Chapters
The worn table. The game scratched into its surface. The stories told during the long Shakes.
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Where Rallah kept the cutting. Where she sat and listened.
Rallah kept a live cutting of the flora on the south-facing sill. Not dried. Living, in a clay pot she'd made herself. She watered it carefully, turned it toward the light. On nights when the Shake came, she would take it to the table and sit with it. Kai asked her once what she was doing.
Listening, Rallah had said.
New chapters arrive when they're ready. No algorithm. Just the next part of the story.
She had whole rooms in her I never got to see. That's not the same thing as being kept out.
Lore
Old Jara sits with her carved walking stick and remembers everything.
Escalating tectonic activity. Always deadly. Always getting worse. It comes with no discrimination — young, old, near, far. It doesn't care.
Milder in the cold season. The Cellars are the only reliable shelter, reinforced by cardium. The Rac'i built them. Not out of generosity — they couldn't stomach watching others die.
Low-growing, dark leaves, small white flowers. Grows throughout the Southlands near walls, foundations, roadsides. Unremarkable in daylight. Easily overlooked.
Under the right celestial alignment: light visible along the veins on the underside of the leaves. Not a glow. More like the dark is thinner there. Light trying to come through from the inside.
Played on a 64-square grid scratched into the table. Five stone types: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Spirit. Simple enough to learn in an afternoon. Deep enough to spend a lifetime failing to master.
The skill is reading the board three moves ahead. Most people can't manage two. Tomin can manage four.
Controlled by the Rac'i — nobleman descendants whose ancestors were the first to build cities and work with alloys. They hold cardium knowledge. They built the Cellars.
From the ridge to the north, you can see it all. Everything Kai knew was small from there. Not diminished. Just the right size.
Maturity around 60 years. Characters live for centuries. Kai is 40 summers. Ace is 157. The Elder has been alive long enough that the number stops meaning much.
What does it do to ambition, grief, risk tolerance, when you measure your life in centuries?