At the center of the room, surrounded by settling dust, Rogan remained standing.

  He was breathing hard now, shoulders heaving with each inhale. The light around him flickered. The golden sheen of his skin dimmed slowly, as if someone were turning down a lantern by degree. His hair lost its metallic brilliance, strands darkening back to their usual color. The glow in his eyes faded, the molten orbs receding until his familiar, human gaze returned, dark and tired.

  The shields winked out, one by one, like candles being extinguished.

  Rogan swayed.

  All at once, the wounds that had been muted by the transformation rushed back to the surface. Blood welled anew from reopened cuts. Bruises darkened rapidly. Old fractures screamed as if they had never been dulled at all. The Hero form had not healed him so much as it had deferred his injuries.

  His knees hit the ground heavily. He caught himself on one hand, the other pressed to his side, teeth clenched so hard a vein throbbed in his temple.

  Irla lurched toward him on instinct, but her gaze flicked to Kerrin and stayed there. Her eyes flicked back to Rogan with visible conflict. Then she turned away from him, dropping down hard beside Kerrin again. The choice cost her, but the state of Kerrin’s body left no room for debate.

  Kerrin’s breathing was shallow and ragged. His right shoulder and arm were a mangled ruin of meat and bone, his ribs crushed inward. His skin had a grey cast that made James’s stomach twist.

  Irla placed shaking hands over his chest and tried to summon Aether Drop. Nothing happened. Her mana pool was spent, scraped raw by the earlier battle. She swallowed, eyes wide with fear, and tried again, drawing on whatever scraps she could find inside herself.

  A faint, pale light finally gathered in her palms. It was nowhere near the rich liquid glow of Aether Drop. It pulsed weakly, like a tired heartbeat.

  “Pulse of Renewal,” she whispered.

  The feeble glow spread through Kerrin in slow, rhythmic waves. It sank into bruised tissue and broken bone, coaxing life back into fading edges. His breathing gradually steadied, growing less erratic. The grey color leached from his skin, replaced by a pale, flushed hue that still looked terrible but at least belonged to the living.

  Beneath Irla’s hands, bones shifted with soft, grinding sounds as they tried to realign. Not all of them succeeded. His shoulder and arm remained twisted and wrong, the mess too complex for a spell cast on fumes.

  Irla kept going until the glow sputtered out entirely. Her shoulders slumped. Sweat dripped from her hairline down the sides of her face. Her hands were trembling so badly she had to clench them into fists to make them stop.

  “He’s stable,” she said hoarsely. “For now. I need… time. Mana. But he won’t die in the next few minutes. Not if we’re careful.”

  Then she sat back hard, legs splaying slightly, palms pressed to the ground as she struggled to catch her breath. She looked utterly wrung out, as if she had poured everything she was into those last, thin pulses of magic.

  James knew the feeling.

  He lay sprawled where he had fallen, cheek pressed against gritty stone. His lungs burned with each breath, as if he were inhaling tiny shards of broken glass. His skin felt too tight around his bones. The emptiness inside him had not gone away. If anything, it had deepened, a hollow ache that throbbed with every heartbeat.

  Lumen drifted down beside him like a dying lantern. The familiar’s weak glow barely outlined its shape. It bobbed once, then sank lower, as if gravity mattered to it now.

  “Hey,” James murmured, or tried to. What came out was a cracked whisper. “Still with me?”

  Lumen flickered faintly in response, a single weak pulse along their bond. It did not speak. It did not offer commentary or scolding or smug analysis. But the reassurance was enough. They were still tethered to each other. Neither of them had broken entirely.

  “Thank you,” James whispered. The words scraped his throat raw. “I know you helped push it through.”

  He felt a faint warmth in return, like a hand squeezing his from very far away.

  Gradually, the sounds of the chamber came back into focus. Ragged breathing. Low groans. The distant settling of debris.

  Maude sat propped against a chunk of fallen pillar, her eyes unfocused, one hand clutching at her ribs. Bren was beside her, one arm braced behind her back to keep her upright. His other hand, still smeared with her blood and his own, hovered nervously in the air as if he wanted to do more but had no idea how.

  “Still in one piece,” she muttered, voice rough. “Mostly.”

  “Mostly is very good,” Bren said, his voice entirely too tight for the shaky humor he attempted. “I’ll take mostly.”

  Rogan, still on his knees a few meters away, forced himself up onto one foot, then the other. He swayed, clenching his jaw, and managed to sit back against a broken wall instead. His breaths were deep but jagged. The aftereffects of the transformation shook his frame in tiny tremors.

  “I’m alive,” he said simply, more to himself than anyone else. “We’re all alive.”

  Irla sat slumped beside Kerrin, brushing hair away from his sweat-slick forehead with a tenderness that had no energy left for embarrassment. Her face was pale, lips slightly blue-tinged, but she stayed upright through sheer force of will.

  James pressed his palms against the floor and pushed.

  For a few heartbeats, nothing happened. His arms shook so badly he barely moved. Then his elbows locked, and he managed to drag his torso up enough to sit. The world tilted drunkenly. He leaned back against a half-fallen wall and breathed, letting his head rest against cool stone.

  Everyone was alive.

  That thought came with a rush of relief so intense it left him light-headed. They were battered, bruised, and hanging on by threads, but no one lay silent in the way that meant the worst had happened. Maude’s chest rose and fell. Bren’s eyes tracked every movement around him with anxious sharpness. Rogan was a broken wall but still a wall. Irla was still the stubborn core of their survival. Kerrin lived, even if his future was unclear.

  The only one missing was Varn.

  James’s Mana Resonance had been a constant faint hum in the background during the battle, drowned out by the Elemental’s overwhelming presence. With that giant weight now gone, the echoes of the chamber shifted. The oppressive pressure lessened. Small currents of mana made themselves known again, trickling through the earthen walls and the fractured ore veins.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and focused, reaching for that sensation. It felt harder than usual, like trying to listen to music with cotton in his ears, but slowly, clarity emerged from the static.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  There. A fragile signature, steady but faint, tucked somewhere at the edge of the chamber. Not as bright as an active fighter, not as complex as someone casting spells, but present, like a lantern turned low.

  “Varn,” he said quietly.

  Irla’s head snapped up. “Is he still... alive?” Her voice wobbled with exhaustion and hope.

  James nodded, though the motion made his vision swim. “He’s close. That way.” He gestured toward the far side of the cavern, where collapsed stone structures leaned against each other in precarious piles.

  He let his head rest against the wall for one more breath. Then he forced his legs under him.

  Everything in his body protested. Muscles cramped. Joints screamed. His empty mana channels ached as if raw. He could have stayed down very happily. He could have closed his eyes and slept right there, in the dust and ruin.

  He pushed anyway.

  He got one foot under him and then another and used the wall as a brace, hauling himself upright inch by inch until he stood. It was not a proud moment. It was more like watching a drunk newborn deer attempt to walk. But he managed it.

  Bren saw him move and blinked in disbelief. “Chieftain...”

  “We’re not done,” James said. His voice wavered but held. “We still have one idiot unaccounted for.”

  Rogan gave a small, exhausted huff that might have been a laugh or a cough. “Going to tell him you called him that yourself?”

  “If he tries to dig another secret tunnel alone, yes,” James said. “Until then, that’s between us.”

  He took a step, then another, leaning heavily on the wall. His Mana Resonance continued to tug like a compass needle, urging him onward.

  Rogan shifted, bracing himself on his arms. “I’m coming with you.”

  Irla frowned. “You can barely sit.”

  Rogan gave her one of his stubborn looks. “I can walk.”

  Bren hesitated, then nodded. “Maude?” he asked softly.

  She rolled her eyes and made a shooing motion with her good hand, even though the movement made her wince. “Go. I’ll stay with Irla and Kerrin. Someone should keep an eye on the healer so she doesn’t heal herself into the ground again.”

  Irla made a tired sound halfway between a snort and a sigh, but she didn’t argue. She simply rested her head briefly against the wall, then straightened enough to keep her hands hovering near Kerrin in case his breathing changed.

  James met Maude’s gaze for a moment. There was fear there, and pride, and a spark of something fierce that had not been present when he first started dragging villagers into training. She had survived a fight that should have killed her. It had changed her, in the way real terror and real victory always did.

  “Don’t let him move,” James said, jerking his chin toward Kerrin.

  “I’ll sit on him if I have to,” Maude replied.

  Bren snorted softly. “I’d pay to see that.”

  “Once I can feel my ribs,” she said, “we’ll negotiate.”

  James turned away before the exchange could stir too much emotion in his exhausted chest. He needed all the resolve he had left for walking.

  Bren fell in beside him, adjusting his grip on his knives even though they were almost useless against something like the Elemental. Rogan limped to James’s other side. Together, the three of them set off across the chamber, a trio of battered silhouettes moving past the wreckage of what must once have been homes.

  The ruins told a quiet story as they passed. Here, a collapsed stone hearth filled with centuries of dust. There, a broken table, only its legs still clinging to shape. Faded wall carvings stretched along crumbling surfaces, people with tools, stylized beasts, curling shapes that might have represented mana. Time had eaten most of the details, but traces remained like ghostly fingerprints.

  The mana signature ahead grew stronger with each step. Close, but muffled, as if something heavy lay over it. James followed it through the broken outlines of ancient dwellings, weaving around fallen beams and shattered stone.

  At the far side of the chamber, a small structure hunched against the wall. It looked like a single-room hut once, or perhaps a storage space, long since crushed. Three of the walls remained partially upright, leaning inward like tired shoulders. The fourth wall had collapsed entirely, its bulk falling inward and sealing most of the interior.

  James stopped in front of it and squinted into the shadowed gap left where the stone hadn’t fully crushed to the floor. Through the dust and dim light, he glimpsed a human shape.

  “Varn,” he called, voice rough.

  There was no answer, but the mana signature flared faintly in response, like a sleeping mind stirring when someone said its name.

  “He’s under there,” James said. “Still alive. Just very bad at choosing hobbies.”

  Rogan stepped forward without being asked. He braced his hands against the largest slab of fallen wall. Bren moved to the other side and did the same. Both men looked like they were about to regret every decision that led them here, but neither hesitated.

  “On three,” James said quietly. “One. Two. Three.”

  They heaved.

  Muscles screamed. Rogan’s face twisted with pain, veins standing out along his neck. Bren grunted, his boots slipping slightly on loose grit until he found purchase. The slab shifted an inch, then two, scraping loudly against the ground. Dust rained down in a choking cloud.

  James ducked beneath the slowly rising rock, heart hammering in his ears. The gap widened just enough for him to slide inside.

  Varn lay half-buried beneath debris, his lower body pinned by smaller rocks, his upper body partially free. His face was a mess of bruises and dried blood. A long cut across his temple had clotted in an ugly line. His clothes were shredded, and one arm lay at a worrying angle, but his chest rose and fell in slow, stubborn breaths.

  “Hey,” James murmured, his throat tightening. “You ridiculous man.”

  Varn did not answer, but the faint crumple of his brow at the sound of James’s voice was enough.

  James dragged away the smaller stones and debris covering Varn’s legs, grunting as he worked. His fingers shook with exhaustion, but he managed to clear enough space to pull Varn free. When he nodded, Rogan and Bren set the slab down with agonized care, letting it settle back without crushing any limbs.

  Together, the three of them maneuvered Varn out of the ruined building. Bren took most of his upper weight, Rogan braced his legs, and James supported where he could, though his strength was mostly in coordination rather than muscle at this point.

  They carried him back through the chamber, each step a long, dragging effort. By the time they reached the rest of the group, James’s head was spinning again.

  Irla saw them and made a sound that was half sob, half ragged exhale. For a moment, she simply stared, as if afraid that blinking would make the image disappear. Then her eyes filled with tears she did not have the energy to wipe away.

  “He’s alive,” she breathed. “He’s alive.”

  Her shoulders sagged as if a weight she had been carrying silently for hours finally slid off.

  They laid Varn down near Kerrin, on a patch of relatively flat stone. Irla shuffled closer on her knees, hands hovering just above his chest. She closed her eyes and reached for mana again, drawing up whatever minuscule threads had managed to return while they were gone.

  A faint, soft glow seeped from her palms. It was even weaker than before, but she guided it carefully, directing it to bruised lungs, to the mild fracture at his collarbone, to the shallow internal bruising from his fall. Most of his injuries were from blunt force, not crushing, which was a small mercy.

  His breathing steadied under her hands. The tightness in his throat eased. The bruise along his ribs faded a shade or two lighter. When Irla finally pulled her hands away, she swayed alarmingly.

  “That’s it,” she said, voice slurring slightly. “No more. Not for a while.”

  James caught her shoulder before she slumped completely. “You did enough.”

  Her mouth twitched. “You keep saying that.”

  “Maybe you’ll believe me one day,” he replied.

  She huffed, a sound too tired to be a laugh but somewhere in that direction, and leaned against the wall with her eyes closed for a moment. Then she opened them again, gaze flicking between Varn and Kerrin and the rest of the group, counting breaths in that healer way of hers.

  James looked around at his people. Maude, pale but gritting her teeth through the pain, leaning against Bren. Bren stubbornly hovering, refusing to rest until everyone else did. Rogan, a bruised and bloody monolith perched against the stone, every inch of him radiating the afterglow of something greater. Kerrin, unconscious but breathing, right side wrapped in improvised cloth, the ruin of his arm covered as best as they could manage. Varn, finally found, finally safe, even if unconscious and battered.

  They were all here.

  He hadn’t lost anyone.

  The realization made his eyes sting.

  He cleared his throat, which came out as a rough cough, and said, “We’re not moving. Not yet.”

  Bren glanced up. “Chieftain?”

  “We’re not climbing through tunnels like this,” James said. His voice was quiet but steady. “We stay. We rest. We eat if anyone has anything left. We wait until Irla has mana, until Kerrin is more stable, until Rogan can stand without pretending it doesn’t hurt. We leave when we’re strong enough not to die on the way home.”

  Maude opened one eye. “So… a nap.”

  “A very serious, heroic, life-preserving nap,” James said.

  Rogan grunted, which could have meant agreement or simply that breathing hurt.

  Irla closed her eyes again, leaning her head back against the wall. “For once,” she murmured, “I agree completely.”

  James allowed himself to slide down the wall until he was sitting again. His body had stopped throbbing quite as violently, though the hollow ache within him remained. He tilted his head back and stared up into the shadowed ceiling of the ancient cavern, where the remnants of a lost people watched silently from their cracked carvings and broken homes.

  “We’ll get you all out,” he promised, though he wasn’t sure if he spoke to his villagers, the stone, the ghosts of the past, or himself. “Just… give me a minute.”

  Lumen settled by his shoulder, a faint, dim presence. James lifted a trembling hand and let his fingers hover near the familiar’s glow. The warmth that met him was small but steady.

  They had lived through this. Somehow.

  He closed his eyes, finally letting himself rest, surrounded by battered breaths and the fragile, stubborn pulse of a tribe that refused to die.

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