The Grand Cap of Spirehold dreamed in slow, rhythmic pulses of light, and Kaelen was a flaw in its rhythm.
He stood on a high, arching walkway, his bare right hand resting on the warm, living rail. Below, the heart of the Mycelian city thrived. Soft chants echoed as Spore-Singers guided the growth of new structures, their voices weaving with the low hum of the bioluminescent fungi that coated every surface. Children laughed, their skin flickering with playful, controlled light as they chased glowing motes in the air. It was a scene of perfect harmony, a symphony of symbiosis.
Kaelen's left hand, sheathed in a glove of supple fungal leather, clenched into a fist. A dull, familiar throb pulsed deep within it, a counter-beat to the city's serene cadence.
"Kaelen! The Sunken Grotto awaits our hands," a voice called, warm and steady.
Kaelen turned, forcing his expression into one of calm as his mentor, Rorin, approached. Rorin's face, etched with the faint, luminous freckles of their people, was a map of quiet contentment. The Weep's peace radiated from him.
"The Grand Cap's pulse feels strong today," Kaelen said, the lie smooth on his tongue. It was the right thing to say.
"It dreams of rain," Rorin affirmed, his smile reaching his eyes. "The Luminous Moss in the grotto will be potent. The Gleaners will trade well for it."
The mention of the Gleaners sent a secret, forbidden thrill through Kaelen. The outsiders. The ones who lived without the Weep. He hid the thought as he hid his hand, and followed Rorin downward.
The Sunken Grotto was a place of deep power. The air itself was thick and sweet, vibrating with energy. The walls were a tapestry of glowing yellow moss, and thick, root-like mycelial veins pulsed with a deep, golden light, casting shifting shadows on a pool of dark, still water. This was a node, a place where the Weep's voice was a shout.
"Here," Rorin murmured, kneeling and placing his bare palms on a pulsing root. He closed his eyes, his breathing syncing with the slow rhythm. "Can you feel it, Kaelen? The memory of the world. The song of life. Don't just hear it. Let it in."
Swallowing hard, Kaelen knelt. With his right hand, he touched the bed of moss.
A wave of blissful connection washed over him. It was peace. It was belonging. It was a sense of being part of something vast and ancient and good. For a glorious second, the constant, gnawing fear in his gut quieted.
Then came the fault line.
A searing, electric jolt shot up his left arm from the glove. It was a pain that was both physical and psychic, a shriek of dissonance against the grotto's harmony. A piercing white light flared, bleeding through the leather stitches.
He gasped, yanking his right hand back as if burned.
"Kaelen?" Rorin's eyes were open, his brow furrowed in concern. "The node is strong, but your connection… it's always been intense. Perhaps the Chorus of the Root could guide you. They understand such depths."
The Chorus. The very name was a cold fist around his heart. To them, his "intensity" wouldn't be a flaw to be corrected, but a symptom of a blessed evolution. A path to losing himself completely.
"I'm fine," Kaelen choked out, clutching his gloved wrist, squeezing as if he could strangle the mutation within. "Just… a powerful pulse. It startled me."
Rorin's gaze lingered on the glove, where the ghost of the white light still seemed to linger. The concern in his eyes didn't fade.
They worked in a silence that, to Kaelen, was deafening. He used only his right hand, carefully harvesting the glowing moss into a satchel. But the heat in his left grew, a building pressure, an ache that promised eruption. The glow from the glove became a persistent, undeniable gleam.
The end came with a brush. A simple, catastrophic misstep.
As he reached for a final cluster, his gloved left hand grazed the main mycelial root.
The world tore in two.
There was no sound, only a silent, concussive wave of pure, violent white light that exploded from his hand. It wasn't the gentle glow of the Weep; it was a shard of lightning, freezing the grotto in a single, agonizing instant. The luminous moss dimmed to a terrified flicker. The pulsing roots stuttered into a frantic, chaotic seizure.
The force threw Kaelen onto his back. The leather of his glove smoked, the seams ripping apart.
Silence.
Then, the ragged sound of his own breathing. He looked down.
The glove was ruined. His secret was laid bare. His hand was a monstrous, beautiful thing. The skin was traced with lines of embedded crystal that pulsed with a malevolent white light. His fingers were slender, articulated claws of chitin and solidified energy.
He looked up and met Rorin's eyes.
The mentor's face was a canvas of shattered trust, morphing into pure, unadulterated horror. He wasn't seeing Kaelen anymore. He was seeing the stories told to frighten children. The thing that lurked in the deep, dark parts of the Weep.
"Touched…" Rorin whispered, the word a venomous prayer. "By the Root… you're Weep-Touched."
There were no words left. No excuses. The evidence was seared into the air, into the grotto, into Rorin's soul.
Kaelen's life in Spirehold ended in that moment.
He scrambled to his feet, his exposed hand casting a jagged, monstrous shadow. The light from it was fading, but the truth was out.
"Rorin, please—" he begged, desperation a metallic taste in his mouth.
But Rorin took a step back, his hand rising not in anger, but in a gesture of warding. Of fear.
That fear was the final, definitive push.
Kaelen ran.
He fled the grotto, past the stunned faces of his people who had felt the psychic shockwave, up the spiraling walkways. He didn't look back. He could feel their eyes, their whispers already weaving the new story of his life: Kaelen is gone. The Weep-Touched remains.
He burst out of the great iris-opening of Spirehold and into the vast, terrifying, and beautiful wilderness of the Weep. The wind sighed through the crystalline leaves, a sound that was now a dirge for everything he had lost.
He looked down at his hand, the crystalline structure gleaming in the twilight. It was a curse. A death sentence. But as the thrum of power still tingled in his veins, he knew it was also the only thing that had saved him.
It was the only thing he had left.
Pulling the tattered remains of the glove over the horrifying appendage, Kaelen took his first step into the unknown, a single, desperate goal burning in his mind, a fault line that would now shape his entire world:
Find a cure. Or be consumed by the storm within.