Syran found Barris hunched among the outermost rows of broadleaf greens, his usually boisterous frame slumped low. Ground mist curled damp against the soil, softening the ruffled foliage without hiding the unsteady tremor in Barris’s hands as he tugged at a weed. He didn’t look up when her shadow fell over him. He knew. Her throat scraped dry, thick with the taste of the tower's falling mortar.
“Barris,” she began, her voice a low, dangerous hum. She held out the stone tablet, its ancient script stark against the dull rock. “This explains why Rellian is acting like a madman. It explains the countdown. And it explains you.”
He flinched, a full-body recoil, and finally turned. His face was a canvas of deep-set exhaustion, dark circles beneath eyes that held a haunted, faraway look. A bead of sweat traced a path through the grime on his temple, even in the cool air.
“Syran, please,” he rasped, his voice rough, like stones grinding together. He tried to stand, but his legs wavered. “Rellian… he can’t know. Not yet.”
“Not yet?” Syran’s voice rose, a desperate edge sharpening it. “You’re coughing up *parts* of the spire's guts, Barris! This tablet shows a sacrificial anchor, a soul-engine. And your magical signature is woven into the diagram! You’re not just dying, you’re… you’re the damn mechanism itself!”
Barris winced, a flicker of pain crossing his face that had nothing to do with her accusation. He stumbled, catching himself on a thick, fibrous stalk. “It’s… for Rellian. For everyone. So they can have a peaceful end. Just a little longer.”
“A peaceful end for *them*? What about *you*?” A harsh heat flared behind Syran's ribs. “Rellian’s dream of a quiet life will be built on your ashes, Barris! Don’t you see the cruelty in that?”
He pressed a hand to his chest, a low groan escaping him. “He needs… his farm. His peace. It’s all he ever wanted.”
“And you? What do *you* want?” Syran stepped closer, her voice dropping to a fierce whisper. “To be consumed, gear by gear? This is madness! We can fix this, Barris. We have to tell him. He deserves to know!”
Barris’s gaze fixed on hers, murky with pain. A convulsion wrenched his shoulders, and the stout plant beneath his grip snapped with a dry crack. His body spasmed, a guttural cry tearing from his throat. He staggered back, hands flying to his chest as if to contain something monstrous struggling within.
Syran lunged forward, instinct overriding her fear, but she was too late. With a sickening wet tearing sound, Barris’s tunic ripped, not from impact, but from something pushing *out*. His skin split, peeling back like fragile parchment. A gaping maw opened in his sternum, revealing a nightmare of intricate, obsidian gears grinding against each other, spattered with a viscous, blue-black ichor. One of the gears, exactly like the one he had coughed up, juddered violently before detaching with a squelch and clattering to the soil. Barris crumpled face-first into the furrows, his chest exposing a slow, pulsing clockwork choked with mold.
“Barris!” Syran screamed, her voice raw with horror. She dropped to her knees, scrambling to him, her hands hovering uselessly over the gruesome cavity in his chest. The machinery whined, a sound of profound mechanical agony, before slowing to an intermittent clunk.
From the farmhouse, a figure emerged, apron askew, a freshly picked golden sun-brassica cradled in one arm. Rellian paused at the edge of the tilled dirt, an easy smirk fading off his mouth. His smile faltered. His attention fixed on Syran, dropped to the motionless heap of his friend, and locked on the wet rift tearing through Barris's ribs.
Rellian’s face went utterly blank. The golden round fell from his crook, thudding into the damp loam. He took a single, slow step, then another, his movements unnervingly precise, like a machine being wound. His gaze was fixed on Barris, on the gears, on the detached, bloody mechanism lying next to him. His breath came out in a shallow, ragged gasp.
“Syran… what is this?” His voice was a flat, dead sound, devoid of its usual calm. He knelt beside Barris, his hand reaching, trembling, to touch the exposed machinery. He pulled it back sharply, his fingers slick with the cold, blue-black ichor. The low vapor drifted across his cheekbones, clinging wet to his skin.
Syran wiped grease and spit from her knuckles, her words ragged: “He’s the anchor, Rellian. The Ziggurat is consuming him. He’s been… holding back the sky.”
Rellian stared at the rotting core of his best friend, then up at the twilight sky, at the faint, hairline fractures already visible in the distant dome above. His dream, his serene sanctuary, suddenly felt like a monstrous deception, built on Barris’s slow, agonizing death. The practiced ease drained from his posture, leaving his shoulders rigid as iron bar.
A roar broke from his lungs, shaking the mud across the terrace. “No!” he bellowed, his voice echoing across the misty terraces. “No, Barris, you don’t get to die for my peace!”
He turned, his gaze hardening. He stared at the sun-bright head resting where it had dropped. The mythical harvest, the solitary thing capable of replacing a human soul in the core's engine. He would cultivate it. He *would*.
[WEEPING: The Loom of Gloom mourns the deepening rot. A soul-engine’s core requires profound succor. The Sun-Core Cabbage demands a singular nourishment. Seek the Abyssal Guano, a sorrowful offering from the Deepest Collapse, Floor 99.]
Rellian’s chin jerked upward. Floor 99. The violent, perpetually collapsing abyssal floor, a maw of churning shadow and forgotten horrors. A place where even the most seasoned Vanguards dared not tread. A place no one ever returned from alive.