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Inside Salile’s silent heart, Thane endures the Test and comes out changed, forced to choose what he believes in as the line between illusion and truth begins to break apart. When Bostick follows them into the chamber, Thane uses the power bound to his father’s watch to command the Unseen and lead the others out of the city, then turns toward a new path with one conviction he can no longer ignore: he has to find the Heart and heal it.
Chapter 17 - Into the Wastelands
Thane didn’t look back. He didn’t want to.
Neither did the others.
Salile lingered behind them, shrouded in darkness. Hidden and forgotten to time. But dangerous and protected.
Though the sun blazed ahead, its warmth did little to thaw the chill Salile left behind. The streets and alleyways they’d walked only moments ago were already slipping into memory—vanished behind its eternal veil.
If Salile was a city suspended in time, what lay ahead had been devoured by it.
It felt like stepping off the map—into the forgotten. Into the abandoned.
The Wastelands.
The cliffs that bookended the city continued northward into the sun—but here, they were different. Bleached. Bone-dry. Dead.
They tapered off in the distance, giving way to the endless expanse of desert—barren flats interrupted by jagged buttes, wind-worn arches, and dry ancient riverbeds choked with thorn and wind-scoured bone. It was beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful—stark, sharp, and uncaring. At the edge of sight to the north, barely visible through the heat shimmer, the snowcapped Velspire Mountains stood like a broken crown, sentinels to the barren ice-choked northlands beyond.
The early morning light burned rust-orange against the cracked red stone, the sky a cruel, cloudless stretch that offered no comfort and even less shade. And then the heat struck them—oppressive and unrelenting.
Nobody spoke for the first hour. The silence was not camaraderie—it was fatigue, the kind that sits behind the eyes and tightens the throat. Even Kaelir, always vigilant, looked worn.
They’d stripped down to their lightest layers—jackets tied around waists, sleeves rolled high, collars open to the scorching air. Even then, sweat clung to them like oil. The sun had no mercy.
Lirien moved ahead of Thane, her tunic clinging to her frame, her skin slick with heat and dust. Her arms—scarred, sun-darkened, strong—moved like she’d done this before. There was grace in her efficiency. Power in how she endured without complaint.
Thane wasn’t sure why he noticed. But he did.
The heat pressed against him from every side. His shirt stuck to his back, damp and useless. Each step dragged. His temper edged up, brittle and sharp. But then he looked down at his wrist. The watch.
It ticked softly, a sound impossibly clear in this wide, dead place. And with each tick, he could feel a pulse—not just in the gears, but in himself. A mirrored echo that rippled beneath his skin.
He flexed his fingers. The faintest shimmer of Wild Magic danced across his knuckles, and the cracks—those pale blue veins of energy that had first appeared in Asmenson—briefly flashed across his skin, pulsing in time with the watch’s beat.
Cael’s voice cut into the quiet.
“That thing you wear—where did you get it?”
That’s when the voice returned.
Let him ask. They fear what they can’t control. But you? You were never meant to be controlled.
Thane didn’t flinch. He didn’t speak. But Echo—its voice, its presence—whatever it was, it was louder now. Clearer. More confident. It no longer felt like a symptom to him. It felt like a companion.
Thane glanced up, eyes narrowing. “It’s my father’s.”
Cael’s eyes stayed locked on the timepiece. “It’s not your father’s anymore.”
“Leave it,” Thane muttered, his anger rising. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” Erynn said behind him, her voice quieter, but firm.
He knew it as well as they did. There was something about that watch—it might as well have been shouting.
But they didn’t have a chance to press further.
“Why the hell are we walking through a desert?” Thane blurted, the heat biting at his neck. “There has to be another way.”
Kaelir glanced over his shoulder, sweat dripping from his jawline. “There is. It’s called the Emerald Pass. Out of the Silent Reach. On the other side of Salile.” He gave a dry, humorless smile. “Would you like to head back that way?”
Thane exhaled sharply and turned away. The sweat felt like it was boiling under his skin. He hated this place. The light. The silence. The heat that clung to everything like a second skin.
“That’s enough,” Lirien said, not unkindly. “We need to find cover before the sun gets higher. If we don’t stop soon, we’ll burn or end up killing each other.”
There were various nods and grunts of agreement.
“There,” Kaelir said, pointing to the lee of a broken stone ridge, where a jagged overhang offered a sliver of shade. The Wasteland’s heat was a living thing—dry, blistering, metallic on the tongue. Sweat dried the instant it formed. Every breath tasted like it had passed through fire.
The sun fell behind the ridge-line, but the heat lingered, pulsing off the stones.
As the others settled into the shade, Cael crouched low, brushing his hand along the sand until his fingers struck something buried—smooth and cold. He scraped the surface clean to reveal the edge of a half-buried Elinath Stone, like they’d seen in the woods on the way to Salile. But this one had a deep crack across its surface, though the carvings on it were whole and intact.
From the inner pocket of his cloak, he pulled a sliver of bone—shaved smooth and notched at one end.
“No, don’t,” Erynn said, grabbing his arm, her eyes soft with concern. “It’s cracked.”
He paused, looking her in the eyes. “We’ve got days ahead. If we don’t make it out of here, it’s all for nothing.”
They both shared a breath, eyes connected, and then she released her grip.
He crouched again, brushing away more of the sand. The crack in the stone pulsed faintly—as if the magic was leaking.
He exhaled once, then placed the bone to its surface and began tracing sigils carved into the cracked face, muttering words that were low and foreign, syllables that seemed to twist the air itself.
A low hum bloomed beneath their feet. Then, a shimmer—thin at first, like heat rising from the sand—expanded outward in a rush of blue light.
The temperature dropped instantly. Cool, crisp air swept over them like a wave. The dome held, faintly glowing around them.
Lirien sighed, collapsing against the rock wall. “Best thing I’ve felt in weeks.”
“Whoa, a little AC… nice pops,” Thane said, laying on the ground, wiping the sweat from his brow.
Cael said nothing. A thin line of blood trickled from his ear and pattered onto the stone. He wiped it away with the side of his hand.
“This place isn’t stable anymore,” he muttered.
“The Rending did many things to this world,” Erynn added, handing him a square of cloth.
Behind her, Kaelir leaned against the rock of the overhang. “At least the old ones left us something useful for once.”
“Says the eternal skeptic,” Erynn smirked. “But the old ones left us more than just stones, didn’t they?”
She turned, her gaze landing squarely on Thane. “Isn’t that right?”
Thane tensed. The question slid under his skin.
“What do you mean?” he asked, already knowing.
“That watch,” she said gently. “It’s not just a keepsake.”
Thane looked down at it, the metal catching a faint shimmer of sunlight as it pulsed against his wrist.
“It was my father’s,” he said, quieter this time.
He didn’t want to think about the hospital room. About his father’s hand going still. About the way the watch had kept ticking.
“That’s all it is.”
“You sure about that?” Cael asked. “Because I saw it back there in Salile. It’s more than a mere timepiece. I think we all know that.”
Thane’s hand closed over the watch. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He tugged his sleeve down over the watch, but the thing still pulsed against his skin—steady, unrelenting.
Erynn didn’t press. Not yet. She reached into her satchel and drew out the Codex, its leather binding dulled by years of use. She knelt in the sand, flipping through the weathered pages with slow precision until she stopped at one.
She turned the book toward Thane. “It’s already been drawn.”
Thane hesitated, then leaned forward.
There it was.
The sketch was precise. The same spiral face, the same flared edge, the same block numbers. Even the little nick near the edge.
He swallowed hard. Something twisted in his chest. How could a drawing of his dad’s watch be in this book, in this place? It made no sense.
Cael knelt beside Erynn, studying the page. “It’s called a Foccil,” he murmured. “I remember seeing the name once. Nothing more than a footnote in a closed archive.”
“It was forgotten,” Erynn added. “Disappeared to time. Until now. It was said to allow one to harness the power of the Wild Magic… wielded only by someone from beyond.”
She looked at Thane. “The Chosen One.”
He didn’t respond. Couldn’t. His throat tightened, eyes still on the page. Trying to make sense of it all, but failing.
“I’m not him,” he muttered finally, almost to himself. “You’re putting too much faith in that book. In me.”
Erynn closed the Codex softly. Dust settled between them.
“Maybe,” she said. “But even the Codex doesn’t say who he’d be. Just that he’d come.”
Cael didn’t argue. He took the Codex from her and opened it again, slower this time, reading in silence as if he were seeing it all anew.
No one said anything more.
And in the quiet, the watch ticked—steady, unyielding.
Later, as the dome of cool air shimmered around them and the stars began to bloom above the horizon, they sat in uneasy companionship.
Lirien pointed skyward. “That’s the Ox-Sisters,” she said. “They say they carry the heavens on their horns.”
Erynn added softly, “And that one—Tir’Elin. The Traveler’s Eye. Long ago, people named the Elinath Stones named after it. Said to watch over those who wander. Some even say it sees the roads we don’t yet know we’ll walk, guiding us.”
Kaelir snorted. “Or maybe someone strung those stars together centuries ago to tell you what to believe.”
Cael chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “Just like Aelith. Stories sold to the desperate.”
Erynn stiffened. “That’s not fair. You don’t know her.”
“I know more about her than you can imagine,” Cael replied. “And her type. Mystics, prophets—they all claim to see the truth, and they’ll all take coin to tell you what you want to hear.”
Lirien shifted, uneasy. “But she helps a lot of people. She gave us a warning—about you. And tried to undo the damage.”
Kaelir stepped in, his hands raised in quiet protest. “We’re not doing this. Not here. The desert doesn’t care who said what to whom years ago.”
But Cael pressed forward, heat rising in his voice. “That’s not what happened. We all know it. And yet people keep twisting it to make her look like some savior and me the villain.”
He turned away sharply, muttering, “I took the fall for the good of Arbelon. But that still doesn’t make her right.”
Erynn let out a quiet breath, gaze flicking back to the stars. “Maybe not. But sometimes it’s not about being right. It’s about needing hope. And she gives that to people.”
“Just be careful,” Cael said, quieter now. “She let me down. She might do the same to you.”
A heavy silence circled the group. Brief. Fragile. Then Kaelir laid a hand on Cael’s shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I never believed those things about you. If I did, you wouldn’t be here.”
Cael nodded, meeting Kaelir’s gaze, and let out a deep sigh.
That was enough to settle things. For now.
The conversation shifted—softer, unfocused. Stories of the Wasteland. Snatches of dry humor. Talk for the sake of talk.
Thane let their voices drift into the background as he lay back in the sand, arms folded behind his head.
The stars stared back—indifferent, ancient, familiar.
They looked no different from the ones back home. Just different shapes. Different names. And yet, the same sharp ache bloomed in his chest. One more thing to leave behind.
He was about to close his eyes when something about the stars changed. Some moved wrong. One constellation rotated. Another blinked, too rhythmically.
He blinked. They went still again.
In the silence, something flickered at the edge of vision—a shimmer, like heat rising, but colder somehow. A glitched mirage of the group walking ahead of themselves… but they looked wrong. Dimmer. Faded. Like echoes more than people. They moved with urgency, glancing over their shoulders.
A shadow passed through the illusion. Dark and too fast. Then—nothing.
A flicker of unease slid through his chest.
Was it a trick of the heat? A glitch in the world itself?
Or something deeper—something inside?
A voice sprouted in his mind. Calm. Clinical. The white hum of hospital fluorescents.
“The line between reality and delusion grows thinner with time,” said Dr. Hughes—his voice echoing from the depths of memory, as crisp and unshakable as if he stood in sand.
For a second, Thane lay motionless.
Maybe his sickness didn’t care which world it took first.
He closed his eyes, wishing it all away. But his wishes never came true. Not anymore.
He should’ve told them. But he didn’t know how. He was tired. Holding himself together. Holding his mother together. It was too much.
Almost on cue, Echo’s whispers came from the darkness.
You are more than their beliefs. They will survive if you survive.
He hated that it made sense. Hated more that part of him wanted to believe it.
He didn’t tell them this, either.
It seemed the desert was a place that kept its secrets.
“We move out,” Kaelir said, breaking the silence as he slung his pack over one shoulder.
The shimmer of cold air vanished as Cael pressed his hand to the cracked Elinath Stone. The carvings flickered once, then died. Heat spilled back into the space like a tide returning. Oppressive. Heavy. Real.
No one said a word. They just stood, adjusted gear, fell into line.
Ahead, the path dipped into a narrow pass flanked by two crumbling spires of stone. The moon hung between them, pale and perfect—a dream framed in dust.
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