Iker stood in his house slippers, the flimsy fabric already damp with the perpetual grime of this decaying realm. His earlier frustration had hardened into stubborn focus, but Hodei’s words set an uncompromising deadline. Twenty-four hours. That was all the time left before the Calamity plunged the world into its eternal, merciful sleep. And Nerea… Nerea wouldn’t be safe, not even in that sleep. Not truly. He knelt, ignoring the foul stench of the weeping earth. He extended a hand, palm down, toward the dark, viscous runoff. This wasn’t just dirt; it was the world’s misery made manifest. A physical representation of a grief so vast it was killing everything. He had faced down an apocalyptic dragon, casually deflected a mudslide, but this… this was different. This was insidious, a slow, suffocating decay that mirrored a pain he knew all too well. His fingertips brushed the lukewarm, greasy ash. It felt like wet clay, yet there was a faint, almost imperceptible pulse beneath his skin. A thrumming resonance that seemed to whisper of ancient pain, of an aching, rending agony. Then, the whisper became a scream. The world dissolved around him. The gulch, the distant, imposing Grand Abbey, the gray sky—all vanished, replaced by a searing white flash, then a kaleidoscope of jagged, disconnected images. A cacophony of screeching metal, shattering glass, and a sickening crunch that echoed not just in his ears, but in the deepest parts of his soul. He was there, back in the passenger seat, small, helpless, watching the unyielding steel of the guardrail rushing towards them, his mother’s frantic cry, his father’s desperate grip on the wheel. The sudden, absolute silence that followed, a void where laughter and warmth had been just moments before. The crushing silence of a world ripped apart, the hollow fright of being alone, of losing everything. Simultaneously, another vision, equally vivid and far more ancient, layered itself over his personal nightmare. He was soaring, not himself, but a consciousness vast and unbound, witnessing the heart of Ohalza. A vibrant, pulsing jewel, nestled deep within the earth, radiating life and verdant energy. The Core. But then, shadows emerged. Not the ash-forms of Hodei, but figures cloaked in ornate, familiar vestments. Priests. Not the doddering, terrified priests of today, but their ancestors, faces contorted by avarice. They plunged shimmering, crystalline siphons into the Core, drawing out its vibrant essence, not to sustain the world, but to hoard, to empower their own lineage, their own foolish, corrupt ‘divine’ right. He felt the Core’s agony as the siphons drained it, saw its brilliant light dim, its perfect structure crack, fracturing like a delicate pane of glass struck by a stone. The lush, emerald glow bled into a sickly, corrosive green, then into the toxic gray that now wept from the sky. He felt the world’s outrage, its betrayal, its slow, agonizing surrender to a creeping, suffocating poison. This wasn’t a natural process. This was murder, slow and deliberate, committed by the very people who claimed to protect it. The two visions, his personal tragedy and the world’s cosmic rape, intertwined, pressing down on him, crushing the carefully constructed walls around his heart. The fear of losing Nerea, the raw, suffocating dread that had fueled his apathy, his constant search for an escape, was amplified by the dying world’s own despair. He saw himself in the Core’s slow decay – a being with immense power, yet utterly helpless against a pain too vast to comprehend, too heavy to contain. He had failed his parents. He was failing Ohalza. He would fail Nerea. The illusions shattered. Iker found himself crumpled in the gulch, not on his knees, but on his side, his face pressed into the wet ash, silent tears carving clean paths down his cheeks. His breathing turned ragged and uncontrolled. The prickly, arrogant facade had cracked, then shattered entirely, revealing the raw, exposed nerve beneath. He was sobbing, shaking with a dread far sharper than any dragon’s roar or world-ending mudslide. A horror of impotence, of a grief so deep it threatened to drown him, to take Nerea with him, just like it had taken his parents. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing for the blank, comforting void of unconsciousness. A light touch on his shoulder. Soft, hesitant. He flinched, expecting Gorka’s grasping hand, but the touch was too gentle, too warm. He opened his eyes, blurred with tears, to see Nerea kneeling beside him. Her small hand rested on his arm, her brow furrowed with concern, her gaze steady and clear amidst the weeping ash. She didn’t ask what was wrong. She just reached into the pocket of her faded, patched dress and pulled out her stuffed Garratza. Its fluffy, pale blue fur was worn thin from years of comforting hugs, its single button eye shining with innocent devotion. With a soft sigh, Nerea carefully placed the Garratza on the black, weeping ash directly in front of Iker. It looked tiny and absurdly clean against the desolate backdrop. Then, a quiet miracle unfolded. Where the Garratza’s worn paw touched the ash, a tiny bud, no bigger than Nerea’s thumbnail, pushed through the grime. It uncurled with ethereal grace, unfurling delicate, luminous green petals. A single, vibrant flower, miraculously alive, pulsed with a soft, internal light, illuminating the desolation around it. It smelled of fresh rain and clean soil, a scent that cut through the metallic tang of ash. Nerea stroked the flower’s petals with a finger. Her voice, usually bright and full of childish wonder, was imbued with a maturity that pierced through Iker’s despair, resonating with an undeniable truth. “We can’t just run away this time, Iker.” As if responding to her words, the glowing flower pulsed, and from its base, impossibly fine roots, like threads of pure emerald light, began to snake out. They didn’t spread wide across the gulch. Instead, with an almost deliberate precision, they burrowed straight downward, a verdant compass needle pointing unerringly into the depths of the earth, directly beneath the Grand Abbey itself.

The Broken Core