AnnouncementSurely this is a perfectly normal dy who just wants to know him.I didn’t know when I fell asleep. I only knew that when I awoke, the Ceralis decided to show me something it had never shown me before.

  [CERALIS NODE CALIBRATION SYSTEM (β)]

  The air around me glowed and distorted, like someone had poured light into invisible gss, and the gss was trying to remember what shape it was supposed to hold. I blinked, but the glow stayed. It wasn't a hallucination this time. (Probably.)

  [System log: Finalizing Task–Boon protocol. Apprentice-level functionality restored.]The ink-like script floated in the air like an instruction written directly into meaning itself, an impression of order that my mind struggled to phrase.

  [QUEST–BOON SYSTEM: PURPOSE]

  To guide the apprentice’s growth through structured tasks. Each completed act grants a boon.

  [Active Tasks]

  1) The Taskgiving Tutorial – Pick up another taskgiving object

  Status: Unfulfilled

  Boon: +25 EXP

  2) The Apple Debt – Return the basket

  Status: Unfulfilled

  Boon: 50% chance of gaining [+1 STR]

  10% chance of gaining [Active Skill: Voice Recmation (Level 1)]

  Hold on. Since when did I get this task?

  But that was not important right now. You get a fifty-fifty chance to gain Strength by returning the basket? What sort of magic bases itself on probability?

  Still, the other reward caught my eye. Voice Recmation (Level 1).

  I willed Ceralis to show me more.

  [Skill: Voice Recmation (Level 1)]

  Effect: For the next three spoken lines, the user’s words manifest precisely as intended.

  Cooldown: 8 hours.

  Warning: Crity can be perilous.

  Three lines. Only three. But they’d mean what I meant. The cooldown was a cruel jest, but ‘Level 1’ spoke of promise. There might be higher tiers: longer, truer, closer to what others called ordinary speech. Perhaps, in time, I might even speak like I used to.

  So I saddled Silvermane and rode around Dunswell. The town stretched wide and uneven, a sprawl of crooked roofs and guttering mps, most of it already dozing off. The young dy was probably home by now, but it wasn’t like I had much else to do with the night. Finding one person in a town this size wasn’t impossible, just improbable. Still, probability hadn’t stopped me yet.

  So I let Silvermane’s pace slow to a trot. Dunswell at night was mostly quiet, save for the sound of wind through shutters and a dog barking at a distance. But then—

  [PER CHECK: 18]

  [PER: 27 → Pass]

  I heard a scraping sound, followed by a muffled thud. Then came a noise, “Give us all your money.”

  Nobody had ever said that and meant anything well. I turned Silvermane’s head toward the sound. Someone was in trouble.

  I pressed my heels to Silvermane’s fnk and urged her forward just fast enough to close the distance without waking the whole street. When I rounded the corner, moonlight caught the scene. Three men with knives, ragged, mean-faced, circling the same woman who’d given me the apples.

  Instinct took over. I drew my sword and swung down from the saddle, gravel crunching underfoot. “Enough,” I started to say—

  —but the word died in my throat.

  Pebbles lifted from the street like seeds caught in a sudden gust, then struck with purpose. One bandit cried out as stone split his lip; another staggered when a cobble smmed into his ribs.

  Then, between the cracks of the cobblestones, squat figures of packed earth cwed their way up. They swarmed the men’s legs like an army of garden gnomes. One man screamed as stone bit into his shin; another dropped his knife and fled outright.

  “They’re alive!” one of them shrieked. “Stones ain’t supposed to be alive!”

  The third man had already lost his nerve; he bolted down the street, tripping over his own feet, leaving the others to fend for themselves.

  “That’ll teach you,” she said, her tone almost academic, “not to bully the weak—” Her head turned as her eyes found me underneath the ntern light, sword at my side, Silvermane’s white coat glinting like a fg of witness.

  “Oh no,” she breathed, suddenly clutching her chest. Immediately, the earthen constructs crumbled where they stood, colpsing into nothing but harmless pebbles and dust. She let out a gasp and sank to her knees beside the debris.

  “Ah! Bandits!” she cried, pitching her voice loud enough to echo off the shuttered houses. “Please! Someone save me! I’m helpless! If only—” she peeked through her fingers, “—there happened to be a noble gentleman upon a white steed nearby...”

  The bandits were still too dazed to grasp what was happening. One of them blinked at the heap of pebbles as if hoping they’d apologize.

  “Oh, come now,” she whispered. She crouched just enough to pluck a pebble, pressed it into the nearest bandit’s trembling hand, and hissed, “Go on then! Attack me! Quickly!”

  Before he could answer, she flung herself backward with another gasp worthy of a temple py. “Ah! He means me harm!” she wailed, one arm draped over her brow. “If only some galnt gentleman would intervene!”

  I sighed. The st thing I needed was half of Dunswell waking up to ‘bandits’ that were already halfway to repentance. So I stepped forward. ‘Leave her,’ I willed myself to say, in the firmest tone I could manage without actually threatening anyone.

  “You will turn away now,” I said, in a tone that threatened everyone.

  [Intimidation Successful]The nearest bandit looked at me, then at the pebble still in his hand, then at the woman swooning like seeing Saint Merin himself. Whatever thoughts he had, they didn’t survive long. He bolted.

  The others followed, tripping over each other in their haste to escape divine farce and possible geological vengeance. I sheathed my sword.

  “Oh! You have saved my life, noble gentleman!” she cried, csping her hands together as though preparing to faint again. “How can I ever repay such galntry, such—such—” She caught herself speaking overcomplicated nguage again and her diction crumpled like parchment in rain. “—uh. Thanks, mister. Real kind of you.”

  She cleared her throat, dropping the operatic posture and dusting off her skirt. “You, uh—you must be tired, ridin’ around this te, yeah? Surely you won’t get into any real danger, but maybe you’d like a pce to rest your horse. And yourself. As thanks. For savin’ me. From—” She gestured vaguely at the fleeing silhouettes down the ne. “—bandits. Yes. Those.”

  “You’re a mage, Miss,” I said. She was not just a mage, but quite a powerful one at that. Not many magi I saw could command stone, much less that effortlessly.

  “‘Mage,’ he says,” she repeated, quick as a cat in the pantry. “Mage? No, no, by the Fmes, that’s far too official. I just—well, things happen sometimes, pebbles get ideas, air gets uppity, you know how it is—and anyway, how’d you find those apples? Weren’t they good? Bit tart, I think, but that’s how Dunswell ones grow, never sweet enough for pies unless you boil ’em twice—”

  I cleared my throat, trying for the barest courtesy. ‘Miss. I know what I saw back there.’

  “Lie again,” my voice rolled out, low and hard as a hammer, “and you shall learn what it is to have the earth take your bones whole.”

  She went utterly, absurdly still. For a heartbeat her hand clenched at her skirt and shuddered once more.

  [Intimidation Failed – Target is Immune]

  [Seduction Successful]

  “Oh, you.” She gave a light, deflective ugh. “Let’s not make things awkward, shall we? Call it... local knowledge. I picked up a few commoner tricks growing up. One of them’s reading the street. Another’s knowing when the sky’s about to change. And, well...” She tipped her chin at the clouds. “my trick’s telling me it’s going to rain. You’d best find somewhere dry, if you’re sensible.”

  Ridiculous, I thought. Even magi weren’t weather-readers. They argued with storms; they didn’t tell them bedtime.

  Then the first cool drop hit Silvermane’s fnk. One became two, then a scatter of percussion over the cobbles. Within heartbeats the air filled with the steady stream of rain, a curtain knitting the mplight into blurring coins.

  She smiled then, a small, poised thing, perfectly composed and entirely cheeky. Her eyes caught mine and glinted.

  “Fine,” I said. “Lead the way.”

  She bobbed a curtsey that would have been ridiculous if it hadn’t been so deadpan, then extended one hand. “Do you have any use for my basket?”

  “No,” I said, returning it to her.

  She took the basket back with a mock solemnity that would’ve been convincing if she hadn’t been grinning. “A debt settled, then,” she said.

  [The Apple Debt – Task Fulfilled]

  [Boon Calcution ...]

  Result: Voice Recmation (Level 1) (Success)

  STR +0 (Failure)

  I... I got the skill from just a 10% probability? Finally, some luck in my life! I couldn’t care less about the STR. It was the skill that I wanted.

  I had no time to celebrate, for Ceralis had assigned me another task.

  [New Task Generated]

  Name of the Earth-Touched – Discover the woman’s true name and field of work.

  Status: Active

  Boon: Unlocks a unique Pathway

  I frowned. Pathway?

  At once, the air around the letters pulsed.

  [PATHWAY: A branch of tasks and objectives that leads to progression in a particur direction.]

  Current Pathway: None

  So Ceralis wanted me to get to know her before I could unlock something called a Pathway. Social interaction as a magical requirement. Cruel.

  The st of the blue-gold script faded from sight. The woman was already walking ahead, leaving me with my thoughts.

  A Pathway.

  If the Ceralis was assigning me ‘directions,’ then surely there had to be one that led somewhere meaningful. The wording of ‘directions’ was plural. Meaning there were options. Meaning there might be a way to choose.

  Maybe I could restore the fallen Order of Saint Merin.

  I wasn't even born when Mostenstein’s walls gave way. What I had were stories from Sir Rond as he moved through the countryside like a journeyman of reverence and compint, trading a tale for a cup of broth, a map fragment for a roof over his head. I’d never even set foot in Mostenstein.

  If Ceralis would let me choose a Pathway that led there, then I would go. I would clear the colpsed stone, set the first true brick into mortar, and rebuild the castle myself.

  A hand waved in front of my face, and I refocused on the weird woman giving me that same too-knowing grin. “You look like you’re thinking far too hard about something unimportant,” she said lightly. “Best not to let the rain drown your thoughts. Come on, I’ve a stable nearby, and your horse looks like she’d appreciate a dry roof.”

  But why would there be a Pathway linked to her? That was what I wanted to find out, for now.