Chapter 142: Southlake
I don’t know how long I’m there.
Knees on the deck of the rear car. Eyes on the heart pulsing in the corner of my HUD. The rest of the world cut out, like someone pulled the plug on everything that isn’t that small symbol next to her name.
"Dryden..." Oliver. His voice arrives muffled, as if from underwater. "Dryden, we have to move."
I don’t move.
"Boss... please."
I keep watching the heart.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Steady.
Alive.
Rhayne sits down beside me. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t touch. Just sits. After a while I feel her hand on my shoulder. The weight is so light I almost don’t register it.
She’s crying. Quietly. I know because I see the reflection of her tears on the polished metal of the floor. She doesn’t wipe them. She just lets them fall.
What’s left of the train has stopped. The rails ended somewhere I didn’t see. Through the escape area: trees, dense canopy, green light filtering down.
The space next to me is empty.
The space where Lola would sit. The space where she’d drop Lullaby’s case across her lap and complain that the trip was long.
I look at the empty space, and the empty space looks back.
My nose bleeds. I feel the heat trail down my lip before I register it. I drag the back of my hand across.
Red.
And then I hear it.
Not really. Not through my ears. Something more like an echo trapped in my skull—her presence, her cadence, the way she handed every sentence to the world like she was doing it a favor.
"You’re leaking again, Uncle..."
A tear reaches the edge of my eye.
Just one. I hold it there. I don’t let it fall.
Lola is alive. I don’t cry for someone who’s alive. I’m going to find her. I’m going to bring her back. Even if I have to pry every portal in Thirstfall open with my bare hands.
I stand up.
Oliver and Rhayne look at me. I can see the question in both their eyes, the one neither of them is asking.
"She’s alive. The heartbeat’s there. You can see it. As long as it stays, I go after her."
The HUD blinks.
[Quest Complete: Escape the Engineer.]
[You have survived your first encounter with a Leviathan.]
[Reward: WaterStrand — Rank C]
First encounter.
The system logged this one as the first. The bioluminescent forest didn’t count. The sanctuary didn’t count. Both showed "????" on the map—Chronia sealed in a pocket the system couldn’t reach, the giant Leviathan in territory the system didn’t recognize.
The Engineer, on the train, was the first one the system officially admitted exists.
Which tells me where Lola was taken is somewhere even the system can’t see.
The WaterStrand drops into my inventory. Rank C. It isn’t the same one Rae sent me to find for him. This one is much weaker.
I look at the item for two seconds and decide.
He isn’t getting this.
We climb out of the rear car. The train stopped in the middle of the forest. No station. No platform. Just rails fading into the trees on both sides. The air is dense. Wet. Smells of moss and rotting wood and something sweet underneath.
I know that smell.
I check my position. For the first time since the Gatekeeper’s subway, the HUD doesn’t show "????????".
The screen flickers, processes, and gives me:
[Current Zone: Southlake Forest]
[Zone Rank: B (Tide)]
[Danger Level: High]
Southlake.
I stop walking.
Southlake Forest. The same forest where I found the Codex in my first life. I was dozens of miles from here when I boarded the train in Azure Prime, then again in Lost Ark, and the train spit me out exactly where everything started.
Coincidence doesn’t exist in Thirstfall. Everything is connected—the tower, the train, Chronia, the Codex, and now the forest where the Codex found me.
"Stay close. It’s a Rank B area. Anything in here can kill us."
Oliver pulls his hammer. Rhayne tugs the Cloaked Cape across her chest with her good hand.
We move through the trees slowly. Every step measured. The forest is dense enough to hide anything past twenty feet. Shadows shift between the trunks—some are leaves, some aren’t.
Rhayne is quieter than usual. She doesn’t talk much to begin with, but right now I can barely hear her breathe. She walks with her good hand clamped on the Cape against her sternum and her eyes wet-drying-wet again in cycles she isn’t controlling.
Twice I see her glance sideways. At the empty space between her and Oliver. The space where Lola would tug her sleeve and say something nobody saw coming.
I look away before my eyes do the same thing.
An hour of walking. The forest opens into a clearing.
In the center of the clearing, the structure I was hoping to find. The thing that might give me a moment of something resembling peace.
An Oathmark.
The gateway is enormous. Two columns of black stone rising thirty feet, connected by an arch covered in runes pulsing faint blue. The surface between the columns shimmers with the distortion of a dimensional portal—the air boiling between the two pillars like reality is simmering under a low heat.
It’s the most reassuring thing I’ve seen in a long time. And it looks smaller than it should.
Everything looks smaller without her...
I walk to the control panel at the base of the left column.
Select the destination.
[Azure Prime — Cost: 1 Shard per person.]
Three Shards. I pay.
[Scales: 20,313 -> 20,013]
"Where are we going?" Oliver asks.
"Azure Prime. I have two things to do there. After, you two can take your own road. We stay in contact."
"Sorry, boss. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave you alone. What are you going to do?"
"Look for leads on my father. He might know how to reach where Lola is."
"You said two things."
I think of the WaterStrand in my inventory. The filament that makes it rain on Earth. The upgrade my family needs and that Rae sent me here to find for him.
"The second..."
I start to plan my move quietly.
"Lie to someone who deserves it."
I step into the portal.
The world dissolves. White, then blue, then the smell of saltwater and old stone. Azure Prime rebuilds itself around me—the main district, the lanterns, the royal architecture, and the stunning oceanic sky.
The same city I walked out of weeks ago. Exactly the same.
That’s the thing that lands wrong.
Because the only thing that has changed is that Lola is no longer here. And this change needs to be fixed.
Hang in there, little bear.
I’m coming...