Chapter 178: Settling in
Chapter 178: Settling in
Rohan did not find a way off Cael Athis that night.
He did not learn the true price of passage. He did not discover why Hestia’s name made Maerin go still, nor why the Great System had begun offering him quests when his Origin Realm system had never once cared enough to suggest anything more helpful than acknowledging that something had died.
What he did do was sleep.
Not well.
The ash-house gave him a narrow bed in a side room with heated stone beneath the floor, a shuttered slit for a window, and a door that did not lock from the inside. Someone had placed a folded blanket at the end of the bed, a jug of mineral water on a low shelf, and a small bell made from dark glass beside it.
For emergencies, apparently.
Rohan had stared at the bell for a while before lying down.
’If I ring this, do they come to help me or stab me?’
Probably depended on the emergency.
His body made the decision before his mind could keep worrying. The moment he lay down, the last reserves of tension that had dragged him across the Ashen Marches finally loosened. His wounds pulsed. His throat felt raw. His back stung where the cinders had kissed through his coat.
But the room was warm, the air was filtered, and no wind scraped ash against his skin.
That was enough.
Sleep took him in pieces.
He woke often.
Once to footsteps outside the door.
Once to the faint clang of metal from deeper inside Veyrhold.
Once to his own hand twitching toward the spear lying beside the bed.
Each time, he listened until his heartbeat slowed, then sank again into uneasy darkness.
When morning came, though morning on Cael Athis was little more than the violet gloom becoming slightly less oppressive, Rohan woke to another panel hovering above his face.
[Rest Completed]
[Wounds Stabilised]
[Temporary Condition Removed: Ash Exposure]
Rohan stared up at the words.
Then he blinked.
"Rest completed," he muttered. "How generous."
The panel remained for a moment, then dissolved into faint motes of light.
He lay still, gathering himself.
The Great System was much more talkative than the Origin Realm system.
That thought kept returning to him, turning over and over in the back of his mind. The Origin Realm system had felt impersonal. Brutally useful, yes, but distant. Kill a beast. Receive a notification.
Obtain an Origin Crystal. Absorb energy. Grow stronger through effort and resources.
The Great System, by contrast, commented.
’Or it might be Hestia herself, who knows at this point.’
It gave quests. It tracked conditions. It nudged him toward knowledge. It rewarded him for following Captain Maerin to a building he had already been walking toward.
That might have been convenient.
It also might have been terrifying.
A system that simply recorded the world was one thing. A system that shaped behaviour was another.
Rohan sat up slowly, wincing as the bandage around his arm pulled against the healing bite wound.
The healers had done good work. The pain was dull now instead of sharp, and the ugly heat that had worried him the night before had faded. He flexed his fingers. Stiff, but usable.
His spear was still where he had left it.
That alone improved his mood.
He took a cautious sip from the water jug, then stood and dressed in the cleaner ash-house tunic someone had left for him. His own clothes had been taken to be scrubbed and patched, though he doubted any amount of scrubbing would make them look normal again. The tunic was rough, grey, and designed to wrap tightly at the wrists and neck to keep ash out. It made him look more like a Veyrhold resident, though the effect was ruined by his face, his lack of a mask, and the general impression that he had been dropped into their world without reading any of the rules.
Which was accurate.
A knock came at the door.
Rohan picked up the spear before answering.
"Come in."
The door opened to reveal Liora.
She stood on one leg, leaning heavily on a crutch made from blackwood and bone. Her left leg was splinted from thigh to ankle, wrapped in layers of stiff cloth. Her face was still bruised, and there was a line of dried salve near her hairline where the cut had been cleaned. But she was awake, upright, and glaring with enough energy that Rohan suspected she would survive out of spite if medicine failed.
"You’re alive," he said.
"So are you."
"Currently."
"That answer is less amusing the second time."
She stepped inside without replying or waiting for an invitation, then lowered herself into the room’s single chair with a sharp inhale she clearly tried to hide.
Rohan watched her settle.
"You should be resting."
"I was resting. It was awful."
"That does sound unbearable."
"It was. Everyone kept telling me not to move."
"After your leg was crushed?"
"Pinned," she corrected. "Not crushed."
Liora glanced at his spear, then at his bandaged arm.
"You healed well."
"I had good healers."
"You also have strange skin."
"It’s an ability, don’t you guys have those here?"
"Not as far as I am aware, for some reason this planet seems to restrict us from obtaining them... the last time someone on this planet had one, besides you, was the original shipwrecked bunch."
"Hmm.." Rohan answered awkwardly. He didn’t realise that he’d brought up what was likely a sensitive topic for her.
For a moment, they sat in awkward silence.
The room was too small for silence to feel comfortable. Rohan could hear the faint hiss of heated pipes beneath the floor and the distant scrape of someone brushing ash outside. Liora’s gaze kept drifting over him, not rudely, but with a directness common to people who had nearly died and now felt less patient about social softness.
Finally, she said, "Bryan lived."
Rohan let out a breath he had not realised he was holding.
"Good."
"He woke before dawn. He remembers the cart breaking. He remembers Sera dying. He remembers the skarn. He even remembers you dragging him."
Rohan’s throat tightened slightly at the dead woman’s name.
"Sera was the other one?"
Liora nodded.
"My cousin."
Rohan went still.
"I’m sorry."
Liora looked away.
"Skarn took her before you arrived. You couldn’t have done anything."
"It still happened."
Her fingers tightened around the crutch.
"Things like that happen here all the time. We’ve long become used to it, despite how much it hurts us inside."
Rohan didn’t have a reply for that.
There were no easy words for it, and he disliked fake comfort almost as much as he disliked being helpless. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
Liora looked back at him after a moment.
"I told Maerin what happened."
"Thank you."
"You saved me. I am not so miserable that I’d lie about that."
"Good to know."
"She will still question you."
"I assumed."
"She questions everyone. She once questioned a cracked water barrel for half a morning because she didn’t like how it had split."
Rohan blinked. Was this... another one of her jokes?
"Did the barrel confess?" He asked.
"No. But she found out Jorren had dropped it."
"The shield-bearer?"
"Yes."
"I like him already."
"You like anyone who laughs at your bad jokes."
"Not true. He barely laughed."
"He made the Jorren sound."
"The Jorren sound?"
"You’ll know it when you hear it again."
Despite his mood, Rohan smiled.
It was small, but it surprised him.
Liora noticed. Then her face sobered.
"Maerin will give you guest-right today if Bryan confirms my account in front of the ledger."
"The ledger?"
"The crash ledger."
Rohan’s interest sharpened.
Liora saw that too.
"You really know nothing."
"I know many things," Rohan said. "Just not the things everyone here considers basic."
"Ignorance like that is dangerous on this planet."
"Some say Ignorance is bliss."
She leaned back, studying him.
"Every family in Veyrhold traces its line to someone in the crash ledger. Crew. Passengers. Sleep-cargo. Bonded workers. The first names. The first dead. The first births after impact. If your name is not descended from the ledger, you are not shipblood."
"Shipblood," Rohan repeated.
"That is what we are."
"And I am not."
"No."
There was no insult in her voice, but no softness either. She was stating a fact as firmly as Maerin might have stated the direction of a skarn trail.
Rohan looked at the narrow window.
A thin line of violet light edged the shutters.
"That’s why people looked at me like that."
"One reason."
"What are the others?"
"You came from the west. You have abilities. You speak strangely. You saved three people, killed skarn badly, refused to surrender a weapon to Captain Maerin, and claimed you were brought here by someone whose name appears in old warning-songs."
Rohan slowly turned back to her.
"Warning-songs."
Liora seemed to immediately regret saying it.
"Not my place."
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"Because some things are not given to strangers before the ledger."
"I saved your life."
"And that is why I am sitting here telling you more than I should."
Her voice had sharpened, then softened.