[Cass]
Three days after the quake, the air in Rootwater changed.
Not from the dust - that still hung in the cracks - but from the silence. For the first time since the collapse, no one screamed, hammered, or wept. The mountain had stopped trying to kill them.
Cass walked the main corridor, bare-footed so he could feel the stone breathe. Each pulse from the Ward still matched his heartbeat, slower now, steadier. When he pressed a hand to the wall, faint warmth answered back. Not heat. Life.
Eshna followed, carrying a bowl of palegrain mash. "Eat something before you fall over."
He took it, half amused. "You watching me now?"
"Someone has to. The ward hums when you sleep. It sounds wrong when you don't."
"Maybe it dreams," he said.
"Or maybe it's keeping you alive out of spite."
They reached the ruined garden cavern - the one where they'd first grown food. The soil was cracked, fungus dim, but water from the vent dripped steady through new seams. Thin shoots had sprouted between stone plates, silver-white and trembling.
Rilka sat nearby, slate across her knees, drawing the new roots. Her eyes glowed faintly in the dim.
"They weren't here before," she said. "The soil hummed after the quake. I didn't plant anything."
Cass knelt beside her, brushing dust from the stalks. The leaves were translucent, almost mineral. "The Ward's energy bled through the ground. It's changing the soil."
Eshna frowned. "Then we eat cursed plants now?"
"No," Cass murmured. "We eat what survives."
[System Notice]
Resource Discovered – Glowgrain.
Nutritional Value: Medium
Regrowth Rate: High
Property: Emits bioluminescent spores (harmless)
Settlement Food Reserves: +20 days
The Warbles gathered as word spread. Some called the new plants holy. Others whispered they were dangerous. Cass watched from the ledge as torches lit the cavern like a festival for the first time since the eruption.
Karrek limped to his side, jaw still bandaged. "You see what you did? You made farmers out of warriors."
"Good," Cass said. "Wars end. Bellies don't."
Karrek snorted. "And what if the mountain wants payment for its gift?"
"Then we pay in work, not blood."
That night, Rilka approached him again, slate shining with new lines. "The walls moved," she said.
Cass looked closer. Her drawing now mapped a spiral - the entire bastion forming around the Ward like a heartbeat. "You can hear it?"
"I think the stone listens. When it likes where we build, it hums louder."
He smiled faintly. "Then keep listening."
[System – Settlement Update]
Propervy Bastion (Status: Hidden)
Food Reserves: +20 days (Glowgrain Fields established).
Morale: Hopeful (+15%).
New Profession Unlocked: Cartographer of Stone (Rilka).
Effect: Reveals nearby tunnel growth and mineral veins.
Later, alone by the Ward, Cass felt the pulse thicken. Not louder - deeper, like a heart strengthening after sickness. When he touched it, a ripple of light spread across the chamber and up the ceiling, revealing something carved there he'd never noticed - runes, old and patient, spelling no language he knew.
[System Discovery]
Ancient Markings – Origin: Pre-Shard Era.
Translation Incomplete.
Partial Match: "Those who bind the heart of stone become its memory."
Cass whispered, "Memory." The word echoed softly through the hollow, as though the mountain answered.
He closed his eyes, imagining his mother again - her laughter before the machines, her voice when she'd said keep building, whatever happens.
He opened his eyes and spoke to the Ward. "Then you'll remember us. Even if no one else does."
Aboveground, tremors brushed the edge of sensors in surface guild towers. Engineers recorded faint rhythmic signals coming from beneath the sealed shard - too regular to be random.
[Forum – Global Noise]
[MetaWatcher]: "New quake pattern below Rivermere South. Every 7 minutes 17 seconds. Pulse frequency = heartbeat?"
[IronFist88]: "Still milking the Ghost Lord myth. Get a job."
[Nocti]: "Heartbeat or not, infection reports in that region just dropped 5%. Something down there still works."
[Cass]
He didn't know it yet, but the mountain's heart had started to echo beyond its stone walls. And with each beat, the world above began to feel his pulse again.