CHAPTER FIVE

  That voice.

  A long pause.

  "...Yue?"

  The word came out in English — quiet, careful, like he wasn't sure he was allowed to say it yet.

  Even Yue was caught off guard.

  "What?"

  "Is that you? Where are you?"

  "Yes. It's me."

  Ashen went very still.

  Is it really Yue? My little brother?

  Could be an imposter. Could be something else entirely in a world full of things he still didn't fully understand. But that voice. That specific combination of confusion and mild irritation packed into a single syllable.

  Na. Same dumb kid as always.

  He let out a slow breath and felt something he hadn't realized he'd been carrying for years quietly leave his shoulders. He set his blade down on the table. Pulled out a chair. Sat.

  He reached for the bottle of wine on the shelf beside him and poured himself a glass.

  "Dumbass," he said, completely calm. "I had my memories from the start. And why would I be traumatized by your voice of all things?"

  Thought so, Yue replied.

  And that was essentially that.

  The reunion of two brothers separated across lifetimes and the width of the universe lasted until morning and looked, from the outside, like absolutely nothing special.

  They talked. They argued. They laughed at each other more than they laughed with each other. They told their stories — the long versions, the ones with all the embarrassing details included — and interrupted each other constantly and got sidetracked into tangents that had nothing to do with anything important.

  Sometimes the conversation went quiet and serious for a while. Old memories. People they'd both loved who were gone now. The strange weight of having lived two lives and remembering both.

  Then one of them would say something slightly too honest and the other would make fun of them for it and they'd be laughing again within thirty seconds.

  By the time the room started getting lighter neither of them had noticed the hours passing.

  "Huh. Morning already," Yue said.

  "I'm used to it." Ashen stood and stretched. "Don't worry about me."

  He crossed to the window and pushed it open.

  The sun was just beginning to rise — a slow warm climb over the rooftops of Dusthaven, painting the sky in shades of amber and pale gold. The city below was still mostly quiet. A rare moment of stillness in a place that was usually anything but.

  Neither of them said anything for a moment.

  Both of them were smiling slightly without quite meaning to.

  Ashen sat on the edge of the bed and looked out at the rising sun.

  "So. What now? You came here looking for something that could work as fuel, right?"

  "That's the plan. Though I'm starting to think it's more complicated than I expected."

  "Understatement." Ashen leaned back on his palms. "This world runs on completely different principles than Earth. Everything here — power, technology, infrastructure — it all operates on mana instead of electricity. Even lightning isn't electrical. It's mana based."

  He held up his hand and touched the exposed wire running along the wall beside the bed. Nothing happened. No shock. Just a faint sensation of something flowing — smooth and foreign.

  "Hydro mana," he said. "Generated from the water mill downstream. Feels nothing like current. If your ship runs on conventional power I genuinely don't know what we're going to do about fuel."

  "That's what I was afraid of."

  "You mentioned limitations earlier. How bad is it actually?"

  Yue was quiet for a moment.

  "More cons than pros honestly. I can't possess anything that doesn't run on electrical current. I can't carry anything heavy. I can't understand a single word anyone says unless I'm talking to you. And my ship is sitting in orbit running on a two month countdown."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Cheerful situation."

  "I have good days."

  Ashen snorted. Then he reached down and pulled something out from under the bed — a bag roughly the size of a human head, tied shut with rope. He set it on the table and looked at it for a second.

  "Check this out."

  He untied the rope and opened the bag.

  Blue crystals. Dozens of them, each one glowing faintly with a cold inner light.

  "Mana cores," Ashen said. "Pulled from monsters during an escort mission last month. These are what powers everything in Aethoria. Every device, every piece of infrastructure, every weapon system — it all runs on condensed mana stored in these."

  Yue drifted closer and examined one carefully.

  Something is radiating from it. A kind of energy. Not electricity — but energy.

  He tried to interface with it the way he'd tried with everything else on Aethoria.

  Nothing immediate. But the sensation was different from the flat dead resistance he'd felt everywhere else. This was more like a door he didn't have the right key for yet.

  "If these things generate power on the same fundamental principle as electricity — just a different medium — then Nue might be able to work with them. He'd need to figure out the conversion but the underlying logic could be compatible."

  "That's what I was thinking," Ashen said. "Take some with you."

  "How many can I carry?"

  He tested it carefully — picking up cores one by one, feeling for the point where his grip started failing.

  One. Three. Five. Seven.

  The eighth slipped. Ashen's hand shot out and caught it before it hit the floor.

  "Nice," Yue said.

  "I try." Ashen set it back in the pile. "Seven it is then."

  He found a smaller bag and began transferring the cores into it while Yue held them steady.

  "You think it'll actually work?"

  "No idea. But trying is better than not trying."

  "Fair." Ashen tied off the bag. "What about Nue — is it reliable?"

  "He has the entire data archive of an interstellar AI empire stored in his memory banks. I'd say reliable is an understatement."

  "Good." Ashen paused. "So the quest."

  "Don't."

  "I already accepted it."

  "I know. I'm not telling you not to go. I'm just registering my opinion formally."

  "Noted and ignored." Ashen started gathering his gear with the practiced efficiency of someone who had packed up and moved out dozens of times. "Head west from here and look for the military encampment near the border. You'll see it from above. I don't know which unit they'll assign me to so you'll have to find me yourself."

  "Naturally. Give me the difficult job."

  "You're the one who can fly." He checked the load on his gun. Set it down. Picked it up again. Set it down. "Don't hover over me constantly while I'm working. It's unsettling."

  "I make no promises."

  Ashen almost smiled. "And don't get yourself stuck in another rock."

  "That was one time."

  "Twice actually."

  A pause.

  "...Twice. Yes."

  He slung his pack over his shoulder and turned toward the door. Then stopped.

  "This is my last contract," he said. Without turning around. "After this one — I'm done with mercenary work. There are things I want to do that I can't do chained to other people's wars."

  "I know."

  "Good." He reached for the door handle. "Don't die while I'm gone."

  "I'm literally a soul. I'm fairly difficult to kill."

  "You got stuck in a rock twice."

  He left before Yue could respond to that.

  He was gone within the hour.

  I watched him leave from above — just a figure moving through the early morning streets of Dusthaven, pack over one shoulder, the same easy unhurried stride he'd apparently carried across two lifetimes.

  I didn't follow immediately.

  I just stayed there for a moment longer than I needed to.

  It's strange. We spent maybe six hours talking after being separated for longer than either of us can properly comprehend. And it felt like nothing. Like no time at all.

  I think that means something. I'm just not sure what.

  I turned west and accelerated.

  The small bag of mana cores was awkward to carry at full speed but manageable. I kept my pace controlled and my attention split between navigation and the faint warmth radiating from the crystals.

  My mind kept drifting back to everything Ashen had told me during the night.

  He'd recovered his memories at age five. A wolf attack. A moment of genuine mortal danger that cracked something open in his mind and let everything flood back in. He'd spent two weeks in a hospital bed piecing together who he actually was — a grown man's memories inside a child's body, in a world that operated on entirely different rules than anything those memories contained.

  Five years old, I thought. That takes a specific kind of stubbornness to survive.

  He'd grown up knowing everything and being able to use none of it. Earth knowledge meant almost nothing here. The civilization of Aethoria had developed along completely different lines — mana instead of electricity, magic instead of industry, a social structure built around power levels that had no equivalent back home.

  He'd had to learn it all from scratch. Alongside everything else a child learns. While carrying the full weight of a previous life in the back of his mind.

  And somehow he'd turned it into this. A mercenary company. A reputation. A network of people who trusted him with their lives.

  I spent seven hundred million years evolving in a rock, I thought. He spent twenty years building something real with his bare hands in a world that gave him nothing.

  I'm not sure which of us had it harder.

  I kept moving.

  The world passed beneath me — forests and roads and small settlements, the occasional flash of mana energy from a vehicle or a distant city. Aethoria stretched out in every direction, enormous and detailed and completely unlike anything I had words for yet.

  The breakdown Ashen had given me played through my memory in order:

  Aethoria. Three moons. Magic integrated into every level of civilization. More dangerous than any fantasy I'd ever read about on Earth.

  The mana hierarchy — commoners with basic ability at the bottom, ancient tier beings at the top, gods and dragons somewhere beyond that operating outside anyone's full understanding.

  The kingdoms — Valdris, morally grey, currently being pressed by Solmara. Solmara, enormous and aggressive, convinced they were doing the right thing. Ironmere, neutral on paper and funding everyone privately. The Verdant Circle, ancient and vast and watching everything from the shadows.

  Dusthaven — where we met. The wild west of Aethoria. A city that asked no questions and expected nothing.

  Thornwall — the capital of Valdris. A city built around a wall that had never fallen.

  Ashen had said there was more. He'd tell me when I got back.

  When I get back.

  I kept moving until the thin shimmer of the planetary barrier came into view ahead — and beyond it, the dark and the stars and somewhere out there a broken ship running

  "Nue is in sleep mode orbiting the planet. I need to get these cores back and see if he can work with them before the power situation gets critical."

  I adjusted my grip on the bag of mana cores and pushed forward.

  Hold on Nue. I'm coming back.

  And I think I might have found something useful.