Kain pushed open the dormitory door with his shoulder, his breath still fogging from the cold outside. He’d practically jogged back through half the fortress, weaving past soldiers hauling the corpses of fallen contracts—it may sound cruel, but they are repurposed these days for desperately needed food and materials for enchanted weapons—dics shouting for clear hallways, and a cluster of staff arguing about whose turn it was to shovel snow off the outer wall again. He ignored them all.
The kid ca first.
Serena looked up from her chair the mont he stepped in. Her face said ’finally’, but her posture said she’d been alert the entire ti. Her spear leaned against the wall within arm’s reach, her coat still on, as though she hadn’t dared relax even for a second.
She’d clearly taken her ’babysitting’ role seriously.
"Kain," she said softly. "He fainted again."
He closed the door behind him. "Yeah. I figured, but... why?"
Serena exhaled, rubbing her temples. "Who knows? He stiffened, clutched his head, said sothing I couldn’t really make sense of. Then—" She snapped her fingers. "Out. Like soone flipped a switch."
Kain grimaced. "Alright. I’ll handle it from here. Thanks for watching him."
"I wasn’t exactly doing anything else," she muttered. "Still—be careful. There’s sothing wrong with him. I don’t know if he can withstand the typical ’questioning’ thods you use."
Knowing she ant Bea’s investigative abilities, Kain nodded in agreent. Queen had said sothing similar before, which is why he refrained form just having Bea scour his mind.
Serena then left, it was now ti for her turn on the walls.
Alone, Kain walked over to his occupied bed where the boy lay—thin, pale, bundled in three layers of blankets Serena had swaddled him in. The kid looked like he’d blow away if soone sneezed too hard.
Kain inhaled.
"Queen."
A soft buzz filled the room as the Vespid Queen erged beside him in a burst of spatial compression, wings shimring with pale gold. The air grew heavier with her presence.
Queen lowered her head and swept her antennae over the boy. Faint green ripples of life-attribute spiritual power pulsed outward, brushing over and rustling the boy’s hair like fingertips stroking his head..
After a mont, the buzzing of her wings quieted as she tilted her head in thought.
’He collapsed again due to ntal overload. The sa pattern. The sa strain. Slightly worse.’
Kain let out a slow breath. "ntal overload... again. And the one thod I can use to find out the cause..."
He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. The math was obvious. He just didn’t like the answer.
He’d deliberately avoided letting Bea dig deeper. The boy’s ntal state was like cracked glass—touch it wrong and it shattered. And while Kain trusted Bea’s finesse, probing mories in a mind this fragile still carried risk; one wrong push could harm the kid regardless of how careful she was.
He wasn’t about to ntally cripple so poor abandoned kid just because he was curious.
Before he could dwell on it, a familiar prickle of presence brushed the inside of his skull.
’You should have more faith in , you know. I can do it.’
Bea.
Kain blinked upward. "Bea, seriously?"
’Yes, seriously. And before you start—no, I don’t intend to rummage around in every corner of his brain. I’m perfectly capable of being gentle and curbing my curiosity to only examine surface-level mories instead of what we both really want to know... who he is and how he ended up here?’
"You say that," Kain murmured, "but your ’gentle’ is relative. And your definition of ’soft touch’ usually involves digging around to uncover and poke at traumas that you can then use to tornt them if they ever cross you. Don’t think I don’t know that Vauleth’s recent frequent nightmares about being reborn into an ant and getting stepped are completely your doing."
’That’s slander. Slander, I say! And he deserved it! Who told that overgrown lizard to call a ’sentient snot blob with delusions of grandeur’! Ahem, anyway, I’m not going back far. Nas, birthplace, early mories—off limits. Too dangerous to dig through that much of his mind. But the last few hours? That I can do safely.’
Kain hesitated.
Queen watched him closely. ’If you are worried, Master, I can also support he condition from the outside.’
Clearly, this state of not having a clear direction to go within this fortress also irritated his contracts and they too wanted answers.
Kain inhaled, then nodded once.
"Alright, Bea. Last few hours only. Nothing deeper."
’Please. I do have standards.’
A warm ripple traveled through his thoughts—
—and suddenly his vision warped.
He blinked, but his eyes weren’t his own.
He was seeing through the boy.
The ceiling appeared first—dim, wooden, worn. Serena leaned over him, tucking the blankets up to his chin with an attentiveness that made the kid’s fluttering heartbeat slow.
Then the voices began.
Faint at first. Barely whispers.
Then louder.
Like breathy chants. Layers upon layers of murmurs, overlapping like dozens of people whispering in different languages all at once. Ethereal. Cold. Pressing against the ears more than entering them.
Then—
A flash and his vision shifted. He was no longer seeing the room with Serena, but was in a new space.
And floating before the boy’s eyes appeared the shape of a gate. The gate that ford wasn’t built from stone or tal. It had no surface to touch, no weight to press against. Instead, countless pale-blue sigils braided and folded into one another until they described an arch. Runes slid together like threads on a loom, each symbol nesting into the next, forming a seamless fra that behaved like a doorway even though it was made only of moving script and light. The pattern turned and shifted in a slow, chanical rhythm, an organized lattice of runes that opened onto sothing beyond the world rather than standing in it.
Strangely, the longer Kain stared at the gate, the more he could feel it sapping away at his strength.
Kain jerked, and the vision snapped away. His awareness crashed back into his own body. Queen buzzed in alarm upon seeing his pale expression.
"Well," Kain said while panting and gripping his head as a headache began to form. "At least I know why he fainted."
If every so often he was forced to see that gate, no wonder he’d be ntally damaged. Even himself, as a 6-star tar, found the gate painful to gaze at.
He raised a hand to calm Queen fussing over him. "I’m fine. Just... saw sothing."
But his pulse was thudding hard. Because that gate—those images—those voices...
His instincts scread that, that gate was why he ca here.
That gate was why Amos Sans had co here.
Awakening more people was the secondary purpose of this trip and could wait, revisiting Amos’ footsteps was priority Number 1.
And sothing in his gut told him that only he could access that gate.
He thoguht back to the strange boy’s reaction every ti he fainted. The first ti he had fainted from listening to those voices had been after Kain had released Chewy to clean up the energy released by the mid-grade Abyssal that broke into the civilian area. He hadn’t thought much of the timing thinking it to be stress from seeing the abyssal.
But it wasn’t.
Releasing his contracts strengthened the boy’s reactions. Made the voices clearer.
And when all five had been released—even though they were far apart at the city wall—the effect had been the strongest.
There was a link here.
Kain just didn’t know what, yet.
A small groan drew his attention.
The boy stirred, eyelashes fluttering. He blinked awake, confused and disoriented.
"Hey," Kain said gently. "Easy. You’re safe."
The boy’s eyes scanned the room. Then refocused on Kain.
Kain crouched beside him. "Feeling any voices now?"
He was curious to see if his contracts really were the trigger since he still had Bea and Queen within the room.
The boy hesitated, then slowly shook his head.
Huh. So nothing without a trigger.
Kain exhaled. "Alright then. Let’s test sothing."
He raised a hand.
"Chewy."
But the boy—
He flinched so violently he nearly rolled off the cot. Nothing had happened yet, but clearly the last ti Kain had ntioned this ’Chewy’ he’d collapsed in pain.
But after waiting for a second, the voices didn’t co and he cald down...unfortunately, he relaxed too soon.
Kain held up a finger.
A shimr of source energy pooled at the tip.
"Chewy. Eat."
The tiny spore latched on instantly like a microscopic leech. Kain barely felt it, but the air gave a faint ripple of pressure.
The boy gasped.
Then slapped both hands over his ears, trembling.
There it was.
The voices.
"Bea. Now."
The amoeba didn’t hesitate. A pulse of ntal energy slid into the boy’s mind, softening the psychic static.
The boy’s body relaxed a fraction. The trembling eased.
But he was still listening. Still hearing sothing.
Bea’s voice echoed in Kain’s thoughts.
’I can dull it. I can’t remove it. Whatever’s transmitting—it’s strong. And it’s directly resonating with him.’
Kain swallowed.
He knelt beside the boy again.
"Hey," he said softly. "Can you tell where the voices are coming from?"
The boy hesitated.
His pupils shook.
But slowly... he raised one trembling hand.
And pointed.
The direction ant nothing from inside the room. But that wasn’t what mattered.
Kain’s chest tightened.
He had a direction.
He could follow this.
He would follow this.
"Thank you," he murmured.
He reached into his ring, rummaging through survival rations—
And pulled out a chocolate bar.
The boy’s eyes widened. Mouth parted slightly in awe, as though Kain had produced treasure from legend.
He broke off a square.
"Here."
The boy took it carefully.
Chewed once.
Then his whole expression lit up.
Kain crouched so they were eye-level.
"If you can be my guide," he said quietly, "I’ll give you the rest."
The boy stared at the remaining chocolate bar like it was the key to immortality.
Then nodded so vigorously his bangs flopped over his face.
Bea remarked ’Tsk tsk. And you say I’m bad. Are you bribing a traumatized child?’
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