Darian opened his eyes.
The heat against his back was more intense than ever. Vaelor's egg pulsed with a steady rhythm, like a distant drum. Something was changing inside that shell.
He sat up carefully. The forge was calm. The furnace fire crackled softly. Varkas slept deeply, his heavy breathing filling the cavern like a constant tide. Kára worked at her anvil, filing a piece of metal with precise, silent movements. She wasn't looking at anyone. But her slightly pointed ears were alert.
Aria was awake.
Sitting against the stone wall, back straight and gaze fixed on the cave entrance. Her posture was rigid. She hadn't slept. Or hadn't wanted to.
The silence between them was dense. It wasn't the silence of calm. It was the silence of swallowed words, of held-back reproaches, of a wound festering without closing. Darian felt it in the air, like additional pressure on his chest, adding to the weight of the Void Dominion.
He got up. The cold of the stone reminded him he was still exhausted, but no longer on the edge of collapse. He walked toward Aria with slow steps, measuring each one. The sound of his boots against the rock echoed through the cavern like hammer blows.
"Aria."
She didn't turn.
"We need to talk about what happened."
"There's nothing to talk about." Her voice was flat, without nuance. A closed door. "You made a decision without us. We almost got killed. End of story."
Darian clenched his fists. The silence stretched again, taut as a bowstring. Kára kept filing, but her movements were slower. Varkas was no longer snoring.
"I didn't see another way out," Darian said at last. "The Empire offered us the archives. The truth about Sarion. If I didn't accept, maybe we'd never have another chance."
Aria finally turned. Her green eyes were ablaze. The tension in the atmosphere shot up.
"And what did you want me to do?" Darian's voice also rose. "Stay in Arkania waiting for the Empire to decide how to use us next? Let the only lead we have slip away?"
"I wanted you to trust us!" Aria got to her feet, facing him. The movement was so abrupt that Kára stopped her file completely. "Not to decide as if we were your game pieces! We're a team, Darian! Or we're supposed to be!"
"I never said we weren't!"
"You acted like we weren't!"
Aria's shout bounced off the stone walls. The entire cavern seemed to shrink. Kára set the file on the anvil and turned, watching. Varkas opened his eyes, but didn't move.
Darian took a deep breath. Rage and frustration burned inside him. The words came out before he could stop them.
"Sometimes I think your pride matters more to you than the team."
Aria froze. Her eyes opened for a second, wounded. The temperature in the cavern seemed to drop several degrees. Then her expression twisted into something darker.
"At least I'm not a failure who took eight years to learn a basic physical reinforcement."
The silence that followed was absolute. Not even the fire crackled. Not even the wind whistled at the entrance. Nothing.
Darian went white. As if all the air had been ripped from his lungs. Eight years. Eight years of frustration, of feeling useless, of watching others move forward while he stayed behind. All of that, condensed into a single sentence. Said by one of the few people he trusted.
He didn't respond. He couldn't. He just looked at her, broken.
Aria opened her mouth, but nothing came out. The regret was already showing in her eyes, but the damage was done.
"Enough."
Varkas's voice wasn't a shout. It was a rock settling into place. The giant sat up, his enormous figure stepping between them.
"That's enough. What happened, happened."
His voice was deep, tired, but firm. The group's anchor in the middle of the storm.
"Arguing about who's to blame won't get us back to Arkania or make those mercenaries disappear."
Aria pressed her lips together. Darian didn't even blink.
Varkas looked at both of them, shifting the weight of his yellow gaze. First to Darian. Then to Aria.
"We're a team. A family. Whether we like it or not, our future depends on ourselves. And that future isn't forged by fighting each other or throwing things in each other's faces. It's forged together. Or it isn't forged at all."
He paused. The furnace fire crackled.
"Out there are enemies. Hooded figures looking for Aria. An Empire that set a trap for us. Secrets we don't even understand. If we stay here tearing ourselves apart, we're dead. All of us."
He looked at Darian.
"You're the one carrying the heaviest weight. I know that."
He looked at Aria.
"And you're the one who keeps us alert. I know that too."
He looked at both of them again.
"But neither of you is going to get far if you don't trust each other. So put your pride away. Heal your wounds. And when you're ready, go back to being the team I chose to follow."
The silence returned. But it wasn't the same. The tension was still there, but something had changed. A crack in the wall of ice.
Darian nodded slowly. He said nothing. He couldn't.
Aria looked away toward the fire. Her jaw was still tight, but her shoulders had dropped. She said nothing either.
But she didn't leave.
Kára, from the anvil, watched. Her violet eyes moved from one to the other. She didn't fully understand what she had just witnessed, but she recognized the weight of that moment. A broken group trying not to fall apart completely.
A crack.
Everyone turned.
Vaelor's egg, which Darian had left beside the fire, had a crack. A fine fissure ran across the sky-blue surface, from the base to nearly the top. It didn't break completely. But something inside moved. A tiny shadow, alive.
Kára approached. Varkas too. Aria forgot the resentment for a moment and took an involuntary step forward.
Darian held his breath. He knelt beside the egg. The crack was small, but the heat emanating from it was different. More alive. Like a heart about to wake up.
The shell didn't open. But something inside pulsed strongly, synchronizing with Darian's own heartbeat.
Outside, the mist continued. The hooded figures were still out there. The Empire was still a threat.
But inside the forge, in the middle of the cracks of a group on the verge of breaking, something new was about to be born.