Vale remained lying on the soft, beige sand, his pale eyes slightly widened as he stared up at Eskar. The crimson-haired boy stood a few steps away, smiling, an expression of genuine relief softening his sharp features.

  Vale studied him quietly.

  Eskar wasn’t wearing a shirt. What remained of it had clearly been burned away when he used Chasm, so that wasn’t surprising. What was unsettling were the fresh burn marks scattered across his upper body, jagged, angry scars concentrated around his chest and shoulders.

  Vale exhaled softly as Hurricane shook himself dry beside him, droplets spraying everywhere and pelting Vale’s face and armor. Illu and August followed shortly after, hopping closer and letting out low, dissatisfied caws as they fluffed their feathers.

  Only then did Vale push himself upright, settling into a seated position on the warm sand. He brushed damp hair away from his face and looked up at Eskar with a small, tired smile.

  “So,” Vale said casually, as if they weren’t stranded in an unknown world, “how long have you been here?”

  Eskar tilted his head, eyes drifting upward as he thought. “Hard to say. I didn’t really keep track.” After a moment, he shrugged. “But if I had to guess… maybe thirty minutes?”

  Vale froze, his smile fading as his eyes widened just slightly.

  “Thirty minutes?” he repeated, disbelief creeping into his voice.

  His thoughts raced backward to the moment he had watched Eskar vanish in a flash of light, followed by the brief pause before he himself had been swallowed by teleportation. The entire gap between them had lasted no more than three seconds.

  Vale slowly lifted his gaze to the sky, his expression tightening as the realization settled in. One second there had meant ten minutes here.

  A quiet curse slipped from his lips.

  Eskar noticed immediately. His brow furrowed as he followed Vale’s gaze, then he glanced down at the ravens resting beside him. He crouched and gently petted them one by one, his fingers careful as he spoke.

  “Can you sense anything?” Eskar asked, looking back at Vale. “Any danger?”

  He was referring to Vale’s ability to perceive atum, both harmonic and chaotic.

  Vale nodded once and pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll try.”

  He closed his eyes, steadying his breath as he sharpened his focus. The instant he reached outward, agony tore through his skull.

  White-hot pain flared as if a spike had been driven straight through his mind. Vale gasped sharply and lost focus at once. His legs buckled beneath him, and he dropped to one knee, teeth clenched as a low growl escaped his throat.

  Then, just as abruptly, the pain vanished.

  What remained was not sensation, but an impression.

  Vale’s eyes widened as confusion replaced the shock. The atum he had sensed was neither harmonic nor chaotic. It was stagnant, an unnatural fusion of both forces, perfectly balanced yet utterly unmoving, and profoundly wrong.

  That should not have been possible.

  Harmonic atum was forged by the gods, while chaotic atum was its primal origin. By their very nature, the two were mutually exclusive. A state like this shouldn't even exist with direct divine intervention.

  Yet here it was, occurring naturally.

  Eskar studied Vale with a troubled expression before slowly raising his own hand. It began to glow a vivid, volatile orange, though no flames formed around it.

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  “…Same for you, huh?” Eskar muttered.

  Vale stared at the glowing hand for a moment before slowly shaking his head. “I don’t understand.”

  Was this why Zellion had gone silent? Why he could no longer interfere, or even speak properly?

  Vale’s gaze drifted to his right arm.

  The metallic prosthetic gleamed faintly in the sunlight, its surface already drying as warmth seeped into it. Then he noticed something that made his breath hitch. Letters had been cleanly carved into the metal of the shoulder plate, precise and unmistakable.

  A name.

  Zellion.

  Vale’s eyes narrowed. “Is this… new?” he muttered.

  Eskar straightened, confusion flashing across his face. “What are you talking about?”

  Vale grabbed Eskar’s forearm and pulled himself fully upright before turning his prosthetic arm so the engraving was clearly visible.

  “This arm, this relic, or whatever it is, I don’t even know exactly what it is,” Vale said carefully. “But that name wasn’t there before.”

  Eskar’s eyes widened as curiosity immediately overtook his confusion. “Huh. Then you’re dealing with either an evolutionary relic… or a sentient one.”

  Vale blinked. “Those exist?”

  “They do,” Eskar replied with a nod, “but not through trials. Think of them as fragments of entire planes, pieces that broke off and gained form. They’re incredibly rare.” His gaze sharpened slightly as he added, “And they choose their wielders.”

  Vale listened intently as Eskar continued.

  “One of the few confirmed examples was forged by a human: the sword Excalibur. Ever since then, no one has managed to replicate the process.”

  Vale absorbed that in silence, nodding slowly as the implications settled in.

  After a moment, Eskar looked around, his expression turning serious. “But right now, we should focus on getting out of here, wherever here is.”

  Vale followed his gaze and scanned the unfamiliar horizon before nodding once. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Let’s survive first.”

  He took a few steps forward, then stopped abruptly and turned back, glancing over his shoulder at Eskar. “Hey,” Vale called out, “how do you even know about those relics? They weren’t in any of the books I’ve read.”

  Eskar slowed and turned to face him. For a moment, his expression was unreadable, neither guarded nor open, simply distant. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm.

  “They wouldn’t be,” he said. “They aren’t considered important enough for introductory texts.”

  Vale frowned slightly as Eskar continued. “Mainly because of their rarity. On average, only one is discovered every thousand years.”

  Vale’s eyes widened just a fraction.

  “As a result,” Eskár went on, “almost nothing concrete is known about them. Only that they’re independent of the plane they draw power from, and that only those who share a connection to that plane can wield them.”

  Vale studied Eskar for a moment after he finished, then nodded once. Without another word, he turned and continued walking.

  The landscape stretched endlessly before them, consisting of little more than sand.

  Vale climbed a small dune and paused at its crest, scanning the horizon as a grim expression slowly settled onto his face. In every direction lay waves of heat-blasted desert, golden dunes broken only by towering sandstone formations and massive stone pillars jutting from the ground like ancient teeth. Some of the rock spires were enormous; judging by their distance and apparent scale, Vale estimated them to be several hundred if not thousands of meters tall.

  That observation did nothing to improve his mood.

  He narrowed his eyes, searching for movement or signs of life, but there was nothing. After a while, he exhaled sharply and made his way back down toward the small oasis where he and Eskar had landed.

  Eskar was already there.

  He had taken out a compact piece of technology and pressed a button on its surface. With a low mechanical pulse, a suit of monk-like armor erupted outward, unfolding and dropping neatly onto the sand in front of him.

  Eskar stared at the device for a second longer than necessary before a quiet curse slipped from his lips.

  Vale raised a brow. “What’s wrong?”

  Eskar didn’t look up. “Take out your Onyx Blades.”

  Vale hesitated, confused, but did as he was told. He retrieved an identical storage unit and activated it. With a dull hum, his twin blades materialized and dropped to the sand beside the ravens, sending a small spray of grit their way.

  The ravens immediately protested, hopping aside and cawing irritably.

  Vale barely noticed.

  He was staring at the device in his hand.

  “…Damn it,” he muttered.

  Like Eskar, he had already realized the problem.

  The weapon storage units were partially linked to Spatium, allowing them to carry far more mass than they should while weighing almost nothing. Normally, they could store and retrieve weapons freely.

  But here,

  The stagnant atum disrupted that connection.

  They could extract items, but once removed, nothing could be stored again.

  Vale scratched the back of his head, frustration written plainly across his face. He pressed another button, pulling out the scabbards as well, at least that way he wouldn’t be forced to carry the blades bare.

  Eskar was already equipping his armor.

  Unlike Vale’s, it contained no metal plating at all. It was made entirely of layered cloth, thick enough to offer protection, yet loose and breathable. The arms were left free, clearly designed for mobility and heat.

  Perfect desert gear.

  Vale looked down at his own armor and sighed.

  It was heavier. Reinforced. Designed to heal him over time.

  But in a place where atum itself had become stagnant…

  Would it still work?