Verne picked a brutal pace through the thick forest. They had dismounted from their horses when they could no longer travel on the main road and had to make the rest of the way on foot. They had left at the break of dawn and now darkness was quickly falling as they nearly ran through the eerily quiet trees and foliage. Of course, both he and Rask remained suspicious of the Sekrelli man, although there was no tactic Ral could imagine him utilizing that would consist of him being outnumbered, unarmed, and exhausted. And his coded words: only Rask, Camaz, Aris and himself knew about Aris’s outburst that day all those years ago. Only they knew the significance of it.

They had to follow this stranger into the forest.

Just as it was getting uncomfortably difficult to see, Ral spotted the flicker of a singular torch between the trees and they hurried towards it. The torch was fixed onto the side of a crumbling tower that looked incredibly out of place in the middle of forest with no pathways, signs or indications of life around it.

“A pre-Caelisian watchtower,” Rask murmured when he was able to see it properly. Ral realized he was right, but the structure was so damaged it was barely a tower and more of a ruin. When they got right up to it, he could see signs of people trying to reclaim it - overgrowth was torn up and the entrance (now a barely functional rotting wood door) was cleared so they could go inside.

A campfire and several other torches lit up the room inside. A woman with long blond hair was on her hands and knees, scribbling runes on the stone ground - the symbols flickered occasionally with blue light. A haggard looking older man sat on the floor, hands outstretched towards the center of the jumble of runes. Ral then spotted a dark bundle in the middle of the runes.

“You,” the older man looked up when they stepped into the room. A beard just as wild and unkept as Verne’s covered a rough and lined face. Even in the firelight Ral could tell the older man’s face was bruised and beaten up.

“Professor Camaz,” Rask said, stepping forward.

Ral blinked. He was just a little boy the last time he saw Camaz, but had a memory of a tall and imposing man in black robes. This man in front of him almost looked like a beggar by how dirty and tired he looked. “No, not now,” Camaz said sharply. He trained his eyes onto Ral. “You, boy. Talk to her. She’ll listen to you.”

Stunned, Ral stepped forward towards the dark bundle, carefully avoiding the runes where he could. As he got closer, he could make out long dark hair trailing onto the floor and…

Aris’s face was covered with some sort of greenish looking substance. At a certain angle, it glittered in the firelight like some sort of uncut gemstone. Ral knelt down, shocked that the ‘rock’ came out from her eyes. He suddenly remembered his dream of her months ago, while he was unconscious after the Trial. Those visions had been real after all.

“She killed a Part and took its eyes,” Camaz’s voice said.

“She… fucking what?” Rask spluttered.

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“She killed a Part and took its eyes,” Camaz repeated, annoyance edging his voice. “For its powers, I presume. It had mutated her solute and was killing her. Tortured her, more like. Now she barely has the will to live.”

“Sun have mercy,” Rask whispered.

“No, the sun did not have mercy on her,” Camaz said. “The only mercy from whatever god is left in Gaia is from the fact Ralos was with you, freerunner.”

“Aris,” Ral said softly, kneeling down beside his sister. There was no reaction.

“She probably can’t hear you,” the woman who was drawing runes around Aris said. Ral noted that she too looked utterly exhausted. “If she wakes, she is subjected to immense pain so we give her doses of sleeping draughts. I don’t know how you’re going to communicate with her.”

Ral had a distinct memory of being back in the caves of the Trial, back when every Somas he ever knew betrayed him. But before that happened he met someone, a child with liquid green eyes. He glanced down and was convinced Ankle’s eyes were the same color as this gemstone growing on Aris’s face. Maybe Aris really did kill a Part to take its eyes.

Then he remembered how Ankle actually spoke to him. The strange child couldn’t speak normally and had a voice only when he took hold of a solute, only being able to speak through the Great Solvent. Ral stilled himself and focused solely on reaching his sister’s solute, stretching out ‘hands’ towards her. He had only ever done this to close Gates, but if Gates were fueled by solutes, wouldn’t the principle be the same?

When he felt Aris’s solute, he immediately recoiled in horror. “Sun curse it, what happened?” he gasped, concentration broken. “Her solute is… wrong!”

All the other solutes he’s ‘felt’ in order to destroy were like a small hard rock - brittle and solid to the touch. Aris’s solute felt almost like an organ, a slimy, malleable, organic thing with scaly growths on it. And if he was to give it a size, it was easily twenty or thirty times the size of a regular solute. Granted, Ral realized he’s only ever interacted with a solute to destroy it - he hasn’t spent much time inspecting it. But instinctively he knew his sister’s solute was wrong, somehow.

“I told you, the Part she absorbed mutated her solute,” Camaz said. “At least that’s the prevailing theory between me and Laell. We haven’t exactly had any time to conduct formal research on it though.”

“Is that what’s killing her?” Rask asked. “The change to her solute?”

“No,” Camaz said. “Well, it was before we fixed it. She had cracks in her solute which most definitely would have resulted in death. But now the cracks seemed to have repaired themselves. The issue currently is psychological.”

The professor seemed to deflate a little, slumping to the ground. Ral stared at the defeated looking man. The professor, this runist Laell who was still drawing on the ground and Verne must have all spent long days and nights keeping Aris alive. Judging by the injuries on Camaz and the utter lack of supplies and resources in the vicinity, they had sacrificed much and fought often.

For a brief moment through the haze of anxiety, Ral almost laughed. It was like when they were children. Aris almost always caused more trouble. He settled to sit on the floor, took one of Aris’s frail, dry hands into his, and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he sat in the snow in the middle of winter, a single snowflake landing on his cheek and melting against his skin like a frozen kiss. A young woman with long dark hair sat before him with her back to him, wearing a silken blue tunic and dark blue dress.

“Ralos,” Aris greeted him.