A chill, deeper than the mountain air, settled into Aris’s bones. ‘Last Prophet’. The words echoed, not in his ears, but in a hollow space behind his eyes. He felt a sudden, profound emptiness, a void where his own will should reside. Cloaked figures remained motionless, their faces lost in shadow, their stillness an oppressive weight. A shared breath seemed to hold, suspended in the cool, dry air of the lower chambers. No one moved. Only the faint rasp of his own lungs broke the suffocating silence. An unfamiliar sensation began to gnaw. Not a hunger for sustenance, for the dry rations he had forgotten, but a more insidious craving. It started small, a flicker beneath his sternum, growing with each silent moment spent under the cultists’ unseen gaze. His gaze drifted to the stack of untranslated parchments on his makeshift table. They seemed to hum, a low, resonant thrumming only he could perceive. The symbols on their brittle surfaces pulsed with a faint, inner light, beckoning him. An urgency coiled in his gut. A need, sharp and undeniable, to return to the work. Every untranslated line felt like a personal affront, an obstacle to be overcome, quickly. His fingers twitched, an involuntary spasm. Movement rippled through the shadowed figures. A soft, collective sigh, like wind through dry leaves. They began to recede, melting into the deeper gloom of the chamber's periphery, leaving him alone with the oppressive quiet and the growing ache. He stumbled towards his table, the ancient texts calling out with a voice unheard but deeply felt. His vision narrowed. Only the glyphs mattered. Only the ink and the brittle paper held any truth. A cold sweat beaded on his brow. His heart hammered, a frantic drum against his ribs, yet his limbs felt unnervingly light. Every fiber of his being screamed to translate, to unravel the remaining secrets, to *finish*. Reaching the table, his hands, calloused from weeks of similar labor, hovered over a fresh scroll. A tremor ran through him. This was not his hunger. This was not his will. Yet he could not deny it. Inkwell, pen, fresh parchment for notes – his movements became fluid, almost preternatural. Years of academic discipline dissolved, replaced by an instinctual, animalistic drive. The complex Solarian glyphs no longer demanded careful deciphering; they unfolded before his inner eye. Each character clicked into place with unnerving speed. A cascade of understanding, not his own laborious process, but a direct download, flooding his mind. He was merely a conduit. His body protested. Muscles stiffened, eyes burned, but a strange energy coursed through his veins, dulling the pain. It was cool and electric, humming beneath his skin, pushing him onward. He felt like a finely tuned machine, not a man. A parchment was translated, its secrets laid bare. His hand, unbidden, pushed it aside and reached for the next. There was no pause, no moment of reflection, only the relentless pursuit of the next glyph, the next sentence, the next paragraph. Hours bled into one another. Outside, the light from the narrow window shifted from the pale grey of dawn to the deeper hues of dusk. He remained unaware, blind to the world beyond the circle of his lamp. His focus was absolute, terrible in its intensity. His stomach growled, a distant, ignored rumble. Thirst scraped at his throat, a minor inconvenience in the face of this all-consuming imperative. The hunger for translation obliterated all other needs. Sweat slicked his hair, matted against his temples. A faint tremor ran through his entire frame, but his hands remained steady, precise. They were no longer Aris’s hands; they were instruments of a higher, unseen will. Sentences formed on his blank pages, faster than he thought possible, faster than he could consciously process. The ancient script bled onto his modern translations, a dark tide of understanding seeping into the world. A cold, metallic taste filled his mouth. He swallowed, the action automated. A dull ache settled deep within his brain, but it felt distant, as if belonging to someone else. The Aris he knew was receding. His fingers cramped, but the alien energy pulsed, overriding the protest. His vision blurred at the edges, yet the glyphs themselves remained crisp, stark against the aged paper. They shimmered with an unsettling vitality. Each completed text was a small, satisfying sigh from the void within him. A temporary satiation before the hunger rekindled, demanding more. The whispers he’d once attributed to exhaustion now felt like direct commands. His breath came in short, shallow gasps. A strange, almost pleasurable current ran through his nervous system, the raw energy fueling his furious pace. It was intoxicating, terrifying, and utterly beyond his control. His gaze fell upon a particularly gnarled, ancient scroll, its edges frayed like old skin. The symbols seemed to pulse, darker and more complex than any he had encountered. A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the air, entering his chest. Without hesitation, his hand reached, snatching the scroll. His fingers, now seeming impossibly long and pale, unfurled the brittle parchment. The hunger intensified, a roaring void demanding to be filled. His hands moved, almost independently, racing through the text, his body fueled by an alien energy he barely recognized as his own. He was merely watching them work, a passenger in his own skin.

Chapter 22: The Oracle's Hunger