Elyria moved with quiet certainty away from the lingering metallic scent of blood and the faint, sharp tang of ozone, guiding the exhausted Kallum deeper into the rocky folds of the encroaching peaks.
The air grew colder, thinner, biting at exposed skin.
She found shelter quickly – a shallow cave mouth almost entirely concealed behind a thick, ancient curtain of dark, waxy ivy, nestled amongst the gnarled roots of a stunted, wind-twisted pine. It felt like a natural pocket of silence, hidden from the world, the steady drip of unseen water echoing faintly from deeper within.
Inside, the air was still and damp, smelling of wet stone, deep earth, and decaying leaves. It offered refuge, but also a sense of confinement, of being buried alive in the mountain's cold heart.
Elyria helped the trembling Kallum ease himself down against the cool, rough-textured stone wall, his breath hissing softly through clenched teeth as pain flared anew through his unnaturally taxed limbs.
"Rest here," Elyria whispered, her voice typically gentle but now holding an undercurrent of intense analytical focus. "I'll keep watch."
Kallum nodded mutely, surrendering to the crushing weight of exhaustion pressing down on every bone. He leaned back against the stone, closing his eyes tightly, but true rest remained elusive.
Pain pulsed, a deep, cold throb beneath the hastily bandaged wound on his shoulder. The unnatural healing spurred by his Dirge had already begun stitching flesh, but it felt wrong – a cold knitting that seemed to draw the surrounding chill deep into him, leaving an internal frost spreading through his marrow.
Sleep, when it finally dragged him under, was a haunted, fractured landscape. Flashes of the fight returned with visceral clarity: the sickening shatter of bone beneath his umber-clad fist, the mercenary captain imploding into frozen shards, the cold, righteous fury singing like black ice in his veins.
But intertwined with the grim satisfaction were darker echoes – the chilling emptiness that followed the rage, the feeling of something vital burning away, replaced by calculating coldness. Whispers, colder and sharper than the ones from the Vestige, seemed to coil in the darkness behind his eyes, urging him to remember every slight, every betrayal, promising the righteous power of retribution, the necessity of balancing the scales.
Once certain Kallum was deeply asleep, his breathing finally evening out into ragged exhaustion, Elyria rose with ghost-like silence.
She listened intently for a moment, confirming only the drip of water and Kallum's uneasy respirations disturbed the cave's quiet. Then, pulling her own cloak tighter against the mountain cold, she slipped back through the ivy curtain.
The moon, nearly full, cast long, skeletal shadows across the rocky clearing where the fight had occurred. The air here still felt unnaturally cold, carrying that faint, sharp ozone tang, a lingering residue of Kallum's power. The stillness felt heavy, watchful.
Elyria moved cautiously towards the scattered corpses, her steps making no sound on the frost-kissed ground. Her purpose was clear: analysis. What she had witnessed demanded closer scrutiny.
She knelt first beside the man Kallum had struck through the chest. Her gloved fingers probed the edges of the wound in his ruined armor.
Clean edges, she noted internally, her mind sharp, focused. Almost surgical. No explosive tearing, minimal heat signature... Grief burns hot, violently. This is... cold. A faint, unnatural chill radiated from the corpse. It diverges.
She moved to the one whose sternum Kallum had struck. Pressing lightly, she felt the unnatural fragility beneath – the bone structure compromised as if by intense, focused resonance, not brute force or simple decay. Not Ruin's signature disintegration, nor the depletion left by Hunger.
Next, the man Kallum had gripped, the one whose veins had blackened with frost-like patterns. The tissue was brittle, crystallized. She carefully extended a bare finger, hovering just above the skin, sensing the faint psychic residue. Terror. Despair. Far beyond mere physical agony. She frowned. Silence erases presence, it doesn't typically inflict this kind of psychic backlash.
Finally, the fragmented remains of the mercenary captain. Implosion followed by shattering. Utterly bizarre. The fragments were unnaturally cold, the destruction precise yet absolute in a way that defied the chaotic nature of most high-energy Dirge manifestations she'd studied or witnessed.
The patterns are wrong, Elyria thought, rising slowly, her gaze distant. Aberrant frequencies. Echoes of Grief in the pain-fueling aspect, perhaps, but fundamentally distorted. Colder. Sharper. That focus... and the shattering effect... She shook her head slightly, a rare sign of frustration. It complicates things. Deeply. This wasn't in the archives, wasn't in the fragmented Delver accounts. The Vestige's influence? Or something more? This resonance... it feels dangerous precisely because it defies understanding.
With one last, careful look around, she slipped back towards the cave, melting into the shadows. She paused just inside the ivy curtain, composing her features back into their usual mask of calm competence, pushing down the unease sparked by the unknown. Understanding Kallum was paramount.
She settled back into her watchful position near the cave entrance, her senses alert, her mind racing with calculations and troubling new variables, just as Kallum gasped awake behind her.
Kallum awoke with a startled gasp, heart hammering against his ribs not with fear, but with a surge of lingering, cold anger and a disquieting sense of scales demanding balance. Sweat beaded cold on his forehead.
The cave was quiet, filled only with the sound of his own ragged breathing and the steady drip of water somewhere deeper in the darkness. Morning's dim, grey glow filtered weakly through the tangled ivy strands across the entrance.
Across from him, Elyria sat silently, observing him. Her usual calm mask was firmly in place, but her pale eyes held that unusual intensity again, a focused, analytical light that seemed sharper than before, making Kallum distinctly uneasy.
"How long was I out?" he rasped, his throat dry and raw.
"Hours," she said softly, shifting forward slightly. Her gaze wasn't on his bandaged shoulder, but flicked between his face and the arm where his scar lay hidden. "The Dirge heals you swiftly – but not without cost. The energy signature lingers... It leaves a unique residue. Cold."
He nodded grimly, tracing the angry red lines beneath the bandages. The flesh felt strangely numb, yet pulsed underneath with that insistent, cold throb – a constant reminder of his power's terrible price and alien nature.
Elyria watched him, her gaze perceptive, almost unnervingly clinical. "Your display, last night," she began, her voice carefully neutral, breaking the delicate silence. "The energy you wielded..."
Kallum tensed, looking away sharply. "What about it?"
"I have studied the known Dirges extensively, Kallum," she continued, ignoring his defensiveness, her voice carrying the weight of careful observation. "Witnessed Grief manifest – violently, chaotically, fueled by raw, hot agony." She paused, her pale eyes narrowing slightly, clearly choosing her next words based on her analysis. "Yours... deviates."
"Deviates how?" he asked, defensive, and uneasy.
"The focus was absolute," she stated, leaning slightly forward. "But beyond that... the distinct coldness beneath the fury. The umber color, shot through with shadow. The way the energy seemed to harden, to shatter and implode rather than burn or consume." She met his gaze, her own reflecting a deep, complex puzzle. "The resonant frequency, the very signature of the power... it presents significant aberrations from the established patterns of Grief. Or," she added thoughtfully, "any of the other four primary Dirges as they are understood."
Kallum stared at her, his mouth dry. Not explicitly unknown, but... aberrant. Deviant. Words that suggested something wrong, something broken. The cold dread intensified. Still not Grief? Just... wrong Grief? Or something else entirely?
Elyria saw the turmoil in his eyes. "Its nature is... difficult to pinpoint, Kallum," she admitted, her voice softening slightly, though the analytical edge remained. "It resonates strangely. The patterns resist easy classification according to the known Dirges."
He swallowed hard, the uncertainty gnawing at him. If even she, with her evident knowledge, couldn't easily name it... "Is that... possible?" he asked finally, his voice brittle. "For a Dirge to be... distorted? Or..." He hesitated, the old fear returning. "...to bind more than one?"
"Binding multiple Major Dirges simultaneously remains theoretically impossible – the dissonance is too great," Elyria stated calmly, reiterating known lore. "But the Abyss is vast, its echoes complex. Perhaps the Vestige you carry interacts with your binding in an unforeseen way, altering its expression. Perhaps your binding itself occurred under... unique duress," she added, her gaze sharp for a moment, "creating a variant. Or perhaps it resonates with something more ancient, less understood." She left the possibilities hanging, avoiding definitive labels.
Aberrant. Distorted. Variant. The words circled in Kallum's mind, offering no comfort, only more questions. He glanced down at his trembling hands. They looked ordinary, raw from the fight, but beneath the skin pulsed the cold, waiting potential. The whispers urging retribution.
"So it might change me faster," he murmured, the dread settling deep. "Consume me quicker? If its rules are... different?"
Elyria hesitated, clearly weighing the lack of certainty. "That is the danger of the unknown, Kallum. Aberrations are, by definition, unpredictable. We lack established patterns to foresee its ultimate cost or effect." She seemed to make a conscious effort to shift from pure analysis back to guidance. "Awareness remains our only tool. Observe it. Understand its triggers – the cold fury, the sense of injustice? Understand its cost – the chilling exhaustion, the hardening within? Listen to its specific voice. It clearly doesn't just whisper of sorrow."
No, Kallum thought, the cold whispers seeming to agree in his mind. It whispers of balancing scales. Of debts owed. Of righteous ends delivered through cold fury. He kept this guarded. Elyria had her own secrets.
"Understanding comes slowly," she offered gently, pulling back slightly. "I don't have definitive answers for you, Kallum – only these observations, these troubling deviations from the known. And deep concerns. We must proceed with extreme caution."
They sat in silence for several long moments, the cave thick with the weight of this refined uncertainty. Not comfortably unknown, but worrisomely different.
Finally, Kallum looked at her again, the fundamental imbalance of their knowledge still grating. "You know so much, yet you walk this path differently. Without binding."
She met his gaze, the mask of guarded composure firmly back in place. "As I said, there are other ways. Other prices." Her evasion was familiar now, almost expected.
He didn't press. His own anomalous state felt like enough mystery for now. He sighed, a ragged sound. Elyria watched him, her concern still visible beneath the analytical surface.
"Your path forward is... less clear than most," she stated softly, choosing her words carefully. "Most Dirge-bearers contend with known dangers, predictable spirals. Yours holds... additional questions."
"Questions," he muttered grimly. "Not comforting."
"Yet perhaps still an advantage," Elyria countered, that strategic glint returning. "If its nature deviates, perhaps its weaknesses and strengths do too. Perhaps it can resist influences standard Dirges cannot, or interact with Abyssal energies, like the Vestige, in ways we can leverage. Its unique resonance might be key."
He nodded slowly, the cold logic a thin shield against the dread. An unpredictable weapon was still a weapon, perhaps. An unclear path was still a path forward.
"Then we continue," he said, his voice low but steady, resolve hardening over the fear. "Towards the Silent Peaks. Towards whatever answers wait beneath that shattered throne."
Elyria gave a single, sharp nod. "Yes. Answers, deeper mysteries, or perhaps just more deviations – but forward. If anyone is equipped to navigate such an aberration, Kallum Vire, it may well be you."
She rose gracefully, extending a careful hand. He took it after only a brief hesitation, rising unsteadily. The cold ache pulsed beneath his skin, a constant companion.
As they carefully pushed aside the ivy curtain and stepped out of the cave, the cool morning light felt sharp, almost clinical. It illuminated the path ahead but seemed to offer no warmth against the internal chill.
Behind them lay the cave, the echoes of battle, and the unsettling ambiguity surrounding Kallum's power – not Grief, but something worryingly different. Ahead lay unknown trials and secrets wrapped in silence.
Kallum felt irrevocably set apart. Elyria's careful analysis, her focus on deviation rather than classification, cast long shadows. He was marked uniquely – perhaps cursed, perhaps empowered in some terrible way yet unguessed – but undeniably an anomaly.
Whatever lay ahead, one thing was chillingly certain: the cold song of Reprisal hummed deeper within him than ever before, an aberrant note in the Abyss's chorus, waiting patiently for the next injustice demanding its unique, terrifying answer.