Chương 38: Chapter 32 – Reflection

Cade blinked and stared at Esmerelda. She chirped again—short, musical—but still completely incomprehensible. What the hell? Why couldn't he understand her? He opened his mouth to ask, but she was already moving, her cloudy eyes narrowing slightly as she stepped forward and took hold of his hands. Her webbed fingers turned them over with surprising delicacy, inspecting the Wispguide Skein still resting in his grip. She frowned.

With a sigh, she plucked the skein from his hands, opened her mouth, and gently placed the delicate cord back into the space behind her throat. Cade didn't know if it was some kind of extradimensional storage or just weird frog anatomy—but either way, that mystery would have to wait. Esmerelda motioned firmly for him to sit. He obeyed, albeit reluctantly, lowering himself onto the rough reed mat once more. His mind was still spinning—he had been so close to something. So close to touching something real.

So close to a breakthrough. And now it was gone. He looked to the hearth—and only then noticed that there was a proper fire going now. Not just the lazy, smoldering embers from earlier, but flickering flame and steady heat. Several skewers were resting around the stone ring, held in place by forked sticks. Something sizzled over the fire, roasting and dripping in the heat. Esmerelda reached forward, picked up one of the skewers, and handed it to him with a firm nod. Cade blinked down at the offering.

It was crispy on the outside, blistered from the flames, and it smelled vaguely of smoke. The thing on the stick was impaled like a hotdog—except he was pretty sure hotdogs didn't have retractable barbed mouths. A quick [Identify] gave him the name. Juvenile Swamp Leech – Small parasite found in shallow reeds. It tracks its prey through heat and vibration. Cade's stomach growled. He stared at the leech. The leech stared back with shriveled black eyes and a crackling, roasted body. Yeah. Okay. Sure.

He took a hesitant bite. The skin was crisp—like overdone chicken skin—but as soon as his teeth broke through, a warm gush of metallic, muddy-tasting fluid hit his tongue. Cade did his best not to gag. It wasn't the worst thing he'd eaten but it definitely wouldn't win any awards. Esmerelda, for her part, was already digging into her own skewer seemingly unbothered by the taste. She sat on the same thick reed mat as before, the one nearest the fire. Cade sat beside her, chewing slowly.

It wasn't as good as the insects, fruit, and seeds he'd been given during his talk with Varosk, but it was food. His body didn't care how it tasted, it just wanted calories. He glanced around the pavilion. The little frogs from earlier were gone. The open space that had once hummed with quiet, curious energy now felt empty. Maybe the spawnlings had gone home to eat? That would make sense as it was probably lunchtime. But then he looked outside. It was almost dark.

The dim light filtering through the mist and vines wasn't bright at all. In fact, it looked like it was right after dusk. Hadn't it been just after dawn when Esmerelda gave him the skein? Without any real way to tell how much time had passed, he gave up trying to guess and let his thoughts drift to something he could control—the System had pinged him while he was deep in concentration. He pulled up his System notifications with a mental command. Ding! You have gained the [Meditation] skill.

[Meditation (common)] – Enter a trance that severs awareness of the outside world to accelerate stamina and mana recovery. Cade froze, the half-eaten skewer of roasted swamp leech resting in front of his open mouth. Wait, how had he gained the Meditation skill? He quickly swallowed and reread the notification to make sure he hadn't misread. There was no level-up message to accompany the skill gain, he was still a level 9 human. It had just happened.

Meditation had been one of the potential skills offered to him during his race evolution. He'd passed on it at the time in favor of [Identify]. But somehow he had gained the skill just now. A small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. He had hypothesized that it was possible to gain skills outside of what the System offered. He had no idea how repeatable that was, or what the rules were but it gave him hope that not everything had to be handed to him. Then the second notification slid into place. Ding!

Congratulations! You have upgraded [Meditation] to [Hyperfocused Meditation]. [Hyperfocused Meditation (uncommon)] – Enter a trance that can sever awareness of the outside world, accelerating stamina and mana recovery. While active, cognition collapses around a single topic, boosting clarity and analysis at the risk of losing track of time. Cade blinked. Oh. He thought. Well, that explained some things. He stared at the new description. That was exactly what had happened.

He'd fallen into a trance so deep that time disappeared, his surroundings vanished, and even his bodily needs had gone quiet. He'd been completely locked in on one thing—figuring out how to move his so-called "essence." And it worked. Sort of. It also explained the darkness. He hadn't been training for an hour or two. He'd lost the entire day. This wasn't lunch, it was likely the last meal of the day. The froglings hadn't gone off to nap or eat, they had gone home. Class was over.

He'd been so deep in focus he hadn't noticed any of it. His smile faded slightly as he considered the implications. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. He felt that he could easily lose himself in that state again. The fact that he hadn't passed out from hunger or dehydration was probably a fluke considering the state of his body. Or maybe Esmerelda had been watching and pulled him out before he hurt himself. I need to be careful with this, he thought.

I could see myself focusing so much that I accidentally starved to death just trying to learn things. Maybe it was best not to use [Hyperfocused Meditation] again. Not until his body was in better condition. And definitely not unless someone was nearby to pull him out if things got dangerous. Still, there was something deeply satisfying about it. He'd gained and upgraded a skill on his own. That meant that both gaining skills and upgrading them weren't limited to some arbitrary System milestones.

They could be earned and the System would recognize the accomplishment. That line of thinking sparked about a dozen new ideas, but Cade forced himself to shelve them. For now, he had food in front of him and a warm fire beside him. He needed to finish eating and recover. He took another bite of leech. The taste wasn't any better than before. Cade had just finished chewing another mouthful of swamp leech when Esmerelda gestured toward the fire, then to the remaining skewers, and then to Cade.

It took a second, but Cade pieced it together—she was offering him the rest. He gave her a small nod of thanks, and she gave one in return, already reaching for her staff and settling into her sitting posture by the hearth. It wasn't exactly a feast, but his body didn't care. Every bite of the roasted parasite was another step toward rebuilding his strength. The taste still had that iron-mud punch, but now that he was past the initial revulsion, it wasn't too bad.

The fire popped softly as Cade worked through the last of the leeches. The flames had burned lower now, casting long shadows across the pavilion and dim orange light on the woven reed mats. Esmerelda didn't speak—or croak. She just sat there, watching the embers and occasionally glancing over at him, as if making sure he didn't pass out face-first into his food. Cade appreciated the silence. It was a strange, almost sacred quiet.

And it was only then, as his hunger began to ease, that the exhaustion hit him in full. Every breath was harder to draw. Every blink slower. He blinked again and realized the last skewer was in his hand—finished. Esmerelda stood. She tapped the end of her staff against the mat. Cade stared at her for a moment, then back at the mat.

"Sleep?" he guessed aloud. She gave a slow blink. A very deliberate one. Yeah. That meant sleep. He didn't argue. The mat was scratchy and lumpy, and he doubted it had ever been cleaned in its entire existence—but it might as well have been a luxury mattress in a five-star hotel. He lay down with a sigh, rolled onto his side, and didn't even bother with a goodnight. Even if he'd wanted to stay up and reflect on everything that had happened today, his body had no intention of cooperating.

He was unconscious within seconds. Esmerelda remained seated long after the human succumbed to sleep. The moment Cade's breathing eased into the slow, uneven rhythm of deep rest, she let out a soft croak—half weary, half contemplative—and rested both hands atop her staff. The pavilion around her was quiet now. The last of the day's warmth clung to the wood, and the embers in the hearth pulsed in a slow rhythm. She watched him in the dim firelight. Small. Fragile.

Raw in ways she had not seen in her many cycles He was unexpected. Very unexpected. She drew a long breath through her nostrils, letting it fill her old lungs. With the exhale, the thoughts she had avoided all day finally settled on her shoulders. What are you? She had given him the Wispguide Skein expecting what she always expected from the hopeless: a little fumbling, a little confusion, and eventually resignation.

Normally, a youngling lacking aptitude would bring the skein back within minutes—defeated, embarrassed, sometimes even angry. Cade did none of these things. He had simply sat there for hours upon hours. Completely motionless aside from his deep, steady breaths. She could sense his focus was tighter than the most disciplined‑driven tadpoles. She had checked on him several times. Yet every time she approached Cade had been locked in that trance‑like stillness. His eyes closed, shoulders lowered, and muscles slack.

Not sleeping but submerged so deeply within that she could not pull a whisper of awareness from him. She had sensed the faintest thread moving within him. Not essence—no, she would stake her staff on that. What ran through the frogs of the mists was essence refined by breath and practice. But the human, Cade, possessed some other current. Distant and weak but persistent. A thread in a dried‑up riverbed. A spark buried in ash. Something old and broken but stubbornly alive.

And he had tried to braid that thread into the skein. Esmerelda lifted the staff slightly and traced the engraved egg patterns with her thumb as she thought. He almost broke the skein. The moment she had seen Cade stand—hands pressed together, chest expanding, she knew something was happening. The energy around him shifted. Not fully visible to her dimming senses, but present. A pulse misaligned with the swamp's natural rhythm. And then he began to draw his hands apart. The skein responded far too strongly.

Its ends shimmered with tension. The knot stretched thin. Filaments strained as if on the brink of unraveling. A hatchling shouldn't have been able to push enough essence to disturb it at all, much less stretch it toward failure. That was what frightened her. For a brief, impossible instant, she sensed something vast brushing at the gates in Cade's palms—not essence exactly but some alien force that did not belong to this realm.

If she had let him continue the skein would have ruptured, its inner runes shredded, its guiding weave snapped. And if a Wispguide Skein broke while being channeled— Esmerelda tightened her grip on her staff. No. She had been right to intervene. Even if doing so had broken the moment of understanding the human had been reaching for. She closed her eyes, feeling the echoes of her own guilt. She knew that expression he had worn when startled from the trance. The raw hurt of someone dragged away from a revelation.

She had felt it herself many cycles ago, when her own teacher had swatted her staff against the back of her head for attempting a Mistcall before she was ready. Breakthroughs were delicate things. Still, it was better that Cade lose a single insight than risk having his untempered essence tear open the skein and possibly rupture his own gates in the process. Her throat sac fluttered with a tired croak. The poor creature had no channels worth speaking of.

She had seen them herself—frayed to threads, collapsed in on themselves, scarred past any reasonable function. His inner pathways looked like the shattered earth surrounding the Eye of Ash, fissured and lifeless. That he could move at all was astonishing. That he still lived was nothing short of a miracle. No frog in this realm would have survived what happened to him. And yet he had.

Pearl had found him curled beneath a discarded Ash Tortoise shell—half-dead, scorched, drained of everything except a stubborn spark of will. Perhaps that was why Varosk spared the boy in the first place. She cast a glance toward the shell lying beside him. Ashen marks still stained its ridges. The Emperor's breath. That alone was enough to kill most living things in a single pass. The Eye of Ash did not spare life. It devoured it. The Ash Emperor—wretched creature that it was—believed itself a savior.

A bringer of cleansing through annihilation. Esmerelda's webbed fingers curled at the thought. She had listened to the elder songs long enough to know the truth of that monster. It could never lead this realm to freedom. Only unmaking. She drew another slow breath and returned her gaze to the sleeping human. Cade was frighteningly thin. Every bone pressed against his skin. His limbs—if one could call them that—were more like reeds than proper appendages. How did a creature survive like that?

How did it stand, or climb, or endure days wandering through ash? The scars along his arms spoke of lightning that should have killed him outright. Yet he had taken the storm into himself and lived. Perhaps humans simply did not work the way frogs did. Perhaps they were more stubborn than they looked. Her gaze softened as she studied him. He had eaten desperately as someone whose body had long been denied nourishment. She had watched him chew each leech with an almost grateful resignation. He was hurting.

And though she would never admit it aloud, something about that stirred an old, aching instinct within her. A memory of tadpoles gathered around her knees. Of decades spent guiding the lost and teaching the stubborn. She had expected a burden but instead, she had been given a mystery.