Chapter 358: Hearts...
The ten minutes pass slowly.
Zhang Xi finishes treating Rhayne and Veric before we’re halfway through them. The blood is gone from Rhayne’s face, and Veric can already move his shoulders without the stiffness Azure Dividend left behind after the last hit. Even so, nobody suggests cutting the break short.
I check what the whole team is doing, and for a moment their movements almost look normal.
Freya stays seated with the scythe across her legs, rebuilding the small fissures in the blade with Permafrost. Zhang Xi goes over her own equipment and then watches the Heart pillar. Veric strips part of Undertow’s housing, clears the stone fragments caught between the plates, and closes it all up again.
The one who puzzles me most is Rhayne, and she’s still connected to Veric through the Link, even during the break.
The Link definitely wasn’t dropped after the healing. I can still tell by the way she keeps part of her attention fixed on Veric, even when she’s looking at something else. He seems more aware of her than before too, though he’s putting considerable effort into not showing it.
I try to ignore it.
I really do try.
I keep looking at the golem, thinking about the last stage, rebuilding what I remember from the other life and separating memory from certainty. The Heart worked a specific way when I came through the Ferryman’s Toll years ago. If it repeats that, I know what to look for.
If it doesn’t, we’ll have a few seconds to work it out.
That should be the only thing occupying my head.
But it isn’t.
I look at Veric.
Then at Rhayne.
’Ninety percent.’
"Okay."
Freya lifts her eyes from the scythe and Veric looks straight at me.
I breathe out through my nose.
"Before we keep going... how did you two get to ninety percent?"
The hall goes quiet in a way that has nothing to do with the golem.
Rhayne lowers her eyes.
Veric goes back to working on a section of Undertow that’s already perfectly seated. It’s obvious. One look is enough to see that everything there is already in place.
So I just stepped on something.
"I’m asking because Rhayne said the Link depends on the attunement between the user and the target," I keep going, looking at her now. "And you told me yourself that you’d never reached a Void Resonance that high when you connected to me."
Rhayne doesn’t answer.
I wait a few seconds. The silence sinks me into a strange, uncomfortable feeling, and nobody comes to save me.
"So. How did you get to ninety?"
Veric is still far too interested in his own shield.
My attention goes back to Rhayne.
"Did the Link change? Did it evolve? Does it have another name now?"
She tightens her fingers on the fabric of her clothes.
Freya lets out a breath from the other side.
"Dryden."
I look at her.
"What?"
"Can’t you see they don’t want to talk about it?"
"I’m asking about the skill."
The answer comes out too fast.
Freya raises an eyebrow.
"Of course."
"You know, if we link again at some point, it’d be interesting to try to reach higher levels. Understanding what raises the resonance could be useful."
"No..."
The voice comes from Veric.
Everyone looks at him.
He keeps his head down for a moment before lifting his eyes toward me.
"You can’t... you can’t do that."
The pauses between the words make me frown.
"Do what?"
"Try to raise it that way."
"Why?"
Veric opens his mouth and nothing comes out. His jaw goes rigid. He glances at Rhayne and then back at me.
That starts to irritate me.
"If there’s some condition on the skill that I need to—"
"Don’t you understand?"
His voice rises.
The hall goes quiet again.
I really don’t understand.
Freya looks at Veric, then at Rhayne, and something in her face changes. The corner of her mouth moves into a small smile, more disbelief than humor.
"My god. It’s obvious that Veric confessed to her, and that resonance must have gone up because of it."
Nobody breathes properly for about two seconds.
I turn my head toward Veric.
Rhayne gets even more interested in the floor.
His face starts going red.
"Shut up, Freya. You’re talking shit."
The answer comes fast and aggressive.
Freya just tilts her head.
That doesn’t help at all.
I look at Veric a few seconds longer. He avoids my eyes and grips Undertow’s strap until his fingers go white.
’He confessed?’
It could just be Freya provoking him.
His reaction, though, seems a little intense for a provocation that’s completely wrong.
I look at Rhayne.
She stays quiet.
No confirmation. But no denial either.
One more thing I don’t understand.
Zhang Xi takes a deep breath and stands.
"You can discuss this later."
She straightens her tunic and takes a position near the last pillar.
"Dryden doesn’t need the Link right now. Veric does. And we still have a test to finish before the Soul Tickets expire."
It’s hard to argue with someone who drops our possible deaths into the middle of the conversation.
I stand too.
"Zhang Xi is right."
Veric lets the air out slowly. Rhayne stays connected to him and walks backward, leaving space for him to set up in front of the line of pillars.
I pass Freya.
She gives me a sidelong look.
"Don’t start."
"I didn’t say anything."
"Your face did."
The break is over.
Five pillars are done. Hand, Eye, Crown, Foot, and Mouth. Only the Heart is left.
There’s no need to spread people around the room anymore. Zhang Xi takes the one pillar still active. Freya stays free to intercept the guardian if Veric needs suppression or a distraction. Rhayne holds the Link with Veric and keeps the earrings ready. I stay at the center, where I can watch the golem and reach any of them with Pressure Step. Zhang Xi most of all.
’The last pillar is treacherous.’
Veric goes back to the line.
"Last time," he says.
"We’re all hoping so."
He looks at me.
"That wasn’t comforting."
"It wasn’t meant to be. Nobody wants to die."
I adjust Eventide in my hand and put my eyes back on the guardian’s chest.
"Everyone knows what’s coming. Heart. The question is how it presents the answer. Don’t assume anything until we understand the pattern."
Zhang Xi rests her palm near the symbol without touching it.
Freya opens the Permafrost wings a little and drops her center of gravity.
Rhayne stays a few yards behind Veric. The Link is already active, and the earrings glow almost imperceptibly under her hair.
I know the old version of this test, and that doesn’t reassure me at all.
"Go."
Veric crosses.
Nothing happens.
He takes another step.
I keep watching the golem’s torso.
The hands don’t move. The body stays kneeling. The eyes stay dark.
Then the hall strikes.
BOOM.
My vision loses focus.
The sound doesn’t come from outside. It seems to pass through the floor, climb my legs, and detonate at the center of my ribcage. I feel my sternum vibrate, and for an instant my heart seems to try to follow the rhythm the golem is setting.
The mist around it moves in one wide wave.
Zhang Xi brings her free hand to her chest.
Veric locks in place.
Another beat.
BOOM.
Stronger.
This time I see dust fall from the grooves of the pillars.
"It’s a... heart..." Freya murmurs.
We knew that.
That’s exactly the problem.
The guardian’s chest is still closed. No opening, no concentration of OXI anything like what I remember. Just that deep sound running through the entire structure of the room.
A third beat comes before the vibration of the second disappears.
BOOM.
Then another.
The interval shrinks.
Zhang Xi looks at me.
I still don’t have an answer.
In my memory, the Heart started with a clear concentration of OXI inside the chest. The charge grew over a few seconds and had to be reproduced at the pillar before it reached its limit, and while that happened the golem exposed its Stone Core, offering the option of finishing it if you had the strength for that.
This isn’t happening. Not the same way.
The rhythm speeds up.
BOOM. BOOM.
My vision pulses with it.
"What the hell is this..."
I try to track the OXI.
There’s energy in the golem, obviously. An enormous amount of it. But it isn’t gathering at a single point. Each beat seems to push the flow along different paths through the whole body, spreading pulses that disappear before I can compare one to another.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Veric backs off half a step.
"Dryden?"
"Stay where you are."
My own voice sounds strange in my ears.
I need to separate what I remember from what I’m seeing.
The old Heart had an answer.
This one will too.
The Ferryman’s Toll doesn’t build an impossible puzzle. Or at least that’s what I need to believe.
The golem’s chest vibrates.
The next beat makes Eventide shake in my hand.
Then my system opens.
[CAUSAL DISSONANCE][Causal deviation detected.][The course established by your previous choices has been rewritten.]
My stomach drops.
’Son of a bitch!’
Chaos Theory. Again.
This isn’t a small variation.
The last stage has been rewritten.
"Shit..."
Freya turns her head toward me.
She isn’t looking at the golem.
She’s looking at something in front of her own eyes.
The color leaves her face.
"Did you see that?"
Another beat hits the hall.
BOOM.
The sound crosses my ribcage and forces an involuntary contraction through my muscles.
I look at Freya.
"My system warned me..."
Her eyes stay fixed on a window I can’t see.
"You remember my passive? Well, this time mine did too..."
I go still.
Freya doesn’t have Chaos Theory, but hers has always warned her when something catastrophic is standing too close.
If her system displayed something at this exact moment, then there’s a second layer here that I still don’t understand. Maybe the dungeon recognized the change. Maybe it’s something else.
I have no way to know.
The heart speeds up again.
The beats start overlapping, each one arriving before the last finishes crossing the hall. The mist shudders around the golem’s legs. The small stones on the floor vibrate and shift a fraction of an inch with every pulse. And what pulls at me most is that the golem stays kneeling and motionless.
Zhang Xi is staring at the creature’s torso.
The hand that should answer at the Heart pillar has moved away from the symbol.
She takes a small step back.
Then another.
Her expression changes in a way I haven’t seen since the day I met her, healing me at the Oathring and standing up to Rahul Sharma. And then every trace of color drains out of her face.
"My god..."