Dust swirled around Levin’s boots as he tracked the skittering trails. Gritfall’s outer reaches hummed with a different kind of quiet than Stonepeak, a silence laced with the promise of something unseen. His senses had sharpened since the last tremor, his connection to the ground deepening. Now, he didn't just walk upon the earth; he felt its pulse, a low thrum that guided him.
He hunted seven Ash-spawn that cycle, a lean harvest. Each time a creature fell, Levin knelt beside it. His hands, still stained with ochre dust, pressed against the cooling hide. He didn’t absorb magic like a hungry void, but rather felt the raw earth-force within the creature bleed away, a reciprocal exchange. A deep hum resonated in his bones, a slow, fulfilling warmth that spread through his limbs. It wasn’t just power; it was a homecoming, a recognition of his own burgeoning nature. The surge was thrilling, a spine-tingling echo of ancient energies awakening within him.
But the surge waned with each successive kill. The smaller creatures offered less, their essence quickly depleted. He knew this growth wouldn’t last forever, not from the meager Ash-spawn near Gritfall. Their numbers, too, seemed to dwindle with his passing.
Two of the smallest, a darting skitter-lizard with a whip-thin tail and a scruffy burrow-badger whose fur mimicked sun-baked rock, he kept alive. Their earth-essence was too faint to bother with, but bounties were bounties.
A length of coarse rope secured them. He carried the squirming bundle back through Gritfall’s dusty lanes, past leaning stalls and the muted chatter of merchants, towards the Regulator’s Booth.
Inside, a stout man with a sweating brow peered over a high counter. His eyes widened at the sight.
“Two of them?” he grunted, disbelief thick in his voice.
“Aye. Unharmed, save for a rock to the head for the badger, a well-aimed boot for the lizard. Both taken alive,” Levin stated, his voice quiet. “That’s twenty-five Scoria Shards, by the city’s writ, isn’t it?”
A small pause. The man’s gaze slid away, then back, a calculating flicker in his eyes. “Hmm, well… these aren’t exactly prime specimens…”
A subtle tremor passed through the packed earth floor beneath Levin’s boots, too faint for anyone but him to notice. A fine dust, like a sigh, drifted from a crack in the plaster above the man’s head. Levin’s stare hardened, not with anger, but with an unyielding patience, the weight of stone settling in his gaze.
The official’s face paled. He cleared his throat, fumbling with a pouch. “Here, then. Twenty-five Shards. Accurate.”
Levin pocketed the rough-hewn coins. The metal felt cool and heavy against his palm, a tangible reward for his new abilities.
---
Back at the Wayhouse, the serving hand, a woman with quick, knowing eyes, met him at the door.
“Alive and well, quiet one,” she chirped, a smile crinkling the corners of her eyes. “Supper again? Dried flatbread and thin gruel, as always?”
Levin usually chose the cheapest fare, his ingrained frugality from Stonepeak a hard habit to break. But the Scoria Shards felt good in his pouch. A new thought stirred within him, a simple curiosity.
“I’ll have the most costly fare you offer,” he said, his voice flat but firm.
Her eyes widened. “Hah! Made a haul, did we? I’ll tell the cook! Right away!”
The inn’s best took time. An hour passed. Levin sat, listening to the murmurs of other patrons, the clatter of pots from the kitchen, the dry wind whistling through gaps in the walls. His stomach rumbled.
When the dishes finally arrived, a feast was laid before him. Freshly baked flatbread, soft and fragrant, alongside a pot of gleaming sun-fruit preserves. A roasted dust-fowl, glazed with dark herbs, its skin crackling. Slow-cooked ribs, thick with savory meat, topped with blistered sand-cheese.
Levin, whose life had been measured in dry grains, stringy goat meat, and the occasional scavenged desert root, stared. This wasn’t just food. It was an experience. The aromas alone were intoxicating.
He devoured it. Bit into the bread, sweet and tangy. Tore into the fowl, the tender meat melting on his tongue. Ripped at the ribs, the rich fat dripping. He ate with a fierce, quiet intensity, every bite a revelation.
When he looked up, the platters were scraped clean, bones picked bare. He blinked.
“No one took this, did they?” he asked, a faint confusion in his tone.
The serving hand chuckled, wiping her hands on her apron. “Hardly! But for a lean sort, you can truly eat, quiet one!”
Even the cook, a burly man usually confined to his smoky kitchen, emerged. He leaned against the doorframe, a rare grin on his face. “Good to see it enjoyed so fiercely. Doesn’t happen often, that menu.”
Levin felt a strange contentment. He had understood. There was more to the world than mere survival.
---
Three cycles later, Levin had cleared Gritfall’s immediate outskirts of Ash-spawn. His tally reached nearly thirty. Only five of those had been strong enough for a bounty, but even that meager sum had netted him over a hundred Scoria Shards. He’d converted some into heavier, stamped Sun-Coins, easier to carry and less prone to crumbling.
His earth-sense had grown sharper, more attuned. Now, he didn’t just feel vibrations; he could trace them, follow the ripples in the dust, sense the subtle shift of stone that betrayed a creature’s passage. It was like extending roots into the ground, feeling the world breathe beneath his feet. He could track the minute disturbances left by a scutter-lizard’s segmented tail or the faint heat signature of a burrowing ember-worm, even when the creatures were beyond sight.
But Kael’s group, the Dust-scrapers, showed the strain of their fruitless hunts. Their faces were drawn, their movements heavy. Complaints about dwindling funds and the rising cost of their beds were whispered openly.
One afternoon, as Levin returned to his room, two of Kael’s companions, grizzled men with scarred knuckles, blocked his way. They filled the narrow hall.
“Hey, quiet one,” the taller one grunted, his voice rough as grinding rock. “Heard you’ve been making a few shards. Share with your fellow scrapers.”
Levin’s heart hammered. He wasn’t a fighter, not in the way these men were. But a cold resolve settled in his gut. A faint tremor rippled through the floorboards, almost imperceptible. Before the first man could lunge, Levin subtly shifted his weight, pushing a barely-there bulge in the packed dirt beneath the man’s foot. The man stumbled, off-balance.
Levin moved then, a blur of unexpected speed. A short, hard jab to the gut. The second man, cursing, swung a wide fist. Levin ducked, a low hum of power coursing through him, and landed a precise blow to the jaw. Both men crumpled, more from surprise and a subtle disorienting tremor through the floor than brute force, tumbling down the short flight of stairs with a clatter of limbs.
A brief commotion echoed through the Wayhouse. Soon, Kael appeared, his face a mask of shame. He bowed his head, deep and low, before Levin.
“My sincerest regrets, quiet one. I’ll deal with them thoroughly. This won’t happen again, I swear…” he stammered, his eyes avoiding Levin’s.
Levin saw the weariness in Kael’s slumped shoulders, the worry etched into his features. “Are things… hard?” he asked, his voice softer than he’d intended.
Kael flinched, then sighed, a long, weary sound. “Aye. We’re tight on shards. Tighter than dust on the wind.”
He recounted their story. Former street-runners, thugs in a sprawling border settlement far to the south. Two cycles ago, they met a man, a 'Stone-Speaker,' who claimed his gifts had awakened after hunting Ash-spawn. Kael’s group, desperate for a new path, had traded their thug life for the uncertain existence of Dust-scrapers.
But it wasn’t easy. True Ash-spawn, those worthy of bounty, were rare. Most creatures they found were just common desert beasts, their forms warped by the Sun-Scoured Lands but not touched by the deeper, ancient energies. No bounty for those. Just hard, dangerous work for nothing.
They had wandered from one parched settlement to another, taking odd jobs, always searching. Two years, and they’d only managed to bring in three 'true' Ash-spawn. Levin understood then why the city Regulators often treated Dust-scrapers like little more than glorified vagrants. Chasing a phantom, while others toiled. It was a bleak existence.
“Honestly, another few cycles,” Kael admitted, voice low, “we’ll be out of a bed. Gritfall’s too small, not enough work to keep us afloat. But don’t worry, quiet one. We’re not planning to ask you for anything. After this trouble, it’d be shameless…”
Levin reached into his pouch, the coolness of the Sun-Coins a stark contrast to the rough Scoria Shards. Kael had shown him kindness when he first arrived, a quiet, gruff decency in a world that often felt indifferent. That was worth something.
He pulled out ten Scoria Shards, gleaming faintly in the dim light, and held them out.
“Here.”
Kael stared, dumbfounded. His eyes flickered between the coins and Levin’s steady face. “Wait… why?”
“You showed me kindness when I had none,” Levin replied, remembering the offer to travel together, Kael’s watchful eye. “Consider it repayment for that.” His mother’s simple code echoed: treat others as you wish to be treated, repay kindness in kind.
“Still, quiet one, I’d feel wrong just taking this…” Kael began, his brow furrowed.
Levin nodded. “Then share information instead. Tell me about the settlements you’ve visited, what dangers lie between them. Anything useful.” One of the first lessons he’d learned beyond Stonepeak was that knowledge often held more value than coin.
Kael’s face lit up. “That, I can do!”
---
Kael spoke for an hour, sketching a rough map in the dust with a calloused finger, marking dusty trade routes and hidden springs. He told Levin about the few thriving settlements, the ones barely clinging to life, and the forgotten ruins where strange Ash-spawn sometimes nested. He spoke of creatures to hunt, like the armoured Sand-Lions, and those to avoid, like the burrowing Acid-worms.
This knowledge was vital. Levin didn’t want to wander aimlessly again, like a pebble carried by the dry wind.
Kael’s stories drifted into tales of ancient empires, vast Stone-Speaker families who guarded their territories with silent, unyielding power, and cursed lands where the very rock pulsed with malevolent energy. What truly caught Levin’s attention, however, was the mention of a Lore-Vault, located in Cindergate, a major settlement to the northeast.
“You say it holds thousands of scrolls? Books?” Levin asked, his voice hushed.
“So I’ve heard,” Kael replied, shrugging. “Never dared set foot inside myself, though.”
Levin had learned to read from his mother, perched on a sun-warmed rock on Stonepeak, tracing letters in the dust. Books were mythical things, spoken of in hushed tones, repositories of forgotten wisdom. His mother often lamented the stories she’d once known, tales she could no longer recall. He had always imagined them as objects of immense, sacred power.
And now, a place existed, in Cindergate, with thousands of them. And the entry requirements? Absurdly simple, by Kael’s account.
“A Stone-Speaker can enter…” Levin murmured, the words feeling foreign, yet potent.
Kael laughed, a short, dry sound. “Aye. Maybe one day, when we’re true Stone-Speakers, we’ll get to visit it too!”
A new desire bloomed in Levin’s chest, one he hadn’t known he possessed, eclipsing the yearning for security or even the strange thrill of his awakening power. It was a hunger for knowledge, a deep, persistent need to understand this scarred world, its forgotten past, and his own place within its vast, unknowable future. He had lived his whole life on Stonepeak, ignorant.
“Is this worth enough?” Levin asked, gesturing to the dust-map and the stories.
“More than enough, quiet one,” Kael said, a genuine warmth in his voice.
Levin had planned to hunt one last time the next day before moving on. Now, he knew exactly where he would go.
---
As if to mock the easy turn of fortune, the following afternoon, during his final hunt in the parched scrubland, Levin stumbled upon a scene of raw horror. One of Kael’s companions, the smaller of the two who had confronted him, lay crumpled against a petrified tree. Blood, dark as dried rust, bloomed across his torn stomach. His eyes, half-lidded and distant, fixed on nothing.
“What happened?” Levin’s voice was a rough whisper.
The man coughed, a wet, rattling sound. “A rabbit… Rift-beast… monster…” He pointed a trembling, bloodied hand. “Kael… over there…”
Levin’s gaze snapped to where the man pointed. A tuft of Kael’s coarse, sandy hair lay on the ground, detached. Beyond it, Kael’s body, torn and mangled, lay sprawled. His eyes were wide open, a burning, indignant regret frozen in their depths. Two more corpses, limbs ripped clean from torsos, painted the dust.
And then, a creature turned. It was a Chitin-hare, but unlike any rabbit Levin had ever seen. The size of a desert hound, its fur matted with dried blood and dust, its eyes glowed a malevolent, blood-red. Incisors, long and curved like polished obsidian blades, jutted from its maw, almost scraping the ground. Its hind legs were grotesquely muscular, twitching with coiled power. It was chewing something, a wet, sickening sound.
It saw Levin. Its head snapped up. In an instant, the creature lunged, a blur of red-eyed fury, the speed of a fired bolt. Its form was a low, powerful streak across the broken earth.
“Ugh!” Levin cried, throwing himself sideways, tumbling into the grit. The Chitin-hare, unable to halt its terrifying momentum, shot past him, slamming into a thick, petrified tree trunk.
A sickening CRACK echoed across the silent land. The tree, ancient and stone-hard, didn’t just shudder. It split, a clean, precise cut running through its petrified heart. The hare’s incisors had sliced through it like paper.
Levin scrambled backward, dust coating his face. There was no time to assess, no time to subtly manipulate the earth. This creature was pure, unrestrained savagery. Instinct took over.
He pulled his simple sheepskin slingshot from his belt, the smooth, worn wood a familiar comfort in his shaking hand. A jagged piece of flint, sharp as a tooth, found its way into the pouch.
He drew it back, the taut leather singing.