Night descended like a slow breath over the valley.Mist coiled between the roots of the pines, silvered beneath a veiled moon. The cottage sat half-buried in that hush, its roof slick with rain, its windows glowing faintly from the embers of a dying hearth. Inside, the air smelled of herbs and smoke and beneath that, something faintly metallic, like starlight caught in water.
The scent came from the Flux Crystal resting in Rin's palms.
He sat cross-legged near the window, small and still, his bare feet tucked beneath him. Moonlight spilled across the floor in pale ribbons, catching the crystal's soft gleam.It pulsed faintly one slow heartbeat, then another as though recognizing him.
Elden's voice lingered in his thoughts, low and patient, a lesson carried through memory.
"Flux is the breath of the world, Rin. All living things draw from it from the stones beneath to the stars above. You must guide it, not command it. Let it rise through your meridians, pass through your heart, and return to the root. Like the tide."
Rin closed his eyes.He drew in a slow breath, uncertain, trying to remember the way Elden's hands had moved when demonstrating the cycle. The air cooled in his lungs. Beneath his skin, the Flux Crystal responded a faint hum against his palms, like something vast stirring from slumber.
Then movement.
A thread of warmth brushed against the edge of his consciousness. It felt delicate and silken, a whisper carried through deep water, pulling gently toward him. He let it enter.
The warmth slid up his arms, slow and searching, tracing unseen paths through his veins. The sensation was strange not pain, not comfort, but something alive and watchful. When it reached his chest, it spread outward in soft pulses, like light trying to learn how to breathe.
For a moment, Rin felt everything the whisper of the forest outside,the slow heartbeat of the earth beneath the cottage,the endless current binding sky and soil.
The world was alive.And he was inside its pulse.
Then
A sharp break.
The warmth stuttered and shattered, scattering like water striking stone. The light in the crystal flickered violently. The energy recoiled from his chest, as though repelled by something that wasn't there.
Rin gasped. His hands fell to his sternum. The current fled his body in thin ribbons of silver that dissolved into the air like mist. His pulse raced; his breath came shallow.
Still, he tried again.Breathe in guide release.
Each breath drew more Flux into him, shimmering threads that coiled up his arms and gathered in his chest. But every time the current reached the center of his being, it slipped away dispersing, vanishing into emptiness.
It would not stay.
Rin pressed trembling fingers to the place where Elden said the Root Seal should be.Nothing.Only a hollow endless and silent.
His voice trembled."Why… can't it stay?"
The cottage answered only with the groan of its timbers. Rain tapped against the roof soft, uneven, like a heartbeat trying to remember its rhythm.
He tried again.
This time, the energy came faster frantic, eager as if mirroring his desperation. The Flux coiled around him, threads of living light winding up from his arms to his throat. His skin shimmered faintly; constellations of silver bloomed beneath his flesh, pulsing in rhythm with his breath.
Then another break.
The light fractured. The current burst outward, seeping into the air, the walls, the very grain of the floorboards. The Flux refused to root itself within him yet it did not vanish this time.
It lingered, circling him like mist caught in invisible wind.
Rin opened his eyes. His reflection in the crystal stared back eyes wide, frightened, glowing faintly with threads of pale light.
"I'm… broken," he whispered.
But even as the words left him, something deep within the hollow stirred.
A faint vibration soft, rhythmic.Not his heartbeat… something older.
The air shifted. The scattered Flux trembled, then drifted again, drawn not into him, but around him. The energy spiraled gently, forming a slow ring of light, orbiting him like a breath that refused to belong.
For a few fragile seconds, Rin sat at the center of a living constellation silver light weaving lazy patterns in the dark. The glow painted his face, his breath visible as pale fog in the cold air.
Then the light thinned. The spiral unraveled, fading back into the stillness.
The crystal dimmed to a faint, ghostly gleam.
Rin's shoulders sagged. He exhaled shakily, his breath fogging against the windowpane."Not gone," he murmured. "Just… somewhere else."
Outside, the mist drifted over the crater's rim. For a heartbeat, faint motes of light pulsed within it the same rhythm that had circled him moments ago.
The world seemed to listen.Then it, too, fell silent.
Rin lowered the crystal into his lap. The last of its glow shimmered faintly in his eyes. In the silence that followed, only one truth remained
The world's breath had found him.But it refused to stay.