----------"Spores.....lots of spores.....give me spores." - Alchemist Aryo Mason----------
The Bottom Ring woke up to the smell of ash grime.
Dawn was not a blessing here. It only revealed more of the rot and broken. Cracked bells tolled above in the upper rings, their sound drifted towards the lower rings like the laughter of gods who had never once stepped foot in the gutter. The people of the Bottom Ring stirred anyway. They had no choice but to work.
Jalen pulled himself upright from his bed of broken straw. His bones ached, his muscles screamed from days of labor but the whip-scars across his back healed. He pressed his hand to the wall of his dwelling, steadying himself. The stone was cold and slick with condensation. A reminder that the abyss never stops breathing.
He had dreamed of spores at night. They had danced in the dark, threads of light curling through his mind and body, whispering things he could not understand. He had woken with a bitter taste in his mouth and the memory of the guard's last gasping cry ringing in his ears.
It had been days since that night, but the memory had not left him nor had Darrin.
The streets were already alive when Jalen emerged. Vendors shouted over each other, selling scraps, boiled rat, fungus bread, thin stew made from roots. Smoke billowed in swathes near food stalls. A child bartered with a chipped coin, pressing it into a woman's hand for a piece of dried meat in her stew.
The coins of Orrhollow were not gold or silver - they were cut from abyssal ore, small shards of metal mined from the Hole itself. It was polished and stamped with the sigil of the crown. Each shard glowed faintly in the dark, a reminder that all wealth came from the abyss. The smallest coins were dull copper, called dusts. A handful of them might buy a crust of bread. Larger ones gleamed faint blue, glows, used by merchants in the higher rings. And above all were shards, crimson-sheened and rarely seen in the Bottom Ring, enough to buy freedom from the pits for a month - if an overseer could be bribed.
Jalen had never held more than a couple of dusts in his hand. Most of the Bottom Ring bartered labor or scraps, debts were repaid with labor. But coins still ruled in the first ring, trickling down from above like a thin rapid following its course.
He wondered, as he watched the child chew desperately on her sliver of meat, whether he would ever hold a glow. Or whether he'd die before ever touching one.
The tannery pits awaited him again. He scraped hide from abyssal beasts, his hands raw and bleeding. The stench burned his throat, but worse than the stench was the wind. The spores drifted thick at the tannery courtesy of the hides themselves. Abyssal creatures, even after deaths keeps killing the workers of the first ring slowly. His fellow workers coughed and spat, their lungs worsening with each breath. The overseers tied cloth over their faces. The workers had no such provison.
Jalen kept his breathing shallow, but the spores still slid inside him, alive and hungry. The spores did not harm him. He felt them coiling, eager. He tried not to exhale too deeply, fearing what might happen if he did. But he kept the act of coughing to avoid drawing attention to himself.
At midday, he slipped away to the ruins that Kaelth showed him. Rats scurried and fungus bloomed there. He could test the thing inside him without anyone finding out.
He knelt in the ground, closing his eyes. Slowly, he inhaled. The spores shimmered around him, faintly luminous in the gloom. He exhaled carefully, imagining threads unspooling from his breath and from within his lungs.
The motes twisted outward, spiraling like strands of silk. They clung to the damp walls, pulsing faintly as if alive. Jalen's heart raced. He reached out a hand, fingers trembling. The spores shifted toward him, then away, dancing as though tethered by invisible strings.
The spores from his body have interacted with the spores outside forming a link. With that link he could command the spores outside. He wondered what would happen if he could command all the spores within the first ring, or even the entire nation.
Jalen's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.
But the memory of the guard's death returned. The spores choking, filling lungs with their hunger. His hand shook, and the threads collapsed into fine powder.
He pressed his palms against his knees, trembling. The Hole had given him power - but it was a blade he barely knew how to hold.
When he returned to the streets, Darrin was waiting.
The butcher's boy had grown bolder since the night in the alley near the tannery. Where before he had slunk in shadows, now he lingered openly, his apron still smeared with blood. His eyes found Jalen with the precision of a predator sniffing prey.
"There you are," Darrin said, his voice too loud for Jalen's liking. He caught Jalen's arm, steering him away from the crowd, but not into solitude. He chose instead the edge of the butcher's yard, where workers dragged carcasses and a handful of onlookers passed by. Not private - but not public enough to draw attention. A place where Jalen would not dare act.
"I told you," Jalen muttered, pulling his arm free.
Darrin smirked, though his eyes betrayed nerves. "And I told you - you don't get to tell me anything anymore. That night… what I saw? That's not something anyone else should ever know. But I know it. Which means you're mine, Jalen."
Jalen's jaw tightened. "What do you want?"
Darrin leaned close, his breath hot and smelled of meat. "You're strong, even if you pretend not to be. You've got something in you no one else does. I want a piece of that strength. Not the spores, don't you dare breathe them on me. I want what comes with it. Coins. Protection. Whatever you can get. You'll find ways, Jalen. You'll make yourself useful."
Jalen stared at him, silent. His fists itched to close.
"You wouldn't dare here," Darrin whispered, reading the look. "Not with so many eyes around. You'd take me down with you, and we'd both choke on the priest's justice. That's why I chose this place. You can't use your gift unless you want to be caught. Which means…" He spread his hands, greasy and blood-slick. "…you listen. You obey. And I eat better because of it."
He clapped Jalen's shoulder with false camaraderie, then stepped back, his grin wide but his fingers trembling. He feared Jalen, deeply. But fear had shaped into greed.
Jalen turned away, every step heavy. He could feel the spores stirring inside him, itching for release. He wanted to breathe and watch Darrin crumble like the guard. But the butcher's boy was right. Here, Jalen's leash was held tight.
For now.
That night, Jalen returned to the ruin. The spores gathered around him again, threads of light weaving through the dark. He inhaled, exhaled, watched them twist and obey.
For the first time, he whispered to them.
And though no words came back, though they offered no language he could understand, they moved as though listening.
One day, the leash would snap. One day, the butcher's boy would choke on his own arrogance.
Until then, Jalen would learn. He would wait. He would breathe.
And the spores would grow.