The autumn wind howled through the valley, whipping up dust devils that danced between the rocks.
Or at least, that's what I would have seen before.
Now I saw something else: those nearly imperceptible energy bonds clinging to soil particles before dispersing like ephemeral smoke.
The Ether. Always there, always active, even when I pretended not to notice it.
Weeks. Weeks of surviving, jury-rigging temporary solutions, telling myself I'd understand later.
But time was running out.
Winter wasn't a distant threat—it was a shadow already creeping along the hut, seeping into my bones each morning when I woke to the vapor of my breath.
I needed to move to the next phase.
I turned to a blank page, scribbled a title:
"DIAGNOSIS – PHASE 1"
Problem #1: Winter.
I wrote in capital letters, as if making them bigger could make them less real.
The cave was damp—too damp. The air clung to skin, clothes, tools.
I pressed my hand against the stone wall behind me. Cold. Not uniformly, of course. Some areas were icy, others lukewarm, as if the Ether flowed better in certain spots. Or worse.
— OK, so...
I sketched a quick diagram of the cave, with arrows indicating air currents, condensation points. The little house I'd built from wood and dried stone was a stopgap. It held some heat, but not enough. And most importantly, it didn't breathe. Moisture accumulated in the corners, gnawed at the planks, made the stores moldy.
— Storage...
I grimaced thinking about the bags of nuts and berries piled near the entrance, already covered in a fine white film. I needed a cellar. A real cellar. Dug into the bedrock, isolated from the rest, where air would circulate without bringing mold. But not just anywhere. If I understood what I was seeing—these lines of Ether snaking through the stone like roots—some areas were more stable than others. Less permeable. Less... noisy.
I jotted in the margin: "Find stable Ether node → dig there."
Problem #2: No overall vision.
I looked up at the roof of branches and dried earth I'd cobbled together above my head. It held. Barely. But it only held. Nothing was optimized. Nothing was designed. I'd stacked solutions as needs arose, like a kid adding floors to a card castle without worrying about balance.
— Expand...
But how? Upward? A second floor would be practical for storage, but the wood would rot faster with the moisture.
I rubbed my temples, the notebook open on my knees. The moisture, the space, the Ether... Everything was connected. Everything could be optimized.
— Build upward?
Why not. A second floor would double the usable space. And if I reinforced the beams with Ether-treated wood—just enough to resist rot—the problem would be solved. I noted in the margin: "Test Ether stabilization on wood → reduce degradation."
— A chimney?
Obviously. Not just for fire. For ventilation. The moisture stagnated because the air didn't circulate. A central chimney, with polished stone ducts—smooth, so the Ether would glide without catching—and the job would be done. Smoke would exit, air would enter through low openings. A natural convection system.
— An attic?
Better: a double attic. One for dry storage—nuts, seeds, tools—the other for winter reserves—dried meat, medicinal herbs. Separated from the rest by partitions of dried clay, reinforced with Ether filaments to block moisture.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I turned the page, sketched a diagram.
The hut would no longer be a shelter.
It would be an organism.
[ACTION PLAN]
- Dig the cellar (stable Ether node → less humidity).
- Raise the floor (isolate from damp ground).
- Add a second floor (Ether-treated beams).
- Build the chimney (polished stone + ventilation ducts).
- Set up the attics (clay partitions + Ether).
[GOAL]
A house that breathes.
A house that lasts.
I closed the notebook, looked at the rocky wall.
— We start with the cellar.
Tomorrow. Today, I still needed to find that stable Ether node.
And most importantly... not screw it up.
My fingers slid over the rock, tracing slow circles, as if trying to read a forgotten language. The stone was cold, but not uniformly. In places, it seemed alive—not in a biological sense, no, more like a metal that conducts electricity poorly, in spurts. I closed my eyes. Not to concentrate. To see.
And there it was again.
The normal world—the gray wall, striated with mica veins, the trembling shadows of my torch—overlaid with the other.
The one I'd started calling the weave. An energetic mycelial network where silicon and carbonate atoms ran. Some glowed brighter, others flickered in sections, as if the current had been cut.
— OK. So...
I opened my eyes, took a breath. The quartz in my pocket weighed heavy. Not physically. Metaphorically.
Since I'd "activated" it—if that was the right term—it had been my compass and my collar, a filter. Without them, the atomic noise overwhelmed me and my precision suffered.
With it, I distinguished the patterns better.
I took out a piece of charcoal stolen from my campfire and began drawing directly on the rock.
Blue, first.
Where the Ether flowed in steady currents, almost lazy. Areas where the stone seemed to breathe, as if exchanging something with the air. I pressed my palm against one. A deep vibration, like the hum of a distant electrical transformer. Stable. Healthy.
Red, next.
The nodes. Points where the Ether accumulated in particulate eddies, spinning like water in a sink before rushing... where? I didn't know. But these areas were hot to the touch—not physically (my skin didn't burn), but as if they radiated disordered energy.
I took a step back. My instinct told me not to linger here. My scientific side wanted to plunge my fingers in to see what would happen.
— Later.
Green, finally.
The fissures. Cracks in the weave, where the Ether leaked toward... I didn't know where. Outside? Another plane? The void? Didn't matter. What mattered was that these paths existed. And if I wanted to stabilize anything here, I needed to understand them.
I took two steps back, observed my work.
My cave now looked like a patient under monitoring, covered in colored electrodes. And I was the country doctor trying to guess what all these beeps meant without having studied medicine.
— Alright. Hypothesis one: these red nodes are congestion points. Like clots in a vein.
I reached toward one, hesitated.
I closed my eyes again, focused my will on the node.
Local adjustment of cohesion vectors...
Nothing.
— OK. Maybe I need to...
I took the quartz from my pocket, gripped it in my left hand. My skull buzzed. Like a headphone turned almost to max volume. The quantum threads became sharper. The red nodes flickered.
I reached toward the rock again.
This time, when my fingers brushed the stone, I felt something. Not resistance. An... elasticity. As if the matter was soft under my fingers, ready to deform.
— Gently.
I pushed.
Not physically. Mentally.
A boom escaping my skull.
Not in the rock. In my head. A fuzzy notification crossed my mind, like a poorly synchronized subtitle:
[STRUCTURAL MODIFICATION] → Partial success (30% efficiency)
[LOCAL STABILIZATION] → +5 XP
[Level 5] → 65/900 XP (7%)
I jumped back, fingers numb.
On the wall where I'd touched, a thin black line now streaked the red. Like a scar. And around it... the energy threads seemed less agitated. Smoother.
— Wow.
I placed my hand on the modified area. The stone was warm now. Not hot. Balanced. As if I'd released pressure.
A kind of Ether osteopath.
I crack myself up.
Behind me, a soft click.
I turned around.
A pebble—no, a piece of quartz, fist-sized—had rolled to my feet. It hadn't been there before. I would have noticed.
I picked it up.
Inside, luminous capillaries shimmered, as if someone had injected liquid gold into the stone. And they... moved. Slowly. Like algae in a current.
— Uh...
I set the crystal down, took a breath.
First observation: I had modified the rock. Not by much. But most importantly, not cleanly. But enough that the Ether flowed better here, at least.
Second observation: The mountain was reacting. Not like a living organism—well, maybe a little—but like a system in precarious balance.
And I had just... adjusted a parameter.
A game of pick-up sticks?
Third observation—and this was the one that made me smile—: It worked.
Not perfectly. Not without risk. But it was a start.
I took out my notebook, wrote:
"Day 47: Direct interaction with Ether node (congestion type). Result: local stabilization + generation of secondary quartz (to analyze). Hypothesis: green fissures = natural drainage paths. Red nodes = blockages to eliminate to balance flow. Next step: map entire East wall."
I closed the notebook, looked at the black scar on the rock.
— We'll take it slow.
Because if I could repair a mountain...
What was stopping me from repairing the rest?