The cave was nothing more than a narrow crack in the mountainside when we first stumbled into it, but further inside it widened just enough to keep the worst of the storm out. Snow and wind still howled past the entrance but compared to the open slopes of Frostdeath, this felt almost peaceful.
Almost.
Veneri slid down against the cave wall with a tired exhale. His glaive clattered softly as he let it rest across his knees. Pale strands of Soul Energy began to flicker around his body, wrapping him in a faint, translucent glow as he circulated it through his body to generate warmth.
Normally, he wouldn't even bother. His Aeterium constitution regulates temperature so efficiently that most forms of cold feel like nothing more than a mild inconvenience to him. But Convergence is different. The cold here is saturated with infected miasma and warped elemental residue from higher Krepsuna beings that seeps into the body and makes even Divine physiology feel heavy and sluggish.
He rubbed his hands together once, watching the faint vapor of his breath curl into the air.
"I haven't felt cold like this since the Fallen Bridge."
"This place almost killed you. It's not exactly a great comparison."
He huffed out something that might have been a laugh, but it faded quickly into another tired breath. What bothered me more than his discomfort with the temperature was how long his injuries were taking to heal. Small tears in his skin and deeper muscle damage from the Sunderer Krepsunas were still visible. Minutes had passed since we escaped and his Body Reconstruction was still working through wounds that should have vanished in seconds.
"That's still there. It should be gone by now."
He glanced down, studying the half-healed injury with a faint frown.
"I know."
Body Reconstruction relies on Soul Energy as fuel. Under normal conditions, he has an overwhelming surplus thanks to Omniphage constantly feeding him new reserves. Without it, his body has to rely solely on the Soul Energy naturally circulating from his soul into his body.
Soul Energy originates in the soul but access to its deeper, near-infinite reservoir is only possible at Deity Rank. As a Divine, he can use Soul Energy but he cannot freely draw from the core of his soul whenever he wants. He has to wait for it to flow into his body at its own pace, which drastically slows down both recovery and sustained combat capability.
He leaned his head back against the cold stone and closed his eyes for a moment.
"It's taking minutes. I'm not used to that."
"You've been fighting for two days straight without rest and Omniphage. Of course it's slower."
"I've never felt this weak before. I'm at the Fourth Enlightenment, and I feel like I'm back at square one."
Hearing that made something twist painfully in my chest. Veneri had always been someone who stood at the top of everything. Seeing him like this, drained and struggling just to keep himself warm, felt wrong in a way I couldn't properly explain.
I drifted closer to him on instinct and reached out, intending to rest a hand on his shoulder like I've done countless times before. My fingers passed straight through him, scattering faint particles of my own projection like mist. I pulled my hand back slowly, staring at it for a moment before letting it drop.
"This is probably what I was like as an Ascender. Weak. Exhausted. Constantly on the verge of running out of energy."
"That's not what's bothering me."
"Mmm?"
"I don't like being like this. I'm used to having a body, feeling things and standing next to you, not… floating around like some glitch you're hallucinating."
"You're scared?"
"A little. It feels like I could just disappear if something goes wrong."
The cave fell quiet for a few seconds, filled only by the distant roar of the blizzard outside. Thick snow slammed against the entrance, piling up in a way that dulled sound and distorted energy movement. In Frostdeath, blizzards like this disrupt sensory perception, scent trails, and even certain types of energy detection. It makes coordinated ambushes extremely difficult, which is one of the few advantages we had in this nightmare of a realm.
"You need to sleep. This storm is too dense for anything to track us properly. If we keep moving, you're just going to collapse in the middle of the mountains."
He looked like he wanted to argue out of habit but the words never came. Instead, he sighed and shifted slightly, adjusting his position so his back was more comfortably supported by the wall.
"Wake me if something changes."
"I will."
His eyes slid shut and his breathing slowly evened out. The glow of his circulating Soul Energy got dimmer as his body shifted into a more passive recovery state. Watching him like that made the cave feel both safer and more fragile at the same time.
I stayed hovering beside him, keeping watch. Everything felt eerily still. Surprisingly, there were screeches from Krepsunas, tremors of distant combat. After a while, though, I started to notice something strange.
A heavy, slow drowsiness began to creep into my thoughts, making them feel sluggish. I blinked, shaking my head slightly as if that would help, but the sensation only grew stronger.
"That's… not good."
Then I remembered.
I'm not fully independent in this state. My existence here is anchored to his Divinity and this Pentarch. Our consciousness is linked and when his mind enters rest, the connection pulls me along with it whether I want it to or not. It's not something I can resist indefinitely because I am, in a very literal sense, a fragment and not my original self which is with the Love Pentarch.
The drowsiness intensified. I drifted closer to him on instinct, settling beside his sleeping form even though I could not physically touch him. I tried one last time to reach out, stopping short before it could pass through.
"Next time, I'm using the fragment that can actually hug you."