The passage was a long, slow climb into shadow. The silver moss that had carpeted the floor of the sanctuary grew thinner here, clinging to the walls in sparse, fading patches. Soon, its gentle light was gone, and they were once again swallowed by a profound darkness, broken only by the single, sputtering torch Sorrin managed to light.
Every step was a fresh agony. Renn's arm was a dead weight over Sorrin's shoulders, his injured leg dragging uselessly. He tried to hop at first, but his strength gave out within minutes, and now Sorrin was practically carrying him. The air was cold and damp, filled with the rhythmic, pained hiss of Renn's breathing and the shuffling scrape of their boots on the uneven stone.
"Just... set me down for a bit," Renn rasped after what felt like an eternity.
Sorrin eased him against a rough-hewn wall, and Renn slid to the floor, his head lolling back. "Sorry," he muttered. "Not used to being the baggage."
"You're heavier than you look," Sorrin replied, with a grin. The words came out between ragged breaths. He leaned against the opposite wall, the torchlight casting their long, dancing shadows. The excitement he'd felt in the throne room had evaporated, replaced by a deep, aching exhaustion and a gnawing unease.
"You were serious back there, weren't you?" Sorrin asked into the quiet. "About Odria."
Renn nodded, his face pale in the flickering light. "You need answers. And I... I need to understand what I'm traveling with." He paused. "But first, we need a story for Arven."
Sorrin frowned. "A story?"
"We can't tell him what really happened," Renn said, his voice firm despite his obvious pain. "We can't tell him about the branch, or the throne. The Captain is a good man, but he's a contractor. His loyalty is to the client, and the client is the Flow Council. If he knew you had a power like this, he'd be obligated to report it."
He was right. Arven was honorable, which meant he would follow the rules. And the rules for an anomaly like Sorrin were not kind.
"So what do we tell him?" Sorrin asked.
"The truth, but smaller," Renn replied. "The abomination was stronger than anything we'd faced. It broke my leg, and in the fight, it triggered a cave-in. We were trapped. We found this passage and climbed our way out. Simple. Believable."
It was. It covered their injuries, their long absence, and their need for extraction without revealing the impossible truth. They sat in silence for a while longer, the plan settling between them like a shroud.
Sorrin debated on whether or not to tell Renn about his mysterious encounter with the supposed "embodiment of the World Tree," but he decided against it, thinking now wouldn't be the time for another groundbreaking piece of information for Renn to comprehend.
The climb continued. Hours blurred together in a monotonous cycle of effort and rest. The passage twisted and turned, always sloping upward. The air began to change, losing its deep, subterranean chill and carrying a faint, fresh scent of pine and wet earth.
Finally, Sorrin saw it. A sliver of grey light high above them. "Renn, look."
Renn, of course, couldn't. But he lifted his head, a hopeful tension in his posture. "I can feel it," he whispered. "A breeze."
They emerged from a fissure in a rock face, blinking against the bruised twilight of the forest canopy. They were on a high ridge, overlooking the same sea of greywood trees the Marrowlight had descended into. Below, the forest was a quiet, tangled mass of shadow. They had made it. They were at the check-in point.
They settled near a tree, with Renn stretching out on a small patch of wet soil.
Then, they waited.
The minutes stretched into an hour. The forest grew darker, and the sounds of nocturnal creatures began to rise from the canopy below. A cold knot of fear tightened in Sorrin's gut. What if they were too late? What if Arven had been forced to leave?
Just as he was losing hope, he heard it. A low, rhythmic thrumming from the clouds above. It grew steadily louder, a familiar mechanical heartbeat. A single searchlight cut through the gloom, sweeping across the ridge before locking onto their position.
The Marrowlight descended, its massive form a comforting bulk against the evening sky. A platform was lowered, and the familiar, sharp silhouette of Calda stood upon it, her telescope case strapped to her belt.
"Took you long enough," she called down, her voice crisp and businesslike, though Sorrin could hear the relief beneath it. "We were about to start taking bets on what ate you." Her eyes fell on Renn's leg, and her expression hardened into professional concern. "Get him aboard, now."
Back on the solid deck of the airship, under the steady glow of the ship's lanterns, the world felt sane again. Crew members helped move Renn to the med-bay, his face a stoic mask. Captain Arven met them at the stairwell, his expression unreadable.
"Report," he said, his voice calm.
Sorrin gave him the story he and Renn had rehearsed. The abomination, the cave-in, the lucky escape. Arven listened without interruption, his gaze fixed on Sorrin, taking in his ragged state, the new tension in his shoulders. He nodded slowly when Sorrin was finished.
"The Council has recalled us," Arven said, his voice flat. "The contract is terminated. Your payment, minus expenses for the early recall." He handed Sorrin a small, heavy pouch of coins. "You're both on paid medical leave until Renn is cleared by a physician. Standard procedure."
"Thank you, Captain, we apologize for not being able to retrieve the artifact..." Sorrin said somberly, taking the pouch.
"It was a difficult mission," Arven added, his eyes narrowing slightly. "You lost your primary gear, an abomination nearly killed your partner, and you were buried for more than a day. Yet you seem... different. Not just tired."
He suddenly stepped closer, his voice dropping low so the rest of the crew couldn't hear.
"Whatever you found in that ruin, Sorrin... I hope for your sake the Council never finds out the price you clearly paid for it."
He turned and walked away without another word, leaving Sorrin standing on the deck. The lie had held, but the Arven knew it was a lie. And he had just given them a warning.