Dusk seeps through the mist like ink in water. What was once ozone—sharp and metallic—now reeks of fermented grapes left in the sun. A moist rot that clings to the edges of his breath.
Chaos % ➜ 2.9… 4.1… 5.0… in under three minutes.
[System latency detected... recalibrating interface...]
The system's voice distorts. Interfaces bleed purple-black; fonts flicker as if every word is suffocating. He stares at the sky—no longer a ceiling of storms, but a blossoming wound: the Chaos Bloom.
---
Sub-Mast #2 takes the hit. A streak of violet lightning slaps the shaft, and the crackle isn't electric—it's wet. Crack-glass sounds, then a bloom of viscous tissue pulses along the conductive bone.
It moves. The mast twitches like it's growing.
Energy Income ➜ 21 QP/min → 9 QP/min
The Lightning-Sprite screeches inside the photon channel:
"Light... choking... ch-choke with meee—!"
---
No time for calculations.
He binds himself with a silver-thread pulse rope and dives. The Earth accepts him like a mouth. No stairs. No warnings. Just six meters of magnetic sludge before his feet slam onto obsidian.
He's inside the Gravity Cavern.
---
Here, there is no sound—only the thrum of his own blood, amplified like a trapped hymn.
The walls are black crystal, semi-transparent, flickering faintly in rhythm with his heart. Life-Sense glows: a gravitational vein runs deeper down, slippery, ancient.
But chaos leaks here too. Thin veins of violet light—hairline fractures in the ceiling—already drip bloom into sacred stone.
---
He crafts the anchor: Heat-Core wrapped in fractured lightning bone, tied with strands of memory-charged filament. 200 QP of pure thermal energy ignite it into a red-hot brand.
With a groan, he drives it into the cave's gravity fulcrum.
---
Contact.
A violet river bursts through the ceiling. It doesn't roar—it consumes. Silence detonates in his skull. For a moment, his thoughts invert.
The cave whispers: shadows of extinct farmers flicker on the walls—long gone, long silent—once smelters of gravity arms.
---
The Heart-Spike channels chaos downward, but creates an equal reaction upward.
Beacon-0 is at risk.
Three minutes. Less.
Pulse-Dash. He surges upward in six bursts, each one flaying light from his limbs.
QP used ➜ 50
He leaves behind streaks of white in the tunnel like arterial flash.
---
He bursts to the surface. Sky—a violet rose, its petals arcs of corrupted thunder.
He opens the ground valve at Sub-Mast #1. In the nexus of the three masts, he weaves two green threads at 120° angles.
Emerald threads bite the sky.
Chaos spirals down like colored waste flushed through a celestial drain.
---
For 18 seconds, hope blooms:
Chaos % ⌁ 2.2 ⌁
Then—snap.
(⌁ 7.0% Chaos ⌁)
An electromagnetic whiplash reverses the flow. Light becomes poison. His Anchor Glyph blares:
[Pulse Collapse Imminent]
He sees himself—not as he is, but as a cracked fog-statue.
---
The Lightning-Sprite, still tethered via empathy-link, leaps into the chaos stream.
He doesn't scream. He laughs.
A child's giggle slices the sky.
Boom—he swallows the chaos like candy.
Out of the explosion, a pure white light flutters.
The sprite draws circles with a finger of flame.
Chaos % ➜ 3.0… 2.2… 2.0
---
Energy Output ➜ 18 QP/min
Heart-Spike absorbs 60–80% of chaos in real-time.
Soul-Seed: 60% integrity.
His body: 85%, but trembling.
He falls. Knees meet crystal dirt. Steam exhales from his chest—electrical breath.
---
The crystal walls around the Gravity Cavern pulse with subsonic bass.
[Gravitational Current Activated – Max Duration: 6 days]
The Beacon whispers: "The mist breathes, finally."
Above, the Rock-Snail lets out a shrill scream—crack in the soil. Perhaps a buried valley waking.
He remembers the Flesh-Trial to come: doubled weight, skin that must resist planet-song.
His inner voice murmurs:
"Chaos is a venom... but sometimes, the plow that tills the soil of the soul."
---
A final line, alone:
"The Earth drinks our lightning, but the price of thirst is tomorrow."