Sleep would not come. The moon's glow was a pale smudge behind stormy clouds. Sharath stood in his private workshop, chalk in hand, facing the vast slate wall that had once held notes on irrigation.
He erased it with a swipe.
Then he wrote, slowly:
"Why must we still burn to see?"
His mind unraveled in wild threads—an elemental core? An ambient light field? A resonance crystal charged without fire or mana?
He scribbled formulae. Diagrams. Arrows that looped into each other. Magical cores without wizards. Self-charging glyphs. Reflective matrices.
His chalk snapped.
Hands trembling, he slumped into his chair. Candles mocked him from every corner, dancing in quiet defiance.
He stared at the wall again.
"Promise me," he whispered, as if to the ghost of the fire, "this won't happen again."