The poison was not swift.
It moved slowly and deliberately, like it wanted to savor its work. Each step I took sent fresh pulses of heat crawling beneath my skin, but it was not the heat of power. It was infection. The Core tried to fight it, but I could feel the confusion, the way the sync between my threads sputtered like a signal fighting static.
We didn't speak as we moved. Sylri walked ahead, every movement sharp and efficient, her presence carving the path forward through wind and ash.
Riven remained close at my side, her hand gripping my waist as if by sheer pressure alone she could keep me from slipping. Her silence wasn't empty. It was saturated with everything she could not say.
I felt it in her breath, the way it caught when I stumbled.
I felt it in her grip, the way her knuckles whitened whenever my steps faltered.
The path narrowed again, winding through a gash in the cliffs where frost bit at the stone. We climbed steadily, each elevation change drawing more from me than the last.
My blood burned. My vision blurred. Shadows crawled at the corners of my sight, not born from the trees or the failing light, but from somewhere deeper. Somewhere inside.
The Core pulsed. Then sputtered. Then pulsed again.
Thread Two held strong.
Sylri's bond burned like tempered steel, constant and cold.
But Thread One, Riven, had begun to flicker again. Not from distance but from strain. From something deeper than distance.
My foot slipped once on loose shale. I caught myself, barely, but it sent a spasm through my side. The wound throbbed with renewed heat.
Riven reacted before I made a sound.
"Stop," she said.
Sylri did not turn. "We don't have time to stop."
"He can't walk like this."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to snarl that I could walk, that I was fine, that this was nothing. But my legs betrayed me. They locked, then buckled, and suddenly I was on my knees, the cold stone beneath me leeching strength I no longer had to spare.
Riven dropped beside me. She didn't ask if I was hurt. She knew. She only brushed my hair back from my face and pressed her hand against my jaw.
"You're burning."
Her voice sounded distant. Or maybe mine was.
Sylri stood above us, her expression unreadable. She did not kneel. She did not touch.
"You should have let me kill them faster," she said, not cruelly. Just as fact.
I opened my mouth to speak, but something shifted.
The ground tilted. The light fractured.
And suddenly I wasn't in the mountains anymore.
I was in fire.
But not my fire. Not the kind that danced in my palm or curled along my veins when the Core responded to my will.
This fire didn't listen. It devoured. It hissed and cracked and spat up embers like teeth. The world around me blurred, stone replaced with ash, air thick with smoke.
I blinked, tried to move, but my body was no longer mine. My limbs felt too light, too hollow, as if I had been burned out from the inside.
A figure stepped through the flame.
She was small, familiar. Her braid undone. Her hands covered in soot.
"Nerra?"
The name caught in my throat. It shouldn't have. I hadn't said it in years.
She walked toward me, barefoot on scorched earth, her eyes black with something that wasn't hate but wasn't love either.
"You let it take you," she said.
I tried to answer, but my voice had vanished. My lips moved, no sound came.
"You used to laugh, you were happy, " she went on, almost gently. "You used to care what happened to the people behind you. Now you only see what lies ahead. You only care for power."
The flames curled around her, but they didn't burn her.
"Nerra," I tried again, the word barely more than a breath.
She crouched, her fingers brushing the mark on my chest.
"This fire doesn't belong to you. You were supposed to carry it. Not become one with it."
Her face blurred then, melting into another.
Riven.
It was not the real Riven. A version shaped by guilt and longing. Her mouth moved but I couldn't hear the words. Her eyes glowed too brightly, her skin flickered like flame caught in wind. She reached for me, but her touch singed.
Then Sylri stood behind her, tall and still and expressionless.
"You're not strong enough yet," Sylri said.
The words didn't sound it belonged to her voice. They were too hollow, like the Core had puppeteered them.
"You'll break them both before you're done," she added. "That's the price of power."
"I didn't ask for this," I whispered.
But the vision only smiled.
"Yes, you did. You begged for it. You wanted to be more."
The world snapped.
Pain brought me back.
My body convulsed once, hard enough to jar my spine against the stone. I gasped and the cold air stabbed into my lungs.
Riven's face was above me again, real this time. Her hair was tangled by the wind. Her eyes wet at the edges, but sharp with focus.
"Lucien," she said, her voice low. "Look at me."
I did.
It was the only thing I could do.
"The Core is fighting it," she said. "But you're bleeding power."
Sylri knelt beside her now, a flask in one hand, a line of salve drawn across the inside of her wrist.
"If we keep moving, he might last another hour," she said. "Two or more, if he stops trying to act like he's not dying."
Riven looked at me again. "You don't get to choose what you survive. But you sure as hell better choose to try."
I gave the smallest nod I could manage. And she helped me to my feet.
I didn't remember walking.
Only that the sky dimmed and narrowed, and the path beneath me grew more distant with each step. Riven bore my weight without complaint. Sylri led with brutal efficiency. Neither of them looked back.
And I began to wonder if the Core had brought me this far only to test what I would do with the edge of my own breaking.
The ridge appeared like a mirage, blurred at the edges, almost too high to be real. But the stone was cold and solid beneath my feet, and the mountain's edge cut the sky open with jagged certainty.
The northern outpost stood ahead at least what remained of it.
Its old walls jutted out of the cliffside like the ribs of something long dead. Stone blackened by weather and war, cracked archways and towers half-collapsed, the scent of damp moss and long-faded fire curling through the air.
I barely remembered how we crossed the final slope.
I only remembered the moment my knees buckled.
Sylri caught my arm before I hit the ground. Her grip was sharp and strong, and she didn't soften it.
"We're here," she said. "Don't collapse yet."
She half dragged me beneath a covered awning where the wind was less cruel. Riven was already clearing the space, laying down her pack with unspoken urgency. She moved fast, fingers nimble as she uncorked one of the smaller vials I'd seen her carry but never question.
I didn't have to ask what she was doing.
Neither did Sylri. She stepped back without comment, eyes scanning the tree line while Riven knelt beside me.
"You're not dying here," she said, more to herself than to me. "Not like this."
The salve she spread across my wound burned worse than the blade that had made it. I flinched, breath catching, but she pressed down harder, grounding me in the pain.
"This is Core-threaded. It'll stabilize the link if your body doesn't reject it."
My vision tilted. The wind moaned through the broken stone above us.
"You always sound so certain," I murmured, or thought I did. My voice felt like it belonged to someone else.
Her hands didn't stop. "I'm not."
The Core pulsed once, weak but stubborn. The fire in my blood flickered. My bonds to Riven and Sylri frayed and snapped in irregular sparks. The sync was unraveling.
"Look at me," Riven said.
I did. Somehow.
Her face was tight with restraint. Her thumb traced the edge of the glyph on my chest, glowing faintly now dimmer than I'd ever seen it.
"You said the Core makes you more," she whispered. "Then let it make you survive."
She reached into her cloak and pulled a blade I didn't recognize.
It was sharp, had curved edges and it looked ritualistic.
Before I could speak, she sliced across the inside of her palm and pressed it against mine. Blood met blood, heat met heat, and the Core surged like it had been waiting for something more primal than strength.
Something like choice.
The Core whispered in me.
Thread One: Stabilizing
Pulse Regulation: Sync Recovery Detected
Riven's hand trembled against mine, but she didn't pull away. Her breath was ragged. Her eyes didn't leave mine.
"I didn't do this to heal you," she said quietly. "I did it because if I lose you, I'll never be able to burn this out of me."
And then the Core responded.
Not in pain.
But in flame.
It bloomed through my chest like a second sunrise. The poison shrieked inside me and began to dissolve, thread by thread. Not vanishing totally but weakening.
I gasped and slumped back, sweat slicking my skin, my heartbeat stuttering into something almost steady.
Riven didn't move. Her blood still touched mine. Her eyes burned with the truth she hadn't wanted to name.
And somewhere behind us, Sylri watched it all silently, unblinking.
Because she knew what I hadn't admitted yet.
The Core didn't just want strength.
It demanded sacrifice.
And this was only the beginning.
Once the glow of the ritual dimmed and Riven finally pulled her hand back, Sylri stepped into the shelter's broken doorway. Her gaze swept the room. I was slumped against the wall, Riven sat pale and silent beside me, the glyphs on both our skin still pulsing with residual heat.
"You bought him time," Sylri said. Her voice was quiet, almost calm, but it cut through the moment like a blade across silk.
Riven didn't respond.
Sylri walked forward, her boots clicking softly on the stone floor. She crouched beside me, not to comfort, not to care but to study. Her eyes flicked from my mark to the fevered sheen on my skin.
"This will cost you," she said finally, looking not at me, but at Riven. "Blood bonding in panic always does."
Riven's shoulders stiffened. "It stabilized him."
"For now," Sylri replied. "But your thread is no longer just connected. It's fused."
She straightened slowly, sheathing her knife. Her expression stayed neutral, but something colder settled in her voice.
"His pain will bleed into you now. So will his doubt. His hunger. You've made yourself a vessel. And the Core won't forget that."
Riven stood without flinching. "I didn't do it for the Core."
Sylri met her eyes. "It doesn't matter why. It only matters that you did."
Then she turned to me.
"You think this is strength. But it's something else. You're building a bond so deep it can drown you both. Be sure you're ready to swim before the tide pulls."
She didn't wait for a reply.
She walked back to the archway, her silhouette framed in the dying light.
And I realized then that Sylri's warning wasn't about death.
It was about love.
Because in the Core's hands, love was just another kind of weapon.