The sun dipped below the ocean line, painting everything gold. The island looked peaceful again, deceptively so. Hunters laughed, shared food, cleaned weapons.

But Lucen stayed awake long after the others turned in, sitting near the shore, eyes on the dark horizon.

The sea hummed faintly, and beneath that hum, the same pulse.

'So much for vacation,' he thought. 'Something's waking up.'

He tossed a small stone into the waves, watching the ripples spread.

'And I don't think it's friendly.'

—

The rain came without thunder. A soft drizzle at dawn, mist coiling around the training grounds and swallowing the horizon in gray. The sea was flat, unnaturally flat, the air heavy with salt and tension.

Lucen stood under the overhang outside the base, mug in hand again, watching droplets collect along the railing before they fell in slow rhythm.

Varik stepped out beside him, already dressed in expedition gear, light armor, travel cloak, that same calm expression that made lesser hunters shut up on instinct.

"You didn't sleep," Varik said, not asking.

Lucen sipped his tea. "Didn't need to."

"You're humming."

Lucen raised an eyebrow. "You mean it's humming. I can feel it through the floorboards."

Varik's eyes flicked toward the southern ridge, where the training field sat quiet. "The resonance hasn't stopped since yesterday."

"It's stronger now." Lucen turned, leaning on the rail. "Lament Node, right? That's what the system called it."

Varik nodded slowly. "I've read that name once before. Old guild logs, pre-Association. Supposedly part of an abyssal vein that runs beneath certain islands. It stores… memories. Mana, emotion, corruption, they called it a 'grave of echoes.'"

Lucen's smirk faded. "Charming. And it's under our feet."

"Yes."

"Do you know what triggers it?"

Varik gave him a sidelong look. "Contact."

Lucen grimaced. "Right. My favorite hobby."

He tossed the rest of his drink into the dirt. "Alright, let's go before it decides to start singing again."

They descended through the forest in silence. Rain filtered through broad leaves, whispering against armor. The path narrowed until the trees gave way to the scarred clearing from the day before, the field where they'd dug.

The pit was larger now. The soil had collapsed inward overnight, forming a funnel-shaped depression with faint blue light seeping from below. It pulsed, slow and steady, like a heartbeat buried in stone.

Rynn and Kale were already there, standing guard.

Kale looked up first. "You feel that too, huh?"

Lucen nodded. "Hard not to. Like someone's tuning the world wrong."

Rynn's eyes narrowed. "Whatever that thing is, it's feeding on ambient mana. The readings are climbing every hour."

Varik crouched at the edge of the crater, tracing a sigil into the mud. "Then we go in before it crosses a threshold."

Lucen sighed. "Of course we do."

He swung down first, boots hitting damp soil. The glow intensified as he descended, soft at first, then sharp enough to sting the edges of his sight.

[Environmental Alert: Mana concentration exceeding safe parameters.]

[Advised Action: Retreat.]

He ignored it. "I've had worse advice."

Varik landed beside him without a sound. Together they approached the center, where crystal veins spidered through the dirt, converging on a single slab of black stone half-buried in the ground.

It wasn't natural. The surface was too smooth, the edges too exact, carved, not formed. Faint etchings shimmered like old script beneath dust.

Lucen crouched, brushing mud away. "This language looks pre-veil. Older than any dungeon I've seen."

Varik's voice was low. "Don't touch it."

Lucen's grin twitched. "You say that every time."

"Because you never listen."

He didn't. His fingertips brushed the stone.

The world didn't explode, not yet. Instead, everything paused. Sound dulled. The air thickened until even breathing felt wrong.

Then came the voice.

A whisper, layered a thousand times, rising from the stone and the soil and the marrow of his own bones.

—Lucen…Iv—

His body froze. The name echoed like a memory he hadn't meant to remember.

He turned to Varik. "Did you—"

But Varik wasn't moving. None of it was. Time had stopped. Rain hung suspended midair. The light from the Lament Node pulsed once, twice, then poured upward in a slow spiral.

Lucen's mind flooded with images, not visions exactly, but impressions. Cities drowned in dark water. Hunters tearing at their own shadows. An ocean split open from the inside.

Then a single sentence cut through them all:

"You carry what we buried."

Lucen's breath hitched. 'We?'

The light dimmed, the whisper faded. Time snapped back like a whip. Rain fell again. Varik's hand was on his shoulder, dragging him backward.

"Lucen! Focus!"

He blinked hard. "It talked."

Varik's grip tightened. "What did it say?"

Lucen hesitated, then exhaled. "That I'm carrying something that used to belong to them."

Varik's expression barely shifted, but his eyes darkened. "The corruption."

Lucen nodded once. "Yeah."

They sealed the pit with a series of containment glyphs before leaving. Rynn stayed behind to monitor the flow; Kale followed Lucen back up the ridge, silent until they reached the treeline.

Finally, Kale spoke. "You okay?"

Lucen laughed once, dry and humorless. "I'm not dead. That's my standard."

"I meant, whatever that thing was. It called your name."

"Yeah. That part's new."

Kale studied him carefully. "It recognized you."

Lucen stopped walking. "Don't start thinking that's special. It's just another abyssal thing whispering sweet nothings."

But his tone didn't convince even himself.

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

By nightfall, the others had gathered again, Rynn, Orren, Talia, Ren, all wearing the same uneasy expression.

"The ground's still pulsing," Rynn said. "Whatever you did down there didn't shut it up."

Lucen sank into a chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Didn't think it would. It's awake now."

"Then what do we do?" Talia asked.

Varik answered before Lucen could. "We wait. Observe. If the Lament Node manifests, we adapt."

Orren frowned. "That's not much of a plan."

Varik met his gaze calmly. "It's the only kind that works when you're staring at something older than your language."

Lucen smirked faintly. "He's right. You can't plan against ghosts."

The group fell into uneasy quiet. The wind outside carried the scent of rain and something else, faint ozone, like the world itself was charged.

Rynn's voice broke the silence. "Lucen."

He looked up.

"You said it talked to you. What did it sound like?"

Lucen thought for a long moment. The words weren't easy. "It didn't sound like one voice. More like… all of them. Together. And tired."

"Tired?"

"Yeah," he said softly. "Like it's been waiting too long for something to wake it up."

Varik's gaze lingered on him, measuring. "Then let's hope it doesn't think you're the alarm."

Lucen gave a humorless laugh. "Wouldn't be the first time I ruined someone's nap."

Later that night, alone again near the shoreline, Lucen stared out into the black water. The waves shimmered faintly with blue veins of mana, mirroring the pattern beneath the island.

He flexed his fingers absently. The corruption in his veins was calmer now, as if lulled by the Node's pulse.

'You carry what we buried.'

He didn't know what that meant. But something inside him, something dark and quiet, almost remembered.

He sat there until the first light of dawn returned.

And deep below, in the sealed pit, the Lament Node pulsed again, once, like a heartbeat syncing with his own.

—

The morning broke in silence, the kind that doesn't feel natural. The sea was still, the gulls gone. Even the wind sounded muffled as it moved through the trees, like the air itself had thickened overnight.

Lucen woke before dawn, not because of nightmares this time, but because his mana wouldn't settle. It pulsed under his skin, faintly in sync with the beat of the Lament Node far beneath the island. Each thrum echoed through him, like a whisper against bone.

He sat up, rubbing at the back of his neck. The veins along his wrist glowed a faint, soft blue, not the abyssal black of corruption, but something in-between. Something new.

'That's not good,' he thought, flexing his hand as the glow dimmed again. 'Varik's gonna love this.'

He dressed in silence, threw his coat over his shoulders, and stepped outside.

The camp was already stirring. Garrik and Rynn were by the edge of the courtyard, checking equipment. Kale was meditating under a tree, or trying to, his focus visibly broken by the same ambient hum Lucen could feel.

Varik was on the far side of the grounds, standing near the cliff overlooking the southern ridge. His arms were crossed, his blade driven point-first into the soil beside him.

Lucen approached without a word.

Varik didn't turn. "You feel it."

"Like a second heartbeat." Lucen stopped beside him, looking down at the horizon. The sea shimmered faintly, faint threads of blue light rising and falling with the tide. "It's spreading."

"Rynn said the readings doubled overnight," Varik said. "Containment glyphs are holding, but it's… resonating."

Lucen frowned. "With what?"

"With you," Varik said simply.

He didn't respond at first. Just watched the glow ripple beneath the waves.

"Yeah," Lucen finally said. "I figured."

Varik's gaze flicked toward him. "Has it spoken again?"

"No. But it's listening." Lucen paused, jaw tightening. "Like it's waiting for me to say something back."

"Don't."

Lucen huffed out a dry laugh. "Didn't plan to. I've had enough conversations with things that shouldn't exist."

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