The Whisper Forest lived up to its name. Even three miles from the jagged mouth of the Crevice, the wind didn't just blow; it murmured through the silver-barked trees like a crowd of ghosts debating a secret. Kaelen sat with his back against a massive, moss-covered root, his right arm—now blackened and scaled up to the shoulder—resting heavily across his lap.
A small campfire crackled between them. It was a pathetic thing, fed by damp twigs and Elara's waning energy, but it was the only thing keeping the encroaching dampness of the Borderlands at bay. Ria was busy sharpening her spear, the rhythmic shick-shick of the whetstone the only counterpoint to the forest's eerie muttering. Elara sat opposite Kaelen, her knees pulled to her chest, watching the way the orange light under Kaelen's skin pulsed in the dark.
"You're staring again, El," Kaelen said, his voice sounding more like a low rumble than he intended.
Elara flinched, then looked away, blushing. "I'm sorry. It's just... the way the mana moves inside you. It's not like anything the textbooks describe. It's not flowing through your meridians, Kaelen. It's... it's saturating your cells. Like water soaking into a sponge."
"More like oil soaking into a rag," Ria interjected without looking up from her spear. "Waiting for a spark to set the whole thing off."
Kaelen looked down at his right hand. The fingers were longer now, the nails sharpened into obsidian-like claws. He tried to flex them, and a faint hiss of steam rose from his palm. "It doesn't feel like a spark. It feels like a weight. Like I'm carrying a mountain inside my ribs, and every time I use it, a little bit more of the mountain turns into me."
"Or you turn into the mountain," Ria said, finally setting her stone aside. She looked him dead in the eye, her expression unreadable. "Kaelen, be honest. When you hit that guy from the Gilded Lilies... what did it feel like? Did you feel angry? Did you feel powerful?"
Kaelen hesitated. He remembered the moment he had thrust his palm forward. He remembered the way the air had shivered and the look of sheer, pathetic terror on the warrior's face. "I felt... hungry. Not for food. I felt like the world was too small, and I needed to push it back to make room for myself."
"A NATURAL INSTINCT," Ignis rumbled in his mind, the voice clearer now that the dragon was fed. "THE SKY IS TOO NARROW FOR THE WINGS WE WILL GROW, ECHO. DO NOT APOLOGIZE FOR SPACE."
"He's talking to you, isn't he?" Elara asked softly.
"He never stops," Kaelen sighed. "He calls me 'Little Echo.' He treats me like... like a garment he's trying to stretch so it fits him better."
Elara crawled closer, reaching out a hesitant hand toward his blackened forearm. Kaelen instinctively pulled away, but she shook her head. "I need to see, Kaelen. As a practitioner. If this is going to spread, we need to know the rate of the 'Echo-Graft'."
He relented, letting her take his hand. Her touch was cool, a sharp contrast to the furnace-heat of his skin. As her fingers brushed the scales, Kaelen felt a strange sensation—not a spark of magic, but a vibration. He could feel her heart beating. He could feel the faint, flickering mana in her blood. He could even feel the fear humming in her nerves.
"It's not just heat," Elara whispered, her eyes wide. "The scales... they're sensitive. You're not just 'imitating' the dragon, Kaelen. You're sensing the world through its eyes. Its skin."
"It doesn't matter what I'm sensing if we can't get into Oakhaven," Kaelen said, pulling his hand back and tucking it under his poncho. "The Lilies are going to report us. 'Unauthorized Channeling' is a hanging offense in the Central Provinces. If we walk through the front gates, the Wardens will have us in irons before we can find an inn."
Ria stood up, stretching her lean frame. "Not if we don't go as 'us.' We're not three starving miners anymore. We're a Company."
"A Company?" Elara asked. "Ria, we don't even have a name, let alone the registration fee."
"We have the 'spoils' from the Crevice," Ria said, gesturing to the small pile of crystalline dust Kaelen had coughed up after consuming the Lens. "It's not a Grade-Three artifact, but it's high-purity residue. It'll fetch enough to pay for a 'Bronze-Tier' charter. In a city as big as Oakhaven, the Guild handles thousands of new parties every month. We hide Kaelen's arm in a heavy wrap, call it a 'battle-curse' from a dungeon, and we register under a name they won't recognize."
Kaelen looked at the fire. The flames were dancing, and for a moment, he saw the silhouette of wings in the embers. "The Ember Spark," he murmured.
"What?" Ria asked.
"The Company name. The Ember Spark. Because that's all we are right now," Kaelen said, standing up. His presence seemed to fill the small clearing, the shadows stretching away from him as if afraid of his heat. "A single spark in a very dark forest. But if we play this right, we're going to be the fire that burns the whole map down."
Ria grinned, a sharp, dangerous expression. "I can live with that. The Ember Spark Company. It has a nice ring to it. Better than 'The Three Rats of the Grey Tier'."
"We leave at first light," Kaelen decided. "We reach Oakhaven, we get the charter, and we find a job that pays in more than just bread. Ignis is quiet for now, but I can feel the bottom of the reservoir. The seven-day clock is ticking again, and I don't intend to let it hit zero ever again."
"GOOD," the dragon whispered. "I WAS STARTING TO THINK YOU LACKED AMBITION."
Kaelen ignored the voice. He looked at Elara and Ria—the only two people in the world who knew he was a walking time bomb—and felt a different kind of heat in his chest. It wasn't the dragon's hunger. It was something he hoped the dragon would never be able to imitate: loyalty.
"Get some sleep," Kaelen said, his eyes glowing faintly in the dying firelight. "I'll take the first watch. I don't think I can sleep anyway. The forest is too loud."
As they settled into their bedrolls, Kaelen sat perfectly still. He closed his eyes and practiced something new. He didn't try to make fire. Instead, he tried to listen to the trees, imitating the way the dragon sensed the flow of the world.
He felt the sap rising in the silver-barks. He felt the insects crawling beneath the dirt. And miles away, toward the setting sun, he felt the massive, pulsing "Echo" of a city—thousands of lives, thousands of sparks, all waiting to be met.
The road trip had begun.