The parchment scrap disrupted Mordecai's isolated life. The solitary hunt wasn't enough; the clue, "Sanctuary. Seek the Thread.", called for networks, not brute force.
Mordecai gathered allies, though he did so reluctantly. They weren't friends like Lina, but people with useful skills. As he built this network, it felt awkward at first, but he could sense it making him stronger.
Elara, a keen street-mage in a neon arcade, excelled in information. She read city data, spotting patterns hinting at otherworldly activity. Mordecai, adding magical context, received precise coordinates from her.
"Another blip," she said one night, sliding a datapad across her cluttered counter. Her fingers, adorned with chunky rings, tapped a location on a map. "Low-level dimensional resonance. Faded fast. But it matches the 'ozone and old blood' signature you described. Tourist district. Fancy that.
"Mordecai studied the map. "A tourist trap? It doesn't fit his pattern.
"Elara shrugged. "Maybe his pattern is changing. Or maybe one of his pets got loose. Fifty credits."
He sent the money. The act felt unpleasant but necessary, nothing like the lessons his mother taught him about acting with pure intentions.
Then there was Alaric, the old cartographer. He was a relic, living in a dusty apartment that smelled of yellowed paper and drying ink. His maps were not of lands, but of dimensional layers, of the subtle shifts in the celestial architecture between worlds. He had once, he claimed, mapped the night-sky changes of Aethelas itself, before the Fall.
"The Thread," the old man wheezed, tracing a gnarled finger over a complex, star-chart-like diagram. "It's not a place. It's a… a current. A ley line for refugees. It uses the world's own psychic scars as camouflage. To find a Sanctuary, you don't look for a door. You look for a place where the Thread gathers."
He taught Mordecai to notice how some places seemed to push people's attention away. It was like his mother's 'Please Knock' wards, but on a larger scale. Mordecai, used to forcing his way, was starting to listen instead.
And there was Lina. He had kept her at a safe distance from the true nature of his hunt, a bastion of normalcy. But her curiosity was a force of nature. She'd noticed his absences, his increasing tension, the strange symbols sometimes sketched in the margins of his notes.
"You're doing that thing again," she said one evening, after he'd been silent for a long stretch at their usual dive bar. "Where you look like you're trying to solve a puzzle made of smoke."
He grunted, a non-answer he'd perfected.She leaned forward, her voice dropping, not with fear, but with conspiratorial excitement. "Is it the teacup mafia? A rival collector? You can tell me. I'm great at surveillance. People never notice the drummer in the corner."
He almost pushed her away, as he usually did. Then Kaiphus tugged firmly at the back of his chair, making it clear he should let her in.
He sighed, the sound dragged from the depths of his being. "It's… not teacups. It's… people. I'm trying to find someone. And the people who took her don't want to be found."
Lina's eyes widened, not with horror, but with a fierce, immediate resolve. "Okay. That's way cooler than teacups. What do you need? I've got a great memory for faces, and I can blend in anywhere. I'm basically auditory wallpaper."
He started to accept help, though he did it poorly and with reluctance. He gave Elara orders, argued with Alaric, and tried to keep Lina safe with simple tasks. Still, he was learning to share his mission. With that came a surprising realization: he liked being needed. It felt different from his usual loneliness. This connection didn't trap him; it felt more like a lifeline in the dark.
The true test came during a practice session in the attic. He was trying to coax the Bone Serpent into something gentler, urging it to manifest just one delicate vertebra, nimble enough to lift a fragile object without harm: a delicate teacup from his collection, the one with the lunar pattern. It was an exercise in control, a defiance of its nature.
He focused, his brow furrowed. Kaiphus was a steady presence on his shoulders. But his mind was crowded... Elara's new data, Alaric's complex maps, and the worry for Lina's safety. His concentration, for a split second, fractured.
There was a sound like a gunshot. A shard of bone, meant to be a gentle probe, snapped into existence with violent force. It didn't touch the cup; the telekinetic backlash from the misfire did. The delicate porcelain lunar cup flew off the table and shattered against the brick wall into a dozen gleaming fragments.
Mordecai stared, a wave of cold despair washing over him. It was a stupid, sentimental loss, but it felt like an omen. Another thing from his past, destroyed by his own clumsy power.He expected to feel the familiar, crushing weight of solitude. But then, Lina, who had been quietly reading in the corner, looked up. She didn't gasp or offer empty sympathy. She set her book down, walked over, and knelt beside the fragments.
"It's a clean break," she observed, her voice practical. "We can fix this. I know a guy who does kintsugi."
He stared at her. "What?"
"Kintsugi," she repeated, picking up a piece with careful fingers. "The Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer. It doesn't hide the break. It makes it part of the object's history. Makes it more beautiful because it was broken." She looked up at him, her gaze steady. "It's okay to break things, Mordi. It just means you're trying something hard."
In that moment, something shifted inside him. The shame didn't vanish, but it transformed. He was not alone with his failure. He was not hiding his fragments in the dark. Someone had seen it, and instead of recoiling, had simply offered a way to mend it, to make the brokenness a part of the story, not the end of it.
Kaiphus gave a soft, warm ripple against his neck, a sensation that felt like a sigh of profound relief. The cloak had been trying to tell him this all along. Not everything ends the way the last thing did. He was no longer a lone survivor picking through the ruins of his life. He was becoming the center of a small, strange, resilient community, learning that some bonds, far from being chains, were the very things that could make you whole again.