Aveline hadn't said another word since their last exchange. She sat at the table with her eyes fixed on Kael, unblinking.
"You'll die, you know." She finally broke the silence.
Kael glanced up for a heartbeat, then returned to what he was doing.
He had been gathering books for over twenty minutes and had barely reached half.
"Then so be it."
Aveline rose from the chair and scoffed.
She struck a match.
"You wouldn't." Kael said calmly.
"I wouldn't?" She moved the flame toward the nearest book.
"Don't waste your life over this. The moment that match touches a page I kill you and put the fire out."
Her lip twitched.
"Then I'll call father."
"It doesn't matter anymore. He's fighting Taric in the mortal district. Your body would be cold before he reached this floor." Kael turned a page. "And destroying everything your ancestors spent generations building wouldn't benefit anyone. Least of all you."
Her fingers tightened until the matchstick snapped. The flame died as it hit the floor.
Aveline sat back down and crossed her arms.
Twenty minutes later Kael tossed the last book into the coffin and dismissed it.
He walked into the hall and started down the stairs. Sharp clicks of heels followed behind him.
"You're going to follow me?" He didn't slow down.
"I am."
Kael glanced back briefly.
This was a problem. He could have killed her back there and still collected the books before Vael arrived, but only barely. He had lied to her about that. Vael was fighting Taric, yes, but if something happened to his daughter he would abandon the fight without hesitation. And while Taric would likely follow, Vael only needed a heartbeat to find Kael and end him. Taric wouldn't reach him in time. He was certain of that.
'Troublesome.'
Running wasn't an option either. The moment he moved she would activate the mote and Vael would have a direction to come from.
Though it could all be a bluff.
"Come then." Kael said.
He couldn't risk it. There were things he would gamble his life on, but only when the odds leaned his way. Here they didn't. Aveline either had the mote or she didn't. At best it was fifty fifty, but given her status he suspected it was closer to sixty forty against him.
Syleena was still nowhere to be found, but he couldn't waste any more time. He needed to start the advancement refinement and he knew exactly where he could do it undisturbed.
The mansion disappeared behind them, replaced by bare trees stretching in every direction, and not long after, those gave way to uneven rock.
"Where are you going." Aveline said between short breaths, struggling to keep pace.
"Threnfall."
She flinched at the name.
"The Smolten's sacred grounds?"
Kael nodded.
"It's surprisingly beautiful this time of year."
He was on edge, more than he had been in a long time, and he couldn't let her see it. If Aveline understood how much he needed to reach Threnfall she could simply stop walking and refuse to take another step. That alone could stall everything. Her hatred worked both for and against him. On one hand it had driven her to follow him out of spite, unwilling to let him out of her sight. On the other it had pushed her to a point where sacrificing herself to bring Vael down on him was a genuine possibility.
Not far from the summit a cloud drifted in, painting everything white. Kael moved from memory alone.
He walked to the mountain cliff and followed its edge.
"This is where the Smolten offered humans." Kael said.
"I know."
Aveline had put a few extra steps between them.
Another ten minutes passed before Kael stopped and turned toward her, extending his arm.
"Let me carry you."
Aveline's eyes widened but before she could respond Kael continued.
"There's a platform below. We need to jump down and you won't manage it as a mortal." He nodded toward the cliff edge.
She looked where he indicated.
"Where are you taking me?"
"I'm not taking you anywhere. You're following me into the mountain. There's a place I found the last time I was here."
She clenched her fists and let him pick her up.
Kael stepped off the edge and landed below without difficulty, setting her down and continuing toward the gaping mouth of the mountain.
"Strike a match if you need to. It will be a while before we see light again."
With that he disappeared into the darkness. Aveline struck a match and followed.
'How different it is now.'
When he had first found this place he had been in the same position as her. He had burned through an entire box of matches before reaching the center. Now, with the Weeping Eye, the darkness was no different from walking the halls of Valthorne. He moved through it without thought.
When the three hour mark hit, a groan came from behind.
The matches had run out long ago. Aveline was entirely dependent on Kael to navigate the darkness, one hand on his coat to keep from losing him entirely.
When he stopped she walked straight into his back.
"Ugh." She rubbed her forehead. "Why are we stopping?" She asked, staring into nothing.
"Climb onto my back."
Aveline raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"
"There's around a thousand meters of climbing down from here." Kael crouched. "Don't worry. I'll manage."
All kinds of emotions moved through her as she climbed on, but she didn't say a word.
Kael drew his knife and held it firmly.
He had always been a capable climber. One handed was another matter entirely. For this descent he had nothing to rely on but the knife and whatever grip the rock offered.
He walked to the edge, turned to face the direction they came from, and took a step back.
A sharp breath escaped Aveline as they dropped. Three seconds of free fall before a suitable crack came into view. Kael drove the knife in. Their momentum stopped in an instant. Aveline nearly lost her hold but managed to twist her arm around the empty coat sleeve.
"A few more like that and we're down."
Before she could respond he pulled the knife free.
Like this the two descended a dozen meters at a time.
When they reached the bottom, Aveline released him and quickly felt around for something to sit on before settling for the ground. Her hands shook uncontrollably, the tension of holding on finally catching up with her.
Kael looked at her with a blank expression.
It had taken around five minutes to descend the entire drop, but those minutes alone must have felt like an eternity for a mortal. Even though she couldn't see a thing, Kael gave a slight nod to the side.
"Come. We can't rest here."
The Hollow Mountain looked similar to how it had before, in a sense, but after the Weeping Eye disappeared so had the Luminescent River, and with it the greatest source of light. The trees still held a faint glow, but it had dimmed considerably. By now they shone just enough to make themselves barely visible to the naked eye, but not enough to cast any silhouette on what lay beneath them.
Aveline looked around with quiet curiosity. She had sat through a great deal of history lessons covering Smolten and Valthorne's lands, but she had never once heard of this place, which was strange given that it wasn't particularly well hidden.
Kael and Aveline stepped over the barren stretch where the river should have been and reached an open space, torn trees scattered around it like an abandoned deforestation site.
He led Aveline to a rock and helped her sit down.
"I'll do a refinement now. Don't disturb me."
She folded her hands and sat in silence.
Kael found a suitable tree and settled against it, summoning the Stone Coffin. Ingredients began stacking one after another until a pile large enough to fill a basket had gathered behind him. He calmly formed a refinement orb and began.
Mothgrass, wolftiger tooth… all the way through the third ingredient everything went smoothly. Then he felt it.
'A mote.'
Kael forced the refinement to a stop and absorbed the backlash through gritted teeth, then crossed the distance to Aveline in an instant, grabbing her throat, this time stopping just short of breaking it.
"What did you do?" he said through clenched teeth, blood dripping from his mouth onto her.
She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, but not a trace of fear showed in her eyes.
A laugh bubbled out of her, filling the space with a faint echo.
"Tell me," Kael said, tightening his grip.
When Aveline moved to spit, Kael pulled his hand back and clamped it over her mouth instead.
For a moment they simply looked at each other, cold and unblinking, neither giving ground. Then Kael forced her head down against the rock with a dull crack.
She collapsed a moment later.
He had felt it. He had suspected he would. Normally a mote activation was overshadowed by the Luminaire's own presence, but that wasn't the case here. Because Aveline was a mortal, that presence had stood out clearly to him instead. He couldn't identify the type or the exact rank, only that she had managed to activate something.
He buckled forward and spat a mouthful of blood.
This was exactly what he had been worried about. From the short time he had spent with her he had built a solid read on her personality, which was also why he hadn't started with a legitimate refinement. Well, it was one, but not one he had ever intended to finish.
He had begun refining the lowest ranking mote he knew the recipe for. If she hadn't reacted, he would have stopped, killed her, and started the real refinement, certain by then she carried nothing.
But when he was more than halfway through, she finally took the bait, thinking he was too far in to notice.
Ignorance. That was what had brought her to this end. Having never become a Luminaire herself, she didn't truly understand the fundamentals, even if she knew them in theory.
Kael collapsed forward, struggling to breathe.
It was only a rank one refinement failure, but it felt like his entire being was being torn apart by something unimaginable. Blood began dripping from his eyes, soaking into the ground in dark red.
With a pained groan he managed to push himself up and walk back to the tree, sliding down against it.
'Why…?'
He was confident in his understanding. A damaged soul shouldn't take more damage than usual simply because it was already damaged, yet it felt like it had.
"Ah… that must be it."
The damage a soul sustained didn't scale with how damaged it already was. But the pain did. In the same way a punch might hurt, being hit again in the exact same spot hurt far more. So by now, the pain he felt was something close to the pain he'd feel if his soul was shy of collapsing entirely.
He let his head fall back against the bark.
Ten minutes. That was how long it would take for Vael to arrive.
Time felt unusually slow, but after fifteen had passed Kael used his elbow to push himself upright.
'Was she bluffing?'
Hints of uncertainty crept in. He knew she had activated something, so why hadn't Vael come? Either Vael didn't care as much as Kael had assumed, or the idea of Aveline carrying a notification mote was wrong entirely. And if it wasn't meant to alert Vael, what was it for? It wasn't defensive. It wasn't offensive. So what was it?
"It doesn't matter," Kael muttered, and began summoning ingredients again.
If Vael actually came, he was dead regardless. He couldn't climb out in time and he couldn't hide from him, so refining was the only choice that made any real sense.
When the first ten ingredients appeared, Kael summoned Point Aegis in its true form and engulfed it with a refinement orb.
By now, his soul was so damaged he wasn't sure how he was still standing. Natural Thought production had fallen so low it had nearly stalled completely.
To succeed with this advancement he would need almost every mindstone he had left just to keep pace with the Thought consumption.
He closed his eyes and sighed.
He had to close everything else out. The refinement he was about to attempt didn't just carry a low success rate, the concept itself was new to him, and it would demand every ounce of concentration he could push through the pain and exhaustion.
And if he failed, Point Aegis would be destroyed. His soul might shatter entirely, taking him with it.
Kael moved the engulfed cube to the first ingredient and activated Obsidian Shard in the same motion, guiding the rules beneath.