Cyril set the elderly man in his arms on the ground in front of Granny Jasmine’s house, careful not to apply any pressure on the man’s left leg. White bone peeked through his shin, the entire lower leg snapped and twisted at an odd angle. Despite his pale face and uneven breathing, the man reached out and gripped Cyril’s hand in both of his.

“Thank you,” he muttered.

Cyril swallowed and nodded, unsure of how to respond. A pair of mundane locals rushed over to inspect the newest patient.

That made a total of twenty-two injured people they had extracted from buildings or found in the streets. Most of them had already received treatment from Edan, Milena, and Granny Jasmine. One of the guards had joined the trio, wielding his control over water to stem bleeding and mix ingredients for medicinal concoctions. Surprisingly, Edan coordinated the effort alongside Granny Jasmine, all signs of his haughty demeanor gone as he lost himself in the effort. The six corpses off to the side, hidden beneath burial shrouds, provided ample motivation.

Cyril, along with the guards and a couple of local cultivators, had combed through the settlement in the aftermath of the earthquake. Uninjured mundanes followed their lead and formed into groups, trying their best to aid in the rescue efforts. He had to admit, he had initially dismissed their potential contributions, but they had proven their worth over the past hour.

Among the hierarchy of the powerful, mundanes were often considered somewhere between completely useless and actively detrimental in certain situations. Cyril had considered himself more enlightened, paying respects to his tutors or excellent performers who had reached the pinnacle of their humble crafts, but he had paid no more attention to the average mundane than he would a passing camel.

Seeing them unite to help one another had made him pause. Their lack of a spiritual connection to the world meant they had no soul, no grand Destiny to follow or tragic fate to struggle against. Still, there seemed to be something more noble about that. They were simply trying to survive in a world that was drowning in the shadows of monsters and tyrants.

And so they joined together to heave slabs of fallen masonry and carry the injured on makeshift stretchers. They consoled one another, offered shelter to those who had lost their homes.

Cultivators defy the heavens, Cyril thought, and the mundane defy the world.

His guilt over the situation had only grown as time went on. While his wide-scale Transmutation had prevented more of the buildings from collapsing, it had also affected the rubble. What should have been normal stone had been converted to a far more durable material. He had acquired the blessed stone from Lanazael’s temple, and while it had no inherent spirituality, he and Edan were the only ones capable of breaking slabs of it apart, or moving large pieces by themselves.

He told himself that his use of the technique must have helped more than it harmed, but every time someone offered him a strange look, or he overheard speculation about the bizarre situation, a tightness gripped his heart.

He tried to convince himself that only a few people had seen him use the Transmute Cantrip. The reassurance felt hollow. Anyone could tell at a glance that he was a wandering cultivator, and the others likely knew one another’s capabilities. It didn’t take the Dominion of Knowledge to deduce the likely culprit. No doubt some of the guards were speculating on the possible connection between a certain Earth cultivator and the battle down south.

Cyril shook his head and turned away from the field of injured locals. He wanted to make one more pass through the city in case he had missed anything. Maybe he’d bring Milena along, in case she could detect vibrations from a buried survivor that he hadn’t noticed.

A strong hand grabbed him by the bicep. He glanced over at Edan, who was staring at him with an uncomfortable intensity.

“Despite the obvious tension between us,” said Edan, “I have to speak up. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for helping my people. The Sect of Sacred Tears offered to make me an outer disciple in an attempt to earn favor with Lady Xincha. My loyalty is bought, and it is shamefully cheap. But it doesn’t matter who I pledged my soul to. This place is my heart. So, thank you.”

After a few moments, Cyril bowed his head and muttered his thanks. He pulled his arm away from Edan, easily breaking the cultist's grip. Cyril began walking away, but after a few steps, he glanced back over his shoulder at Granny Jasmine and her home.

Her entire garden had been petrified in the wake of his Transmute Cantrip, fused into a single perfect sculpture. A few mundanes called out to him as he walked between them, offering words of thanks or encouragement. He forced himself to ignore their gratitude, as well as the pain in their voices.

Granny Jasmine stared at him in silence as he approached. One of her wizened hands was latched onto Milena’s shoulder, as if the girl would float away without someone to ground her. The apprentice sat with her legs pulled up, face buried between her knees.

Cyril moved past them and touched one of the stone tea plants. Over half of his core streamed out, reversing the Transmutation until the vibrant leaves once more glistened in the sunlight. He repeated the process with the desert bluebells and desert marigolds. While the mundane plants required a fraction of the energy it had taken to Transmute the Spirit Tea Leaves (E-grade), they still drained a surprising amount compared to an equivalent stone or metal.

The living plants stood in stark contrast with the rest of the stone foliage. Without having touched all of the garden, Cyril’s options had been limited. His understanding of the Transmute Cantrip and its related concepts wasn’t advanced enough for him to truly reverse the technique; he could only switch between materials already on his list of options. The tea shrubs would likely survive despite being planted in blessed stone, though he didn’t hold out much hope for the flowers he had restored.

You already exposed yourself enough, he told himself. Why keep holding back?

Cyril poured more earth qi into the plants, this time offering no more direction beyond ‘flourish.’ They obliged, flowers and tea leaves proliferating until they buried their stone companions under a dense tangle of greenery and bright petals.

Cyril took a step back. “I’m sorry, grandmother. I can’t stay here and brew tea, like you asked. You’ll have to do it for me until I return.”

Grime and stone dust had settled across Granny Jasmine in a fine layer, though she appeared unharmed. All the mirth was gone from her voice. “Where are you going, child?”

“To confront the person who did this,” he answered truthfully.

“And will you punish them as they deserve?”

Cyril kept his expression neutral. During his search through the rubble, his mind had frantically tried to make sense of the situation. The perpetrator behind the earthquake was no doubt another cultivator of the Dominion of the Earth. Though other concepts could have replicated the disaster, the trail of qi flowing underground bore an uncanny resemblance to Cyril’s own.

His mind had immediately leapt to the conclusion one of his family members had been calling out to him. He soon realized it was a naive hope. Wrong direction, wrong element. Someone in his tribe may have ascended to one of the higher Spheres of Earth in his absence, but he doubted it. Which meant he had no other option other than to find out who was on the other end of the technique.

Granny Jasmine, in her infinite wisdom, accepted his silence as an answer. “I forgot. You’re not family, after all.”

Her words were harsh, but she spoke them plainly.

“Thank you for the tea,” he said.

Milena finally tilted her head up to face him. Her fingers tapped on Granny Jasmine’s shoulders uncertainly---once, twice, then she began to hammer out a frantic rhythm.

Once she finished, Granny Jasmine translated the message. “She says that she was able to figure out what the earthquake was saying. Once she figured out it wasn’t words or an alphabet, she realized it was actually a symbol. She wants to draw it for you, but doesn’t have a way to do so.”

Frowning, Cyril knelt next to Milena and Transmuted the top layer of the ground into sand. The blindfolded woman immediately realized what he had done, and began to sketch a symbol onto it with her finger. Slowly, it materialized into a shape he recognized. He had seen it on the same page as the Cult of Leviathan’s sigil, and it resonated with Behemoth’s memory as well.

Not that Cyril was surprised. It was the sigil of the Cult of Behemoth, after all: a hand reaching for a tiny orb, meant to represent the material world.

Cyril clenched his fist and struggled to keep the quaver out of his voice. “Thank you for showing this to me. I think I have an idea of what I’m dealing with now.”

Milena tapped another message on Granny Jasmine’s shoulder.

“My foolish granddaughter says she wants to come with you.” Granny Jasmine cleared her throat and spit to the side. “You’ll deny her, of course.”

Cyril spoke to the blindfolded woman directly. “You’ll do far more good tending to these people. And it’s best to remember that you, too, suffered harm from this attack. Rest, if you need to. The information you provided me was very much appreciated. Let me handle things from here.”

Milena dipped her head. Cyril thought he saw a faint blush across her cheeks, then immediately dismissed the possibility.

He bowed deeply in farewell. As he left, Edan glanced up from where he was tending to one of the patients and offered an awkward smile.

Cyril forced all thoughts about the settlement behind him. On his way out, he stopped and retrieved his spear from where he had buried it. Determined steps soon carried him to the gate. One of the guards approached, attempting to explain that the portcullis had fused with the rest of the Transmuted wall.

Cyril crouched and, with pure strength, leapt up and over the fifteen-feet-tall battlements. The moment he touched ground on the other side with a heavy thump, he took off at a sprint.

All traces of the foreign earth qi had vanished, but the memory of the trail had been burned into his mind. North.

Once he was far enough from the settlement to escape scrutiny, he ripped off his robes and cast them aside. A cold, distant voice in the back of his head complained that he had lost more of his loot--the clothing had been half the reason he entered the settlement in the first place.

Naked as the day he was born, he continued running. Finally, he gave in to the itch that had been bothering him since the battle at the oasis. Earth qi circulated throughout his body, following the same pattern he had used before--a bizarre fusion of the Transmute and Reinforcement Cantrips.

The agony, the tearing, none of it mattered. Flesh and blood turned to blessed stone. His limbs elongated and grew thick as pillars. The loss of his self, his humanity, numbed the memory of the suffering he had left behind. At the settlement, and at the oasis, where he obliterated other men like they were no better than monsters.

Within thirty seconds, a golem twice the size of a man bounded across the desert, clutching a spear that looked like a twig in its gargantuan hands. Eddies and spirals churned in the sand as his gravity domain spread out in every direction.

One of the survivors of Fissure was waiting for him. A violent stranger who slaughtered others just to send a message--which meant he was no better or worse than Cyril himself.

Don’t worry. I’m coming.