The stillness in the wake of Kiran's report was heavier than the silence of the Void Gardens. A Soul-Artist. A cultivator who dealt in the raw stuff of emotion and memory, who made the Silent Gardens their larder. A competitor, not a mindless force.
Damien's initial reaction was cold calculus: use the artist as a canary, let them trigger the Heart's defenses. But Lyra's face, pale and strained from the psychic shrieking of the Bleeding Stones, gave him pause. Brom's ruined shoulder was a silent, stone rebuke. They were already damaged.
"We are not ready for another major conflict," Lyra said softly, giving voice to the unspoken tension. "Brom is hurt. Kiran's new power is… untested. And I have a headache that feels like a Geophage Pod is tap-dancing on my soul."
Kiran scowled, flexing his void-blackened hand. "I am perfectly tested. That artist is just another scavenger. We can take them."
"And if they have friends?" Sylvia cut in, sharpening her dagger on a whetstone with practiced, angry strokes. "Soul-Artists are solitary, yes, but they make deals. They trade in memories. What if they've traded for protection? We're a wounded pack. Charging in is how you end up as a particularly interesting stain."
Damien listened, his Storm-Eyes seeing not just the probabilities of combat, but the fatigue in Lyra's slumped tails, the careful way Brom favored his left side. The Conqueror's Paradigm pulsed with optimal attack vectors, but a newer, quieter sense—born from months of relying on them—whispered of preservation. These were not just assets. They were… his.
"Compromise," Damien stated, the word foreign on his tongue. "We do not attack. We do not retreat. We observe. We learn the artist's patterns, their true objective. If the Heart is their goal, we wait. The conflict between the scars is unstable. It may do the work for us."
Kiran looked like he'd swallowed something sour, but gave a curt nod. Brom rumbled approval. Lyra's shoulders relaxed a fraction.
"Observation I can do," Sylvia said, sheathing her dagger. "But it'll cost you. Soul-Artists are creepy. I charge a creep premium."
---
The next two days were a lesson in patience and petty bickering, a strange, human counterpoint to the cosmic horror outside their cave.
Their "forward base" was a shallow overhang Sylvia had found, which Brom promptly named "The Gargoyle's Perch" for its ugly, jutting rock formation. It was cramped.
"Kiran, your void-cold is giving me actual goosebumps," Lyra complained, swatting at him with one of her tails as she tried to stitch a rip in her robe.
"Your foxfire stinks like burnt sugar," Kiran retorted, not moving an inch. "And it's distracting."
"It's cinnamon, you philistine!"
"Would you two be quiet?" Brom grumbled, trying to meditate. "I'm trying to commune with the enduring silence of stone."
"The only thing enduring is your snoring," Sylvia muttered from her watch post.
Damien observed it all, a faint, unfamiliar tightness in his chest that wasn't meridian damage. This was… inefficiency. Noise. It was also, he realized, the sound of people who weren't terrified of him. Annoyed, yes. But not terrified.
His attempts at "observation" with his Storm-Eyes were frustrating. The Soul-Artist was elusive, a grey ghost flitting through the Gardens. They weren't approaching the Heart. They seemed to be… circling it. Studying it. As they were.
On the third morning, the monotony broke. Sylvia slipped back into the Perch, her face grim. "We have a problem. And it's not the artist."
"What?" Damien asked, instantly alert.
"The Ashen Talons. The hunter team I spotted before. They've made camp at the canyon's head. And they've brought friends. I saw banners for the 'Gilded Claw'."
Lyra went very still. "Vex's crew? But we… we killed them. At Chimera's Roost."
"Killed the team, not the company," Sylvia corrected bluntly. "The Gilded Claw is a bounty guild. You beat one team, they send a better one. And they've teamed up with the Talons. Seems you've made quite the name for yourselves in the outlaw community."
Kiran's eyes glinted with dark excitement. "Let them come. We'll turn this canyon into their tomb."
"We are not fighting a war on two fronts," Damien declared, his mind racing. The cold logic was back, but it was flavored with a new urgency. "The hunters are a known variable. The Soul-Artist is not. The hunters want capture or kill. The artist… who knows? But they are both drawn to the Heart."
A plan, ruthless and simple, formed. "We use the hunters to flush out the artist."
"How?" Lyra asked, apprehension in her eyes.
"We give the hunters a trail. A clear, tempting trail that leads not to us, but directly to the Silent Gardens, to the artist's territory. We let them disturb the hornet's nest."
Sylvia whistled, impressed. "Nasty. I like it. How do we lay the trail?"
Damien looked at the sample of Abyssal Stone Core, still safely encased in frost. It pulsed with a psychic hunger. "We use this. We contaminate a false trail with traces of its energy. The hunters will have tracking artifacts sensitive to unique spiritual signatures. They will follow the 'scent' of powerful Abyssal residue, assuming it's from us or from a treasure."
"And the artist?" Brom asked.
"The sudden invasion of loud, spiritually aggressive hunters into their quiet sanctuary…" Damien said, a ghost of something like a smile touching his lips. "I believe they will find it… disruptive."
It was a dangerous gamble. They'd be pitting two enemies against each other, hoping to slip through the chaos. But it was better than facing both sequentially.
Lyra looked at the throbbing core, then at Damien. "You're learning to be devious. I'm not sure if I should be proud or terrified."
"Be efficient," Damien replied. "It is the same thing."