Rivers of Living Light

"Sometimes the smallest kindness from a stranger matters more than everything else put together. Not because it changes your situation, but because it reminds you that kindness still exists at all."

The grey stepped onto the first switchback, and the world tilted.

I'd seen the path from above—those long, gentle slopes carved into the cavern wall, winding back and forth like the creases of a folded map. But seeing it and being on it were different things entirely. The mule leaned into the descent, adjusting its gait, and I felt my stomach lurch as the true scale of the drop revealed itself.

The cavern floor was far. Much farther than I'd realised from the entrance ledge. The buildings I'd glimpsed—structures that had seemed substantial, solid—were miniatures from this height. Toys arranged on a distant surface. We were hundreds of metres up, maybe more. High enough that the figures moving through those distant streets were barely visible, like ants on a pavement viewed from a rooftop. High enough that a fall would mean death long before impact—just the terrible knowledge of the ground rushing up to meet you, and then nothing.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Focused on breathing.

In. Out. In. Out.

The vertigo passed. Slowly. Grudgingly. But it passed.

I opened my eyes again, keeping them fixed on the path ahead, refusing to look at the drop.

The path itself was beautifully made. Even in my exhausted, bound, half-delirious state, I could see that. The stone had been carved with precision—smooth surfaces, gentle curves, edges rounded rather than sharp. Drainage channels ran along the inner wall, designed to carry water away from the walking surface. And set into the outer barrier, at regular intervals, were posts of carved stone that glowed with soft, embedded light—way-markers, I assumed, visible even in absolute darkness.

They've been doing this for a long time, I thought. Generations. Maybe centuries.

The craftsmanship reminded me of something, though it took a moment to place it. The convict-built bridges in Tasmania—those sandstone structures from the 1800s that still stood solid after two hundred years. Built by people who'd had nothing but time and stone and the determination to create something that would outlast them. This path had that same quality. That same sense of permanence.

The ceiling drew my attention despite myself.

I'd noticed the lights from the entrance ledge—those distant clusters I'd mistaken for stars. But now, as we descended, I could see them more clearly. They weren't fixed. Weren't static. They moved in slow, drifting patterns, pulsing with a rhythm that suggested something alive rather than something mechanical.

I tilted my head back, straining against the restraints, trying to get a better look.

The cavern ceiling was so high above that I could barely make out its contours—just a vast darkness stretching overhead like a sky. But scattered across that darkness, like constellations drawn by a mad astronomer, were clusters of soft light. Thousands of them. Maybe millions. They drifted and swirled in currents I couldn't feel, their glow shifting from blue to green to something in between. Some clusters were dense and bright, like nebulae. Others were sparse, scattered, individual points that pulsed with their own slow rhythm.

They look like they're breathing, I thought. Like the whole ceiling is alive.

The thought should have been terrifying. Instead, it was strangely beautiful. I'd spent countless nights in Tasmania staring up at the southern sky, trying to memorise the constellations, tracing the familiar patterns of stars that humans had been watching for thousands of years. This was different—stranger, more exotic—but it triggered something similar in me. That sense of vastness. Of being small beneath something immense and ancient and utterly indifferent to human concerns.

What are you? I wondered, watching the lights drift overhead. What kind of creatures live on a ceiling and glow like stars?

The grey's hooves clicked against the stone path, each step carrying me deeper into this impossible space. The sound echoed strangely—bouncing off walls I couldn't see, returning to me from directions that didn't make sense. Everything about this place played tricks with perception. Distance. Direction. The fundamental assumptions I'd carried my whole life about how spaces worked and how sound behaved within them.

The first switchback came, and the grey navigated it with patient expertise—slowing at the turn, adjusting its weight, pivoting on the narrow platform where the path reversed direction. I swayed against the straps, my stomach lurching at the momentary sense of exposure. For just an instant, I could see straight down—past the barrier, past the carved stone, into the depths below.

I looked away. Fast.

Don't think about it. Just breathe.

The second terrace was different.

The path widened here, opening onto a platform that jutted from the cavern wall. The formation paused—riders slowing, mules bunching together—and I took the opportunity to study what I could see.

The cavern wall behind us had been reshaped. Carved. What might once have been natural rock had been transformed into something architectural—doorways cut into the stone, dark openings leading to spaces beyond. Windows, too, or what served as windows in a world without sun. Rectangular apertures glowing with soft interior light.

People live here, I realised. In the walls themselves. They've carved homes into the rock.

The thought was dizzying. Not just a city on the cavern floor, but a city that climbed the walls, that occupied every available surface, that turned the entire underground space into a single, vast, interconnected habitation. How many people lived here? Thousands? Tens of thousands? The scale defied my ability to calculate.

Movement caught my eye. A figure had emerged from one of the carved doorways—an old man, bent with age, who stood watching our procession with an expression I couldn't read. He wore simple clothing, darker than the Scouts' gear, but threaded with the same soft luminescence at the seams and collar. A pipe jutted from his mouth, trailing wisps of something that might have been smoke.

After a moment, he raised his hand—not a wave, exactly. Something more formal. A greeting, or an acknowledgment.

One of the Scouts raised a hand in response. Called out something I couldn't understand.

"Bertrand! Comment va ta jambe?"

The old man removed the pipe from his mouth. His response carried across the distance, rough and good-humoured.

"Mieux que ta tête, Olivier! Tu as l'air fatigué!"

Laughter rippled through the nearby Scouts. One of them—Olivier, presumably—made a rude gesture that transcended language barriers. The old man's weathered face split into a grin.

They know him, I thought. They know people here. This is home.

The realisation was strange. Humanising. These weren't just soldiers or captors—they were people, with relationships and histories and lives that had nothing to do with prisoners and pirates and the violence of the foothills. They had friends who teased them. Neighbours who asked about their health. A community that welcomed them back from patrol.

More faces appeared in doorways and windows as we passed. A woman with grey-streaked hair, pausing in the act of hanging fabric to dry. Two children who pressed their faces against a window, their eyes wide with curiosity. An elderly couple sitting on carved stone chairs outside their door, watching the procession with the patient attention of people who had seen many such sights before.

Their gazes lingered on me. On Nelson, stumbling somewhere behind. On the cargo we represented—the prizes being brought home from the hunt.

I tried to read their expressions. Hostility? Curiosity? Indifference? I saw all of these, and others I couldn't name. We were a spectacle, I realised. A break in the routine of their day. Something to watch and discuss and remember.

The prisoners, they would say later, over meals and drinks and whatever passed for evening conversation in this underground world. Did you see them? The one who couldn't walk, and the other one covered in blood?

The formation moved on. The old man watched us pass, his pipe back in his mouth, his expression fading to neutrality. The children in the window waved—small hands, innocent enthusiasm—before being pulled back by someone I couldn't see.

The air changed as we descended.

Warmer. Damper. Carrying scents I didn't recognise—something organic and green, like growing things, mixed with something sharper that might have been smoke or cooking or a hundred other activities of daily life. The accumulated odour of civilisation. Of people living and working and existing in an enclosed space.

And with the warmth came other sensations. Discomforts I'd been too cold to notice before.

My arms.

The cord around my wrists had cut deep, rubbing the skin raw where it pressed against bone. Now, with feeling returning, I could sense the full extent of the damage—the burning ache of abraded flesh, the deeper throb of muscles held too long in an unnatural position, the tingling numbness that spoke of restricted blood flow. I tried to flex my fingers and found them sluggish, reluctant, as if they belonged to someone else.

My legs.

Still dead. Still unresponsive. But somehow worse now, in the warmth—the absence of sensation more pronounced, more wrong, more terrifying. I could feel where my body ended and the emptiness began, that sharp demarcation at my hips where living flesh gave way to meat that might as well have belonged to a stranger.

My throat.

Dry. So dry. The thirst I'd been ignoring for hours came roaring back, demanding attention, refusing to be dismissed. I needed water. Needed it desperately. The brief glimpse of that pool on the mountain path—the Scouts drinking while I watched, helpless—felt like a memory from another lifetime.

How long since I've had anything to drink? Half a day? More?

I couldn't remember. Couldn't calculate. The journey had blurred into a continuous stream of movement and pain and impossible sights, and somewhere in that stream, basic needs like water and food and rest had been lost.

You're running down, some calm, detached part of me observed. Like a battery that hasn't been charged. You're running out of time.

I pushed the thought away. Focused on the path ahead. On the grey's steady movement. On anything except the slow failure of the machine that kept me alive.

The third terrace brought us close enough to see details.

The buildings on the cavern floor were no longer miniatures—they were structures, real structures with walls and roofs and doorways and all the architectural elements I associated with human habitation. Most were built from stone, the same grey-brown rock that formed the cavern itself, but some incorporated other materials—wood, dark and polished, that must have been traded from somewhere that had trees. Metal gleamed in places, shaped into decorative elements or functional fixtures, catching the soft light and throwing it back in reflections.

And the light itself...

I'd thought I understood it. Had seen it in the clothing, the harnesses, the posts along the path. But here, in the heart of the cavern, I realised I'd only glimpsed the edges of something much larger.

Rivers of light flowed through the city.

Actual rivers—channels cut into the stone, carrying water that glowed with soft blue-green luminescence. The light wasn't in the water, I realised as I stared. The light was the water—or rather, something in it. Billions of tiny points, too small to see individually, that together created those flowing ribbons of radiance winding between buildings and under bridges and through public spaces.

Alive, I thought. Whatever's making that light, it's alive.

The rivers branched and merged, creating patterns that reminded me of veins in a leaf or blood vessels in a body. Some channels were wide and bright, carrying the main flow. Others were narrow, threading between buildings, delivering light to corners that would otherwise be dark. The whole city was connected by them—a network of luminescence that reached every street, every plaza, every carved doorway.

Pools of brighter light marked what I assumed were cultivation centres—larger basins where the glowing water collected, tended by figures I could see moving around the edges. They carried tools I didn't recognise, performed tasks I couldn't identify. But their attention was focused, purposeful. Whatever lived in that water, it needed care. Maintenance. The accumulated knowledge of generations who had learned to cultivate light itself.

They've built their civilisation around this, I thought. Whatever those creatures are, they're the reason this city can exist at all.

The path curved, and new wonders replaced the cultivation pools. Gardens—or what I assumed were gardens, though no garden I'd ever seen had plants that glowed. Terraced beds carved into the cavern wall, filled with vegetation that pulsed with soft luminescence. Leaves that were more silver than green. Stalks that seemed to shimmer as if wet. Flowers—if they were flowers—that bloomed in colours I didn't have names for.

How? I thought. How do they grow anything without sun? How does any of this work?

But the questions felt distant. Academic. The kind of puzzles you might contemplate over a cup of tea in a comfortable chair, not while strapped to a mule with your arms bound and your legs dead and your throat burning with thirst.

Priorities, I told myself. Survival first. Botany later.

I was so transfixed by the rivers and gardens that I didn't notice the footsteps at first.

Soft. Deliberate. Keeping pace with the grey's steady progress.

Someone was walking alongside me.

I turned my head—as much as the restraints allowed—and found a young woman matching the mule's pace. Early twenties, maybe, with dark hair pulled back from her face in a practical knot and eyes that studied me with open curiosity. Her clothing was simpler than the Scouts' gear—a long tunic the colour of storm clouds over fitted trousers, both threaded with faint luminescence at the seams. A woven basket hung over one arm, half-filled with something round and pale.

She wasn't a Scout. Wasn't a soldier. Just a person, apparently, who had decided to walk alongside the prisoner on the pale mule.

I stared at her. She stared back.

Neither of us spoke.

The grey continued its steady descent, and the young woman matched its pace without apparent effort, her footsteps light on the carved stone. She seemed content to simply observe—watching my face, my bound hands, the way I swayed against the restraints with each step the mule took.

What do you want? I thought. Why are you here?

But I didn't ask. The memory of the slap, the boot to my ribs, the leader's cold instruction—you will speak when spoken to—kept my mouth shut. For all I knew, speaking to civilians was forbidden. For all I knew, she was testing me, waiting to see if I'd break the rules.

The path curved again, and we passed a section of the cavern wall where work was being done. Scaffolding clung to the rock face—actual scaffolding, wooden frames lashed together with rope and metal brackets—and figures moved across it, engaged in what looked like construction or repair. The sound of hammers rang out, rhythmic and purposeful. Someone called instructions in a language that sounded more Spanish than French, the words sharp and commanding.

"Más arriba! No, no—más arriba! Antonio, ayúdame con esto!"

Spanish, I thought. Not the blended language I'd heard from the Scouts, but something purer. Something that had held its shape despite centuries of isolation.

The young woman followed my gaze to the construction site. A small smile played at the corners of her mouth.

"Les bâtisseurs," she said. Her voice was quiet, pitched to carry only to me. "The builders. They are... expanding. Always expanding. More people, more homes needed."

I turned to look at her, surprised. Her English was accented but clear—careful, like someone speaking a language they'd learned rather than grown up with. But it was good English. Better than I'd expected.

"You speak English," I said. My voice came out rough, cracked from disuse and thirst.

"Un peu. A little." She waggled her hand in a so-so gesture. "My grandmother, she was from a place that spoke English. She taught me before she died. And there are others here—les marchands, the traders—who use it. It is useful to know."

Traders, I thought. They trade with other settlements. Other places that speak English.

The realisation opened up new questions, new possibilities. If Xylora traded with English-speaking settlements, then maybe—

"You are wondering many things," the young woman observed. She was watching my face with that same quiet curiosity, reading my expressions like text. "I can see them moving behind your eyes. Questions and questions and more questions."

"I have a lot of them," I admitted.

"Everyone does, when they first arrive." Her tone was matter-of-fact. Not unkind, but not particularly sympathetic either. "The city is... beaucoup. Much. It takes time to understand."

The path widened into another platform, and the formation slowed. Ahead, I could see Scouts dismounting, stretching their legs, exchanging words with figures who had emerged from a nearby doorway. Some kind of checkpoint, maybe. Or just a rest stop.

The young woman didn't leave. She stood beside the grey, one hand resting lightly on the mule's flank, her eyes still on my face.

"You are not like the other one," she said. "The Pirata. You are... different."

"I'm not a pirate," I said. The words came out before I could stop them. "I'm not his partner. I'm his hostage. He kidnapped me."

She tilted her head, considering this. "The Capitaine says you are both Piratas. That you were captured together, fighting together."

"The Captain is wrong." I heard the desperation in my own voice, hated it, couldn't suppress it. "I don't even know where I am. I don't know anything about any of this. A week ago, I was delivering packages in Tasmania. I'd never heard of Clivilius or portals or any of it. I just want to go home."

The young woman was silent for a moment. Her expression was hard to read—sympathy, maybe, or just the careful blankness of someone who had learned not to show too much emotion around strangers.

"Home is far from here," she said finally. "Very far. I do not think you will see it again."

The words landed like stones in my chest. I'd known it, of course. Had known it since the moment I'd woken in that impossible lagoon, since the moment Jamie had explained what had happened to me, since the moment Nelson had dragged me away from everything I'd found. But hearing it spoken aloud, by a stranger in a strange city, made it real in a way it hadn't been before.

I'm never going home, I thought. This is my life now. Whatever this is.

The formation began moving again. The young woman fell into step beside the grey, apparently in no hurry to leave.

"I am Sylvie," she said. "My name. I did not tell you before."

"Joel," I replied. "Joel Gibbons."

"Jo-el." She tested the name, her accent turning the single syllable into two. "This is English?"

"It's from the Bible, I think. My mum chose it."

"Bible." She nodded slowly. "We have this too. Some of the families—les anciennes familles, the old families—they still read it. The French parts, mostly. And some Spanish."

French parts, I thought. Spanish parts. They've divided it up by language, by heritage. Keeping the old cultures alive even as they blend into something new.

The path descended through a section of the cavern where the construction was more elaborate. Multi-storey buildings rose from platforms carved into the wall, their facades decorated with patterns that looked almost European. I saw what might have been Spanish ironwork—delicate scrolls and flourishes framing windows and doorways. And beside it, something that reminded me of French shutters, painted in faded blues and greens. And elsewhere, plainer stonework that could have come from Georgian England.

Layers, I realised. Different styles, different eras, all built on top of each other. Like geological strata in a cliff face.

"You are looking at the quartiers," Sylvie observed. "The... districts? Yes, districts. Each family group, they have their own area. Their own style. The Vasquez family, they build like their ancestors from España. The Beaumont family, they prefer the French ways. And the Ashworth family—" She pointed to a cluster of plainer buildings, solid and functional. "They are more English. More... practical."

"They keep the old cultures separate?"

"Not separate, no. But... remembered. Honoured." She searched for the right word. "We are all Xylorans now. But we remember where we came from. It is important, non? To know your roots?"

I thought about that. About Mum's stories of her Irish grandmother, the one who'd come to Australia during the famine. About the way certain traditions had persisted in our family—Christmas pudding, Sunday roasts, the particular way Mum made tea—echoes of a homeland none of us had ever seen.

"Yes," I said. "It's important."

Sylvie smiled. It was the first genuine smile I'd seen from her—not that small, guarded expression she'd shown before, but something warmer. Something that reached her eyes.

"You understand," she said. "Bon. Many people from outside, they do not understand. They see the mixing, the blending, and they think we have forgotten who we were. But we have not forgotten. We have... adapted. Become something new without losing what was old.”

The path curved again, and the view opened up below us.

I could see the rivers of light more clearly now—their branching patterns, the way they threaded between buildings, the bridges that arched over them in graceful curves. People moved along streets that glowed from beneath, their figures casting strange shadows that shifted and flickered with the rhythm of the living light.

"Les Lumineux," Sylvie said quietly. She'd followed my gaze to the rivers. "This is what we call them. The creatures in the water."

"What are they?"

"Très petits. Very small. Too small for eyes to see." She pinched her fingers together, indicating something minute. "They eat things in the water—tiny things, also too small to see—and they make light. We have cultivated them for... many generations. Since the beginning. They are the heart of Xylora."

Cultivated, I thought. Bred and tended and shaped over centuries, like crops or livestock. Not magic. Biology.

"The ceiling," I said, tilting my head toward the vast darkness overhead, where those drifting constellations still swirled. "Are those the same creatures?"

"Oui. Les étoiles—the stars, we call them, though they are not truly stars." A note of pride entered her voice. "It took many, many years to establish them on the ceiling. Many generations of work. But now they are... self-sustaining? Is that the word? They breed and spread and glow without our help. A sky we made ourselves."

A sky we made ourselves.

The phrase echoed in my mind. I thought about all those nights in Tasmania, lying on my back in the paddock behind our house, staring up at the southern stars. The Milky Way arching overhead. The Southern Cross pointing toward the pole. Light that had travelled millions of years to reach my eyes, carrying messages from suns that might already be dead.

These people had lost that sky. Had been forced into Clivilius, into darkness, cut off from the stars their ancestors had navigated by. And they'd responded by creating their own. Not as vast, not as ancient, not as impossibly distant—but theirs. Something they'd built with patience and care and the accumulated knowledge of generations.

"It's beautiful," I said. The words felt inadequate, but they were all I had.

Sylvie's smile returned, smaller now but still warm. "Oui. It is. Most of us, we do not notice anymore—we have grown up with it, yes? It is just... normal. Part of the world. But sometimes, when I stop and look, I remember that it is also beautiful."

She reached into her basket and withdrew something small—a vial, I realised, made from clouded glass about the size of my thumb. It hung from a thin cord, braided from something dark and fibrous. Something glowed inside the glass. Faintly, softly. That same blue-green luminescence I'd seen in the rivers.

"Pour toi," she said. "For you."

She held it out toward me. I stared at it, not understanding.

"I can't—" I lifted my bound hands, as much as the restraints allowed. "I can't take it."

"Ah." She frowned, considering the problem. Then she stepped closer to the grey, reached up on her toes, and slipped the cord over my head—settling it around my neck, adjusting it so the vial rested against my chest, just visible above the neckline of my t-shirt.

The glass was warm against my skin. Not body-temperature warm—warmer than that, as if whatever was inside generated its own heat. And I could feel the light pulsing where it touched me, a gentle rhythm that seemed almost like a heartbeat.

"There," Sylvie said, stepping back to examine her work. "Now you have light of your own. Even in the darkest cell, you will not be completely without it."

I didn't know what to say. Didn't understand why she was doing this—why anyone would show kindness to a prisoner, a stranger, someone her people had every reason to hate.

"Why?" I asked. The question came out raw. Almost accusatory.

She was quiet for a moment, her dark eyes studying my face with that same thoughtful intensity I'd noticed from the beginning.

"You looked lost," she said finally. "Perdu. When you were watching the rivers, the light... you had a face like someone seeing something beautiful for the first time. And also like someone who has lost everything they knew." She paused, choosing her words carefully. "My grandmother, she was lost when she first came here. Lost and frightened and far from everything she knew. Someone gave her a vial like this, on her first day. She kept it until she died."

"Your grandmother wasn't from Xylora?"

"Non." Something flickered across Sylvie's face—there and gone, too quick to read. "She was from Skegness. A settlement not far from here. She was... found by our scouts when she was young. Brought here." Another pause, longer this time. "It is a complicated story. For another time, perhaps."

The way she said it—found, not rescued; complicated, not sad or happy—suggested depths I couldn't begin to guess at. But her expression had closed slightly, a door easing shut, and I understood that this particular thread of conversation was finished.

For now.

I looked down at the vial resting against my chest, its soft glow pulsing steadily.

"It helped her?" I asked. "The light?"

Sylvie's expression softened, the door easing open again at this safer question. "It reminded her that there was light, even in darkness. That people could be kind, even to strangers." Her smile turned wistful. "She used to say that the light you carry with you matters more than the light around you. I did not understand when I was young. Now I think maybe I do."

Before I could respond, a voice called out from somewhere ahead. Sharp. Impatient.

"Sylvie! Qu'est-ce que tu fais là-bas?"

An older woman stood at the edge of a carved platform, arms crossed, expression disapproving. She wore clothing similar to Sylvie's but darker, heavier, with more elaborate patterns of luminescence threading through the fabric. Her hair was grey, pulled back severely, and her face carried the kind of authority that came from years of being obeyed.

"Je viens, Maman!" Sylvie called back. She turned to me one last time, and that small smile flickered across her face. "Bonne chance, Joel Gibbons. You will need it here. But perhaps..." She glanced at the vial, now resting against my chest. "Perhaps you will find that not everything in Xylora is as dark as it seems."

Then she was gone—peeling away from the formation, jogging toward the older woman who must have been her mother. I watched them exchange words I couldn't hear, watched the mother's expression shift from disapproval to something more complicated, watched Sylvie glance back at me once before they both disappeared through one of the carved doorways.

The vial pulsed against my chest. Warm. Alive. A small light in the gathering uncertainty of everything ahead.

Sylvie, I thought. Her name is Sylvie. And her grandmother was lost once, too.

The grey walked on.

The fourth terrace brought us close enough to hear individual voices. To smell cooking smoke and something floral and the sharp tang of metal being worked. The sounds of the city rose around us—vendors calling in that blended language, children playing in the spaces between buildings, the clatter of daily life in a place that had no sun.

More people watched us now. The terrace was busier here, the platforms wider, the carved dwellings giving way to what looked like shops and workshops. A blacksmith worked at an open forge, the orange glow of his fire competing with the blue-green luminescence that surrounded it. A woman arranged goods in a window display—fabrics, I thought, in colours I couldn't quite identify. A group of old men sat on carved stone benches, smoking pipes and watching the world pass with the patient attention of those who had nothing better to do.

And all of them watched us.

The stares were harder here than they'd been on the upper terraces. Less curious, more hostile. I saw lips curl in disgust. Saw hands make gestures that didn't need translation. Saw a woman pull her children behind her as we passed, as if our mere presence might contaminate them.

Piratas, I thought. They think we're pirates. They think we're the enemy.

I wanted to shout at them. To explain that I wasn't what they thought I was, that I was a victim too, that I had no quarrel with them or their city or their way of life. But what good would it do? They'd believe what they wanted to believe. What their leaders told them to believe.

And besides, my throat was too dry for shouting.

Movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention. I turned my head—straining against the restraints—and caught my first clear glimpse of Nelson since the descent began.

He was still on his feet. Barely. His head hung forward, his shoulders slumped, his steps the stumbling shuffle of a man operating on nothing but will and the rope that pulled him forward. Blood had dried on his face from the cut above his eye, from his split lip, from wounds I couldn't see. His clothes were torn and filthy, his bound hands hanging limp behind his back.

He looked broken.

The thought hit harder than I expected. I'd spent days hating this man, fearing him, resenting him for every brutal moment he'd put me through. But seeing him like this—reduced, diminished, stripped of the cold competence that had defined him—I felt something that might have been pity. Or might have been recognition. The understanding that we were both prisoners now, both at the mercy of forces we couldn't control, both heading toward a fate we couldn't predict.

His eyes lifted. Met mine.

For just a moment—a heartbeat, no more—something passed between us. Not hope. Not solidarity. Just acknowledgment. A recognition that whatever we'd been to each other before, we were something different now.

Then his gaze dropped, and he was just a broken man shuffling forward, and the moment passed.

The path levelled.

The switchbacks ended. Ahead, the terrace opened onto what looked like a proper street—paved stone stretching toward the heart of the city, where buildings rose and lights glowed and the sounds of civilisation echoed off ancient walls.

The formation paused. Scouts exchanged words in their blended language. Someone called out instructions I couldn't follow. The mules shifted restlessly, sensing that the long descent was finally over.

And I sat there, strapped to the grey's back, a vial of living light pulsing against my chest, and tried to prepare myself for whatever came next.

Sylvie, I thought again.

I didn't know why her name kept surfacing in my mind. Didn't know why a stranger's kindness felt so significant in the midst of everything else. Maybe it was just because she'd been the first person in this city to treat me like a human being rather than cargo. Maybe it was because her grandmother had been lost too, once, and had found a way to survive.

Maybe it was because she'd given me something to hold onto. Something small and warm and alive, a reminder that there was light even in darkness.

The vial pulsed against my skin.

The grey shifted beneath me.

And the city waited ahead, its rivers of light flowing through streets I didn't know, toward a fate I couldn't see.