Chapter 8: The Search
Finding a compatible host for a reproductive cardiac symbiote wasn't simple.
Kael spent three days consulting records, visiting other settlements, talking to symbiotic technicians. Most people he met listened to his explanation with a mix of reverence and confusion.
- "You are Kael-Zhur - they said." - "You faced the Rejected Core."
- "Yes, yes - he replied." - "But now my cardiac symbiote wants to have an offspring. Do you know anyone willing to receive a graft?"
The reactions varied. Some laughed. Some recoiled, afraid. Others volunteered, fascinated by the idea of carrying a fragment of a living legend's symbiote.
Kael refused all volunteers motivated by fascination.
- "I don't want someone who wants a piece of me - he told Thess, when she suggested accepting one of the candidates." - "I want someone who needs Threnaal as much as Threnaal needs them."
On the fourth day, they found him.
He was an old man named Maren. He worked as a fungus cultivator in a community near Arin. His original cardiac symbiote had died cycles ago, and he survived with a mechanical substitute that left him tired, breathless, unable to work for more than a few hours.
- "I'm nobody important - Maren said, when Kael visited him." - "I'm not a hero. Not a sage. I just want to cultivate my fungi without having to stop every ten minutes."
Kael looked at Maren's hands. They were working hands, like Yallin's.
- "You are exactly the kind of person I was looking for, he said."
The procedure was done the next morning. Thess extracted the reproductive nucleus from Threnaal and implanted it in Maren's chest. Kael stayed by his side throughout the process, his hand on his own chest, feeling Threnaal pulse in a rhythm he had never felt before.
It was pride.
- "It'll hurt a little for the first few days - Thess told Maren." - "Then your body adapts."
Maren touched his chest, where a small scar was already forming.
- "I feel it - he murmured." - "It's like... a drum. Soft. Constant."
Kael smiled.
- "I know."
That night, Kael returned to Arin and went straight to the unregistered space. He sat on the central stone and let Threnaal pulse freely, without trying to interpret the rhythms.
- "You did something good today - he said to himself." - "Something small. Something that doesn't change the universe."
Ser'kaum emitted a click from its corner on his forearm.
- "Maybe that's enough - Kael replied."