The victory over the mire tasted like bile and desperation. Alex gained the solid ground of the King's Wood, his legs trembling from the sustained human effort. The twenty minutes he'd spent moving stones had burned through the tallow, draining his caloric buffer, but the sacrifice was worth it: his Stillness tank remained full, a freezing, inert weight at his core.
He was moving uphill now, a slow, uneven ascent through brittle undergrowth, propelled by the single, cold truth: distance equals time.
The air was heavy, but the stillness was wrong—not the natural quiet of the woods, but a profound absence of noise that suggested a larger predator. Then came the smell, sharp and metallic, quickly followed by the soft, heavy patter of paws on the dry leaves to his left, keeping pace.
It was a wolf, a large, dark shape that darted into a brief gap in the trees. Its yellow eyes reflected the faint moonlight. This was not a physical obstacle like the mire; this was a mortal threat. This was the line where human endurance failed and magic was the only currency.
The Unavoidable Price
Alex threw open his mental Ledger Two (Stillness). The tank was full. The Aging Debt was safely buffered.
He initiated the draw, ready to command Vigor to his legs for a life-saving burst of speed.
Stillness now serves Vigor. Sprint for five seconds.
But as the primal surge began, the power resisted the command. The freezing energy flowed, but it refused to lend speed to his host body. Instead, the focus—sharp, demanding, and utterly lethal—shifted outward, away from Elian.
Stillness seeks Stillness.
The energy rushed out, focused entirely onto the stillest, most rigid thing currently moving in his immediate vicinity: the predator's powerful, tense foreleg poised for the attack.
A deep, bone-crushing cold vacuum ripped through his core. It was a terrifying, violent discharge—not a controlled thread, but a rupture of the buffer. The massive wolf stumbled, pitching sideways into the brush. Its leg hadn't broken; its movement had simply ceased. Muscle, bone, and connective tissue had been locked in a fraction of a second of profound, unnatural inertia.
Alex didn't wait for the creature to recover. He stumbled backward, scrambling up the path, using his own failing human legs.
The New Ledger Entry
He collapsed a few yards later, trembling. The wolf, having broken free of the instantaneous trap, let out a confused, furious bark before crashing back into the woods, its hunt ruined by the unnatural resistance.
Alex ignored the predator. He was focused entirely inward. The cold emptiness in his chest was profound. He ran a terrified audit of his resources.
The Stillness tank was no longer full. It had dropped by over forty percent—a catastrophic, single-use loss. The simple act of freezing the wolf had consumed more energy than his complex five-second lock of the latch, the map lift, and the simple punch movement combined.
He checked his face in the dull gleam of the stolen knife. No new lines. The Aging Debt hadn't been incurred. The buffer had held.
But the cost was worse than aging. It was control.
New Rule Established: Stillness is a Master of Inertia.
Lending Vigor (Movement to the Self): The power resists this. It requires conscious, overriding mental effort and is inefficient.
Lending Stillness (Inertia to the External): The power flows naturally and efficiently toward this goal. It is devastatingly effective, but the draw is massive, unpredictable, and instinctive.
He was not simply a user of Stillness; the power itself was pulling him toward its own nature—the cessation of motion and life. He had accidentally discovered the terrifying truth of his specific magical aspect: he was an agent of entropy, and every time he used his magic, he risked rupturing his buffer and returning to zero.
The Stillness in his core felt like a fraying cord, a terrifyingly small tether against the vast emptiness of the world. He was still free, but he was now forty percent closer to the moment when the tank would empty and the debt would be settled in years.
His entire focus shifted from escape to a desperate, urgent need to find a new Acquisition Source before Theron or another wolf found him. The Thorp was no longer a destination; it was a potential graveyard he desperately needed to locate.