Our protagonists made their way into the cave—a hollow of damp rock that reeked of mud and scorch marks. The silence was broken only by the bored breathing of the wounded and the steady drip of acidic water leaking from the ceiling. There was no light, save for the faint, bluish reflection still emanating from Zeryth’s wrists as he y on the ground like a piece of spent metal.The Overseer stood near the entrance, clutching the golden staff of the fallen King. His beard was stained with ash, his eyes bloodshot from the smoke. Around him, the dwarven refugees were huddled against the stone walls; women trying to warm their children with the remnants of their tunics, and men staring into the void, their hands still bckened by the dust of the Mall.Tsuki sat beside Llyr-Vahn. Her fingers were trembling from the exertion of moments before; she felt Etan like a cold weight behind her sternum, an irregur heartbeat reminding her how close they were to colpse. Llyr-Vahn didn't move. His back was pressed against the rock, his jaw clenched, the muscles in his arms still taut from heaving those tons of debris during the escape.Moko, who until then had remained curled in a corner, snapped to her feet. Her eight eyes stopped spinning and fixed on a single point in the cavern’s vault. The creature let out a short whistle, almost a hiss, and began to beat her tail rhythmically against the frozen ground.The Overseer turned abruptly. “What do you hear, little one?”Moko didn't answer, but pressed herself ft against the ground, belly to the rock to better catch the vibrations. From above, far beyond the thunder of Secundus’s cannons, something new was coming. It wasn't the sharp crack of artillery, but a low, constant hum—a mechanical vibration that made the very air of the cave shiver.“Something is descending,” Tsuki said, looking up toward the darkness of the ceiling. “And it’s not falling. It’s aiming straight for us.”Suddenly, the sound of shifting stone broke the stasis. It came from a natural niche, a narrow cleft about three meters up the eastern wall. The remaining dwarven soldiers scrambled to their feet, gripping their axes with hands shaking from exhaustion.From the darkness of the niche emerged an elongated head, covered in sand-colored scales that caught the dim light from Zeryth’s wrists. Two yellow eyes with vertical pupils scanned the room.The dwarves readied their weapons, but the Overseer stepped forward, raising his golden staff—not to strike, but to signal a cease-fire.“Steady!” he barked, his voice hoarse but filled with relief. “Ashnuith? Is that you, you old crag?”The lizard-man let out a low hiss, a sort of guttural chuckle, and leaped down from the niche with an agility no human or dwarf could ever match. He nded in the mud without a sound, adjusting a rough leather satchel over his shoulder.“The King has fallen, but the Overseer’s eyes are still open,” Ashnuith replied in a gravelly tongue.He was not alone. Behind him, as if the stone itself were melting, the cavern walls began to tremble. Through an ancestral magic of mineral manipution, other lizard-men and women emerged directly from the granite, blending with the environment until they were fully clear of the rock. There were a dozen of them, den with heavy wool bnkets, skins of clean water, and bundles of healing herbs that gave off a sharp, balsamic scent.Once everyone had been fed and tended to, a couple of the lizard-men began tracing concentric circles upon the walls, opening a passageway.The march was a blur of whispers and stones shifting at the lizard-men's touch. The group of refugees, still shivering from cold and shock, was guided through tunnels that felt like living veins in the earth. Ashnuith led the way, moving his hands in circur gestures that made the rock recede like water, only to seal it shut immediately after the st dwarf had passed.After two hours of trekking through absolute darkness, the air changed. It was no longer the smell of ozone and Mall dust, but a damp fragrance of fertile earth and subterranean growth.They emerged onto a vast natural balcony overlooking a cavern so immense it defied all sense of proportion. There was no need for torches: the ceiling and walls were draped in carpets of bioluminescent moss and clusters of giant fungi that cast a soft blue and green light, gentle as a perennial sunset.Below them stretched a true city. Dwellings were carved directly into the stactites or built from wood and stone at the base of the walls. It was a cosmopolitan hive: dwarves carrying baskets of ore, humans busy cultivating algae in circur vats, tiny gnomes darting between the legs of enormous mushroom-men—slow, silent creatures that looked as if they were made of spores and bark.The Overseer came to a halt, gazing upon the sanctuary his people had known only as a merchant’s legend.To reach the heart of the vilge, however, one had to cross the only stone bridge spanning a profound abyss. At the entrance, standing as immobile as mountains, were the two guardians.They were golems over four meters tall, cd in massive armor ptes—rusted, yet as thick as the hulls of starships. Their bodies were humanoid, with heavy arms and blunt fingers capable of crushing granite, but it was the heads that made the blood run cold. They had no faces. In pce of a skull sat a ft structure, a disc-shaped helm, smooth and devoid of any slits for eyes or mouth. They were blind and deaf; yet, as Tsuki passed beside them, barely dragging her feet, she felt the ft head of the colossus to her left rotate slowly. The armor screeched as the disc tilted toward her, tracking her with haunting precision, as if it were "seeing" her through the beat of her heart or the heat of her blood.“Do not fear,” Ashnuith said without looking back. “They do not look at your flesh. They look at your intent. If you bring war, the bridge will become your tomb before you can take another step.”Once past the golems, the group was met by a delegation of mushroom-men carrying litters made of woven pnt fibers. With delicate movements, they took charge of Zeryth and Llyr-Vahn, whose bodies were at the very limit of endurance.The city was called Asha. The moment they stepped past the great golems, the air changed; the tunnel became a sensory explosion that dazed the newcomers. It wasn’t just the relief of being alive; it was the sheer vitality of the pce that overwhelmed them.The smell was the first thing to hit: a sweetish blend of wet earth, pollen from giant flowers that bloomed only in the dark, and the scent of spices simmering in rge communal cauldrons. There was no stench of smoke or burnt metal typical of Kaelos; here, everything smelled of growth and life. The colors of the bioluminescent mosses weren't just blue, but shifted from the electric purple of hanging roots to the warm orange of the fungi serving as nterns along the streets.The houses had no bolts or welds. They seemed to have been molded from the rock itself or woven from the branches of subterranean trees that grew in harmonious geometries.The group had to split up immediately upon entering the central square:Zeryth and Llyr-Vahn were taken by the Mushroom-Men. Their bodies were id upon beds of soft moss that seemed to pulse with a golden light. There were no syringes or monitors; the healers used distilled essences and guttural chants that made the air vibrate, inducing a deep sleep necessary to repair the damage caused by energy overload.Tsuki and Moko, however, were led toward a different wing of the city, reserved for guests carrying spiritual or mental "burdens."In this part of Asha, the total absence of machinery was almost shocking to those from the Citadel. Not a single gear existed, no relief valve, no copper wire. Everything was reguted by a pure and ancient magic—a force that seemed to flow directly from the cavern walls. Doors opened because the stone recognized the warmth of a hand; water flowed upward following natural paths of attraction, and the light was adjusted simply by the tone of one's voice.Tsuki looked around, feeling Etan stirring within her. For the first time, his presence didn't feel like a technological anomaly, but a discordant beat in a perfect orchestra.The silence of the Asha cavern wrapped around Tsuki’s body while the medical mages and Moko kept watch. In the white void of sleep, the two found themselves face to face.Etan sat composed, his back straight and hands interced, his gaze lost in the infinity of the dream.“A curious pce, this,” Etan began. His voice was steady, steeped in that culture that seemed almost an armor against his own fragility. “No metal, no electricity. Only a resonance I cannot map. It’s… reassuring, in a way that almost frightens me.”Tsuki remained standing, a few paces away. Her silvery figure seemed to fade into the white of the dream. Her blue eyes were fixed on Etan, her gaze unfiltered, direct and ice-cold.“I feel your fear, Etan,” she said. Her tone was detached, almost clinical. “I feel the way your heart hammered when the lizards touched us. Why do you always tremble when someone tries to help us?”Etan lowered his gaze, a slight nervous tic at the corner of his eye. “Help is an undecred transaction, Tsuki. There is always a debt that accumutes. And we are already heavily indebted to destiny. I often wonder… if I hadn't taken your pce in that womb, if I hadn't ‘arrived’ from wherever it is I came from, you would be here. You would have had a solid life, made of flesh and bone, not echoes in my head.”Tsuki tilted her head to the side, observing him as if he were a mysterious object. “I was darkness. I was only a quick heartbeat before you ate me. I didn't know what the cold of snow was until I felt it through your skin. You stole my life, Etan. You ate my legs, my hands, my voice.”Etan winced, as if struck. “I know. I carry that weight every time we transmute matter. Every time our mother’s marble appears in my dreams.”Tsuki took a step forward. Despite the coldness of her words, there was no hate, only a strange, childlike curiosity. “And yet, without you, I would have remained in the dark forever. You are my eye on the world. But you are weak, Etan. You break like gss. I wonder why I must protect such a fragile shell.”“Because we are the same thing now,” Etan replied, trying to regain his composure. “A biological error and a wandering soul. In this vilge of magic, perhaps we can stop being weapons for a while.”Tsuki didn’t answer. She merely watched him with those eyes that seemed to see right through him, lingering in that cold silence that was her only defense against a world she could not yet grasp.The dialogue in the white void of the dream grew taut, like a string ready to snap. Etan remained seated, his back rigid, while Tsuki circled him with the slowness of a predator or a curious child.“This is what scares you, isn’t it?” Tsuki said. Her voice was a cold whisper that seemed to come from every direction. “This silence. It reminds you that you are alone. Do you remember when you were little, Etan? When you cried in the dark because you felt your parents looking at you as if you were a disease? I was there. I told you: They don't love you. They’re afraid of you.”Etan gripped the armrests of the chair, his knuckles white. “You did it out of spite. You poisoned my every thought because you couldn't stand that I was the one receiving those few caresses, even if they were den with terror.”“No, Etan. I did it out of envy,” she shot back, stopping in front of him. Her blue eyes were two frozen wells. “I envied even their looks of hatred, because at least they were directed at something solid. I was confined to a room without windows, watching the world through your brown eyes. I wanted you to be alone, because then we were equal. I wanted it to be just the two of us, in the dark.”Etan shook his head, tormented. “You talk as if I have everything. But I have nothing, Tsuki. I only have these… sensations. Fragments of an elsewhere I cannot visualize. I feel that things should be different, that machines should answer to logics that don’t exist here, but they are only shadows. It’s like trying to read a book in a nguage I’ve forgotten. I carry the weight of an entire world without the memories of it, and on top of that, I must endure your resentment.”“Mine isn't resentment, Etan. It’s hunger,” Tsuki said, bringing her pale face close to his. “I envy the way you taste food, the way the cold makes your teeth chatter. You are a shell full of secrets you don't know how to use, a king without memory inhabiting a body I would have known how to use better. You absorbed me, you reduced me to a voice, and yet you tremble before a minister or a soldier.”“You would tremble too if you carried the weight of a conscience,” Etan replied, his tone cultured yet broken. “You only see the surface. I feel the void of what I’ve lost and cannot name. We are two cripples, Tsuki. I have no strength, and you have no body. But stop telling me that no one loves me. I already know. I don't need you to remind me to feel like I’m part of you.”Tsuki remained silent for a long moment, then reached out a silvery hand toward Etan’s chest, without touching him. “We are alone, Etan. In this pce of light and magic, we are the only ones made of darkness and guilt. Perhaps that’s why I hate you so much. Because you’re the only mirror I have.”The white void of the dream began to splinter into a myriad of bck cracks, as if the ceiling were about to colpse. The truce was over. Etan took a step forward, his figure becoming more solid, his brown features trying to push away that silver glow.“Enough, Tsuki. Let me back out,” Etan said. His voice was firm, ced with that elegance he used to hide how tired he was. “I feel the body waking up. We are in Asha; there are strangers everywhere. It has to be me. It’s dangerous if you stay.”Tsuki didn't move. She lunged at him, grabbing his tunic with her small hands. “No! No, Etan… just a little longer!” Her voice was no longer icy; it had become high and thin, like a child afraid of the dark. “If I go back inside now, it’ll be dark! You’ll lock me in the windowless room and I won’t know when you’ll let me out again! I want to see the mushroom light! I want to feel the warmth on my skin!”“You don’t get to decide!” Etan yelled, trying to pry her off. “It’s my body! I’m the real one, you’re just a piece that was supposed to disappear!”“I am alive!” she screamed, and her voice made the entire dream tremble. “I saved us! If you send me back into the bck, I’ll tell you the bad things! I’ll tell you that you’re alone and that nobody wants you! I won’t let you sleep anymore!”They began to scream together. His cultured words mingled with her angry, simple cries. The white exploded and everything turned bck—a deep hole that sucked them both in.The scream that tore through the silence of the medical room was nothing human. It wasn't a simple cry of pain, but a collision of frequencies: a male voice, cultured and choked, overpping perfectly with a female one, sharp and infantile. The sound was thick, distorted, as if two people were trying to force the same passage of air at the very same time.