He ran until the burning in his lungs was a sharper pain than the one in his soul. The Ashen Tracts offered no resistance, no life to push against. The fine, grey dust puffed up around his boots with each desperate stride, a silent testament to a world already dead. There were no trees to block his path, no roots to trip him. There was only the flat, featureless expanse under a sky the color of a corpse. He ran from the memory of a small hand reaching for him, from the wet sizzle of a life unmade, from the hollow man who had stood and watched.
He did not stop until his body gave out, collapsing at the mouth of a shallow cave carved into a low, crumbling escarpment. It was a wound in the dead earth. He crawled inside, seeking a darkness deeper than the one that had fallen over the world. The air within was still and cold, carrying the same faint, acrid taste of burnt metal as the air outside. He went deeper, away from the grey twilight, until the only light was the memory of the blight’s corrosive glow.
His back found the cold stone of the cave wall and he slid down to the floor. Before him, a small, stagnant pool of water had collected, black and motionless as obsidian. It did not reflect the darkness; it was the darkness. He stared into it, seeing nothing of himself, only a perfect, placid void. This was it. The bottom. The place his five years of running had finally led him. Hope was a value of zero. Guilt was a constant, at one hundred percent. There were no more numbers to track.
The shaking started again, but it was different now. It was not the frantic tremor of nectar withdrawal. This was a deeper quake, a structural failure that began in his bones and radiated outward. It was the shudder of a foundation giving way. The pain of his addiction and the raw agony of his grief had been two separate storms, one he could medicate and one he could flee. Now they had merged. There was no escape. There was no flask at his belt, not even the phantom weight of it. There was only the crucible of his own making.
He sat in the absolute blackness, letting the storm break over him. He did not fight it. He did not try to think his way through it. He simply endured. Hours passed. The only sound was the ragged rasp of his own breathing and the soft drip of water somewhere deeper in the cave.
Then, a whisper. It was his own voice, a dry, cracked thing he barely recognized.
— Matti.
The name was a shard of glass in his throat. He remembered Matti’s laugh, loud and booming, echoing across the high mountain pass just before the graft-bridge had groaned its first complaint. He remembered the surprise in his friend’s eyes, a look that had not been fear, but simple, final disappointment.
— Kaisa.
Her name was softer, a memory of quiet competence. She had warned him. She had told him the resonance was unstable, that the winds were too strong. He had pushed forward, arrogant in his skill, certain he could force the living wood to obey. He had been wrong. He had killed them with his pride.
He drew a shuddering breath, the cold air searing his lungs. He had carried those names like stones in his gut for five years. He had drowned them in nectar, buried them under the haze of his self-imposed exile. But they were still there. Now, a new name joined them, fresh and raw.
His voice cracked, the sound small and broken in the vast silence of the cave.
— Elina.
He said her name and saw her again, her hand outstretched, her face a mask of terror as the Tears of Ash unmade her. He had not killed her with his pride. He had killed her with his cowardice. He had frozen, a monument to his own past failure, and she had paid the price for his paralysis. The two moments, years apart, fused into a single, unbearable truth. His flaw was not a single mistake. It was a part of him.
He did not stop.
— Matti, — he whispered to the black water. — Kaisa. Elina.
He said the names again. And again. The repetition was a punishment at first, each name a lash of self-flagellation. He forced himself to see their faces, to feel the weight of their absence. He was a warden who could not protect, a friend who betrayed, a hero who ran. He deserved this pain. He deserved this darkness.
— Matti. Kaisa. Elina.
But as he continued, the nature of the act began to change. The names were no longer just a list of his failures. They became a litany. A mantra. The sharp edges of the pain began to dull, not because the pain was lessening, but because he was absorbing it. He was making it a part of his own structure. He was not pushing it away. He was pulling it in, weaving it into the very fiber of his being.
The pain was not a wall to hide behind. It was a foundation to build upon.
The realization settled not as a thought, but as a physical shift within him. The grief was not a weight to be carried. It was a tool to be wielded. The guilt was not a poison. It was fuel. He would not act to escape the pain of their memory. He would act because of it. Their deaths would not be the reason for his end. They would be the reason he continued. This was the only maintenance he had left to offer. This was the only active symbiosis that mattered now.
He had found his why. It was a grim and terrible purpose, forged in the absolute darkness of his own soul, but it was his.
Slowly, deliberately, Lauri Vatanen stood up.
His body was weak, ravaged by withdrawal and grief. His limbs still trembled, but his eyes, staring into a darkness that was no longer empty, were clear. They held a focus that was terrifying in its intensity. The despair was gone, burned away. In its place was a resolve as hard and cold as the stone around him. The Dark Night was over.
