Elara's words lingered in the small, damp room long after she had left. Maybe you're an answer. The idea felt both absurd and terrifying to Kael. An answer? He felt like a problem, a broken thing that brought nothing but trouble and paid for it with pieces of his soul.
His confinement was a monotonous cycle of quiet observation, the dull ache of the Bedel, and Elara's visits. He watched the shift changes of the guards outside his door, their wary glances whenever they thought he wasn't looking. He heard the muffled sounds of the sanctuary's life continuing – the never-ending work, the hushed conversations about supplies, about patrols, about the attack. And always, the low, resonant thrumming of The Void outside, a constant reminder of the enemy.
Elara's visits became longer, more focused. She still brought him his meager food and water, but now she also brought questions. Not the basic ones about his name or origin, but questions probing the edges of the unknown.
"That light," she would ask, her voice low. "Does it... does it hurt when it comes out? Or is it the Bedel that hurts?"
Kael struggled to answer, relying on gestures, on the few words he could find. "Bedel... hurts..." he would rasp, touching his chest, where the deepest voids lay. "Light... just is..." It was difficult to explain that the power itself didn't necessarily cause pain, but the price extracted immediately afterwards was agonizing.
Elara listened intently, piecing together his fragmented words and gestures with what she had seen and heard. She was learning his unique language of broken speech and silent expression.
She also brought information she gathered from others, carefully phrased questions asked in hushed tones away from Kael's door. She spoke to the older survivors, those who remembered the time just before The Void fully descended, or those who had heard the old tales.
"Old Man Hemlock said... before the grey... the sky used to have colors," she told Kael one day, her eyes wide with a wonder that Kael could no longer fully comprehend with his missing joy. "And some legends... about people who could touch the 'living light'... to fight the growing dark."
Living light. The phrase resonated somewhere deep within Kael, a faint echo of understanding he couldn't grasp. Vispera's presence, always with him, seemed to subtly brighten at the phrase, a warm pulse that Elara, perhaps, could sense indirectly through Kael.
Elara watched him closely whenever she spoke of these legends, looking for a reaction. Did he recognize the phrases? Did the Bedel react to the mention of 'living light' or 'old magic'?
"They say," she whispered another time, leaning closer, "that the ones who touched the light... they paid a price. Not like coins or food. Something... inside them." Her gaze was fixed on his chest, where his void ached. "Was that the Bedel, Kael? That price?"
Kael could only nod, the connection clear to him, agonizingly so. Yes. The price was the Bedel.
Their quiet conversations, Elara's relentless but gentle probing, created a small, shared world within Kael's isolation. She was trying to understand him, not just fear him. She was trying to find a purpose for his terrifying nature, to fit it into the framework of the world's legends.
The sanctuary itself remained a place of grim routine. Food rations were still scarce. Repairs were ongoing from the attack. The low thrumming outside would sometimes change frequency, causing a ripple of unease among the guards and drawing worried glances towards Kael's door. Gus's voice was still occasionally heard, complaining about Kael's continued presence, predicting doom.
Elara learned the sanctuary's rules, the daily struggles, the names and roles of the people within its walls. She learned how they rationed water, how they organized scavenging patrols (when they dared), how they monitored The Void's movements. She shared these details with Kael, painting a picture of the precarious life they led, making him feel, despite his isolation, like a part of it.
The chapter ends with Kael still confined, wrestling with the Bedel and his limited communication, but with Elara now actively investigating his condition through the lens of old legends and sanctuary lore. Their bond has deepened through shared secrets and shared purpose (Elara's quest for understanding), hinting at the possibility of Kael eventually learning to control his power, guided by Elara's research and her unwavering belief that he might be more than a curse.