The cave felt different after Morwen left. The air, once thick with shared fear, was now charged with a new, divisive tension. The seamless, brutal mend in the wall stood as a monument to a power that was both terrifying and alluring. It was a solution. A quick, decisive, and clean end to a problem Kaelen had been too weak to fix.
No one spoke for a long time. The survivors processed the whirlwind that had just departed. A woman—Corbin's sister. A Stone-Singer of immense, frightening power. An offer that hung in the air like the scent of ozone after a lightning strike.
It was Old Man Hemmet who broke the silence, his voice a reedy, awestruck whisper. "Did you see that? She… she just fixed it." He pointed a trembling finger at the wall. "No song, no fuss. Just… fixed it. That's real power. Not… not all that shaking and trembling." He didn't look at Kaelen, but the accusation was clear.
Roric grunted, shifting his weight and wincing. "She fixed a wall, Hemmet. The boy raised a fortress out of the ground and fought off three of those demons. Don't forget which one saved your skin."
"But at what cost?" Elara's voice was quiet, but it cut through the men's argument. All eyes turned to her. She was looking at Kaelen, her expression pained. "Look at him, Roric. He's pale as a ghost. He's been shaking since the fight ended. That power is eating him from the inside." She hugged herself, a gesture of deep unease. "And that woman… her power felt… cold. It didn't feel like the mountain. It felt like the Blight, just… pointed in a different direction."
Kaelen said nothing. He was trapped in the chasm between their words. Roric saw a weapon. Hemmet saw a flawed tool. Elara saw a dying boy. And Morwen… Morwen had seen an asset. No one saw him. Kaelen, the mason's apprentice, who was terrified and homesick for a home that was dust.
He pushed himself up, ignoring the protests of his body. "I need air," he mumbled, not meeting anyone's eyes. He needed to be away from their stares, their expectations, their fear.
He stumbled out of the cave, past his own stone dome, and into the ravaged clearing. The grey dust of the unmade windbreak coated the ground like a shroud. He walked until he found a fallen log at the tree line, collapsing onto it, his head in his hands.
Morwen's words echoed in his mind, picking apart the foundations of everything he believed. He was always sentimental. It was his greatest weakness. He hid from his purpose.
He thought of Corbin. The patient teacher, the man whose hands were as rough as the stone he worked, but whose voice was always gentle. He remembered the countless hours learning to feel the grain of granite, to understand the patience of limestone. He had thought it was about the craft. Now, Morwen insinuated it was about hiding.
Did he ever mention me? she had asked, her voice dripping with a bitter need. His twin?
Kaelen racked his brain. Corbin had spoken of the world, of the old songs, of the Weave. He had spoken in generalities about the great Stone-Singers of the past. But of his own life? Of his family? There was nothing. It was as if the man had been born the day he arrived in Oakhaven. The omission now felt like a canyon, a void filled with unspoken history and a betrayal so deep it had broken the world.
"He never talked about his past."
Kaelen started. Elara had followed him. She stood a few feet away, her arms crossed, not pushing, just present.
"He never talked about anyone," Kaelen repeated, the realization aching dully. "It was just… him. And the stone."
"People who don't talk about their past are usually running from it," Elara said softly. She sat on the log beside him, leaving a careful space between them. "My father was like that. He never spoke of his family. I found out why after he died. It wasn't a happy story." She paused, picking at a piece of bark. "That story I told in there… about the twin. I didn't tell you all of it."
Kaelen looked at her, a cold dread settling in his stomach.
"My father's journal," she continued, her voice barely above a whisper. "The last entry… it was a rant. He was a rational man, but he was terrified. He wrote that the betrayer's twin didn't just disappear. He said she went mad with grief and rage. That she blamed the other Singers for her brother's death. That she swore she would finish his work, but without his 'weakness'. She believed the only way to save the world was to control it absolutely. To use the Blight's own corrosive power as a tool, to burn out the sickness no matter the cost."
She finally met his eyes, hers wide with fear. "Kaelen, he called her the 'Corrupted Healer'. He said she would offer you everything you wanted, and that her price would be your soul."
The pieces slammed together in Kaelen's mind with the force of a rockslide. The Warden's story of Iscarius's pride. Morwen's bitter resentment. The tale of a twin consumed by vengeance. They weren't separate stories. They were different verses of the same tragic song. Iscarius had tried to seize control and shattered the world. His sister, Morwen, now sought to do the same, believing her method—her lack of "sentiment"—would succeed where her brother had failed.
She wasn't just another Stone-Singer. She was a relic of the original schism. And she saw Kaelen as her new instrument.
The weight of it was crushing. He was a pawn in a war that had started centuries ago, fought over his soul by the ghost of his master and a woman who was a living embodiment of the very corruption he fought.
"What do I do?" The question was a plea, torn from the depths of his exhaustion. "The Warden teaches me to endure, but I'm not sure that's enough. She offers me the power to fight back, but it's a poison. I can't… I can't protect anyone like this." He gestured at his own trembling, depleted body.
Elara was silent for a long moment, watching the forest as if it might hold an answer. "Corbin taught you to mend," she said finally. "Not to fight. Maybe… maybe that's the answer. We don't need a warrior king, Kaelen. We need a mason." She nodded towards the dome he had created. "You built that to protect us. Not to attack them. That's who you are. That's the strength she doesn't understand."
Her words were a lifeline, a return to the core of what he was. But the doubt Morwen had sown was a resilient weed.
Suddenly, a sharp, collective gasp came from the direction of the cave. Kaelen and Elara spun around.
One of the children was pointing at the mended wall, her face pale. Where Morwen had seamlessly fused the stone, a network of thin, black lines was now visible, spiderwebbing out from the center of the mend. They pulsed with a faint, sickly green light. A low, corrosive sizzle, almost too quiet to hear, emanated from the stone.
Morwen's "fix" wasn't a mend. It was an infection. A calling card. And it was slowly spreading.
She hadn't just offered him a choice. She had forced his hand, demonstrating the cost of her path by planting a seed of the very decay she claimed to control. The message was unmistakable: Your way is slow and weak. Mine is immediate and strong. See what I can do? Now, come and learn how to stop it.
Kaelen stared at the blighted mend, the cold in his chest throbbing in unison with its faint, malevolent pulse. The war for the world had just become terrifyingly personal.