“She’s hunting for a rumored System Core fragment, and she thinks you have it.” Tadek blinked, the forced cheer draining from his face like water through a sieve. His lips parted, then closed. “Me? But… but I just have Apprai— I just found some mushrooms,” he stammered, pulling at the threadbare sleeve of his tunic. “I’m a mortician’s boy. Why would I have something like that?” Waclaw pushed himself away from the wall, grunting as his bruised ribs protested. He limped closer, a shadow in the flickering lamplight, and leaned in until Tadek could smell the dried blood and damp earth on him. “You think Zyta cares about logic, boy? She cares about power. And when someone like *you*—a nobody—suddenly starts conjuring rare elixirs out of thin air, that’s not medicine to her. That’s a sign.” “A sign of what?” Tadek’s voice was barely a whisper. “A sign you’ve found a Core. Or at least, a shard. The whispers have always been there, haven’t they? Of the entity's heart, shattered across Veridian Reach. Each piece an origin of untold power, capable of bending reality.” Waclaw’s good hand clenched, then relaxed. “That’s what she wants. What all the clans want.” Tadek shook his head, a faint tremble in his hands. “But I don’t. I really don’t. I just… I can just…” He trailed off, catching himself before he revealed too much. “I just help Otylia.” “I know, Tadek.” Waclaw’s voice softened, a rare, almost painful shift. “I saw it. I saw how you looked at her, how you fought. But that doesn’t matter to Zyta. All she sees is a sudden, inexplicable resource.” He paused, his gaze hardening. “And maybe… maybe she’s not entirely wrong. Not about the fragment, but about the power. Tell me, boy, that skill of yours. The one that lets you… copy things. What is it, really?” Tadek looked away, towards the shadowed wall where the brute’s discarded trench knife lay glinting faintly in the gloom. “It’s complicated,” he mumbled. “Everything is complicated now,” Waclaw retorted, his voice regaining its usual gravelly edge. “But some complications lead to death, others to salvation.” He took a staggering step back, wincing. “Zyta believes these Cores are the answer to everything. She wants to control them. But I… I believe they are the *fountainhead* of everything. The rot itself.” Silence stretched between them, thick with the damp smell of the sewers and the distant drip of water. Tadek slowly turned to Waclaw, his eyes wide. “The wellspring of… Decay?” Waclaw nodded, a stark, grim line to his mouth. “Its broken pieces. They’re not just power. They’re anchors. They keep us bound to this cursed continent, feeding the very illness that gnaws at us all. Destroy the Cores, Tadek, and we sever the rot.” This was new. A new goal, sharper and more terrifying than just finding a cure for Otylia. A cure for *everyone*. But Waclaw’s conviction, raw and desperate, resonated with a dark truth Tadek felt deep in his bones. The System was a sickness. And a sickness had a root. “How do you know this?” Tadek asked, his voice low and serious, devoid of any pretense. Waclaw looked at him, truly looked at him, and for a moment, the grizzled survivor seemed to shed years. “I’ve spent too long watching. Too long losing. There are patterns, boy. Whispers. Scars on the land itself. The Perch, this massive petrified tree… it wasn’t always dead. The unseen warden killed it. And the Cores… they’re the veins that spread the poison.” Tadek processed this, his mind racing. If Zyta was after a Core, and Waclaw believed the Cores were the source of Decay… then this wasn’t just about survival anymore. This was about *ending* it. He glanced at the dagger again, a sudden, desperate idea forming. What if the shards weren’t just objects? What if they carried echoes? What if something *else* carried an echo? He knelt, ignoring the foul water seeping into his trousers, and picked up the discarded blade. It was a sturdy, practical weapon, dark iron with a simple leather-wrapped hilt. Grime and a smear of crusty red clung to it. [Appraisal] [Item: Forged Iron Trench Knife] [Quality: Common] [Durability: 87/100] [Properties: Sharp Edge, Balanced Grip] [Echoes: Faint trace of recent combat trauma (Bogdan), Strong imprint of user’s intent (Zyta’s hunt)] Tadek swallowed hard. Zyta’s hunt. He hadn’t thought to look for that on an item. A remembered thought. Not just of an object, but of an *intent*. Could he… could he Echo that? He focused, pushing past the physical steel, past the faint, lingering imprint of the brute’s pain. He reached for the ‘Strong imprint of user’s intent’. It felt like reaching into cold, viscous mud, but with a sharp, metallic tang. He felt a tug, a resistance, then a sudden, jarring *snap*. [Conceptual Echo activated: Memory Fragment ‘Zyta’s Hunt’] [Warning: Echoing direct living recollection incurs significant physical stress. Proceed with caution.] The blue window flashed, but Tadek barely registered it. His vision blurred, not just at the edges, but his entire perception of the grimy sewer wall melted away. He was somewhere else. A cavern of rough-hewn stone, lit by the sickly glow of a single, caged lumicrystal. The air reeked of ozone and fear. Zyta stood before him, her back to him, but her profile was unmistakable. Her dark, severe hair was pulled back, revealing the sharp line of her jaw, the cruel curve of her mouth. She held something, or someone. A man, slumped in a chair, his head hanging, his body shuddering with ragged breaths. He was bound, bloodied. “The mortician’s boy,” Zyta’s voice cut through the air, flat and sharp as a honed blade. “Where did he get them? The elixirs? Speak, you worm, or I’ll cut the answers from your living skin.” The man whimpered, a broken sound. “I don’t… I just heard he was a quiet one. A nobody. Then Waclaw… Waclaw started asking around for that strange mold. Said it was for his sister. Never saw the boy with anything else. Just the mold.” Zyta’s hand moved. A flash of silver. A choked cry. Tadek felt a phantom pain in his own arm, a burning rip of flesh. He wanted to scream, to look away, but he was trapped, a silent, helpless observer in this chilling memory. “The mold,” Zyta mused, her voice devoid of emotion. “A new origin. Ingenious. But how does a mortician’s apprentice suddenly *replicate*?” She turned, and for a fleeting, terrifying moment, her eyes, cold and calculating, seemed to bore right through Tadek, though he knew he wasn’t truly there. “Find him. And bring me his hands.” The vision flickered, then shattered like glass. Tadek gasped, stumbling back, dropping the iron with a clatter. The cold, wet stone of the sewer floor was suddenly very real beneath his palms. His head throbbed, a dull, insistent ache behind his eyes, and the metallic tang from the Echo now filled his mouth. He put a hand to his nose. It came away stained dark. Blood. He looked at Waclaw, who was staring at him with a mix of shock and dawning horror. “What… what was that, Tadek?” Tadek wiped the blood from his lip, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. The cheerful facade peeled away to stark, cold resolve. “She’s looking for me. Specifically. She thinks I’m copying something from that mold, but she knows I’m copying *something*. And she wants my hands.” He swallowed, the metallic taste making him gag. “She tortured someone for it.” “Your nose is bleeding, boy,” Waclaw said, his voice quiet, almost reverent. “You just pulled a living thought out of that blade, didn’t you? What kind of cost is that?” Tadek pushed himself up, leaning against the damp wall for support. The drain was profound, a hollow ache in his bones, but the clarity of the vision, the chilling certainty of Zyta’s hunt, left no room for his usual evasions. “A physical one, it seems,” he admitted, his voice rough. “But it confirms it. Zyta thinks I have an origin. A Core, even if she doesn’t know it’s not an actual relic, but my skill. So she’ll keep looking. And if the Cores are really what cause the Decay…” He looked at Waclaw, his eyes unwavering despite the lingering pain. “Where would the Ironwood Clan hide something they don’t want found?”

Anatomy of a Lie