The hole was still there. Same jagged edges. Same sickening drop. But this time, Noah stepped forward willingly.
Last time, it had been an accident—a slip, a distraction, a failure in basic footing he hadn't let himself live down. He'd broken his wrist on the landing, torn the sleeve of his best suit, lost access to his powers, and walked away with nothing but questions. That had been months ago.
Now, he dropped clean. No injury. No stumble. His boots hit the stone below with a dull tap, coat settling neatly around him. He exhaled slowly through his nose, adjusting the grip on the crystal tablet in his hand. It was already active, already pulsing softly with anticipation. Good.
The air down here hadn't changed. Still warm in a way that didn't make sense. Still filled with that faint smell—like copper and something sweet rotting just beneath it. The stone around him glowed faintly with bioluminescent veins, blue and green running in perfect geometry along the walls. This wasn't a cave. It was a structure. Something made.
He took a few steps forward. No hesitation this time. His powers flowed freely now—no resistance like before, no delay between thought and effect. He tested it just to be sure, flicking two fingers. A small line of white energy arced between them, stable and cold.
The beasts were still here, too. Same shapes as before—hulking things with skin stretched too tight, some crawling along the walls, others stacked motionless like statues. They watched him. None moved. But they remembered him.
Noah didn't slow down. If they wanted a fight, they'd already be attacking. Which meant they were curious. Or afraid. Either worked.
He tapped the edge of the tablet. It responded instantly, runes blooming across the surface. He started logging everything—the glow pattern of the walls, the position of the creatures, the temperature of the ground beneath his boots.
Last time, he'd been a target.
This time, he was a researcher.
And he intended to stay that way.
The path curved downward through a slope of jagged obsidian, fractured in a way that suggested pressure, not age. Noah moved carefully, not because he feared slipping, but because he hated damaging things he hadn't studied yet.
A patch of lichen caught his eye—deep violet with silver roots that curled inward when he stepped near. He logged its movement speed, moisture pattern, and proximity to the glowing minerals nearby. Possible symbiosis. He'd compare it to the surface samples later.
Further in, the space opened up.
A chamber. Or a biome. The scale of it made both words feel inadequate.
A flying kraken drifted overhead—wings spanning wider than James' entire citadel, each movement slow and deliberate, like it was swimming through atmosphere instead of air. Dozens of thin, translucent tendrils dangled from its underside, collecting spores or something like them from glowing clouds that hung around the upper ridges.
To his left, a dark serpent twisted through the stone like a whisper. Its scales shimmered with faint reflections, like oil spread over shattered glass. Noah paused only briefly to mark its size—about the length of a village perimeter—and the low hum that vibrated through the ground as it passed.
He heard the spider before he saw it.
The clicks echoed from multiple directions, like the sound was being bounced around deliberately. When it finally emerged—sliding out from a gap in the wall—it moved with careful precision, one leg at a time. Its body was covered in moss, bark, even flowers. It had been sitting still so long the biome started growing on it.
None of them attacked.
None even moved toward him.
They watched. Or ignored. Either was fine.
Noah's hand hovered over his tablet again, but he didn't log anything for a few minutes.
Just stood there.
Looking up at things no one had names for yet.
The terrain shifted again as he made his way up the hill. Trees bent in spirals, bark twisting like it had grown in slow agony toward something it could never reach. The grass here was taller, sharper around the edges, pale green with a tint of blue under the low ambient light. Bushes flanked the sides of the path, thick with webs that shimmered faintly whenever the wind moved through.
He recognized the layout.
Every root placement. Every ridge.
It was the same path as before.
Noah adjusted his pace automatically, boots avoiding the snare-vine patches he remembered from the last visit. His coat brushed through the overgrowth without catching, and his hand never left the side of the tablet.
At the top, the trees gave way. A clearing. Same as before.
A flat meadow stretched out, soft moss covering most of the stone beneath. There were no visible threats, no unnatural movement. It was quiet, except for the low hum of nearby growth systems.
He stopped just at the edge.
This was where he'd met her last time.
Ariela.
She wasn't here now.
He allowed himself a breath. One second. Maybe two.
Good. That would save time.
He stepped forward, started scanning the plant structures again—and froze when a voice spoke right behind him.
"Back for round two?"
Noah jumped. Visibly.
Nearly dropped the tablet.
"Hello," he said louder than he meant to, halfway between a greeting and a reflex. He turned sharply. She was already standing there, barefoot in the moss like she'd always been part of it.
Ariela tilted her head, looking him up and down like she was inspecting a misplaced painting. She stepped closer without asking, reaching out and plucking a small leaf from his shoulder. It was shaped like a spiral, same as the trees they'd just passed.
"You didn't fall this time," she said, brushing the spot gently. "Your coat's still clean. Impressive."
Noah inhaled slowly through his nose, trying not to visibly react.
The leaf fluttered from her fingers.
He focused on adjusting his grip on the tablet again, pretending it required more precision than it did.
"I didn't fall the first time either," he muttered.
She blinked.
He adjusted his tone. "I was the victim of a blazing shadow-rubble meteor. Crafted by two idiots having a brawl above my coordinates."
"Oh."
She smiled, like it was mildly amusing. "Did it scream, too?"
"No," he said flatly. "I did."
He expected her to laugh, or say something sarcastic. Instead, she looked at him like that explained everything. Her attention shifted back to the moss beneath her feet.
Trying to take back control of the moment, Noah lifted the tablet and flicked a few runes across its surface, pretending to review his log page.
"Just so you know," he added, "you're still the only humanoid I've seen down here. Not much competition for jokes."
She nodded absently. "I liked when you screamed more."
Noah stared at her for a second. Then sighed. "Right."
He gave up on conversation and focused on opening the interface. The tablet flickered—either from residual divine interference or his own mild emotional spike. He didn't care which.
Noah started walking again, tapping at the crystal tablet as he went. The data streams flickered into view—density readings, heat distribution, and something new embedded beneath the stone: trace divine matter.
Ariela followed.
Not beside him. Right behind him.
Just close enough that her breath occasionally brushed the back of his neck.
He didn't say anything. Not at first.
She leaned a little closer as he paused beside a patch of glowing moss. He scanned it. Logged it. Typed out three notations.
"You're trying to see if it glows because of memories," she guessed, peering over his shoulder.
"No," he replied without looking up.
Another step. Another scan.
"Oh, this one's moving when you blink," she said. "Does that mean it's shy?"
"No."
Another reading. Another guess.
"Are you naming them all after your brothers?"
"No."
He quickened his pace.
She quickened hers.
Every time he increased his stride, she matched it. Every time he stopped, she stopped two inches behind him. At one point, he shifted left without warning—she followed.
"You don't have to walk on top of me," he muttered.
"I'm not," she said.
"You are."
"I'm following. That's different."
He turned sharply and looked at her. She looked back, perfectly calm, like she didn't see a problem.
Noah tapped a little harder on the tablet this time. The screen flickered, likely from his pulse spiking.
Noah knelt beside a cluster of pale-red stones, setting the tablet against one of them to begin a proximity scan. These weren't ordinary crystals—they pulsed irregularly, like something alive was trying and failing to remember how to breathe.
He narrowed his focus, runes cycling faster across the screen. The reading was almost clear—
—and then the light shifted.
Behind him, Ariela crouched next to a smaller moss cluster and pressed both palms flat into it.
"Ariela, don't—"
The moss rippled. Then hissed. The glow turned violet, then a sickly orange. The stone cracked, and the data on Noah's screen vanished as interference spiked across the field.
He stood up fast, snatching the tablet out of the way as the entire patch destabilized.
"What are you doing?"
She blinked at him, hands still on the moss. "Helping."
"That's not helping," he snapped. "That's contamination. You've just erased six minutes of unrepeatable ambient growth data because you thought pushing it like dough would be a good idea."
"I was giving it more energy," she said, frowning slightly.
He stared at her.
Then scoffed.
"You're the goddess of life," he muttered. "And yet you don't understand the first thing about growth. You don't study, you don't observe, you just touch everything and expect it to love you back."
She looked down. The glow from the moss was already fading.
Noah didn't stop. "Do you even know what you're doing down here? Or are you just some overgrown child running on instinct and hoping the world bends to it?"
She didn't answer.
Good.
He didn't want one.
He turned away, opened a new scan template, and tried to recover whatever he could from the surrounding readings.
Noah walked off without another word, holding the tablet tight in one hand as he smacked the screen with the other. Once. Twice. Three times. The interface flickered, glitching between scan states and dead data logs.
He muttered under his breath, jaw clenched. "Useless. Absolutely useless."
He wasn't even sure if he was talking about the tablet or her anymore.
Why had he come here again?
Why had he let her near him? She wasn't special. She wasn't unique. Not to him. She was just another anomaly in a world full of them—less predictable, sure, but no more valuable than a rare mineral or an unpredictable lifeform. Just another factor to work around.
He tapped the screen again. Still nothing recovered. He sighed through his teeth.
"She's not important," he told himself. "She's not... anyone."
He tried to reconfigure the search parameters. The error message blinked back at him.
All he had was this—data, discovery, patterns that listened when people didn't.
And the two idiots—Evodil with his nonsense, James with his theatrics. They were entertainment. Background noise. Nothing more.
If they weren't there tomorrow?
So be it.
If he ended up alone?
So be it.
If he didn't know what to do without them—without someone?
So be it.
He stopped walking. The screen dimmed again in his hands.
No more scans. No more data.
Just quiet.
Ariela stayed where she was, crouched beside the now-dim moss, watching it lose its light.
She hadn't meant to ruin anything. She only wanted to help.
The energy she gave it was supposed to wake it up. That's what life usually wanted—warmth, presence, a gentle push. It worked on the surface. It worked with vines, with flowers, with all the things she could feel before they bloomed.
This time, it didn't.
And Noah's words hadn't been just cold. They had cut.
She looked at her hands.
They didn't glow.
They didn't hurt.
They just felt... small.
Her gaze drifted toward the direction he'd gone. He was a flicker in the distance now, walking fast, shoulders tense, arms close to his body like he was trying to hold himself in.
Ariela stood up slowly, brushing her palms against her legs.
Maybe he was right.
Maybe she didn't understand how growth worked down here.
But then again…
He didn't understand everything either. He couldn't. No one who did would speak like that.
She turned, walked in the opposite direction. Her bare feet left soft impressions in the moss as she moved through the clearing.
She didn't cry.
Not because she didn't want to.
Because she didn't know how.
Noah kept walking, further down than he'd planned to go. The terrain grew steeper, tighter—roots knotted into the walls, thick vines suspended over mineral shelves like nature had grown itself into architecture.
He didn't care. More plants meant more data. More to log. More to think about that wasn't her.
He scanned a twisting stalk with glowing blue thorns, noted its movement pattern, how it recoiled slightly when exposed to his divine pressure. He found a rock with spore pods embedded in the surface, and when he scraped a piece off with his boot, it released a faint hiss and a scent like burnt honey.
Everything was new. And mysterious. And useful.
He made sure to remember the exact temperature readings, the radius of the growth clusters, the position of nearby vines in case the spores reacted to sound.
The deeper he went, the easier it was to pretend that what he'd said didn't bother him.
That she wasn't still standing in that clearing.
That he didn't miss the pressure of her walking two inches behind him like a confused shadow.
Eventually, he reached a small opening beneath a cracked slope, found a flat stone that looked stable enough, and sat down. The moss here was dry—older, untouched.
He spotted a broken stalagmite near the edge, snapped it free without effort, and dipped the tip into a patch of thin, dark mud forming near the wall.
He started drawing.
Circles. Root lines. Diagrams. Nonsense patterns. Some he recognized from old runes. Some were just motion.
He didn't know why he was doing it.
It didn't matter.
It kept his hands moving. Kept his thoughts quiet.
He stabbed the stalagmite into the ground and leaned on his knees, staring at the lines like they might offer something useful.
They didn't.
He stared at the muddy patterns for a while, not really seeing them anymore.
It wasn't that he regretted saying what he said. Not exactly.
He'd been right, technically. Ariela had interfered. She had ruined a scan. And she did act like the world was something soft enough to hug into obedience.
But the truth didn't feel as satisfying as it usually did.
It just felt... heavier.
She hadn't argued.
Hadn't defended herself.
Just stood there.
Like she believed it.
Noah leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands still smeared in cold soil.
He wasn't used to this. Normally, if James did something stupid, he'd complain. If Evodil did something worse, he'd insult him and they'd move on. No lingering tension. No fallout. No shame.
But Ariela didn't argue. She just absorbed it—like moss taking in rain.
And somehow, that made it worse.
He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose. Slow. Measured.
She wasn't important. She wasn't part of the plan.
She was a distraction. A strange variable in a system that had already been broken from the start.
But for someone unimportant, she had a way of making the silence feel sharper after she left.
He glanced at the tablet lying beside him on the rock. It was still blank in sections. The log wasn't recovering.
For a moment, he imagined walking back to her.
Then shook his head.
Too early. Too obvious. Too emotional.
He wasn't like Evodil. He didn't fix things with jokes and grins.
If he went back, it had to mean something.
If he went back, it had to be because it was necessary.
Not because he wanted to.
There was no crunch of moss, no shift in the air, no divine aura brushing against his.
But when he glanced up, she was there—sitting on a rock a few steps away, knees pulled up, arms loosely draped around them.
She didn't look at him.
Didn't speak.
Just sat.
Like she belonged to the clearing. Like she'd grown out of the stone the same way the moss did—quiet, unchanged, unconcerned by what had or hadn't been said.
Noah stared for a moment, unsure what to say, unsure if he was supposed to say anything at all.
He didn't.
Instead, he returned his gaze to the ground, nudged the mud with the tip of the stalagmite again, smearing the lines he'd drawn into nothing.
She still said nothing.
After a while, he started talking. Not to her. Not directly.
"The moss reacted to your hands," he said. "Not your essence."
Ariela glanced over, just a little. Still didn't interrupt.
"It destabilized because it didn't recognize your structure. Not because of interference. I'll need to recalibrate the readings."
A beat of silence.
She blinked. "That means I touched it wrong?"
He exhaled slowly. "...Yes."
Another pause.
"Okay," she said softly.
That was all
But it was enough.
Noah sighed, eyes still fixed on the moss-smeared rock in front of him.
What was he even supposed to do now? Lecture her again? Sit here and wait for the awkward silence to ferment into something useful?
He tapped his fingers once against the tablet beside him.
Maybe… maybe it was better to try something else.
Without a word, he picked it up, leaned slightly toward her, and held it out. She looked at it, then at him. He didn't explain. Just nodded once.
Ariela took it with both hands, careful, like she thought it might fall apart in her grip.
He pointed at a rune cluster on the edge of the screen. "That cycles entries. Don't press too fast or it'll bug."
She tilted the tablet slightly, squinting as a small violet plant spun into view—leaves like folded glass, pulsing with light.
"I catalogued that three days ago," he said. "It emits low-frequency vibration patterns every four minutes. Probably a warning system."
She tapped to the next.
"Those spores—don't touch them. They mimic the taste of things that are already inside your blood."
She didn't speak much. Just nodded. Listened.
One tap became two. Then ten. Then twenty.
Noah leaned closer, showing her where the minerals were logged—organized by density, reactivity, and magical potential. The tablet glowed gently between them, casting lines of blue and white across their suits and skin.
They kept going.
Forty. Fifty entries.
He didn't even realize he was talking so much until the air around them felt lighter, and he wasn't annoyed anymore.
Not tired. Not defensive. Just… there.
Noah sat still, arms folded, as she continued swiping through the tablet.
She read slowly, sometimes out loud—mispronouncing terms, giving minerals names he never would have approved.
She seemed to like the glowing fungi best. Called one "wigglecap" because it pulsed when she leaned near it. He hadn't corrected her. He told himself it wasn't worth the breath.
But as he watched her, something shifted.
Subtle. Dangerous.
His gaze lingered—not on her hands, not on the tablet—but on the way she leaned forward, how her hair curled slightly near her shoulders, how her breath slowed when she was focused.
And suddenly he wasn't thinking about her as a goddess.
Or an unpredictable variable.
Or a chaotic lifeform too eager to hug carnivorous plants.
He was thinking of her as...
Attractive.
The realization hit like a system crash.
He straightened his back and looked away sharply, heat rising in his chest, which only made him angrier.
Feelings were beneath him.
Romantic feelings were even worse.
He was the God of Knowledge.
The rational one. The controlled one.
He wasn't supposed to—couldn't—end up like James.
James, who fell for someone once and got rejected so hard it burned into his personality like a scar.
Noah had mocked him for weeks. Called him pathetic. Said he was acting "biologically compromised."
And now here he was. Sitting in the dark.
Watching a goddess hum softly while reading his notes and feeling his pulse misalign.
He closed his eyes.
No.
He wouldn't fall like that.
He wouldn't feel like that.
He wouldn't need someone who wouldn't even understand what he was.
He wouldn't be James.
Noah sat there a second longer before dragging both hands up over his face, fingers pressing into his temples. He didn't sigh—but something like it escaped him anyway. A small, breathless sound.
And somehow, against all reason, he smirked.
Just for a second. Just enough to hate himself for it.
He lowered his hands and turned slightly toward her.
"I need that back," he said, voice steady again.
Ariela tilted the tablet, flipping through one last entry—some reflective gemstone with shifting colors. She grinned at it, then handed the crystal device over without a word.
He took it, nodding once, and stood up. Slid it into the inside pocket of his coat with practiced care.
The clearing felt quieter now.
Too quiet.
"I'm heading back to the surface," he said flatly, brushing moss off his sleeve. "This has been... informative."
Ariela smiled, as if she thought that was a compliment. He didn't correct her.
As he turned away, he could already picture it—James raising an eyebrow, Evodil making some sarcastic remark about "field trips with flower girls," maybe even Jasper asking if he'd held hands.
He'd deny all of it, obviously.
Probably threaten one of them just for fun.
Still, the thought clung to him as he walked.
He didn't feel lighter.
But he didn't feel as heavy, either.
He was already halfway up the incline when he heard her call out.
"Goodbye, Noah!"
He paused.
Ariela was heading back toward the meadow, walking lightly over the moss like she'd never been interrupted, like the outburst, the tension, the silence—it had all washed off her like rain.
He turned his head slightly, just enough to raise one hand and wave once behind him.
"Yeah," he muttered, mostly to himself. "Bye."
His smirk returned—uninvited, persistent.
This one lingered longer than the last, and it frustrated him more than it should have.
He groaned, dragging a hand down his face again, more forcefully this time.
"Fantastic," he muttered. "Emotionally compromised and inefficient. What a productive day."
He reached the ascent point—the same tunnel, the same slope that had once thrown him into a screaming descent he still hadn't forgiven physics for.
Now, he climbed it with ease. Boots finding grips, coat catching on nothing, no divine rubble crashing down on him.
Back through the narrow passage.
Back into the faint light near the crater's surface.
Back to the cold, clean air of the world above.
He stood there a moment, brushing dirt from his coat and checking his tablet, mostly out of habit. The screen blinked clean, data intact, systems stable.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, clouds curling from his mouth.
Where to next?
The Citadel.
Might as well see what idiotic situation James had thrown himself into this time.
And if he hadn't yet—Noah would find a way to cause one.
He turned, walking toward the distant shimmer of gold and heat that marked the Citadel's horizon.
Noah moved steadily across the floating bridges, each one suspended over mist-choked valleys between the isles of Menystria.
Normally, he wouldn't have looked twice—just moved with focus, analyzing wind pressure or the structural curve of the arcstone supports.
But this time, something felt different.
He noticed the light bending through the fog.
The way the sky pulsed faintly between shades of violet and gray.
He even paused once—briefly—to watch a flock of spirit birds spiral through a shard of sun. Their wings shimmered like glass touched by memory.
It wasn't overwhelming. Just… noticeable.
New.
A connection he hadn't asked for, but didn't mind. Not yet.
He walked on.
The Citadel rose before him, vast and golden and empty.
He passed the threshold, boots echoing softly against polished stone. The silence pressed in around him—cool, dry, sacred.
No James.
No guards.
Just him.
He stood there for a moment, uncertain whether to wait or leave—
Then footsteps behind him.
He turned.
Evodil stood in the archway.
His coat looked uneven. His hair a bit messier than usual.
His eyes—still hidden—but his expression? Tired. Hunted. Human.
"You…" Noah started.
Evodil raised a hand, palm out.
"Just tell me," he muttered. "Did you spike my coffee?"
Noah blinked. "What?"
Evodil looked like someone who had seen every version of himself die at once and still managed to be sarcastic about it.
"Because if you did," he said slowly, "I want you to know—it was impressive. But also... I hate you."
Noah stared at Evodil.
There were about a dozen questions waiting in his throat, but only two made it to the front—
What the hell happened to you?
And
Where the hell is James?
He knew he wouldn't get both.
So he chose.
"Where's James?"
Evodil winced like the question physically hurt. He dragged a hand down his face, still standing half-slumped like someone had knocked the sleep out of him with a brick.
"He left earlier," Evodil muttered. "Said something about taking the new kid—Jasper, I think?—to go forge a katana."
Noah blinked. "Forge? You mean craft?"
"Yeah. Big deal. Whole 'birth of a warrior' speech. Real dramatic."
Noah's mind turned over the information. Slowly. Carefully.
Why would James forge a blade for a kid? He could just give him a weapon—something simple, enchanted, replaceable.
But then another memory surfaced.
A forge. A hammer. A crater in Yellowstone.
"Wait," Noah said, already feeling the cold crawl down his spine. "Where did they go?"
Evodil looked up now, eyes narrowing just slightly behind the blindfold. "He didn't say it directly. But I heard him mention heat-resistant enchantments and volcanic layering."
They both paused.
Then said it at the same time:
"Shit."