The archimage acknowledged him with the slightest nod of his head. At the corner of his mouth played a small, ambiguous curl - a smile or a grimace of some perverse amusement. Fengyu could not tell. For a brief moment their eyes met.

  What thoughts were moving behind that calm, distant gaze? Why had the archimage followed them here? And how had he even dared to?

  The intrusion felt obscene. Fengyu felt bare, stripped of the privacy of his secrets, as if the moment on the cliff had laid him open before forces eager to claim him.

  How much had he seen? How much had they all seen?

  Paronel Vaithar’s eyes lingered on him a moment longer, thoughtful and weighing, before he finally turned away.

  Without a word, the archimage began to pick his way down through the rocks, descending with an unhurried, almost leisurely ease. There was no haste in his movements, yet they carried the quiet certainty which made Fengyu uneasy. The man walked like someone who had seen exactly what he came for.

  Fengyu, unsettled, remained still for another heartbeat. Then he turned back toward the valley below. The world had returned to its familiar face. A dense canopy of green stretched beneath his feet, lush and endless, the forest breathing quietly under the distant shimmer of heat rising from the crimson peaks above. No cities. No hidden lights threading through unseen streets. Only leaves and wind and the endless murmur of water.

  Yet the calm felt deceptive now. Fengyu stared longer than he intended, trying to reconcile what he had seen with what lay before him. Had it truly vanished? Or had it hidden itself beneath the mist that pretended to be the forest?

  An unease settled in his chest. Somewhere beneath that tranquil sea of leaves, another reality had stirred - one that had noticed them.

  He tore his gaze away at last, rubbing the lingering dampness from his palms, unsure whether it came from the waterfall’s spray or his own sweat.

  When Fengyu turned, he found Joy still watching him closely. It was not concern in Joy’s gaze, nor approval. It was something deliberate calculating attention of someone measuring a result.

  For a fleeting instant, Fengyu wondered how much Joy had seen reflected in him.

  Joy stepped forward and bent slightly, retrieving the small crystal from where Fengyu had dropped it. The Heart of Nyx lay quietly in his palm now, its faint inner pulse steady, almost innocent, as if it had not just torn open the fabric of Fengyu’s perception.

  Joy studied it for a moment before lifting his eyes again.

  “So what did you see?” he asked calmly.

  “I… don’t know how to describe it,” Fengyu said slowly. “It was so different from what I say in the Seer’s Department. It was so much more real, much more detailed. The were no more abstract currents, threads and colours… It was so close… The valley… it broke apart, like the world split into layers, like countless windows hanging in the air.”

  He frowned, trying to recall the impossible sight.

  “Behind them there were… other places. Forests, mountains, deserts… oceans, entire worlds. And the shapes there… they didn’t behave like anything I know. Things bent, twisted, moved… Even the colours… the colours weren’t colours I have names for.”

  “So what happened?” Joy asked again. “Why did you startle so suddenly?”

  Fengyu dragged a hand through his damp hair, still trying to steady his breath. For a moment he did not answer, searching for words that did not feel completely inadequate.

  “It was… too much,” he said at last. “When the valley broke apart, it wasn’t just other places I saw. It was possibilities. Endless ones.” He shook his head slightly, still trying to push away the memory of that crushing vastness. “World after world… every direction I looked there were more. Forests, deserts, oceans… things I couldn’t even understand. And every one of them felt real.”

  He exhaled slowly, his gaze drifting back toward the valley as if the sight might return.

  “I suddenly felt…” He hesitated again. “Small. Not just small - insignificant. Like I had stumbled into something so vast that I shouldn’t even exist inside it.” His jaw tightened faintly. “It felt like the weight of all those worlds was pressing down at once. Like if I stayed there another moment, my mind would simply… break.”

  He paused, glancing briefly toward Mokai.

  “And then he caught me,” Fengyu finished quietly, “before I ran.”

  Mokai shifted beside him.

  “I think… he pulled me into it,” he said. “Into whatever he was seeing.”

  Joy’s eyes moved to him at once.

  “I didn’t see… layers of worlds,” Mokai continued slowly. “For me it was just one.” His gaze drifted briefly toward the valley. “A world right in front of us. Cities. Lights. So vivid they felt real enough to touch.” His brow furrowed as he recalled it. “I froze when I saw it. It felt… wrong somehow. Alien. Dangerous… And then Fengyu broke the vision before I could understand more.”

  Mokai’s description was carefully incomplete.

  He had said nothing about how perfectly that world had aligned with the valley before them. Nothing about how the cities had not hovered in some distant dimension, but had rested exactly where the forest now stood - hidden only behind that thin canopy of trees.

  Fengyu glanced at him from the corner of his eye.

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  Joy was silent for a while after Mokai finished.

  The seer’s fingers turned the Heart of Nyx slowly, the crystal catching fragments of light as if it held small, trapped stars inside it.

  “I have never heard of such an experience,” he admitted at last.

  “The Nyx current reveals itself differently to every mind. Some see colours, others hear tones, some perceive shapes, or living echoes. The mind translates higher dimensional energy into symbols it can understand. It has always been… personal. And then, many struggle to describe what they experienced.”

  He turned the crystal once more between his fingers before lifting his gaze fully to Fengyu.

  “But pulling another person into the vision…” Joy said slowly. “That is something else entirely.”

  For the first time, there was the faintest trace of genuine astonishment in his voice.

  “An untrained mind should barely be able to anchor itself within the Nyx Void perception. To extend that perception to someone else…” He shook his head faintly. “No record speaks of such a thing.”

  Joy studied Fengyu again, longer this time, as if considering something he had believed settled for sure.

  “That,” he said quietly, “is truly unheard of.”

  No one spoke for a while after that.

  The wind moved softly along the ridge, carrying the whisper of the waterfall and the quiet breath of the valley below.

  “That is enough for today,” Joy said at last. “We should return.”

  He did not elaborate further. Whatever conclusions he was forming remained locked behind the composed mask, he schooled his features into.

  Mokai helped Fengyu fully to his feet, though Fengyu no longer needed the support. Together they began to pick their path down through the rocks.

  Fengyu walked in silence.

  The rocks shifted under his boots, but his thoughts moved elsewhere - circling the same bitter realization that had been growing in him for days now.

  Everywhere he turned, someone seemed to be watching, measuring, guiding.

  The Seers.

  The Guild.

  Now even Mokai.

  A hollow weight settled in his chest.

  For a long time he had felt it creeping, but now it was impossible to deny. Somewhere along the way he had stopped being simply Fengyu, he had become an asset. A tool these quiet, patient forces intended to shape and use.

  And the most unsettling part of it all was the quiet certainty that he had already stepped far too deep into their designs to simply walk away.

  They left the rocks behind and followed the narrow path that wound back along the stream. Soon the harsh stone gave way again to softer ground, and the familiar herb fields spread before them in gentle waves of green.

  Fengyu walked through the green expanse in silence.

  Everything here felt simple and ordered - the careful rows of plants, the slow rhythm of wind through the grass, the distant shape of the Abode waiting quietly at the edge of the fields.

  Yet none of it reached him.

  The valley he had seen still lingered behind his eyes, layered with hidden cities and watching lights. The archimage’s quiet smile, Joy’s calculating gaze, the pulsing warmth of the Heart of Nyx - all of it moved through his thoughts like pieces of a game he had to play.

  They were halfway through the herb fields when Fengyu broke the silence.

  “Joy.”

  The seer slowed slightly but did not turn his head.

  “What exactly is that stone? The Heart of Nyx?” he asked. “And why is it called the Heart of Nyx?”

  Joy walked a few steps more before answering.

  “It is simply a focus,” he said at last. “A stone used long ago by Elarion, the founder of Mytharok. When Elarion entered the state of the Nyx Void, he often rested upon it. It helped him anchor his mind while exploring his visions.”

  He lifted the crystal slightly between his fingers, letting the light pass through it.

  “That is why the seers later named it the Heart of Nyx,” Joy finished. “Not because the stone itself contains anything extraordinary, but because it once rested at the centre of Elarion’s practice.”

  The explanation sounded simple, almost casual. Too casual.

  Fengyu watched the crystal for another moment but said nothing more. Somehow, he doubted that something capable of tearing open his perception of reality had earned its name merely because an ancient guy liked to hold to it while meditating.

  “Later, the crystal was moved to the Temple,” Joy continued. “And, eventually, it was broken into smaller, portable pieces. Others discovered it could be used to enter the Nyx Void on their own. Each fragment retained a trace of Elarion’s intent, a faint echo of his thoughts.”

  Joy looked up at Fengyu. “Those pieces were placed into the walls of the suspended chamber. That is why it is… easier to enter the Void there.”

  Fengyu did not outright question Joy’s words - it would be unwise, but he probed carefully, pressing for details.

  “And… where did the original stone come from?” he asked slowly, testing the waters. “Where was it taken from? Was the Nyx Void tied to the place where Elarion practiced? Why Nyx? Does it mean something?”

  Joy admitted quietly, “It is not known.”

  “Some say the place where Elarion first practiced was called Nyx. That it was… a world in itself, extraordinary and attuned to the Void. Others say he simply named his favourite spot to meditate ‘the Nyx,’ and that was enough.”

  Fengyu frowned, absorbing the ambiguity. Somehow he sensed that the history of Mytharok’s beginnings was far more tangled. he simplicity of Joy’s explanation felt carefully measured, hiding more than it revealed.

  “Does it… have a meaning? Nyx?” he asked.

  “Some say Elarion named it Nyx because it means… nothing. Null. Void. Not darkness, not night - but the sense of having nothing to hold onto. The myth tells it simply: Nyx is a reminder that some things exist beyond the reach of hands, beyond the grasp of even the strongest will. Elarion discovered that long before anyone else - and the Heart of Nyx still carries that lesson.”

  Fengyu thought back to his own vision. The valley shattering into countless panels, the dizzying flow of worlds, the threads of life twisting in every direction, each tugging at his mind. The panic, the vertigo, the sheer, unrelenting sense of being too small, too insignificant…

  Maybe it wasn’t just a story told to give meaning to a name. Maybe Nyx really was nothing. Null. Void. Something that could not be held, not even by the strongest mind.

  Perhaps that was the lesson Elarion had left behind - not to master the Void, not to conquer it, but to witness it, to endure it, and to remember that it existed beyond the reach.

  By the time they reached the abode, the sunlight had begun to soften, spilling gold across the walls and veranda.

  Paronel Vaithar lounged casually in the armchair, legs crossed, hands resting lightly in his lap. He did not rise, did not speak, merely observed them with the same inscrutable composure he had displayed on the ridge. Fengyu’s stomach tightened slightly as he passed by.

  He made his way to the small room at the back of the abode, the one he had claimed for himself, and closed the door behind him.

  Not long after, a quiet knock came at the door. Mokai stepped inside, settling himself on the edge of the bed. “I thought I’d stay here,” he said, voice casual. “I’d rather share this room with you than any of the mages.”

  Fengyu paused, studying him for a moment. Then, without a word, he moved to a nearby chair and pulled it close, seating himself squarely across from Mokai.

  Every line of his posture, the way he leaned slightly forward, emphasized the weight behind this moment. Mokai felt it immediately. This was not a casual conversation, not a friendly exchange. Fengyu wanted him to understand that whatever came next, it demanded honesty and attention.

  Mokai’s eyes met Fengyu’s, steady but wary. The quiet weight of the room pressed between them, heavier than the walls or the ceiling.

  “You knew.” Fengyu stated it simply. No questions, no hesitation, only certainty.

  Mokai’s jaw tightened slightly, the faint flicker of surprise passing over his features. That single statement demanded an answer.

  It was not accusation, not anger, but it was an opening, a hinge that could swing toward trust and alliance.

  Fengyu leaned in slightly, letting the pause stretch, letting Mokai feel that whatever came next would bind them or break them.

  “I need you to admit it,” he said quietly, his gaze unflinching. “If we are to walk forward… we start with honesty.”