[Cass]
Morning arrived without light. Underground days began with sound instead. The hush before the tribe woke. The soft clink of tools. The drip of water from the roof into the river. The shrine's breath-thick glow pulsing like a sleeping heart.
Cass sat with his back to a pillar and watched Warble children carry small baskets of glowshroom caps. They laughed in voices that came out like gravel and bells. For a moment he let himself believe this peace could last.
The shrine brightened. Not much. Enough to make his skin prickle.
[System]:Quest Unlocked – The First Trial of Propervy
Shelter your people in the dark. Prove that you can lead where others falter.
Reward: Approval Sigil (Lord Rank).
The words landed with a weight his bones remembered from another life.
He stood. "Elder."
The old Warble was already there. Staff planted. Eyes black and steady. "The Dawn calls," he said. "We answer."
Cass's hands closed and opened. "Then we move."
Orders slid from him like they had been waiting behind his teeth.
"Scouts. Bring in the hunters. All spirals. No stragglers."
"Farmers. Harvest what you can now. Dry caps. No waste."
"Stonecutters. Choke the side mouths to slits. Leave listening gaps."
"Guards. Shields up. Rotcloth on faces. Bats will carry things we do not want."
Warbles peeled away in waves. There was no arguing. No posturing. This was what faith did. It made a voice into a plan.
Karrek strode to his side with his apron still dusted white. "The southern ward holds," he said. "Not forever."
"Nothing does," Cass said. "We make 'long enough' mean something."
They moved through the hamlet together. Cass touched walls and counted steps without thinking. He had mapped this place in his feet. He had learned where stone rang hollow and where it sang.
He had learned what a hamlet sounded like before fear swallowed it.
Today it sounded like work.
[Forum – World Noise, mid-morning]
[TradeBaron]: "Skysong convoy lost two wagons to new ambush AI. Bandits split across both ridges. Watch your flanks."
[GreenwardGrrl]: "Fungus rot fix pinned. Boil tools. Dry racks higher. Mix four-plant diet. It works."
[Spinebreaker]: "Arena queue bug again. Stuck at 14 of 16 for half an hour."
[Nocti]: "Ghost Lord thread moved to Rumors. Mod hammer heavy today."
[LoreSeeker]: "Propervy trial cadence predicted. Mark your calendars. You will see a beacon."
[ChefDeBuff]: "New stew meta. Ground cave-crab with spice. Kids stop crying at bowls."
[AshenGlass]: "Two Ember Kilns synced. Fuel cost murderous. Output sweet."
The river of talk went on. Most of it had nothing to do with Cass.
[Cass]
The first tremor came at noon. A long shiver through stone. Glowshrooms bent as if a wind touched them, though none lived here.
Cass raised his hand. The Warble horn answered. A low call that made dust dance on ledges.
"Positions," he said.
Shields of woven fungus and chitin locked shoulder to shoulder. Spears leaned forward. Nets lay coiled by the river mouth.
The air thinned. It grew sharp. He could taste metal on his tongue.
"Eyes down," he said. "They come low first."
Karrek stood to Cass's right with a hammer tucked into his belt and a short spear in his hand. His face had the calm look of someone who had lived through many bad nights and learned how to make his breath small.
"Child of Propervy," Karrek said without looking at him. It was the first time he had used the title without mockery. "You stand. We stand."
Cass did not answer. Words could wait. The world would not.
The stone cracked like ice.
[System]:Event: The Beast Tide approaches.
Enemy mix forecast: Cave Rats (Swarm), Chitin Crawlers (Burrowers), Rotfang Bats (Aerial).
His mouth went dry. He had hoped for two types. The system had given him three.
The first wave poured out of a low seam in the wall. Cave rats with slick fur and white eyes. Dozens. Then hundreds. They moved like liquid. They hit the shields with a sound like rain.
"Hold," Cass said. "Stab shallow. Pull back. Shallow. Pull back."
The line flexed. Spears punched. Bodies thumped against stone. The rats kept coming.
A crawler snapped out of the floor like a trap. A Warble went down with a shout, leg clamped in jaws. Karrek's spear struck twice at the joint. Cass dropped his weight on the shaft and leveraged the jaw open. The guard was dragged free, bleeding but alive.
More jaws broke the floor. More bodies pushed the shields. More things dropped from the roof with teeth.
Cass's voice found a rhythm he had used in other lives and other fights. "Left push. Right hinge. Center breathe."
He fought until his arms stopped being arms and became a long ache. Until his lungs tasted iron. Until his thoughts narrowed to the next step and the next strike.
The bats came last. Dark blurs with teeth like needles. They went for eyes. For throats. For the soft places between woven plates.
"Cover," Cass said. "Faces down. Strike by sound."
Warbles obeyed. Blind strikes. Short kills. The air filled with the smell of a nest dragged out into the sun. Only there was no sun.
A red line crawled across his vision.
[System]:Safety bar at risk. Stability compromised.
He felt the tribe move behind him. Mothers pulling children back. Old ones shepherding slow feet. He heard small voices ask if the Dawn was angry.
It was not anger. It was math.
He needed light.
He turned and ran.
The Dawn Hole was a thin throat cut into the roof of the world. He had worked at it with bad tools and stubborn hope until a thread of air moved there. It let scent into the hamlet on certain days. It let leaves fall once in a while. It let him dream that the surface was not a story he had made up to keep from going mad.
He reached up. The edge cut his knuckles. He shoved his fingers against rough rock and shouted up where no one could hear him.
"Open."
He did not know who he spoke to. The Dawn. The system. The stubborn face of luck. The mother who had told him to live.
He shouted again. "Open."
The air thinned, then swelling breath pushed through. Dust glittered like a shaken jar of stars. Then the light came. Not a blast. A blade. It slid down the shaft with the slow pride of something that knows it cannot be stopped.
Daylight touched the cavern floor.
Bats screamed like the sound hurt. Crawlers backed away as if a whip cracked. Rats broke and ran into the dark mouths they had poured from.
The Warbles raised their faces and cried out words Cass could not translate. He did not need to.
The shrine brightened until the resin veins looked like rivers poured into stone.
[System]:Trial condition stabilized. Enemy morale broken.
[System]:The First Trial of Propervy – Progress 100%.
Silence fell like snow. Bodies twitched once and stilled. Drips resumed. Breaths returned.
Cass held the edge of the shaft until his fingers stopped shaking. Then he let go and dropped to the floor and laughed once without sound.
He stood slowly and turned back to the tribe.
They had lost three. The names were short and heavy. The elder spoke each one with the same care he had given his staff for forty years. He placed his palm on each brow and thanked them for their strength. The families set small stones on chests and sang a low song that made the hair rise along Cass's arms.
He hated the number three. He loved it. It could have been more.
He stepped to the shrine. The light slowed. It moved like breath again.
[System]:Trial Complete – The First Trial of Propervy.
Reward Granted: Approval Sigil (Lord Rank).
New Access: Hamlet Overview, Citizen Aptitudes, Build Options.
He stared at the words until they blurred.
He had wanted this. He had feared it. He had no room left for either.
He placed his palm on the altar and kept it there until the heat of the resin worked through the cuts on his hand.
"Thank you," he said to no one. Or to stone. Or to the line that had moved him from one life to the next like a bead along a thread.
[Forum – Afternoon Noise, the world continues]
[Wainsmith]: "Smithing queue fixed by relog. Still bugged at 10 items for some."
[CaravanCarl]: "Convoy made it through West road with new formation. Two scouts. One decoy cart. Worth it."
[Spinebreaker]: "Arena highlight. VeilDancer's double-step is real. Clip in thread."
[Nocti]: "Underdark rumor gone quiet. Mods pushing it down."
[GreenwardGrrl]: "Rotfang bats bad this cycle. Hang nets with resin strips. Trust me."
[GlassRush]: "Fuel prices up again. Trade channel useless."
[SimoneVlogs]: "If you fell where I fell, mark the stone with chalk for others. Do not go deeper."
The river did not care about a hamlet in the dark. That was mercy. That was also the danger.
[Cass]
Elder and Karrek stood with him under the Dawn Hole. Dust still drifted in the shaft like a slow snowfall.
Karrek rubbed his shoulder where a bat had torn the cloth. "We need more shields," he said. "We need better spears. We bleed too much when we win."
"Food days," the elder said. "We sit at eight. Ten if the river is kind. Children eat first."
Cass opened the new view that had just unlocked in his mind. It did not show numbers like the old worlds. It spoke and he understood.
[Hamlet – Propervy Bastion]
Population: 243
Morale: Wounded, proud
Food Stores: 8 days
Housing: Cramped
Safety: Recovering
Crime: None
Faith: High, rising
Threats: Southern rot under ward. Beast nests disturbed.
He felt the tug to build and the pull to rest at the same time.
"We need trade," he said. "Iron for a forge. Fiber for a loom. Grain for a mill. These caverns can feed us only so far."
Karrek snorted. "Trade with what road. With what face. With who."
"With whoever can be bought with stone and clever hands," Cass said. "We start small. We stay quiet. We move like roots."
The elder nodded. "Small things endure."
Cass looked up at the thin throat of light. It had shrunk again to a suggestion. The sun moved on. It did not wait for caverns.
"We will make it come back," he said.
[Media – World's Dawn Chronicles, evening segment rundown]
The logline scrolled. The anchor spoke in the voice of someone trained to make even weather sound like war.
"Rivermere fines levied for bridge fires. New civil code proposed."
"Greenward healers trial a four-herb tonic against field blight. Side effects under review."
"Ashenfolk glass surge continues. Trade prices volatile. Investors hint at speculation bubbles."
"Rumor file: reports of light underground after seismic activity in a Highlands shard. Our analysts suggest cave-ins or lighting bugs. If a new tribe has been found, no official recognition yet."
A smiling developer appeared in a side window to talk about lag fixes. The world kept circling its own small suns.
[Cass]
Night in the hamlet was not dark. Glowshrooms made dusk that never left. The shrine gave a soft day in one corner. The river talked in its sleep.
Cass sat with a bowl of stew that tasted like salt and metal and something like home if you squinted your heart. Children slept in a pile near the oven heat. Two guards dozed with their chins on their chests. Karrek whittled a spear haft as if the next fight was an appointment he did not want to be late for.
The elder lowered himself beside Cass with a sigh that had many years in it. "You carry the shape of the next thing on your face," he said.
"I carry a cost," Cass said.
The elder's mouth bent. "Those are the same word in stone."
Cass watched steam rise off the stew and try to be a cloud before it became only air again. "We need to touch the surface soon. A hole is not enough. A tunnel. A road that light can walk."
"The Stone sings warnings about long cuts," the elder said. "They draw eyes."
"They also draw trade," Cass said. "And sun. And hope."
The elder looked at him for a long time. "We will need a name for that road."
Cass almost smiled. "We will steal one from a story later. For now it is a line in my head I cannot stop seeing."
He finished the stew and set the bowl down and stood.
"Rest," the elder said.
"Soon," Cass said. He walked to the Dawn Hole and laid his palm on the wall below it like a man who had never seen a door and wanted to learn what a handle felt like.
[Forum – Late Night Noise, soft and wide]
[ThreadCraft]: "Anyone else naming their settlements something dumb and regretting it."
[MapTactician]: "Fault line overlay updated. New tremor cluster mapped."
[BloodPrinceTV]: "VeilDancer rematch tomorrow. I will not lose twice."
[GreenwardGrrl]: "Put a bucket of clean water at every field exit. Wash hands. This is not a joke."
[SimoneVlogs]: "If you don't know what you are looking for, turn back."
Somewhere a clip of bats poured over a shield wall in a different shard. Somewhere someone laughed at a joke about stew. Somewhere someone logged off because their kid cried in the next room.
The world did not lean toward Cass. That helped him breathe.
[Cass]
He opened the new menu the system had given him. It felt less like a page and more like a voice whispering into the space behind his eyes.
[Lord Access – Propervy Bastion]
-> View Citizens
-> Assign Work
-> Queue Builds
-> Set Rations
-> Petition Tribe
-> Request Wanderer Aid
He did not press everything. Power used without a breath becomes fire. He let himself be still. He let the options sit like tools on a bench.
He thumbed the one that mattered. View Citizens.
Faces moved through his head in a slow roll. Names. Ages. Aptitudes like seeds.
[Rilka, 17]
Patience high. Memory high. Potential rare. Sings while she works. Eyes hurt in glare.
[Torv, 42]
Strength high. Nerve high. Creativity low. Drinks too much when days are long.
[Ina, 9]
Curiosity very high. Touches everything twice. Potential unknown.
He pressed two fingers to his eyelids until stars burst under his thumbs. These were not bars. They were people. He would not turn them into math to win a prize and forget their voices.
"I will not be Valorin," he said. The name tasted like rust. "I will not tell a man to hold a dragon and call it duty."
He closed the view and opened the shrine log instead.
[Faith Event]
The First Trial roused old words. Propervy sung by children in a tune that did not exist yesterday.
He breathed out and it shuddered.
Before he slept he walked the narrow cleft again where Simone had lost her light. He had built a low stack of stones there earlier. He made it higher. He made it into a shoulder that would narrow a body passing. He tucked a smooth rock into the stack so he would know if someone nudged it.
He whispered three small promises into the seam.
"I will keep them alive."
"I will bring the sun below."
"I will not forget why."
He touched his forehead to the stone. It was cold. That comforted him.
He went back to the shrine and lay down with one hand on the floor. The rock hummed very faintly. Maybe that was only his blood. He pretended it was the Dawn telling him this was one right step among many wrong ones he would take.
He slept.
It was not long. It was enough.