Argolaith paused beneath a bent willow that wept glowing strands into the grass.
He reached into his storage ring and pulled out a small etched stone.
With a flick of his finger, he inscribed a simple locator rune on it. Then he pressed it into the ground beside the willow and whispered, "Mark one."
He continued forward, this ti leaving a rune stone every half-mile. The deeper he traveled, the more foreign Elyrion felt, as if another will had molded the distant terrain.
The soil grew darker in patches, softer underfoot. Strange insect-like creatures hovered by tall stalks of amber-colored grain, shimring like lanterns in the breeze.
A mountain lood ahead, jagged and crystalline. From its base, waterfalls spilled in reverse—streams of liquid flowing upward, bending gravity without breaking it.
Argolaith stared. This hadn't been in his design. Not consciously.
He made a note of the mountain's strange magic in his ntal log, then placed a rune marker beside a nearby cluster of moss-colored rocks.
Each rune was personalized. So pulsed softly. Others shimred like heat over stone. All were tuned to him, guiding his return if he ever lost his way.
Hours passed.
He stopped to drink from a small spring that bubbled between two twisting stones. It tasted sweet—like cold fruit with a whisper of mint.
As he sat down to rest, a soft breeze passed through, carrying with it faint echoes. Whispers? Singing? It was hard to tell.
Argolaith didn't summon the cube—but it ford anyway, hovering beside him like a silent companion. Its surface rippled as if listening too.
He narrowed his eyes toward the horizon. Sothing had shifted in Elyrion again. The cube always responded when the realm did.
Deciding not to linger, he pressed on.
Through a tunnel of glass-leafed trees, where each step left a temporary shimr on the ground. Then over a shallow ravine, where fish swam through the air like water.
His next rune marker he embedded in the side of a tree that bled silver sap. When he touched it, his fingers tingled with unfamiliar mana.
He left it there, recorded it silently, and moved on.
By nightfall—if night could be defined here—the sky turned pale purple. A second sun dipped behind a ridge, and soft blue stars lit up overhead.
Argolaith found a place to camp.
He cleared a patch of moss and summoned a thin slab of wood from his storage ring. It beca his seat as he set a small fire using kindling gathered from glowing branches.
Dinner was simple—roasted Saint Beast at and a salad of crisp leaves and soft golden berries he'd found growing nearby. Everything tasted fresh, vibrant.
After eating, he checked the cube again.
It hovered calmly, unchanged, but he could tell—Elyrion's continued evolution was feeding it more than raw mana. The realm itself was alive in ways he hadn't fully understood.
He stared at the stars above and whispered, "What are you becoming?"
No answer ca.
Only the soft sound of frogs—still sohow echoing through the realm, as if even here, so far from the pond, their magic left a signature on the land.
Argolaith closed his eyes and drifted into a light sleep, surrounded by a realm still stretching outward with no end in sight.
Argolaith woke to silence. Not the stillness of sleep, but a quiet so profound it pressed against the skin.
He sat up slowly. The fire had gone out. A faint silver mist had rolled across the clearing, soft and damp, brushing against his face like a whisper.
It wasn't natural.
The frogs' presence—so constant in Elyrion—was gone. Even the wind had paused.
He rose from his seat and reached instinctively for the sword at his side. The cube ford before he could think to summon it, pulsing once.
That was when he saw it.
Just beyond the edge of the camp, a figure took shape in the mist. At first it looked like a ghost—slender, flowing, and translucent. But as it drifted closer, it solidified slightly into a creature unlike any he had seen.
Its form resembled a deer, but it was made entirely of swirling fog and glowing white lines. Runes pulsed faintly across its side, as though its body had been written into being.
The cube floated forward defensively, but Argolaith held up a hand. "Wait," he murmured.
The mistborn creature tilted its head.
It didn't speak, yet sothing passed between them—a pressure against his mind. Not hostile. Curious. Old.
He took a step closer. "Are you… from this realm?" he asked quietly.
It didn't answer. Instead, it lowered its head and brushed its ethereal nose against the moss where he had slept.
Then it turned and began to walk away, its legs not quite touching the ground. The fog parted before it and stitched itself closed behind.
Argolaith hesitated only a second before following.
The journey wasn't far. The creature led him through a patch of trees whose bark shimred like glass, and through a narrow passage where crystals humd quietly in the walls.
They erged in a glade he hadn't seen before.
The mistborn stood in the center. Around it, small motes of light floated like will-o'-the-wisps. Runes—ancient ones—were carved into the stones that ford a broken circle at the glade's edge.
He felt a pull toward them.
As he stepped forward, the cube moved with him. Its glow synced with the runes. One by one, the stones flickered to life.
It was a mory.
Not his. Not even the realm's. But sothing older. Sothing buried in the foundation of Elyrion. A trace of what had existed before it fully ford.
He saw shadows of shapes—more mistborn beings, drifting through the glade. Living, not hiding. They had been part of sothing greater.
Then, war. Ruin. Silence.
And the magic faded… until now.
The vision ended.
The cube gently lowered itself to the ground and absorbed the remaining wisps of light. When Argolaith opened his eyes again, the mistborn was gone.
Only the rune stones remained, faintly warm.
Argolaith stood there for a long ti.
This realm wasn't just evolving. It was rembering. Echoes of sothing ancient had taken root here, and his presence had awakened them.
He traced his finger over one of the runes and whispered, "I'll protect it."
Then he turned and made his way back to the camp.
Argolaith stood beneath the pale light of Elyrion's twin stars, their rays filtered through the canopy above. He knelt at the outer edge of the ancient glade, gently brushing moss away from one of the rune-carved stones.
Each glyph pulsed softly, as if rembering his touch from the night before.
He opened his notebook and began sketching them. The lines were unlike any he had seen in the academy's libraries—sharp curves interwoven with circles, layered symbols that hinted at a language rooted in sothing far older than common magic.
The cube floated beside him silently, its core dim but stable. It hadn't spoken or pulsed again since absorbing the mory echoes.
He glanced back at the center of the glade, where the mistborn creature had once stood. It hadn't returned. But sothing told him it was watching—or waiting.
Argolaith muttered, "You were part of sothing before all this."
He finished the final sketch and stood.
The runes needed to be studied, but not here. Not yet. The glade was delicate. Sacred. He would not test spells here. Not until he understood more.
He took a slow walk back to the cabin, eyes lingering on the shifting trees and the moss that seed to ripple with breath beneath his feet. Everything in Elyrion had a rhythm now. A heartbeat.
And it had started when he had begun building—not just the sword or the cabin, but the realm itself.
Back at the cabin, the frogs leapt to greet him.
They swam in their pond and bounced from stone to stone, but Argolaith's mind was elsewhere.
He pulled out a blank scroll, transcribed the runes again with care, then began cross-referencing them with the forging tos he'd borrowed from the academy.
Nothing matched directly.
But in one of the older volus, a footnote caught his eye.
"Pre-Source glyph structures used to channel mory-based enchantnts. Most unstable, prone to collapse unless rooted in a living core."
A living core.
His eyes drifted to the pond. The frogs. The shimring grass. Elyrion itself.
What if the realm was the living core?
His breath caught. That would an the runes he found weren't just a mory—they were a living spell trying to restore sothing lost.
He didn't write another word that night. Instead, he stepped outside with the scroll in hand and placed it gently on the table beside his cabin.
Then he sat and watched the frogs, just listening.
He whispered to the stars, "I'll figure this out."
And the trees seed to lean closer.
The morning light in Elyrion spilled golden across the moss as Argolaith packed his bag. He didn't take much—just the scroll with the runes, the cube, and a few alchemical plants he might need for energy elixirs.
The frogs croaked softly in the distance, their magic dancing in the air like heat shimr.
He gave them one last glance, then whispered, "Don't burn the place down."
Then he used the cube that was the entrance to Elyrion and stepped through.
Monts later, he stepped into the Academy.
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