The cave was heavy with the sound of shallow breaths, from both Vell and Sonder.
She sat rigid, watching, waiting, terrified of what might come to pass.
At last the Yellow Mage drew back, though threads of light still lingered between his wrapped fingers.
"He will not wake," the Yellow Mage said.
Sonder swallowed hard.
The Yellow Mage inclined his head to her, ever so slightly.
"I can hold him here," he told her, "but I cannot restore him. Not as he is. Whatever has stricken him did not merely wound flesh. His strength is unraveling, thread by thread. Unless it is bound again, he will fade."
"There must be a way."
"There is," he said, cutting across her panic with a voice steady as stone. "But not here. This cave is no place for healing. My home lies to the east, three days' journey. There, I have what I need to keep him alive for longer than a breath. But even that will not be enough."
"Then what?"
The Yellow Mage's veiled face turned toward her, and she felt the weight of his unseen gaze press into her.
"Couldn't you just teleport us? Open a portal? You got here somehow." The words slipped out before she could stop them.
"Not by my will. The shard - the bone you broke - was a covenant. A tether. It tore me across distance to this place, but it was no spell of mine. I have no gift for doors between places. Only what my own feet may carry."
The words sank into her. The distance remained unshortened.
"There are gems," he said. "Jewels wrought in the early ages, when houses still clawed for power with steel and spell alike. None larger than a clenched fist, but within them lie seas of healing. Supposedly divine, crafted from the tears of the goddess of the wind."
"Tears?"
"Do not be deceived by their form," he said. "The stones have only one gift: to pour life where none remains. To bind again what is unraveling. It is precisely what Vell requires. Without it, I know of nothing else that could heal him quickly enough. Time is what we do not have."
"Where are they?"
"The House of Lustre," the Yellow Mage said. "A line of little renown. No generals. No kings. Their only claim to history is the keeping of the tears. Charged with it centuries ago, they clung to it as legacy, as honor, as curse. You will find them west of here, across the silver river and through the glades—if their halls still stand."
Sonder frowned.
"You must go there. I cannot. If I leave Vell even for an hour, the unraveling will take him. You are his only hope."
Her throat was dry. "And if they refuse to give them up?"
Silence. At last, his voice came calmly: "Then you must make certain you leave with it regardless. A week is all the time you are afforded. At the seventh sunset, if not at least one of the tears has touched Vell, he will die."
The Yellow Mage rose, moving with soundless grace. He bent and lifted Vell into his arms as though the mage weighed nothing, the golden threads of power wrapping close to shield and bind him.
"Make haste," he told Sonder.