The knowledge sat inside Ali like a swallowed stone. Cold, heavy, and indigestible.
For the next several days, every interaction with Lyra was viewed through this new, grim lens. When she retreated indoors after only a short time outside, he didn't just see convalescence; he saw a body losing a war of attrition against itself. When Elara pressed another cup of steaming, pungent tea into her daughter's hands, he saw a devoted mother fighting shadows with the wrong tools. When Kaelen's eyes followed Lyra with a concern he showed nowhere else, Ali saw a man guarding a treasure with a crack he couldn't see, slowly spreading.
And his own hands—the hands that had touched hers and felt that hollow chill—felt different. They weren't just tools for hauling and digging anymore. They were, according to the System, potential conduits for a force he couldn't feel or control. It was maddening.
He threw himself into the labor with a new, almost desperate intensity. The physical pain was a welcome distraction from the psychic weight of his secret. He split wood until his arms burned, focused on the clean, simple physics of the maul's arc and the satisfying crack of separation. He hauled stone until his back was a single sheet of ache, his mind occupied only with balance and footing.
[Skill Progress: Axemanship - Splitting (Level 2, Tier 0) → Level 3, Tier 0]
[Skill Progress: Manual Labor - Stone Hauling (Level 4, Tier 0) → Level 5, Tier 0]
[Brawn Tasks Branch Proficiency: 12% → 14%]
The progress was tangible, measurable. It was safe. Unlike the formless, terrifying problem of the knot in Lyra's core.
One evening, as Ali was oiling leather harnesses under Elara's direction—a new, finicky task that was spawning a [Leatherwork (Lv.1)] skill—Lyra sat nearby, carding raw, greasy wool.
"You work like you're being chased," she observed, not looking up from her task. Her voice was still soft, but stronger than it had been a week ago.
Ali paused, the oiled rag in his hand. "There's always more to do," he said, using the standard Steading excuse.
"There is," she agreed. "But Father works to finish a task. Bryn works to prove he can. You work… to forget something." She glanced at him then, her grey-green eyes clear and direct. "Is it the woods? What you saw there?"
It was a logical guess for her. The only source of trauma she could imagine for him. He seized the out.
"Some of it," he said, which wasn't a lie. The memory of the goblin's black eyes and the wyvern's shadow could still tighten his chest. "It was… large. Empty. I felt very small."
Lyra nodded, returning to her wool. "It is large. But not empty. Just full of things that aren't you." She said it with the simple acceptance of someone who had never known a world that was anything else. "The smallness doesn't go away. You just get used to carrying it."
Her words, meant to be comforting in their bleak way, felt like a key turning in a lock. You just get used to carrying it. She was talking about the forest, the fear. But he heard the echo of her own, greater burden. The thing she had carried every day of her life.
He wanted to say something. Do you feel cold inside? Do you feel like there's a hole where your strength should be? But the questions were impossible. They would reveal knowledge he shouldn't have. They would mark him as something other than a simple, displaced laborer. They might scare her, or worse, give her a hope he had no power to fulfill.
So he said nothing. He just went back to oiling the leather, the silence stretching between them, filled with the unsaid.
Later, in the cold solitude of the wood-shed, he confronted the System.
You confirmed it. It's her own mana, stuck. And I have the potential for it too. There has to be a next step. A theory. Something. Can we at least study it? Observe it without touching her?
The System's response was a scroll of cold logic.
[Proposal: Extended Passive Observation.]
Method: Utilize enhanced auditory and visual analysis to monitor Lyra's physiological parameters (respiratory depth, heart rate variability, capillary flush) in correlation with her activity, emotional state, and the time of day.
Goal: Identify patterns or triggers that cause the 'knot' to become more active or dormant. Map its influence.
Limitation: This will not lead to a cure. It will only provide a more detailed chart of the disease.
[Additional Proposal: Self-Investigation.]
Method: Attempt to meditate or focus inward, using my biofeedback protocols as a guide, to search for the 'dormant riverbed' of your own energy.
Risk: High probability of failure (99.9%). Without a reference point or activation catalyst, you are searching for a sense you do not possess in a language you do not speak.
Potential Benefit: If any resonance is detected, it may provide the first data point for understanding the nature of this world's metaphysical energy.
It was better than nothing. It was a direction.
The next day, Ali began his dual observation. As he worked, a part of his attention, guided by the System, remained on Lyra. He noted how her color worsened after a coughing fit, how her hand drifted to her core not just when tired, but sometimes when she was frustrated or sad. The knot was sensitive to more than just physical strain.
And at night, in the dark of the shed, he would sit on his straw pallet, close his eyes, and try to feel… nothing. Or everything. He tried to listen to his own heartbeat, to imagine energy flowing through his limbs, to visualize light in his core. It felt stupid. Profoundly, embarrassingly stupid. He felt nothing but the ache of his muscles and the prickle of the straw.
[Self-Investigation Session 1: No anomalous readings. Neural activity consistent with focused relaxation. No metaphysical energy signature detected.]
[Session 2: No detection.]
[Session 3: No detection. User's frustration levels are rising. This is counter-productive.]
After the third failed attempt, Ali lay back, gritting his teeth. He was a teenager trying to perform brain surgery on himself with instructions from a manual written in gibberish.
He heard the soft crunch of footsteps on dirt outside the shed archway. Not the heavy tread of Kaelen or Bryn. Lighter. He opened his eyes.
Lyra stood there, wrapped in a thick blanket over her dress, her face pale in the moonlight. She held two clay cups.
"You sigh too loudly to be asleep," she said, her voice a whisper in the quiet yard. "And you're worse company to yourself than you are to the goats." She held out one cup. "Mulled cider. Mother says it helps the spirit. It's just crab-apples and bark, but it's warm."
Ali sat up, stunned. He took the cup. The warmth seeped into his chilled fingers immediately. "Thank you."
She didn't leave. She sipped from her own cup, looking out at the yard, at the stars between the sharp tops of the palisade. "You asked about the cold," she said finally. "It's worse at night. Sometimes I think it will never leave. That I'll just… get colder and colder, until I stop." She said it without self-pity. It was just a fact, like the presence of the forest.
Ali's throat tightened. The secret screamed inside him. I know why. I know what it is. He took a sip of the bitter, warm cider. "You won't," he said, the words feeling utterly inadequate.
"How do you know?" she asked, not challenging, just wondering.
"Because you're still here," he said. "You got up. You brought cider. You're fighting it."
She was quiet for a long moment. "Maybe," she whispered. Then she turned and walked back to the longhouse, a ghost in the moonlight, leaving him alone with the warmth of the cup and the crushing weight of a truth he could not share.
He had a direction now, but it was a path leading into a deeper dark. He was observing a dying girl's symptoms and groping in the void of his own soul for a spark. The foundation he was building was made of stone and callus, but the real structure he needed—one of knowledge, of power, of healing—felt more distant than ever.
The grind continued. But now, every log split, every stone hauled, was done with a new, silent question echoing in the rhythm of the work: How do I find the key before the lock rusts shut forever?