The rain continued its assault, a cold, steady drumming that sought to wash the world clean of everything but grey. Anastasya lay prone on a high, moss-slicked ridge overlooking the Crystal Causeway. The causeway itself was an affront to the forest, a wide, smooth road of fused Crystalline Myxoid that glowed with a faint, internal blue light, cutting a sterile line through the chaos of the Verdant Maze. Her energy rifle felt cold and solid against her shoulder, a familiar weight from a life that now felt like a stranger’s. This was a heretical act. An ambush. A shift from fleeing to hunting, and the choice sat in her gut like a shard of ice.
Lauri was beside her, a still, dark shape in the gloom. The frantic energy of his withdrawal had burned away, leaving behind a quiet, focused intensity that was more unnerving than his shaking had ever been. He did not fidget. He did not speak. He watched the causeway, his gaze fixed on the middle distance, his grief a palpable silence between them. He was a weapon waiting for a target, and she was the one who had to aim him. The thought was as cold as the rifle stock.
A low, grinding hum vibrated up through the rock. It was a sound of immense weight and slow, inexorable movement.
— Target approaching, — Lauri’s voice was a low rasp, devoid of emotion.
Anastasya sighted through her scope. The Prison-Worm Cart emerged from the mist. It was a grotesque fusion of biology and Regalis engineering, a segmented carriage of dark, chitinous plates dragged by a massive, pale worm whose rhythmic contractions pulled the entire vehicle forward. It was a functional, disgusting piece of state machinery. Two guards sat atop the carriage, their own armor glowing faintly. Her objective was not them. It was the motive crystal that linked the worm’s harness to the cart.
She exhaled slowly, her training taking over. The world narrowed to the glowing blue crystal in her sights. She accounted for the rain, the distance, the target’s slow but steady movement. Ilmar’s laughing face flashed in her mind, a ghost of defiance. The price for this knowledge had been his freedom. She would not waste it. She squeezed the trigger.
There was no thunderous report, only a sharp crack and a brilliant white bolt of energy that crossed the hundred meters in an instant. The motive crystal shattered, erupting in a shower of blue sparks. The link was severed. The great worm, freed from its burden, continued its mindless forward momentum, burrowing into the soft shoulder of the causeway and vanishing into the earth with a final, wet heave. The cart slid to a halt, inert and powerless. The two guards, stunned, were already scrambling for their weapons.
— Now, — she commanded.
They moved down the ridge, a blur of grey fur and blue armor, two predators with a single purpose. Lauri was faster, his movements fluid as he navigated the treacherous, rain-slicked terrain. He reached the cart first, tearing the door from its magnetic lock with a grunt of effort. Anastasya covered him, her rifle tracking the disoriented guards.
Lauri peered inside, then stepped back, his expression unreadable. Anastasya moved to the opening. Inside, a single figure sat chained to the floor. He was a Silvanus, old and wiry, his grey fur matted and thin. But his eyes, dark and sharp, held none of Ilmar’s patience. They were chips of obsidian, glinting with a cynical, ancient intelligence. This was Jukka Anttila, the shaman, the foremost expert on precursor lore.
Jukka looked from Lauri’s grim face to Anastasya’s Regalis armor. A dry, rasping sound escaped his throat. It was a laugh, but it held no humor. It was the sound of stones grinding together.
— So, the warden and the wall. You think you are hunting the blight. You are chasing the symptom, — he said, his voice a low croak.
Anastasya’s hand tightened on her rifle. The shaman’s gaze was unnervingly direct, dismissing their entire desperate journey as a fool’s errand.
— Gerasim is just a gardener. A particularly zealous one, I grant you. But the seeds were planted long before he was born. You fight the weeds while the roots poison the world, — Jukka continued, his eyes flicking to her.
— What roots? — Lauri asked, his voice tight.
— You seek a cure for the Tears of Ash. There is no cure. There is only a rebalancing. The precursors had a name for it, a legend. They called it the Sunken Song, — the shaman said, shifting his chained wrists.
Anastasya felt a flicker of something, a word from a forbidden text, a myth dismissed by the Chancellery of Forms as Silvanus superstition.
— It is not a song, — Jukka clarified, seeing the disbelief on their faces. — It is a machine. A terraforming engine from before the Schism, buried in a place they called the Progenitor’s Cradle. It can absorb the blight, drink the poison from the water, and exhale life. But it must be woken. It must be sung to.
— Sung to? — Anastasya repeated, the word feeling foolish on her tongue.
— The activation key is not an object. It is a specific biotic resonance. A melody, passed down for generations, hidden in plain sight. A garbled lullaby, — Jukka explained, his voice dropping lower.
He leaned forward as much as his chains would allow. He began to hum.
It was a simple tune, almost childish, a sequence of five rising and falling notes. It was nothing. A nursery rhyme.
But the sound struck Anastasya like a physical blow.
The sterile lines of the prison cart dissolved. The cold rain vanished. She was small, in a room she could not remember, warm and safe. A voice, low and gentle, was humming that exact melody. The pattern of the Weft of Vigil, the symbol of Regalis order etched into every wall of her life, felt cold and dead. This song… this song was warmth. It was the memory of a hand on her brow. It was a lullaby from her own forgotten childhood.
— Where did you hear that? — she demanded, her voice tight, her carefully constructed discipline cracking.
Jukka stopped humming. He looked at her, his cynical eyes widening with a flicker of genuine surprise. He had expected many things from his rescuers. A warden haunted by ghosts. A soldier blinded by doctrine.
He had not expected this.
The rain fell harder on the roof of the cart. The mission had changed. The key to saving the world was not in a vault or on a map. It was buried in a memory she had spent her entire life trying to forget.
