Mud took him like a verdict.
It hit his knees first.
Then his hands.
Then his face, because the ground decided he was finished arguing.
Cold mud filled his mouth. Rain hammered him flat. His lungs tried to inhale anyway and got a mouthful of earth.
His body fought.
A cough ripped up from his chest and he spat mud and water. He gagged, coughed again, and found air on the third try. Breath hauled in like a rope yanked through wet hands.
Behind his shoulders, weight shifted. Plates clicked under his skin, hard and wrong, nothing like feathers. A small click. Then another. Crystal grinding against itself.
He rolled onto his side and dragged in air again. His throat burned. His eyes stung. Rain hit his lashes and made him blink hard.
He pushed up.
His hands sank. Mud swallowed his fingers, but his nails bit down deeper than nails should, finding something solid under the muck. Root. Stone. The grip felt automatic.
That scared him more than the mud.
He lifted his head.
The world was rain and dark.
Shapes blurred at the edges. Badlands and thornwood, broken shelves of stone, scar-lines in the ground like old cuts. A half-sunk terrace base leaned beside him, a slab of ancient stonework with a curve that didn't belong to nature. Water ran down it in smooth sheets.
He tried to think.
Name.
Place.
Why.
The words formed for a blink, then slid away like the inside of his skull was coated in oil. He reached for them and got nothing but a blank wall.
His tongue moved over his teeth. Grit. Mud. Blood, maybe. Hard to tell.
He swallowed.
A single thing stayed.
Isaac.
Not a memory. Not a story. Just a fact sitting in the middle of him.
Isaac.
He said it in his head to keep it from sliding away.
His body shook. Cold. Adrenaline. Something else.
He got one knee under him. Then the other.
Wings shifted again, weight changing his balance. He caught himself before he fell forward. Plates at his back scraped softly, as if they wanted to open and couldn't.
He turned his head, trying to see them.
Rain made it hard. Darkness made it worse. He caught a glimpse of black crystal ridges, layered like armour scales, slick with water.
He didn't have time to stare.
Lightning tore open the clouds.
For half a heartbeat, the world snapped sharp.
The land curved inward like a giant bowl, an amphitheatre around something deeper than distance. Ridges and badlands leaned toward the centre, subtle, relentless.
And far off, dead centre of that curve, a vertical scar of brightness split the storm.
Pale and wrong, like the sky had been stitched and the thread glowed.
The Core.
The word landed in him without explanation.
Then the light was gone.
Clouds knitted shut. The rim returned to rain and grey bands. The image tried to slip out of his mind the second it arrived, but his body didn't forget.
His feet angled inward.
He took a step toward where the scar had been.
Mud sucked at his boot. He pulled free and took another step.
His chest tightened. Not fear. Pull. Like gravity had a favourite direction.
Isaac stopped.
He didn't know why he was walking. He didn't know what he was walking to. He only knew his legs were willing to do it without permission.
He looked down at his feet like they belonged to someone else.
"No," he said out loud, and his voice came out rough and small in the storm.
He turned away from the pull.
It didn't go away. It just stopped getting worse.
Thunder should have rolled after the lightning.
It didn't.
A low roar arrived early, the sound of something huge moving far away. Then the thunder came late, as if the sky had to remember the correct order. A second echo followed, wrong-footed, like the land answered before the question finished being asked.
Isaac flinched and forced himself to focus on something real.
Shelter.
He was in open ground. Rain hit him straight. He needed cover.
He moved toward the half-sunk stonework, using it as a windbreak. His wings shifted as he walked, plates clicking when they brushed each other. The sound was quiet.
It still felt too loud.
He crouched by the terrace base and scanned the ground. Cracks. Roots. Anything that looked like a gap under stone.
He found one.
A root pocket beneath the slab, where thick knots of wood had grown around old stone and left a hollow. Not safe. Not clean. Just less exposed.
He shoved his shoulders in first.
His wings protested.
Plates scraped bark. The ridges snagged and left thin black scoring lines in wet wood. He pushed anyway, breath held, teeth clenched.
He fit by forcing it.
That was a new kind of humiliation. Wings too big for the world.
He got inside and lay on his side, pulling mud and leaves toward the entrance to block the rain line. His hands moved without thinking. Pack. Seal. Make the opening smaller.
Rain noise muffled a little.
The pocket smelled like damp stone and rot.
And a sharp edge under it. Metal.
Clean. Cold. Like biting iron.
His teeth ached when he inhaled too deep.
He shifted his head, trying to find the source.
Outside, the hiss was clearer now. Not the rain. A steadier sound, thin and constant, like breath through a crack.
He parted the root curtain just enough to look out.
A pale-blue column rose from a split in the ground a few paces away.
Too straight to be fog. Too steady to be steam. A leak that knew exactly where it belonged.
The edges held a faint blue-white sheen, like frost caught in moonlight, even without moonlight. It didn't drift with the wind. It stayed where it wanted.
Isaac watched it.
The air around it tightened, released. Tightened again.
His ears popped.
He froze.
The pressure shift wasn't inside him, it was in the world. An invisible line sitting across the mud.
He leaned forward by an inch.
The pressure pushed harder, behind his eyes this time. His tongue flashed clean metal. A vibration in the stone behind him lined up with his bones like a chord snapping into tune.
He leaned back.
It eased. His jaw unclenched without asking.
He stared at the empty mud, breathing shallow.
Breathmark.
He didn't have that word. He had the feeling.
He tested it again, slow.
Forward, the pop. The metallic bite. The vibration.
Back, relief.
Again. Same result.
His chest loosened like he'd found a handle.
A stupid, small bright bead settled in him.
Not optimism.
Control.
He could learn this place. Even if he didn't know its name.
Isaac lowered his head and breathed through his nose, careful. The sharp air felt cleaner than the rest of the storm, and that made it worse.
Clean meant unnatural.
He checked his body because he needed a job to do.
Hands. Mud-caked. Nails too dark. Too hard.
Forearms. Scrapes. A shallow cut that stung when rainwater seeped in.
Chest. Sore ribs, but they moved. No sharp pain on inhale. That was good.
Legs. Bruises. Knees raw.
Wings.
He couldn't see all of them in the pocket. He shifted his shoulders and felt plates slide. The weight was constant. The joints ached like they'd taken a hard impact.
He reached back with one hand and touched the nearest plate edge.
Cold. Smooth. Real.
He pulled his hand away fast, like it would burn him.
It didn't.
His skin prickled anyway.
He tried to think again.
Who did this.
Why did I fall.
Where am I.
The questions slid off his mind before they formed.
Isaac.
That stayed.
He said it again silently, and his throat tightened like the word was a rope tied around something deeper.
Outside, rain hissed. The leak hissed too, different pitch, more focused.
A small click came from the wings as if they resettled on their own.
He waited.
And listened.
The world's timing was wrong.
A distant roar rolled through the Verge, low and heavy.
The echo came first, faint and thin. Then the roar itself arrived. Then a second echo chased it like a late thought.
Isaac pressed his palm to the mud by his face.
If anything moved out there, he wanted to feel it before he saw it.
The blue column tightened again. His ears popped again, softer this time. More like a squeeze, then release.
He tried to keep his breathing steady. In. Out. Slow. Don't cough.
Hope, right now, was breath that didn't turn into panic.
Lightning flickered behind clouds, not enough to show the Core scar again, just enough to sharpen the pale-blue edges outside. Curtains in the storm for a blink.
Isaac watched the column like it was a mouth.
A drag sound cut through the hiss.
Soft. Close.
It wasn't a splash or a slide. It was a careful pull through mud, like the ground was being combed.
His body locked up before his mind caught up.
He didn't move. He didn't breathe. He held still until his lungs started to burn.
The drag sound came again.
Four thin lines scraped across wet ground.
Staggered. Not perfectly together. Like multiple tails, or multiple limbs, learning how quiet they could be.
A tiny spark-scratch followed.
Glass on stone.
Brief. Clean. Wrong.
His wings tightened without permission, plates clicking as they braced.
Isaac wanted to look.
Looking meant moving the root curtain.
Moving meant giving the world a sign.
He stayed still.
Outside, the pressure line seemed to tense, then relax, the way a throat works. His tongue flashed copper for one breath, then went clean again, undecided.
Isaac swallowed hard. His throat made a tiny sound.
Outside, the drag stopped.
Silence, except for rain.
His heart hammered.
He waited for the next sound.
Nothing.
He let one breath in, shallow.
Rain hissed. The leak hissed. That was all.
He waited longer than he wanted to.
His muscles began to cramp from staying too still. The wings at his back trembled with tension, a low tremor he could feel through his spine.
He risked a glance.
He parted the root curtain by a finger width, moving slow enough that the roots barely shifted.
The pale-blue column rose steady. Same crack. Same edges.
Mud around it was darker where water pooled.
And in that darker mud, the ground had been written on.
Four thin drag marks, fanning outward, fresh.
Rain already polished their edges clean.
Placed. Deliberate.
Isaac stared at the marks until his vision narrowed.
He didn't understand what made them.
He understood what they meant.
A creature had come close enough to sign its name in the mud.
His feet wanted to angle inward again, toward the Core, toward the centre. He felt it even crouched in the pocket, like the pull was an itch behind his ribs.
He hated that too.
He shifted back deeper into the root pocket, careful not to scrape plates too loud. Mud and leaves stuck to his clothes and came with him, strings of wet grit.
He packed the entrance tighter.
More mud. More leaves. A broken root shoved into place as a brace.
Smaller opening. Less light. Less chance.
He set his cheek against damp stone and listened.
Rain. The thin hiss of the leak.
His breathing, finally slowing.
Another sound came, far off.
A low rumble like the land turning over in its sleep.
It arrived late, then doubled, like the world couldn't decide which version was real.
Isaac closed his eyes, not to rest, just to narrow the world down to what he could survive.
One more breath.
One more.
His wings shifted once, plates clicking softly, like they were settling into a guard position.
Outside, the blue column tightened again. The pressure line across the mud held for a beat longer.
Then it happened.
No footstep. No tail drag.
A shift.
Huge, slow, like the ground itself adjusted its weight.
The seam haze outside thickened for a blink, displaced, like a body moving through water. The air in the pocket cinched around Isaac's ribs, tight as a mouth closing.
He held his breath.
In the pale haze, a mass moved.
And the rim answered with a roar.