After the trial, Mira brought me a letter hidden between the layers of the egg capsule.
My mother had written to a member of staff at the orphanage:
"Don't tell the boy his parents left the egg. He must not feel obliged to choose it. If the beast doesn't answer, find him another life. If it does, don't call it fate."
The egg lost its special status after its keeper died and ended up in a box for the lowest rank. On the day of the awakening, the other boxes were taken first. Styx woke to my blood.
Nobody had brought us together in advance.
That did not make the bond any weaker.
I placed the original in the city archive and kept the copy in a tin box. Every evening I put a drop of blood on the lid as a familiar scent, in case Styx was still alive.
For the first two days I could not take part in the search. My legs held me for a few minutes, then began to shake. I sat over the map and caught myself trying to open the System window. My hand made the familiar movement, but the wall remained in front of my eyes.
The captains came one at a time. Each showed me his section of the ruins and decided for himself where to search next. One searched by the river, another beneath the family hall, a third returned to the clutches until dark. I wrote everything down on paper because I could no longer carry the map of the swarm in my head.
On the fourth day I made it to the tower.
At the sight of every red body, my heart stopped for a second. Most of the dead were soldiers from the old broods. I placed them in separate boxes so the captains could collect their own. Each time, hope died only after I had examined the wings.
Lily walked beside me and did not tell me to stop. She only made sure I did not miss a step.
The swarm captains searched for five days, then returned to their starving broods. I thanked them and took the map.
Lily came with me. We found red bodies in the ruins, and each time I bent down, hoping to see movement.
On the third evening she asked:
"If Styx is dead, who will you be?"
I grew angry because staying faithful to the search seemed like the only answer I was allowed to give.
"I don't know."
"That's honest."
We left before dark. For the first time, I allowed the search to end for the day.
The next day I went alone and again left before dark. Then I did it again. The box remained by the infirmary window, and the blood on its lid dried by morning.
Two weeks later, I began helping the scouts beyond the wall. Without the System, distances became real: after an hour on the road my legs hurt, the scent of a predator was not highlighted, and a wrong trail cost half a day. Cole taught me to read tracks. Taya gave me a whistle and warned me that now anyone might answer a signal, not the person I was waiting for.
A month later, the first reconnaissance party entered the Wildlands. Without the System, I tired, heard every snapping twig and learnt to count a retreat from the fire hounds as a success.
An independent captain met us at the gates. He brought a fragment of transparent wing and showed us a hollow underground beneath the titanic lizard's field.
An old nest.
White threads inside.
Styx was hiding there, holding the new swarm at bay.
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