Chapter 57: Hypothesis
"These stones," he murmured, "they’re the source of the mist, aren’t they?"
Elara nodded from behind Lila. "Papa said they felt cold, and he saw the mist coming from them too."
Riku carefully ran a gloved hand over the stone. It was indeed unnaturally cold. He picked up another stone and used it to chip off a small fragment from the first stone.
Lila leaned closer, peering at the broken piece in Riku’s palm. "What is it?"
"Well, it doesn’t seem like natural rock," Riku said, brow furrowed. He held the fragment up to a sliver of sunlight penetrating the canopy. Embedded within the dark, almost glassy matrix were countless tiny specks, pulsing with a faint, sickly crimson luminescence.
"See these?" Riku pointed. "These little red things? They’re not part of the stone itself. They feel separate—almost like tiny parasites within the rock. The coldness, the mist, the red particles... I think these stones act as vessels, or incubators, for whatever this blight is."
"So the stones themselves aren’t the curse, but they carry it?" Lila asked, trying to understand.
"Precisely," Riku affirmed. "And look around." He gestured to the clearing. "There are at least twenty or thirty of these scattered here. Some larger, some smaller. They seem almost... discarded. Just dumped here. This much mist is enough to contaminate the area, affect the wildlife, and anyone unlucky enough to stumble in here—like Elara and her father."
Elara looked at the ground. "So... we were just unlucky?"