The sun bled through the sky with a blazing, mathematical intensity, each ray a precise line cutting through the dust-choked atmosphere. Below, the desert stretched out in a desolate panorama of ochre and umber, a terrain as dry as ancient parchment. Kaelen walked beside the lumbering caravan, his boots kicking up little spirals of sand that hung in the air before settling—each grain a tiny world governed by invisible rules.
His mind, still humming from the encounter at the Drowned King's Gate, now turned toward a different kind of law. Not the chaotic, drowning order of Theron, but the clean, unwavering logic he had gleaned from the Godclimb's earlier pages. The world can be described, he thought, with a tremor of awe in his inner voice. Strings of numbers. Patterns. They follow rules even the Titans seem to obey.
He watched a gust of wind lift a sheet of sand, and for a moment his vision seemed to sharpen, revealing the hidden architecture beneath the chaos. Trajectories sketched themselves in his mind's eye—parabolic arcs, vectors, accelerations. The silver tracery in his veins pulsed softly, not with the resonant ache of Nul'Thaum, but with a cooler, more crystalline frequency. It was the hum of comprehension.
The force on an object equals its mass times its acceleration, he recited inwardly, the formula—F = m a—fitting the movement of the caravan's wheels as they fought the sand. The displacement of a falling body is proportional to the square of the time. He watched a dislodged stone tumble from a nearby ridge: s = u t + ½ a t². It was all there, a silent symphony of cause and effect. It made the ideas of Keth and the Titans feel less like articles of faith and more like… engineering. Marvellous, terrifying engineering.
He was pulled from his reverie by a shout up the line. "Al'Rahim! The walls!"
Kaelen looked up. In the distance, rising from the haze like a mirage given solid form, stood the sandstone battlements of Al'Rahim. They were the colour of old honey, massive and seamless, stretching for what seemed like miles. A bastion of order in the无序 desert.
As the caravan neared the towering gate, Kaelen made his way forward to where Caecilius was overseeing the final approach. The merchant's shrewd eyes were already calculating the tariffs and the market prices within.
"Well, traveller," Caecilius said without looking at him, "our road together ends. You've earned your passage. No extra charge for the… detour." His voice carried a hint of unspoken things—the silent ruin, the unsearched depths.
Kaelen instinctively touched the money pouch at his belt. It was light. The irony of seeking cosmic power while lacking coin was not lost on him. He cleared his throat. "Actually, Caecilius… perhaps you could pay me a little. For the extra scouting."
Caecilius finally turned, a slow grin spreading across his weathered face. He chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. "So the scholar has practical needs after all. Very well." He counted out a few extra silver pieces into Kaelen's palm. "It was good having you. Sharp eyes. Quiet. If only…" he trailed off, his gaze drifting back toward the western desert, toward the unseen sinkhole.
"If only what?" Kaelen asked, though he knew.
Caecilius shook his head, the merchant's superstition briefly overwhelming his greed. "Nothing. Forget it. Your journey ends here. May the Titans bless your travels." The blessing sounded routine, hollow.
"And yours," Kaelen replied, the irony thick in his mouth. He thanked the man and turned toward the city gate, the newly acquired silver cold in his hand.
Passing through the shadow of the immense archway was like stepping into another world. The desert's roar faded, replaced by the contained chatter of a thousand people: the call of vendors, the clang of smithies, the murmur of crowds. The air still carried the pervasive, fine dust of sandstone, but it was now mixed with the smells of baking bread, spice, and humanity.
Before him unfolded a city carved from a single, monumental vision. Buildings of the same warm stone rose in terraced steps, connected by arched bridges and stairways that defied easy geometry. And at the city's heart, dominating the skyline, stood a cathedral of staggering scale. Its spires reached like petrified flames toward the sun, and its vast facade was carved with intricate, interlocking patterns that seemed to swirl with captured light. Above the great doors, a single word was inscribed in the common tongue: LUMINAEL'S EMBRACE.
The Titan of Light and Energy, Kaelen thought. Two concepts the Godclimb spoke of in terms of radiant power and conserved transfer—concepts he had little expertise in, but felt a fierce hunger to understand. If anywhere in this ordered world would harbour deeper knowledge of the sciences, of the how behind the divine, it would be here, in the shadow of a Titan's cathedral.
Wow, he thought, his scholarly detachment momentarily swallowed by sheer spectacle. It's… something. The texts never capture the scale. The presence.
His plan was formed with quick, pragmatic clarity. First, find a room. Then, locate the information networks—scribes, cartographers, maybe even a public forum. And then… He gazed up at the luminous cathedral. Then I find where they teach. Where they discuss light, motion, and force. Energy and its behaviour. If they're so zealous for Luminael, they must study his domain.
A grin touched his lips, one of genuine, anticipatory fortune. This was a place of structure, of law—the very opposite of the Drowned King's chaotic well. But both, in their own ways, were sources of power. One offered knowledge that could be mastered. The other offered power that mastered you.
He shouldered his pack and melted into the flowing current of the city's main thoroughfare, his mind already dancing between the clean lines of Newton's laws and the haunting, submerged gaze of a king who had drowned them. The path forward was here, in the light. But the deeper current—the one of defiance, of unmaking—it was still out there, in the dark, waiting.
For now, he would learn the rules. All of them.