Chương 37: Chapter 31 – Weaving the Mist

Esmerelda's words hung in the air.

"How are you even alive?" Cade had no answer. He'd asked himself that same question so many times since the System arrived. The Ashen Baptism alone should have ended him. The Rite of Lightning, even more so. Add in the toad mucus, the burns, the cracked skin, the sleepless nights spent half-mad with pain and hunger—it should have been more than enough to break a person. But here he was.

He exhaled shakily and brought up his resource pools with a flick of thought: HP: 32 / 350 SP: 28 / 320 MP: 260 / 260 Better than it had been, but not by much. He wasn't dying. But something bothered him. His mana was full again. Why? That kind of recovery shouldn't have happened that fast, not with how wrecked the rest of his body was. Why was his mana always the first to recover? He closed the window with a mental command.

"What did you see?" he asked the old frog. He tried to sound calm, but his voice was too dry, too cracked to fully mask the tension behind it. Esmerelda's cloudy eyes studied him again, slow and deliberate. Her fingers curled around her staff and planted it gently beside her.

"I saw channels that were fried and frayed," she said, "dry and cracked beds where rivers should flow." Her tone wasn't cruel, just measured. Like someone who had seen thousands of possibilities and was now seeing one more that didn't quite belong.

"Our tadpoles harden their pathways in the jelly," she continued.

"Younglings deepen them when they climb from the pools. Even those burned by ash return with something left to carry a trickle. But you…" She stopped, her throat sac rising with a breath. She looked away. Cade tried to smile, but it came out crooked.

"So… that's bad."

"In our measures, it is not only bad," she replied.

"It is impossible." Her gaze returned to his face.

"And yet, here you sit. Asking for lessons." A quiet beat passed between them, thick with unspoken weight. Cade looked down at his hands, remembering how they had lit up during the lightning storm. Burned. Rebuilt. Or maybe just barely held together.

"Harsh truths are not always kind," Esmerelda said.

"But they are better companions than lies." Cade nodded once. He didn't trust his voice just then. There was a strange relief in hearing it spoken aloud. That something in him was broken. That the reason the System's automatic Core formation had failed wasn't just random. That it wasn't all in his head. He'd felt it since the beginning. The sense that others had been given something, and he had been left half-formed. Now someone else could see it too.

"What now?" he asked. Esmerelda tapped her staff gently on the mat. Her throat fluttered with a tired croak.

"Second Elder Varosk has asked me to teach you our ways," she said, her voice quiet.

"So I shall." Hope surged in Cade's chest.

"But," she added, "I will not waste what little time I have left in this realm trying to teach the hopeless." Her gaze didn't waver, but her voice softened slightly.

"I do not have the breath to nurse a creature who should not have lived this long." Cade's shoulders sagged, the spark of hope already flickering. He managed a small nod.

"I will loan you tools," Esmerelda continued, "tools so simple even a hatchling can use them—if they have the aptitude. You will try them without my hand to steady yours." Cade took a breath and met her gaze again.

"Understood." Esmerelda adjusted her grip on her staff, the wood creaking softly beneath her fingers.

"From what I saw, you lack affinity for any of our paths," she said plainly.

"Your body bears scars from the ash, and your channels…" Her cloudy eyes narrowed.

"They are feeble. Ragged. They cannot carry enough essence to attempt our techniques." Cade felt the words land in his chest. He tried not to show it—but Esmerelda's throat gave a small, sympathetic croak, as if she had seen straight through the thin veneer of his composure.

"However," she continued, "if there is even a guttering spark in you we will find it." She lifted her chin slightly, throat sac swelling. Then—without warning—she leaned her head back, opened her mouth, and reached two fingers past her tongue. Cade leaned back, startled that she was going to puke on him. Her fingers vanished past her teeth, deeper than any normal mouth should allow, as though she were reaching into a hollow space carved behind her throat.

When her hand finally emerged, she carried something impossibly delicate between her fingers. A thin cord of shimmering twine. Ethereal, translucent, glistening like dew stretched across spider silk at dawn. A tiny knot sat in its center, glowing faintly like a captive firefly. Cade stared.

"You keep that in your mouth?"

"No," Esmerelda said, as though the answer were obvious.

"It rests in a storage fold. A pocket between breaths." She gave him no further clarification, and Cade wasn't brave enough to request any.

"This is a Wispguide Skein," she announced, holding it gingerly between two fingers.

"Even the most stunted beginner can use it if they possess the Mistweaver's aptitude." As he stared at the delicate skein in Esmerelda's fingers, Cade activated [Identify]. Wispguide Skein — A patterned guide for controlled mist shaping. He had a dozen questions, crowding and jostling for priority, but Esmerelda had already slipped into demonstration mode. She took one end of the skein in each hand and drew them taut. The string stretched, shimmering faintly.

"Mistweaving is two workings," she explained.

"Inside: you draw essence along your channels and pool it in your palms. Outside: you shape what leaves through the gates in your palms into the pattern that births mist." Cade blinked.

"Gates?" Esmerelda ignored him.

"The Wispguide forms the outer pattern for you," she went on.

"All you must do is feed essence steadily into each end." Her fingertips paled slightly as she began channeling. Cade watched, mesmerized, as a shimmering flow ran along the cord, traveling inward from both sides until it reached the knot. The knot unfurled like a blooming flower, spreading into an intricate sigil that hovered a hair above the string. The skein shifted, weaving itself into a looping figure‑eight.

A thin ribbon of mist spun outward from the center—delicate, spiraling upward before dissipating in the warm air. Cade felt his breath catch. He had seen this before. The black frog in the vision—the one who had breathed life into an entire wasteland—had woven mist as easily as letting out a breath.

"This is a training tool," Esmerelda said.

"A crutch to teach children." Then she abruptly flooded the skein with too much essence. The knot snapped shut with a sharp ting, the cord stiffening. A cold hiss escaped as frost crackled along the line and nipped at her thumbs. She eased back, and the skein softened, returning to its pliable, shimmering form.

"If you push too much," she said, "it locks. If you trickle too little, nothing forms." She extended the skein toward him. Cade accepted it gingerly. It weighed almost nothing, yet he felt a strange connection to it, like it expected something of him. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. His mind raced. What is essence? Is it mana? Stamina? Something else? How do I push it through a channel I can't even feel? What happens if I break this thing? Does it ever get cleaned?

He swallowed all the questions. Esmerelda had made it clear she wasn't here to hold his hand.

"Stay under the eaves," she said.

"Practice until I return. You will not leave this pad while you hold the skein." She didn't wait for him to agree. She simply turned and shuffled away, staff tapping rhythmically as she approached the group of spawnlings gathering at the pavilion's edge—leaving Cade alone with the mist‑weaving tool and the unsettling knowledge that his channels were a patchwork of broken lines and empty spaces. Okay, Cade told himself, settling onto the reed mat with the skein draped across his palms. Here's your starting place.

He exhaled once, slow and shaky, and positioned the Wispguide the way Esmerelda had shown him with the ends held lightly, center knot resting between his thumbs. Move your essence, he instructed his body. Nothing happened. Not a tingle. Not a pulse. Not even the faint suggestion that something could move. Cade frowned. Okay that didn't work. He tried again. Harder. Still nothing. He didn't even know what he was supposed to be moving. His resource sheet didn't list anything called essence.

He had health, stamina, and mana. No "essence." No mystical frog‑compatible energy pool. Just the basic System stats he'd been struggling to survive with. Maybe it's something these frogs have that humans don't. He wracked his memory for something— anything —that could give him a clue. And then it hit him. The vision. The black‑skinned frog meditating in the ash, her body humming with internal flow. He had felt it—something circling through her channels, looping in a deep rhythm.

The sensation had been faint, indistinct, but real. He'd spent what felt like hours in her skin. Enough to know that something had been moving. He straightened his posture, crossing his legs the way she had, spine tall, shoulders relaxed. He rested the skein in his palms. Okay. Think. Ignore everything else. Focus. He let the world recede. The croaks and trills of the swamp softened. The gentle sway of the walker lily beneath him faded. Even the distant sounds of Esmerelda instructing the spawnlings blurred away.

He focused on his body. He felt the warm rush of blood moving through his veins. He felt the steady, heavy thump of his heartbeat. He felt the rise and fall of his chest with every breath. But beyond that? Nothing. No echo of essence. No rhythmic pulse like the frog's. No deep internal river he could draw from. Minutes passed as his sense of time thinned until he couldn't tell if the sun had shifted or the lily pad beneath him had moved. Still—nothing. Frustration coiled up his spine. Why can't I do this?

Why can't I feel anything? Esmerelda said even children can Mistweave with this thing. So what does that make me? Less than a child? A stunted hatchling? A waste of time? His jaw clenched. His shoulders tightened. He felt himself folding inward, hunching, his breath constricting. His mind spiraled. Maybe this was pointless. Esmerelda had already decided he was a lost cause. Maybe he really didn't have any channels worth saving. Maybe— Stop. Cade caught himself. He slowly lifted his shoulders—then dropped them.

He inhaled deeply through his nose, letting the air fill him. He exhaled through his mouth, letting the tension bleed out with it. Once, twice, again. He straightened. He reset. He returned to the posture he remembered so vividly: the posture of the frog that breathed life into ash. That was when he felt it—a familiar tug at the edge of his mind, a subtle System ping trying to force its way into his awareness. A notification attempting to open. He pushed it away. Not now.

He could almost feel the internal flow waiting for him, just beyond reach. A shape. A rhythm. Something familiar yet elusive. It was close. It was right there. He inhaled, steady and controlled. He exhaled, matching the memory of the frog's slow ritual breath. Just a little further, he thought. Come on. Come on— And his focus sharpened to a point. Something inside him shifted and responded. He reached for it yet held still.

The sensation was faint, like the tingling awareness of a limb returning from numbness—but it was there. A motion that didn't come from muscle or blood. A whisper running parallel to the pulse of his heart. Not quite physical. Not quite imagined. He didn't know what to call it but it was some sort of flow. It wasn't fast. It wasn't strong. But it moved. He let himself fall into it. Each breath helped.

Not forced or frantic—just slow, steady inhales, drawing the air into his lungs, letting the rise and fall of his chest become a metronome. In. Out. In. Out. And as his breath deepened, so too did the sensation. The flow inside him gathered faint weight, spreading outward in faint trails. Like warm water dripping into dry soil. Cade's mind wandered—not with doubt this time, but with a memory. His anatomy class. A lecture he had half-slept through back in college.

He remembered the circulation diagrams, the closed-loop system that powered the human body. Deoxygenated blood returned to the heart, passed through the lungs, picked up fresh oxygen, then was pumped back out through the arteries. The aorta split and branched and fed the entire body—arterioles to capillaries, capillaries to cells. Gas exchange. Nutrients. Waste removal. The loop continued, always cycling, always moving. What if this was the same? Not blood but something deeper. Something more subtle.

He imagined that same network again—but superimposed. Not veins and arteries, but metaphysical threads. Invisible channels that didn't carry oxygen, but potential. It didn't matter that he didn't have a stat for it. He could feel something moving now. He thought back—again—to the black-skinned frog from the vision. The rhythm in her body had mirrored breath. Flowing in stillness. Power without motion. She had done it for hours without strain. Not forcing it, just letting it happen.

Cade opened himself to that rhythm. He didn't chase it. He didn't force it. He allowed it. The System pinged again, this time more insistent trying to demand attention but he ignored it. His body wasn't screaming as loudly now. His mind had quieted. And beneath it all, something moved. It started in his chest—just beneath his sternum. A gathering, a weightless center, like a coil of warmth unwinding. It slipped along his spine, crept down his arms, and pooled in his palms. He immediately felt the difference.

The ends of the Wispguide tingled in his hands, as if the cord knew something was coming. Still holding the flow steady, Cade stood—slowly, carefully. His body ached, but he didn't let it pull his focus. He moved into the posture he remembered from the black frog's final movement. The pose that had ended her night-long cultivation. The one that had seemed like a kind of release. He brought his feet beneath him. Spread his toes. Felt the mat beneath his soles.

He lifted his hands high, the skein's ends trailing upward, and slowly opened them apart as he exhaled. This is it, he thought. It has to be— Something caught. A hum deep in his arms. A thread of energy curved from one hand to the other through the skein. He didn't see it. But he felt it. Closer. Closer— And then it all came crashing down as a clammy hand touched his shoulder. Cade nearly jumped out of his skin. Every sense roared back into his awareness like a dam breaking.

The low croaks and creaks of the village, once background noise, now blared as if the entire swamp had erupted in song. The steady rhythm of the walker lily beneath his feet, once a soothing pulse, now felt like a drunken earthquake. His body swayed, and it took every ounce of will not to fall over. Heat blasted his face—the hearth, he realized—and cool, damp air slid across his back like a sheet of ice.

His limbs flared with aches he'd managed to forget, and his stomach— his goddamn stomach —let out a gurgle that could've registered on a seismograph. Hadn't he just eaten? He opened his eyes in a daze. Esmerelda stood in front of him, her brow furrowed with concern, her cloudy eyes narrowing slightly as she studied his expression. She opened her mouth and spoke. Or—no, not spoke. A chirp. Short and musical. More followed. Words, clearly—but Cade couldn't understand them.

Her mouth moved, her throat sac flexed, but the mucus translation effect wasn't working. Cade blinked. Shouldn't it be translated? He stared dumbly, trying to will her voice into something he could understand. Nothing. Not even a fragment. Esmerelda kept talking, but all Cade heard was meaningless frog noises.