The hum of the Marrowlight's engines filled every corner of the cabin. Brass pipes rattled softly in the walls, and the steady churn of propellers set the floorboards into a faint vibration. Outside the porthole, clouds drifted like pale smoke, swallowing all sight of land.
Renn lay back against his bunk, his chest wrapped tight in white bandages. His arm had regained some strength, but his ribs still ached with every breath. He tried to look calm, though the stiffness in his shoulders said otherwise.
Across the cramped room, Sorrin sat hunched over the desk, revolver untouched beside a stack of unused papers. His eyes were hollow, restless, darting often toward nothing at all.
Renn finally spoke, his voice rough. "You've been pacing holes into the floor for three days now. Whatever it is, say it."
Sorrin's fingers twitched against the desk. For a moment, he didn't answer. Then he leaned back, staring at the ceiling, words dragging out of him like iron chains.
"I heard a voice," he said. "Back in the ruins."
Renn stared at him for a couple of moments before, with a smile, responding.
"I believe I was only blind, last time I checked, not mute too."
Sorrin looked back at him with a stoic expression on his face.
"I'm being serious."
Renn sat upright despite the ache in his ribs.
"Alright, alright, what kind of voice was it?" he said clearly amused.
Sorrin met his gaze. "A woman's. Clear as if she stood beside me. She told me… that when I touched that branch, I made a link. To the World Tree."
Renn froze. His lips parted, but nothing came out.
Sorrin continued, his tone low and steady, as though afraid the walls themselves might be listening. "She said I'd been given a fragment of itself. That I could use its blessing. But she also said I've been given a curse."
The room seemed to shrink around them. The thrum of the engines pressed louder, filling the silence that followed.
"Are you serious?" Renn whispered.
"Why would I lie about this?" Sorrin asked sharply.
Renn let out a shaky laugh and raked a hand through his hair. "The World Tree… Sorrin, do you have any idea what you're saying? Nations for decades have been trying to understand the world tree, and you're telling me its voice spoke to you."
"I didn't ask for it," Sorrin muttered, fists clenching. "All I wanted was to save you."
That silenced Renn for a moment. His expression softened, but the shock in his eyes didn't fade.
"It was already bad enough, but now we absolutely cannot tell anyone," he said finally. "Not the crew. Not anyone in Solamen. If word spreads, we both will be in immense danger. We'd never see the ground again."
Sorrin nodded stiffly, though his eyes drifted back to the revolver on the desk. His thoughts were elsewhere.
That night, when Renn's breathing finally evened into sleep, Sorrin tried again.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes shut, hands resting on his knees as if he were meditating. He slowed his breath, listening for the faintest tremor of that presence he had felt before.
World Tree… are you there?
Silence.
He focused harder, forcing the image of the vast tree into his mind, its roots wrapping the earth, its branches piercing the heavens. He imagined the fragment he had absorbed, the way it had burned inside him.
Answer me, please.
Nothing. Only the groan of the ship's hull and the distant beat of the engines.
By dawn, his throat was raw from calling out, though no sound had left his lips. He opened his eyes to the same silence, the same emptiness.
When Renn woke and saw him still sitting on the floor, his expression told him everything.
"No luck?"
Sorrin shook his head. His voice was flat. "Nothing, not even a whisper."
"Then maybe she's gone," Renn said, pulling himself upright with a wince. "Or maybe she's waiting for something. Either way… don't lose yourself chasing it."
But Sorrin's gaze lingered on the porthole, where the clouds parted just enough to reveal a strip of the World Tree in the distance. He said nothing, though his silence carried its own weight.
The Marrowlight's voyage carried on for days, the hum of its engines a constant rhythm that never ceased. The ship's crew worked with a quiet efficiency, brass boots clanging on steel decks, while the air outside seemed always filled with a dim haze of drifting clouds.
Sorrin spent much of his time at the desk or by the porthole, keeping to himself. He ate sparingly, slept even less. Though he never said it aloud, Renn could see his mind was tethered elsewhere, always circling back to that voice. The confession had left a shadow between them, not mistrust exactly, but something more fragile. It was like a shared secret that pressed down heavier with each passing night.
Renn recovered slowly, though his stubbornness made him push further than his body was ready for. He spent hours forcing himself to stand and walk the narrow halls of the ship, even when his ribs protested. Sometimes he would spar with the air, mimicking strikes and parries, only to collapse into a chair with sweat dripping down his temple. The crew looked on with quiet admiration; they had seen warriors break before, but Renn refused to give up.
Still, when the night grew quiet, Renn's confidence faltered. He would sit by his bunk, staring at his wrapped torso, thinking of how helpless he had been when Sorrin pulled him from the ruins. It gnawed at him in ways he did not admit, not even to his closest friend.
One evening, after another failed meditation attempt for Sorrin to reach the voice of the World Tree, Renn spoke from his bed without opening his eyes.
"You're not going to force it, you know."
Sorrin turned from the desk, his hands still curled as though they remembered the meditative pose. "I'll do it eventually."
"This 'tree', whatever spoke to you. You can't drag a mountain into moving with your hands. If it wants to speak, it will." Renn exhaled slowly. "Maybe your mistake is thinking it was yours to command in the first place."
The words stung, not because they were cruel but because they felt true. Sorrin said nothing, though his jaw tightened.
By the time the Marrowlight finally touched down in Solamen, the clouds had cleared to reveal a sprawl of marble and copper, a city where the sky seemed almost within reach. Towers stretched upward with glass domes glinting in the sun, and massive bridges connected districts suspended over open air. Steam hissed from vents along the streets, mingling with the scent of oil, baked bread, and the sharp tang of sea salt drifting from the distant coast.
"Nothing less I'd expect from the biggest nation in the world." Sorrin said quietly.
Renn drew in the sight with quiet awe, his lips parting. "It's been years since I've seen Solamen," he murmured. "I almost forgot how alive it feels."
Sorrin only nodded, though his eyes were fixed elsewhere. The Marrowlight's crew busied themselves with docking procedures, ropes creaking and pulleys whining as the airship came to rest at one of the landing docks
They were met by medics soon after, men and women in long white coats trimmed with silver. Renn was taken into their care, though not without his usual stubborn resistance. He insisted he could walk on his own, though every step cost him more than he let show.
Arven must have alert them ahead of time...
Sorrin let out a sigh of relief with a smile.
The hospital they brought him to was a towering structure of pale stone, etched with golden inlays that caught the sunlight like fire. Inside, the halls gleamed with polished floors and walls lined with pictures of national heroes and scholars from the past. Renn was admitted to a private chamber, his condition deemed stable though still requiring close watch.
Sorrin stood at his bedside as the medics worked, his silence sharper than words. He did not like the feeling of leaving Renn in the hands of strangers, even trusted ones, but he knew he had little choice. Renn caught his look and forced a small grin.
"Jeez man, I'll live. This is kind of embarrassing... Anyways I'm sure you have your own business to attend to."
Sorrin almost asked what he meant, but Renn cut him off. "The voice, the tree. You won't be able to leave it alone, will you? So go. Do your searching, but don't do anything stupid while I'm stuck here."
"Well, if you insist."
For the first time in forever, Sorrin walked the city streets alone. Solamen was a place of contrasts: noble carriages clattering down boulevards of polished stone while children of the poor darted through alleys, their hands quick as blades. He heard the ringing of bells from high towers, the shouts of merchants in sprawling markets, and the distant whistle of steam trams running through the heart of the city.
But Sorrin's mind was elsewhere. Every corner he turned, every face he passed, he kept thinking of that voice, whether it would return, whether it had ever been real at all.
He quickly brushed that thought off.
His wandering led him, inevitably, to the city's great libraries. One in particular loomed above the rest: The Celestial Athenaeum. The name alone made his breath catch.
"Well that's quite grand isn't it?" He whispered.
Its entrance was framed by carved roots twining into archways, and its walls stretched upward into the shape of a colossal trunk, as though the building itself imitated the World Tree in stone.
Inside, he searched.
Days passed in the echoing silence of the Archive, broken only by the scratch of quills and the shuffle of old parchment. He pored over texts of history, theology, natural philosophy. Simply anything that spoke of the World Tree. Most of it was riddled with contradiction. To some, the tree was the divine heart of creation; to others, a parasite binding the world in its roots. Sorrin didn't gain much useful information though, but this did tell him that so far, nobody was able to connect with the World Tree in any way.
And yet Sorrin had heard it.
Late one evening, the library was quiet except for the faint creak of timber and the whisper of the sky outside. A single candle burned low on Sorrin's desk, spilling its wavering glow across the yellowed pages of a book he had borrowed from the Marrowlight's archives. It was an anthology of ancient myths, its leather cover cracked and brittle, its spine giving off the faint smell of dust and age.
Sorrin turned a page, his eyes dragging slowly across the dense script. Most of the tales had been little more than symbolic fables. There were legends of gods, kings, and forgotten wars, but one passage made him sit upright.
The story spoke of a figure named "Veylara", a deity said to have walked the earth in the old ages. According to the myth, Veylara carried with her a seed of creation stolen from the heavens themselves. With it, she planted what would become the World Tree, a bridge between mortal soil and divine sky. After witnessing the horrors of war, famine, and utter devastation, she felt pity for the humans and wished to give them salvation. The seed she planted grew endlessly, its roots burrowing into the deepest dark, and its crown piercing the stars.
Yet the tale did not end in triumph. The text described how Veylara, upon seeing the tree not able to reach its full majesty, offered herself as its final nourishment. She allowed its roots to coil through her body, impaling her, binding her forever to its trunk. Her blood, the book claimed, became the sap that coursed through its veins. Her soul was said to linger within the tree, guiding it till it eventually reached the heavens.
Sorrin's breath caught. He could see it as though the words themselves had dragged him back into his vision: the smaller tree, the roots piercing his torso, the blood pooling beneath him. The memory struck him like a blade.
"Veylara…" he whispered under his breath, the name heavy on his tongue.
"What have I done..." Sorrin said his voice trembling.
Sorrin closed the book fiercely. His mind whirled with the memory of roots piercing his torso, of blood pooling on grass. A vision, yes, but now, it seemed more than just that.
When he returned to the hospital that night, Renn was sitting upright, strength returning to his body. The moment Sorrin walked in, Renn read the answer in his friend's face.
"Seems like you found something, eh?" he said.
Sorrin sat heavily in the chair by his bed.
"I-It's just too much..."
Renn listened in silence, his usual humor gone. After a long pause, he said softly, "Well, it can't be that bad... right?"
Sorrin buried his hands in his face.
Outside the hospital window, the night stretched wide, and far beyond the horizon, the World Tree's silhouette rose like a pillar of eternity. It seemed to watch them both, though no one could tell if its gaze was merciful or cruel.