Several months after the battle at the Domain of Cinders.
The air smelled of salt and pine resin, a harsh contrast to the sulfur-saturated atmosphere of Aethelburg. Lyall stood barefoot on the black sand of a secluded cove, somewhere on the coast of the Maritime Kingdoms.
The escape had been brutal. Months spent hiding in freight wagons and coastal hideouts had left Lyall gaunt. The scar on his arm where the Gauntlet once rested was healed, but the artifact's absence left him raw. His gift, unfiltered, was a chaotic fire, a nexium tide threatening to consume him.
Lyall clenched the Selithe of Teral in his palm. This brown spiral fragment, a Pyrelans crystal (Master of Earth and Gravity), was all he had left. Lyall was no longer trying to read nexium. He sought to tame it through physics. The Teral did not amplify the flow; it imposed mass and inertia, according to the Pyrelans principle: transforming raw energy into elemental matter.
Lyall injected his flux into the stone. He was no longer fighting external metal, but his own body. The Selithe of Teral reacted immediately. The sandy ground beneath his feet darkened, the grains compacting. Lyall felt his weight increase exponentially, as if gravity itself was concentrating solely on him.
This was the feared side effect: bodily heaviness, but he forced its manifestation. This weight was necessary to anchor the disordered flow of his gift. Lyall's chaotic energy was suddenly constrained by the new physical cause he had determined: his own mass.
Elara sat about ten meters away, watching. Her steady presence, her rhythmic breathing, was the emotional filter Lyall needed to keep from being crushed by his own power.
"The boulder," Elara said quietly. "Focus on density."
Lyall obeyed. He reached out to a block of gray granite. He injected the flux into the Teral, not to shatter it, but to multiply its mass. Under his eyes, the granite slowly and silently sank into the damp sand. Lyall had successfully doubled its mass with no visible effort.
"You are manipulating the cause of immobility, Lyall," Elara whispered. "You can now dictate immobility."
Lyall withdrew his flux. The heaviness vanished; the granite became light again. This was not the illusion of freedom, but the mastery of the determining causes themselves. Lyall, the artisan, was rapidly becoming a strategist of physics.
Later, in their makeshift refuge an old ship repair forge Elara spread out a crumpled map of the Maritime Kingdoms, with hasty notes scrawled in the margins.
"Vane has quieted down," she said, "but his hunt has not. He is now utilizing the Empire's minor houses to extend his reach without committing his own vital resources."
She pointed to two symbols:
House Aerum, which uses Aeliths crystals (Masters of Movement). They specialize in aeronautics and levitation (Selithe of Aerone).
House Ferix, which uses Voraks crystals (Masters of Forces). They manage security and shields (Selithe of Pressa).
"These houses are hunting for Vane in exchange for shares of his power. They have Selithes and the advantage of the sky."
Their situation was clear: they were outlaws hunted by a coalition. They had to reach the maritime capital to speak to the Lady of the Tide and convert their heresy into an alliance.
A heavy metallic sound tore through the silence, too low and too powerful.
Lyall and Elara exchanged an icy glance. It was an aerostat. Lyall recognized it by the distinct whistle of the nexium engine: a rapid reconnaissance model, typical of House Aerum. They had been found.
Lyall stood up and stepped out of the forge, gripping the Selithe of Teral. Training time was over.
He strode toward the sand. He felt the power gather in his arm, a wild flux he had to contain. He would use his new mastery of Earth and Gravity not to anchor himself, but to create an obstacle so massive that the aerostat, specializing in lightness and movement (Aeliths), could not avoid it.
The Heretic's Journey was beginning with the weight of the anchor.