Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

"GO GO GO!" I drive my heels into the Ferredon’s ribs. The animal fires forward. The force snaps my neck back. The desert blurs.

Everyone follows. Full panic gallop.

"IT’S NOT GONNA MAKE IT, BOSS! NOT GONNA MAKE IT!" Oliver screaming behind me.

I look over my shoulder. The white wall is coming. Same crystalline mist from days ago. Faster this time. The leading edge eating the desert behind us—sand, rock, scrub, everything going to white glass in a second flat.

The inselberg appears. Six hundred fifty feet out. Rock formation tall enough to shield us.

"INSELBERG! INSIDE THE ROCK! NOW!"

The Ferredons round the formation. I jump from mine and grab Lola by the vest, pulling her clean off the saddle. Oliver dismounts rolling. Rhayne is already on the ground. She uses the cloaked cape over herself as if it could protect her from the mist.

We press between the stones. We are flat and holding our breath.

The mist passes, and the hollow roar feels close to us. The voices inside it are making the temperature drops even lower. Ice forms on the edges of the rock.

And it passes.

Silence. In front of us, untouched. Behind the rock, everything is white. Crystallized and Dead. The four ferredons were crammed against the rock, shaking but standing. All intact.

"Everyone good?"

"I’m alive," Lola says. "But stop throwing me. It’s annoying."

She looks anxious today...

We mount and ride toward the tower again. Slower now. The Ferredons nervous, their ferret ears rotating backward at every sound.

Near the base of the tower, I see something that makes me pull up.

A statue. One hundred and fifty feet from the tower wall. Crystallized perfectly. The shape is unmistakable—Reef Goberingei. Frozen in a running posture. Legs stretched, arms on the ground, head low. Caught mid-flight.

I dismount and walk to it. Crouch down and check the back heel of the left rear leg.

It’s cut, a clean cut. The same cut I made in the tunnel.

It survived the fall.

I knew it. I didn’t get the experience.

Somewhere at the bottom of that chasm there was a passage connecting back to the surface. It climbed out.

Today it tried to run from the mist, but the severed tendon didn’t let it be fast enough.

I look at the frozen Goberingei for a long second. The king didn’t get his kingdom back.

I just wonder where he got all the beads.

"Oliver. Look for where this thing came out. Same one we fought."

"On it, boss."

I walk to the tower wall. Touch the surface. The same energy as before. That frequency in the small bones behind my ears.

No monsters around. Just desert dust mixed with crystalline frost. The ground glitters in patches where the sand melted into glass.

I follow the wall, trailing my finger against it as I head toward the puzzle. The runes are still there, still glowing a pale blue.

"No camp this time!" I yell to no one.

If another eruption fires from the top of the tower, the squad needs to be mounted and ready to run. Rhayne stay with the Ferredons. Saddled and Ready.

"Lola. Come here."

She comes slowly. Looks at the runes with clinical curiosity.

"Each rune rotates. Each one is a word. I need to build a sentence."

She nods.

We start. I rotate runes. She rotates runes. I test combinations with logic. She tests without any apparent logic, but with instinct that produces results faster than logic does.

’The Hunger stays Open Below The tongue’

—the first half assembles in an hour. The words falling into place as if they’d been waiting. ’as we Wait for the Chosen Void to Control what lies Beyond the’—the second half takes longer.

One hour...

Two hours...

Four hours...

Each rune solved unlocks the next. Lola is locked in—eyes shut, fingers turning runes by touch alone. I’ve seen her this focused maybe twice.

Then she stops.

"Uncle. This last one doesn’t turn."

I look. The final rune in the right-hand column. It isn’t a rune. It’s an empty slot. A blank space waiting for a word that isn’t part of the puzzle.

A variable.

I read the incomplete sentence.

"The Hunger stays Open Below The Tongue, as we Wait for the Chosen Void to Control what lies Beyond the ___."

What word is missing?

The door opened for me. Only for me. When Oliver walked close, it shut. There’s something in me that the tower recognizes. Something I carry that no one else has.

Of course... The Codex.

And two days ago, when the Codex resurfaced on my HUD, the notification said one thing for the first time. I registered but didn’t process.

"The Aion Codex (Hope) has accepted the offered item."

Hope.

The Codex is called Hope.

I crouch down. Touch the empty slot with my thumb. Push a thread of OXI into it. And think of the word, writing the ancient rune.

Hope.

The slot glows. Pale blue. The word etches itself into the stone. It fits perfectly. It belongs there.

"The Hunger stays Open Below The Tongue, as we Wait for the Chosen Void to Control what lies Beyond the Hope."

The complete sentence pulses once. Every rune at the same time. A single heartbeat of light.

Then the tower ignites.

Every surface. Every ridge. Every nodule. Light climbing the helix from the base to the summit in a wave so bright I throw my arm across my eyes.

Behind me I hear Oliver shout. Lola buries her face in her hands. The Ferredons scream. The whole structure is lit from inside, pulsing, awake. Everything it did until now was sleep. This is the waking.

The energy column—the beam that has been striking the false sky of Lost Ark since the day we arrived, the constant vertical pillar that lit the desert and fed the system and held the whole structure’s heartbeat—flickers.

Stutters.

And for the first time since anyone in Lost Ark can remember, goes dark.

The silence that follows is the deepest I’ve ever heard. The desert holding its breath because the thing that made it breathe just stopped.

A concussive blast rolls down the tower—not an explosion, a release. A transformer blowing its charge. The shockwave hits us flat and warm and passes.

Then the door opens.

This time there’s no hesitation. It swings wide in a single motion—fast, hard, complete. A punch, not a gesture. A door that has been holding this position for so long, finally hearing the word it was built to answer to.

Inside, a white light. Steady. Patient. Warm.

Inviting us in with a cold breeze.