The sound of flowing water in the darkness echoed like the labored breath of some ancient beast, hidden deep within the rock veins. It rose and fell, reverberating through the narrow limestone caverns. The damp air was thick with a metallic, mineral tang, reminiscent of old blood and rust. Now and then, a cold droplet would fall from the tip of a stalactite, breaking the silence with a crisp drip that rang like glass.
Rein knelt on the slick shale, his right arm glowing faintly with phosphorescent green light. The crystalline growth on his forearm was still slowly expanding, the jagged edges twisting like living things. Each extension came with a soft crack-crack, like ice fracturing beneath spring sunlight.
His breath was heavy and uneven. Every inhale dragged a lance of pain through his lungs—as though tiny shards of glass were tumbling through his alveoli with each breath.
"Keep this up…"
Ravenna's voice drifted from behind him, undercut by the low electromagnetic hum of her mechanical heart.
"…and you'll end up a very pretty crystal statue before I do."
She was slumped against the jagged cavern wall, orange-red dreadlocks dripping onto her worn leather armor, forming dark, spreading stains at her collar. From beneath the armor, her mechanical heart oozed sluggish, iridescent oil, pooling on the stone floor in a shimmering puddle.
Rein didn't respond.
He simply looked down at the baby in his arms.
The child, sensing something, reached up and gently clutched the front of his tunic. The emerald green eyes flickered with runes, pulsing softly—
But this time, no white light came.
His power was spent.
"He can't help you now," Ravenna said between shallow breaths. She pulled her mouth into her signature crooked smirk, though the expression was twisted by pain.
"Time to worry about us—the world's most dysfunctional tag team..."
When Rein looked up, the crystalline growth had already crept up to his right eye, forming translucent, vein-like patterns across his cheekbone—like some ancient tribal totem etched into flesh. Through the fractured refraction of crystal, he could see clearly now: Ravenna's mechanical heart, partially exposed beneath torn leather, lay bare.
The once-steady pulses of blue light coursing through the heart had grown erratic, flickering like a lighthouse on the verge of going dark in a storm.
"Your heart…"
"Almost gone," Ravenna replied with a strained half-smile.
"That energy blast clipped it bad—I knew I was screwed the second it hit."
She blew a stray lock of hair out of her eyes with a mock-casual gesture, though her voice trembled.
"With what I drained from your mess of crystal back there, I've got maybe two hours left. Tops."
Silence seeped through the cavern like a cold mist.
Only the distant gurgle of the underground river remained, echoing endlessly in the dark.
Suddenly—without warning—Rein grabbed her wrist.
Thin shards of crystal shot from his fingertips, snaking like roots, piercing toward the exposed mechanisms of her mechanical heart.
"Shit—what the hell are you doing?" Ravenna reflexively jerked back, but his grip was like forged steel, unyielding.
"Leech," he whispered.
The crystals pierced the casing of the mechanical heart, and white-hot agony surged through Ravenna's nerve conduits, lancing straight into her brain. Her back arched instinctively, a strangled gasp escaping her throat.
But then—the pain changed.
To her astonishment, she felt not destruction, but restoration.
The crystal tendrils weren't draining her.
They pulsed with a soft green glow, arcane healing energy flowing in reverse—from Rein to her. The emerald current seeped into the heart's fractured conduits, temporarily stabilizing the flickering energy core.
"You're insane!" Ravenna gasped, eyes wide. "The energy inside you is already out of control. If you share it, you'll—"
"—die faster?" Rein rasped, voice as frayed as old parchment.
"Doesn't really matter anymore."
He could feel the crystal's backlash chewing through his organs, the cold burn of crystallizing blood spreading with every heartbeat. But for now, Ravenna's heart kept beating.
They moved forward, following the underground river, until they reached what remained of an ancient elven outpost—half-collapsed, overgrown with bioluminescent moss. Its faint glow revealed weathered murals carved into the stone:
Elves standing alongside dragons.
Forests withered into husks.
A child cradled by silver blossoms.
"Prophetic murals?" Ravenna muttered, eyes scanning the wall, heterochromatic gaze narrowing.
Rein's stare locked onto the final image—
A lone figure standing in the heart of a dead forest,
crystals spreading across their body,
and from those crystals—
silver flowers blooming.
"...Withering gives birth to new life." Rein murmured, repeating the words Isariel Starborn had spoken.
The infant stirred in his arms, reaching a tiny hand toward the mural. His lips moved, mumbling softly. Rein leaned in closer, straining to hear.
Finally, the child spoke a single word—
"Key."
Suddenly, Ravenna's mechanical heart emitted a sharp, irregular hum. She clutched her chest and dropped to one knee.
"Damn it… the energy's destabilizing again."
Rein took a step toward her—then staggered, coughing up blood.
The backlash from the crystals had reached his heart. He stumbled, catching himself against the wall before collapsing.
That was when it started—the low, rhythmic whir of machinery echoing from deep within the outpost.
"Someone's coming," Ravenna warned, drawing her short blade, though her mechanical arm trembled with sluggish response, its power nearly drained.
A cold blue light flickered to life in the darkness.
It bled outward through the damp air, diffusing like watercolor on parchment.
A faint creak followed—the sound of old metal wheels grinding against stone, like an ancient mechanism being reawakened.
Then the figure emerged fully into the light—
And Rein's crystals began to thrum faintly, resonating in response to the subtle ripple of ancient elven energy that pulsed through the air.
Bathed in the ghostly glow sat a figure in a wheelchair.
"I'm guessing you need help."
The voice belonged to a young woman. Her face was pale, set with a pair of cold mechanical eyes. Long, dark brown hair was tied loosely at the back of her neck. A thick woolen blanket covered her lower body, but Rein's sharp gaze caught the contours beneath—
Not human legs, but something else.
Something folded. Mechanical.
"Who are you?" Ravenna asked warily.
"Eunice Kovak," the woman replied, pushing her wheelchair forward. The cold light revealed more of her face—
Pale, like porcelain untouched by sunlight. A jagged, lightning-shaped mechanical seam ran across her left cheek.
Her mechanical eyes whirred almost inaudibly as they shifted focus, tiny gear mechanisms clicking in rhythm.
Between strands of dark brown hair, Rein glimpsed a data interface socket nestled at her temple.
A thick wool blanket draped over her lower half, but what peeked from beneath wasn't flesh or bone—it was alloy.
Cool, gleaming metal joints.
Intricate hydraulic systems expanded and contracted in sync with her breathing.
"I'm the current keeper of this outpost," she said, her voice layered with an odd mechanical resonance.
Rein noticed her fingers—elegant, metallic digits etched with fine elven runes, glowing faintly blue in the dark.
Then Eunice's gaze shifted to the child. Her mechanical eyes adjusted focus with a soft click.
"So… this is the Holy Child who just arrived in the world, only to be stolen by a rogue elf?"
The baby looked at her, eyes unwavering.
He suddenly reached out and clearly spoke a single word:
"Restore."
Eunice's lips curved into a faint smile.
"Clever little one."
She turned her wheelchair and gestured toward the deeper shadows of the outpost.
"Come with me. Your wounds... might still be reversible."
Eunice turned, and her wheelchair left two faint, wet tracks along the stone floor.
Only then did Raine notice: the ancient elven runes carved into the stone walls flickered faintly to life as she passed—glowing for a breath, then fading just as quickly.
Ravenna gave a low whistle at the sight that greeted them deeper inside the outpost.
The architecture was a seamless fusion of old-world elven elegance and cutting-edge machinery.
Ancient stone columns wrapped in ivy-like carvings held embedded gear assemblies that turned in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
In the center, a moonwell shimmered—surrounded by twelve floating crystal prisms. These refracted its silvery-blue glow into intricate spectrums that danced across the chamber.
Tiny glowing motes drifted in the air like suspended stardust, held in place by an unseen force field.
Eunice rolled to the edge of the moonwell.
As she stopped, a platform beneath her clicked open, and a cluster of mechanical arms rose up and unfolded into a surgical array.
She unhooked a neatly arranged toolkit from the armrest of her wheelchair—each instrument glinted with the cold sheen of mithril.
When her mechanical fingers touched the wound at Ravenna's chest, the light at the seam where skin met alloy pulsed suddenly bright.
"Your mechanical heart might look new on the outside," she said coolly, "but its internal components are severely outdated.
The core's damaged. Forcing more energy into it will only accelerate the collapse."
Then her voice dropped into a fully synthetic register:
"Estimated time to complete failure: 4 hours, 32 minutes."
Ravenna raised an eyebrow. "You got a way to fix it?"
"There is," Eunice said calmly, "but it comes at a cost."
Her mechanical eye shifted, focusing directly on Raine.
"Your crystal energy can stabilize her heart… but not for long. In the end, both of you will die."
Raine said nothing.
"But," Eunice continued, reaching toward the moonwell and drawing a cup of shimmering liquid, "with the Child's blood and this moonwell water, I can create a temporary stabilizer."
As she dipped the vessel into the silver-blue pool, Raine noticed something:
Her seemingly flawless mechanical wrist trembled—a sudden, involuntary twitch.
It lasted less than a second, but it was enough. Her perfect shell had cracks.
Ravenna saw it too. Her jaw clenched.
"No. We're not using the kid."
And that's when the unexpected happened.
The baby, silent until now, reached out—
He grabbed Raine's finger and pressed it against Eunice's toolset.
The moment Raine's skin made contact, the surface of the tool shimmered, and ancient elven glyphs ignited into motion.
They twisted, rearranged themselves like flowing water, and finally locked into a shape Raine had never seen before.
Eunice's breathing apparatus hissed and accelerated.
"…He's given consent." Her voice wavered—a rare sign of emotion—
But in the next breath, she steadied.
She looked at them, her eyes unreadable.
"Now choose."
Raine slowly raised his head. The crystal growth across his face cast fractured shadows under the moonwell's light.
"Save her first."
Ravenna seized his arm, her grip tight.
"Raine!"
"Your heart won't make it through the night," he said, his voice disturbingly calm. "And I… can hold on a little longer."
The crystallized pattern on his cheekbone shimmered faintly, its jagged edges refracting the silver-blue glow.
When he spoke again, his voice sounded like it came from somewhere far away:
"Save her."
As he uttered those words, the crystal spread another inch—almost reaching his throat.
Suddenly, Ravenna's mechanical heart let out a shrill warning chime.
Her fingers tightened involuntarily on his arm, leaving white marks on his skin.
"You son of a—" she choked on the words, her voice raw.
Her orange-red dreadlocks shimmered in the moonwell's pale light, like strands of flame.
Eunice worked with the precision of a surgeon.
From the child's fingertip, she extracted a single drop of blood using a needle forged from mithril.
As the droplet fell into the moonwell water, the entire chamber's floating particles turned gold.
The liquid inside the test tube began to swirl, forming a spiral like a miniature galaxy—
then slowly shifted into a luminous silver-blue solution.
"Drink it," Eunice said, handing the vial to Ravenna.
In that moment, her mechanical eye flickered—briefly losing focus.
A hairline fracture appeared across the lens of her synthetic right eye.
"It'll keep your heart going for three days."
Ravenna took the vial but didn't drink right away.
Instead, she turned to look at Raine, her gaze unreadable.
In the moonwell's light, her hair looked like it was made of flame.
"And after three days?"
Eunice's synthetic eye glowed faintly.
"After three days… you'll need to find a real solution."