"What am I supposed to do now?" Ashe asked while keeping her gaze fixed on the cluster suspended near the stone wall.
For a moment, the only answer was the movement of rain through the grass which, for all its rustling, couldn't hide the faint hum surrounding the Seeds. Then the dark markings formed again across the surface of the stone behind them.
"Take one of them," Seven wrote. "And break it."
Ashe hesitated as the instruction itself felt strangely at odds with what she was seeing. Each fragment hovered in place in a delicate balance, so she instinctively thought that breaking something so fragile might affect the faint blue cores pulsing within them. Which she assumed were important.
Still, she reached out. Her fingers closed around one of the Seeds and she was struck by how light it felt. Up close, the material resembled glass. It was actually thinner than usual glass, almost unnaturally so, and yet there was a subtle flexibility to it that made it feel less brittle than it appeared.
She turned it slightly between her fingers, watching how the inner glow moved.
If it truly was glass, she would need to apply enough force to fracture it, but not so much that she shattered it completely or that she might hurt herself in the process. She chose the exposed roots of a nearby small tree which she deemed firm enough for the impact, then tightened her grip on the Seed, and drove it into them.
The shell cracked, breaking into small shards that scattered into even finer ones across the ground. Then, for an instant, the light within it dimmed. Ashe's expression tightened slightly as she thought she might have ruined it entirely, but before that thought could settle, the opposite occurred.
The glow rapidly intensified until it spilled from the fractured shell. It turned into a multitude of fine luminous strands, hundreds of them thin as hairs, drifting free in the air.
The strands then curved toward her, guided by an unseen force that seemed to work on them uniformly. The first points of contact came at her hands, where the blackened veins beneath her skin were most visible. She watched how they withdrew gradually, retreating along the same branching paths they had followed when they first appeared. The strands layered themselves over those paths, gently weaving into her skin.
The sensation that followed was unlike anything she had experienced before. It was as if her senses had been sharpened beyond their usual limits.
"I can see your organism stabilizing," Seven wrote on a nearby surface. "That's good."
Ashe read the words but decided not to respond this time. She lowered her gaze to her hands, watching as the last traces of the strands dissolved beneath her skin. The blackened veins had faded and were reduced to faint remnants that no longer seemed to spread.
She closed her eyes and, for a few seconds, allowed the sensation to settle into something she could eventually catalogue.
But then, suddenly, the sound of a child laughing happened again. And this time it didn't feel distant or distorted, it was clear as though it came from somewhere directly beside her.
Ashe's eyes snapped open and she turned instinctively, reacting to the laughter before any clear thought about it could form at all. Yet there was no one there. She scanned the area quickly, studying any movement that might have come from the tall grass or any of the broken structures, but no, nothing moved beyond the natural motion of the environment.
As she tried to make sense of it, she thought it could have been a memory resurfacing, or a projection of some kind. Even a reaction to the Seed felt plausible. Or it could have simply been her mind searching for something familiar and human after what had happened with the scavengers.
"Your heart rate has gone up," Seven wrote to her right, pulling her attention back. "What happened?"
Right. Seven. Now that the pain in her body had subsided, and the black veins were no longer threatening to swallow her entirely, reason allowed her to remember this unusual strange written voice she kept with her apparently at all times, except those that really mattered.
It wasn't that she expected anything from Seven. She didn't know him after all, didn't understand what he was, yet the thought remained: when it mattered, she couldn't rely on him even though he was putting some effort into supposedly helping her.
But if she had to be truthful to herself, she found that the frustration she felt was not directed at him alone. It was broader than that. She was angry at the situation itself. At the fact that nothing made sense, yet she was still expected to move forward within it.
She closed her eyes again, then took a slow breath and let it out, forcing her thoughts into something more… helpful perhaps.
"I'm okay," she said after a moment. "I don't know what's in these things, but the pain is gone."
"Good," Seven replied. "You'll need to take a few of them with you. They'll keep you stable until you reach shelter."
That made sense. So she knelt beside the cluster and reached for another Seed. It came free easily, detaching from the group with almost no resistance. Now that she paid attention to this detail, it did strike her as strange. The Seeds weren't anchored to anything, they simply hovered there, positioned in the most accessible way, as if they had been placed intentionally to be found. Was something that important so easily accessible?
Ashe looked down at herself, trying to figure out where to store it. The suit had no obvious compartments, but as she moved slightly, she became more aware of the tunic the masked man had given her, now draped loosely over her shoulders. And this one did have several pockets she could use. Without overthinking it, she placed two of the Seeds inside, adjusting them so they wouldn't fall out as she moved.
Afterward, she let her gaze move across the surrounding area. The rain had begun to ease over the ruins stretching out in every direction, silent and unmoving.
"Okay…" she said quietly. "Now I need to get out of here."
"Yes, you can't stay here through the night," Seven replied. "This place won't remain as quiet as it is now. Drifts will gather, and things will become difficult."
"Difficult…" Ashe repeated, scoffing a little bit.
"Go through the rusted gate ahead," he continued. "If you follow the path straight, you'll reach an old railway. It should still be visible. Once you find it, follow it in the direction of the sun."