Ghravv’s spawn suddenly flashed with colour, then produced a single wispling on the tip of its finger. Elach held his breath as the spawn gently offered it to him, the small thing the exact same colour as Nevvi’s lightblood had been.

“I do not know what caused it, but everything changed. The wolf devoured the Issi from the less hidden half of the Gilded Night and Hoalt raised the pillar’s entrance to the concealed upper floor, but it wasn’t fast enough.” The spawn gestured at the death around it for emphasis. “The wolf’s Issi had corrupted us. We were quarantined on this floor alone, and forgotten about.”

“Until Prisoner came along?” Elach guessed.

The spawn shook its head. “Prisoner was the third. The first two groups did not survive. I have no explanation as to how we became part of the pillar once more, but as long as we are, the people of the Gilded Night are in terrible danger.”

Elach gently wrapped Nevvi’s wispling in chains, then pulled it into his headspace. The spawn watched in fascination, then reached a finger towards Elach. “May I feel your Issi?”

“No.” Elach answered firmly, stepping to the right so there wasn’t a wall to his back. “I saw what Myttos did with you. I’m not letting you anywhere near my Issi.”

“I… I understand.” The spawn said slowly, backing away from Elach in the other direction. “I will wait for your distraction and strike at the heart of Lighthome. You do not need to modify your plans in the slightest.” It bowed deeply, a sound like creaking floorboards accompanying its movements. “Thank you for giving me this chance to right the wrongs of my people. Hoalt gave us a chance, and I will not allow any more of his people to suffer at our hands.”

A quiet creak and all the bodies were gone, along with the spawn, leaving only pools of quickly evaporating lightblood. Elach shook his head and stepped towards the stain that had been Nevvi, staring blankly at it as the reality of what was around him slowly seeped in. If he hadn’t been convinced this was the right path, that one short meeting with Ghravv’s spawn had convinced him.

Lighthome deserved to fall.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered to the dripping lightblood as the sound of clattering feet rose in the distance. “I’ll give your wisp a good home. I’ll give everyone’s wisps good homes.”

Elach raised a hand to chain the blob of shadows falling above him, then launched it into the regiment of Polished Guards who were moving to surround him. He snarled at their approach, feeling the spine within his headspace tingle at the Issi swirling around it. Not quite close enough to use as a focus, but on the verge of it; bringing in Roxu should be more than enough to push him over the edge.

The lead polished guard stepped forward, a symbol of brilliant light etched into their shell. “Stand down, intruder. The Great Lights will decide your fate.”

Elach wanted to laugh, but his face wouldn’t move from the scowl that it had been etched into. A web of chains cut off the Polished Guard’s approach, swirling with colours that hadn’t been there before.

“Nobody decides my fate but me.” He decreed equally to the bugs in front of him and to himself. “Not anymore.”

There was more Issi in Elach’s container than he knew what to do with. So he settled for immobilizing all of the Polished Guard, chaining both the lifeblood inside them and their physical bodies as he strolled through a gathered crowd of insects. Countless eyes watched him go past, but only now did Elach realize that none of them were truly seeing him. They were on a path somehow determined by the wolf Hoalt, and they wouldn’t step out of it for anything. How could they? They didn’t know any better.

The myriad colours in his chains faded as the endless well of Issi inside of him proved very well to have an end, but it was so far away that Elach didn’t feel an ounce of worry. These people might simply let him waltz up tomorrow and steal everything in the lightwell. If the Polished Guard weren’t going to stop him, then who would? The spawn seemed to be on his side, he hadn’t heard a peep from the great lights, and he had a feeling every truly powerful warrior these bug-people had ever seen were now dead.

“Yes, hello, coming through.” Elach said, pressing past the bugs who had yet to move out of the way. He didn’t feel a single technique welling up among the entire crowd. “I’m not going to hurt anyone, but I’m not above shoving a few of you out of the way.”

The lantern buzzed at Elach’s side, and he looked down to see the wisplings zipping about like hyperactive bees. They’d been completely placid up until now, but Elach’s bizarrely empowered Issi had stirred something in them. He raised his eyes to the now completely parted crowd in front of him, murmurs and whispers flowing through the crowd like ripples on an otherwise still pond.

His first thought was of worry. The last time he’d found himself empowered was at the glacier, and that had ended less than well. And this empowerment felt scarily close to what he remembered the existential bleed feeling like. Maybe Y’talla or Flow had gotten into the stash he kept under the fountain, and now he’d have to worry about dissociating in a few minutes.

Something popped into his mind, and Elach had to force his feet to keep moving. He now knew that he had exactly seven bottles of existential bleed left, which was the same amount he’d had since drinking the last one. He also knew he had the two rotting blades, the metalfruit, and everything else he’d gathered since arriving at the Gilded Night. He didn’t remember when he’d started being able to store more than just the existential bleed in there, but he was building up a small stockpile to call his own.

So where was all this Issi coming from?

The once-nameless spawn of Ghravv, who had taken the name of its sire, skulked through the underground passageways of Lighthome in search of the dark heart at the center of everything. The wolf’s corruption had laid waste to its wondrous and safe home, forcing it to sleep as it ate away at everything Lighthome was meant to embody. Ghravv’s sickly black light was meant to be its own. But now it was everywhere, twisted with the wolf’s hunger and the Eternals’ damned powers into something that wasn’t Ghravv.

Something that Ghravv had fought mandible and stinger to push down into the darkest depths of itself. Something that it had killed long ago, but whose corpse festered and rotted close enough to the Gilded Night that the fumes and sickness could corrupt those who breathed too deeply of the light.

“The first teaching; breathe deep of the light.” The spawn repeated humourlessly, dragging one finger along decrepit stones to scour a way back. “Damned by our first breaths. And the sickly spawn proved the lone being immune to the temptations. How disgustingly ironic.”

The beating of the dark heart began echoing in Ghravv’s chest. It was nowhere near close enough to hear, but the reverberations went on for miles. The closer Ghravv got, the more unbearable they would get. If Ghravv hadn’t felt the bizarre person eating a metalfruit, it wouldn’t have ever ventured down here again. Not after Prisoner was caught by the greater lights and fled for the safety of those Prisoner protected.

But the budding practitioner had something within him that even Prisoner didn’t. Touches of Issi that felt like twin beginnings. The first was of the true beginning; from which all else rose to form everything that the world piece held. The second, however, was of a beginning Ghravv had yet to see. The beginning of a path beyond the path’s end that Ghravv had met all those years ago. Ghravv knew instinctively that it could kill the strange person and drink of the path beyond, but something else stilled the insatiable hunger. Stilled it long enough for Ghravv to offer Nevvi’s light beyond to the person, who in turn offered Nevvi endless sanctuary.

Ghravv wanted that sanctuary. To be free of the sickness it had been born with, of the hated and death that followed its every step. Hunger sloughed off, and in its place came longing. To learn from the person’s Issi that they too wanted the end of Lighthome was akin to finding a blazing beacon in an eternity of dark. Giving Ghravv a choice; would it sacrifice itself for its people, or sacrifice its people for itself?

The spawn laughed, a melodic chittering that betrayed its disgusting form. “Down here, I have already made my choice. My people come before me, and Hoalt’s people before them.”

The beating of the dark heart was still beyond far away, but Ghravv’s own heart was louder than it ever remembered. It hadn’t wanted anything in so, so long. It hadn’t lived in so, so long. And after this, it would never want or live again.

A trade that would cost Ghravv everything, and would grant it nothing in return. It made no sense why the spawn would even consider it, but as the sticky darkness grew thicker the spawn pushed harder. The stranger’s distraction would come. The heart would send everything it could to protect its source of life. And Ghravv would strike it down at its weakest moment. Its lone moment of weakness in two centuries.

Scrabbling feet. A scything spurt of darkness. Glowing, liquid silence.

Ghravv stepped over the death and continued. Just as it always had.