"Come on, son," Karix said. He placed a casual hand on Vex's shoulder, which the lizardkin was tempted to shrug off. Neither of them had really earned his trust, and while he was cautiously optimistic, the more realistic part of him thought that this was quite likely just another ploy on his parents' part. Karix seemed genuine enough, but then his father had always been a good actor.

His mother, though? She wasn't quite as good at acting. There was nothing apologetic in her gaze, though she gave him a loving hug and patted his head in the most condescending way he could imagine. He'd enjoyed those, once — seen it as a sign of hard-earned approval — but now they didn't hold a candle to when his friends did it. They didn't do it to be manipulative.

Or perhaps he simply wasn't being charitable.

"Where are we going?" Vex asked, not moving.

"We're going to help you with your evacuation efforts, of course," Karix said. He seemed surprised, and Vex wondered how much of that was a front; then he wondered how much his parents had poisoned him against them, that he was so suspicious of a simple offer of help. "I'm sure you need help. There's quite a lot of people to evacuate."

Vex considered his father's words for a moment. "I think we should collect Riss first," he said eventually. His little brother was undoubtedly still holed up in the Ashion estate. If he wanted to test if his parents were being genuine, then that was where they could start. All his older siblings were undoubtedly there as well, with the exception of Helix; he was still out there helping with the evacuation efforts.

Part of him was worried, though. They'd interrupted whatever Wisfield was doing in their estate, but that didn't mean that the process was halted; it only meant that it had been interrupted. What if that nascent god was still growing, this time without Wisfield control? What if his friends needed help?

Vex checked the system somewhat anxiously. There was no message from Derivan or any of the others, which comforted him somewhat; they'd update him if anything went wrong, or if Sev noticed anything was happening with the divine.

He still couldn't entirely believe that Sev was so old.

Lost in his thoughts, Vex barely noticed his father's change of expression — Karix seemed thoughtful for a moment before that expression smoothed over and became something more guarded. "Home it is," he said.

Prissa seemed annoyed, folding her arms across her chest. "I'm sure Riss will be fine at home," she said. "The evacuation should be our priority."

Vex stared at her. "Riss will have to be part of the evacuation," he reminded her.

"But he'll be safe there!" she argued.

"Prissa," Karix said. His voice was surprisingly gentle — Karix always spoke to his mother that way. For all their flaws, Vex did believe that the love between the two was genuine. "We should get Riss. It's not safe anywhere in Elyra right now."

At least Karix seemed to understand.

Prissa, on the other hand, just sighed. "Fine," she said. "If it's so important, I'll go on ahead and get the rest of our children. Some of them are in their own homes, which you'd know if you'd stayed with us."

The last part was directed at Vex, who flinched; Karix's hand rested on his back almost protectively, and he gave Prissa a look. His mother's expression tightened for a moment before she gave her husband a nod, and then she disappeared in a flicker of magic.

Karix sighed. "She does not understand yet," he said. "But she will."

"Are you sure about that?" Vex asked. He glanced at where she'd left, watching the way the mana flowed in her wake; it was erratic and irregular, far from the usual result of a teleport spell. "System skills aren't exactly safe to use right now."

"Do you know why that is?" Karix's tone was curious, edged with a small amount of what Vex thought was genuine worry. He started to walk, leading the way as they chatted along the path back towards the Ashion estate; Vex no longer thought of it as his home, but the road was one he was intimately familiar with, down to the cracks and crevices in the brick.

"Because the system is failing, dad." Vex sighed. "You've seen the signs. We've all seen the signs. There's no noble that hasn't. We find all these little tricks and loopholes in the system — you can't tell me no one's noticed that the loopholes just keep getting bigger. Things are possible now that weren't possible before. Everything Wisfield is doing, for example. Everything they did."

"Ah, yes, their god-plan," Karix said. Vex nearly stopped in his tracks at the disgust in Karix's voice — he glanced up at his father, who saw his expression and snorted. "I did not approve of that plan. It was foolish."

"Tell me about it," Vex muttered. "We stopped their ritual, but I don't know what that means. I don't think their plans are over."

Karix was silent for a moment. "They are not."

Vex glanced up. His father wasn't looking at him — instead, he was staring off into the distance, arms folded behind his back. Vex remembered walking with his father in the noble district just like this years ago. The only difference now was how quiet everything was.

"The Speaker is contaminated with divinity," Karix said. "A broken form of it, I think, but it already exists within him. He is waiting for the right moment to use it."

"What is he going to use it for?" Vex hated that he couldn't help the alarm in his voice, but Karix didn't seem to notice.

"He wouldn't tell me. He was sure it would fix all the problems with Elyra, though." Karix glanced down at his son, and Vex saw a certain intensity swirling in his eyes. "Tell me, son. You don't think this problem is solvable, do you?"

"...No." Vex said the words quietly, but firmly. "We're not even close to a solution. and we know the cause. Does the Speaker?"

"He believes he does," Karix said. "He believes it's a problem with the gods. That they have failed us in some way."

Vex snorted. "They're as much victims of this as the rest of us."

"Is that so." It wasn't quite a question. Vex was glad, if nothing else, that Karix seemed to be taking his words seriously. "That is... concerning."

"Dad," Vex said. He searched for the words for a moment, trying to convey how serious all of this was — and then he sighed. "It's not the system that's falling apart, dad. It's everything. We can't afford to fight with one another now. You want to know what we learned in that dungeon?"

"I admit to some degree of curiosity."

"We learned that the world ended." It was so strange, saying the words out loud to someone else — it made it all feel so much more real. Vex stared at the curbside as he spoke, at the flowers that were planted along the sidewalk; they had all begun to wither and die in the wake of the failure of growth spells, and though a few brave, vibrant flowers continued to thrive, most of them were brown and dry. "Not that it's going to end. It ended, a long time ago, and the system is an attempt to keep the last vestiges of the world together."

"...That is a bold claim." Karix stared straight ahead, keeping his face perfectly expressionless.

"And now that it's failing, we're running out of options." Vex ignored Karix's doubt — he would see it for himself, one way or another. "We need to evacuate. We need to run. We need to keep everyone alive as long as we can until we find some kind of solution, or there isn't going to be a world left for Riss to grow up in."

"Do you have any proof?" Karix asked. He didn't say it unkindly, but he said it with no small amount of reservation. Vex just shrugged.

"Is the system falling apart not proof enough?" he asked. "Growth spells don't work anymore. System skills don't work correctly. The dungeon's begun falling apart, the gods were pushed out of Elyra by a nascent god that Wisfield created... The signs have been everywhere for a long, long time. Why can't we get enough mana crystals to all the smaller villages? Why don't we have Anderstahl's technology? Why can nothing spread, even if we try?"

Vex had never articulated all of this out loud. He curled in on himself slightly as he spoke, realizing the extent of the damage that had been done to their world...

...and then he straightened again.

He would not let himself be brought down by this. He had Derivan and Misa and Sev, and Sev had — without any of their knowledge — been working to find a solution for this for centuries. He trusted them, and they trusted him; if anyone was going to find a way to fix all this, they would.

Karix watched him. Vex was oddly conscious of his gaze — he saw out of the corner of his eye the way Karix's expression flickered when he straightened, the way there was the barest hint of regret and something else there that he couldn't quite read. The expression was foreign and out of place on his father, and vanished as soon as he noticed it.

And yet, after a moment had passed, Karix spoke.

"Your friends have been good for you." It wasn't a question. There was instead something almost akin to wonder in his voice.

"They have been." Vex's answer was quiet. There were words there that remained unsaid — they did for me what you could not. It seemed too harsh for him to say out loud, yet it hung in the air between them, creating an odd tension.

Karix sighed.

"I did not lie about the dream," he said eventually.

Vex cocked his head. "But you did lie," he said. It wasn't exactly a surprise.

"Figured it out from your mother, did you?" Karix seemed resigned. "Yes. But... perhaps that plan is foolish. From what you have revealed to me..."

"The gods can't help us solve this, dad." To his own surprise, Vex found he was speaking gently. He saw the tension in Karix's shoulders, saw the listless way his father fidgeted as they walked. The Ashion estate wasn't far now — it could be seen in the distance, tall towers of sapphire and gold built into a veritable mansion. "They're as much a victim of all this as we are."

"If that is true..." Karix hesitated. "What makes you so certain we will find a solution? If we need something more powerful than what Wisfield has accomplished, with all their money and resources..."

"As powerful as they may be, they're kind of close-minded," Vex said dryly. "We can't solve this with any of the tools we have. We need something new. What do you think my friends and I have been searching for all this time?"

"Hence the glyphs," Karix said.

"And more," Vex said, although he didn't elaborate. Karix glanced at him as if waiting for an explanation, but shook his head when he didn't continue.

"You don't trust me anymore, do you?"

"...That you have to ask that question at all is telling." Vex glanced up at his father. "You just admitted you were planning on betraying me."

"At least I admitted to it."

"Congratulations, you've done the bare minimum." Vex couldn't help the small bite of sarcasm that came out of him; it felt like something Sev would have said, not him. He could picture the cleric grinning at him and giving him a thumbs up, though.

Karix sighed. "I suppose you're not wrong."

Vex raised an eyebrow. He hadn't been expecting Karix to admit to it. He didn't say a word, though, instead slowing to a stop as they came to the gates of the Ashion estate. Vex gazed up at the tall walls, the garish blue-gold towers that he'd once admired — at the place he'd once called home — and wondered how such a majestic building could feel so cold.

He'd spent nights with his friends out in the open, with barely a blanket to share between them, and that had felt far warmer than this.

The good thing was that he now carried that warmth with him.

"Are you on board with evacuating?" Vex asked. "I'd really rather not fight."

Karix eyed him. "Seems I missed my son growing up because of how stubborn I was," he muttered, mostly to himself. "...I will help you. We will make sure our family is safe."

Vex glared at him.

"We will make sure everyone is safe," he amended.