I Can See Evolution Paths

Arthur woke in the icy hallway with Dusk already raised, the rumbling still rolling somewhere out past the edge of his vision. He backed toward a rock formation crusted in ice and crouched behind it, spear ready.

Nothing came. After a long moment the rumbling stopped on its own.

He leaned around the rock slowly. The hallway sat empty, no beast, no movement, not even tracks in the frost. "That was strange," he muttered, and took a step forward.

The change wasn’t gradual. One second he stood in the frozen corridor, and the next the ice-covered walls were gone entirely, replaced by a cavern lit in ancient gold. He recognized the architecture immediately, the same ancient civilization as before, except this time the place wasn’t a ruin. It was alive, full of people in long robes gathered around a massive blue mirror.

"Another Mirror," Arthur said under his breath, and stepped closer to one of the robed figures, reaching out to touch a shoulder.

His hand passed straight through.

He froze, staring at his own palm before trying again, same result. "Could this be... a memory?" Nobody in the room so much as glanced his way. He didn’t test it a third time. He just watched.

One of the women near the mirror looked troubled enough that she finally broke the group’s silence. "Are we certain this is the right choice?"

"What choice?" The man beside her hadn’t looked up from the mirror.

"Sealing it away."

"We already agreed."

She shook her head, arms crossed tight. "We agreed because we were afraid."

"And you think we shouldn’t be?"

"If we seal the Mirrors, we’re not just protecting them." She gestured at the glowing surface. "We’re cutting the Everglades off from everything they could give us. This realm’s been isolated for generations. The Mirrors could strengthen our Beast Tamers, improve the land, let us actually grow instead of just surviving."

Someone else stepped in from the side. "And what happens when the outside world finds out?"

"We ask for help." She didn’t sound sure of it even as she said it.

"From whom?" The man finally turned to face her fully, like the question was absurd on its face. "You think the outside world hears we’ve got an artifact that can reshape who rules a realm and just offers assistance?"

A third figure spoke without looking up from the mirror. "They wouldn’t help us. They’d take it."

"I know," she said quietly, eyes down.

"Then why are we still arguing about this?"

"Because hiding it forever isn’t a solution either."

Arthur watched the tension settle over the room before one of the men finally laid out what was actually at stake. "The Mirror doesn’t just strengthen a Beast Tamer." Every head in the room turned toward him. "It can influence the realm itself. The environment. The mana. The creatures." A pause. "Even the pace of our own development."

"Whoever controls the Mirror could shape the Everglades," someone said, working it through out loud.

"And whoever controls all of them," the first man added, "could effectively rule it."

Arthur’s jaw tightened, watching from the edge of the room.

"And that’s not the worst part," another voice cut in, drawing every eye back to the mirror. "If outsiders learn these things can push Bronze and Silver Rank Beast Tamers toward Gold—" He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

"Anything," someone said flatly.

"They’d come here."

"They wouldn’t just come," the first man said. "They’d fight for it. Betray anyone standing in the way. Even their own allies."

"Especially their own allies," someone else muttered.

The troubled woman wasn’t done. "Then shouldn’t we tell someone we trust? Someone strong enough to protect it?"

A bitter laugh answered her. "Who? Someone powerful enough to guard it and immune to wanting it for themselves? You just said yourself even Gold Ranks would want it."

"And if someone above Gold learns about it," another voice added, "what then?"

Nobody answered that one.

The woman’s shoulders dropped. "Grandmasters," she said, barely above a whisper, and Arthur’s stomach turned, hearing the exact word he and the others had been circling for days.

"So we’re sealing them," she said finally. "Forever?"

"Until we’re certain nobody can misuse them."

"And the Everglades, in the meantime? Our people?"

"They survive."

"Surviving isn’t living."

The first man looked at the mirror for a long time before he spoke again. "Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe sealing them hurts us more than it helps." His eyes didn’t leave the glass. "But if we leave them exposed, someone comes for them eventually. I believe this is the safest chance we have."

She didn’t look happy about it, not even close, but she nodded anyway, and one by one the rest of the room followed her lead.

The figures started to disperse from the mirror, and that was when the whole memory shuddered around Arthur, the chamber breaking apart at the edges, the mirror flickering.

He reached toward it without thinking.

Everything went white.

...

Arthur opened his eyes to Mithra leaning over him. "Arthur!" The relief in her voice was immediate. "You’re finally awake."

He blinked a few times, working his jaw. "How long?"

"Long enough that everyone started worrying."

He pushed himself up and took stock.

Vedas nearby, Sun sitting against the wall, Athena already scanning their surroundings, Luna awake and watching him. Eden flew straight at him the second he moved. "Arthur!" and Star bounced across the stone floor and pressed itself flat against his chest before he’d even fully sat up.

"I’m fine," he said, catching the slime.

"Are you sure?" Eden hovered close, looking him over. "You went under after the boat broke apart."

Star wiggled against him and he laughed, patting it. "I’m fine, Star."

"Star’s not convinced," Mithra said, smiling.

Vedas crouched beside him. "No injuries?"

"None."

Vedas let out a breath he’d clearly been holding.

"You were worried," Mithra pointed out.

"We all were," he said, looking away.

"Not me," Sun said immediately, and every head turned toward him. He held out for about two seconds. "...Okay, I was too."

Arthur laughed, but Athena had already noticed something. "You’ve gone quiet. Something happened."

"When I went under, I saw something." Her eyes sharpened instantly. "The past."

He walked them through it, the robed figures, the mirror, the argument over sealing it away, the danger of outsiders learning what it could do, the possibility of ruling the realm through it.

Athena went still halfway through. "Wait. They said it could push a Silver Rank Beast Tamer to Gold?"

He nodded, and Athy’s feathers rose slightly beside her. "That’s enormous."

"That’s why they were hidden," Athena said, working through it in real time. "Not just because they’re powerful. Because people would tear each other apart over them." She looked back toward the ruins around them. "If that ability holds consistent, one organization could manufacture Gold Ranks."

Sun let out a low whistle. "If that got out on the continent, these things wouldn’t be worth billions."

"Then how much?"

"Arthur, we’re talking Gold Rank." He gestured at the walls around them. "You could put a trillion gold on the table and someone would still think they got a bargain."

"Ten Gold Ranks in one organization," Mithra started, and didn’t finish the thought.

"Would be a force nobody could ignore," Vedas finished for her.

"Grandmasters," Arthur said quietly, and the whole group went a shade quieter.

Luna’s fists tightened. "Then Rokkaku—" She didn’t finish either, and didn’t need to. If he reached the mirror first, whatever he walked away with wouldn’t be some ordinary artifact.

Arthur set a hand on her head. "We won’t let him have it."

"But why did only you see it?" Sun finally asked the question everyone had been circling.

"I don’t know."

Luna thought about it for a second. "Maybe the Fire Mirror. You carry its blessing. Maybe the water reacted to it."

"That’s possible," Athena said.

"Fire Mirror plus a water environment could’ve triggered something," Athy added.

Arthur glanced back toward the river behind them. "Then the next one might do the same thing."

Nobody had an answer for that.

"If the river’s what caused it," Mithra said, "what happens if it happens again?"

"That’s what I was thinking," Sun muttered.

"Did you feel anything strange?" Athena asked.

Arthur considered it honestly. "Not really."

"That’s not reassuring."

"Didn’t say it was."

"Arthur shouldn’t jump into rivers anymore," Eden said solemnly.

"Probably not."

"You agreed to that way too easily," Sun groaned.

They got moving again not long after, Luna glancing back the way they’d come. "I still don’t get how Rokkaku got through the river."

"Maybe he found another route," Vedas offered.

"Possible," Athena said, "but we never saw an alternate passage."

"Maybe another boat," Sun tried.

Arthur looked back toward the water. "Maybe. But if there was another boat, why didn’t we see it?"

Nobody had an answer for that one either, and Athena’s expression tightened around the edges. "You think he already knew about this place."

"Maybe," Arthur said, and left it there.

They followed the passage upward as it gradually leveled out, Arthur in front with Dusk resting against his shoulder, the mountain growing quieter with every step until even the distant sound of the river faded out behind them.

He reached the top of the slope first and stopped cold.

Mithra nearly walked straight into his back. "Arthur?"

He didn’t answer. The hallway ahead was packed with them, dozens of Glaciermaws lining the passage, dark scales catching the faint light off the walls, some no bigger than the ones they’d fought in the river and others large enough to nearly fill the corridor wall to wall.

"Those are the same beasts," Luna said, staring.

Vedas already had his spear up. "Why are there this many?"

"Something isn’t right," Athena said slowly, lifting Aegis as she studied them from a distance.

One of the Glaciermaws twitched, its front leg dragging once across the stone before going still. Its head jerked to the side and slowly settled back into place. Then another did the same. Then another, all of them moving stiff and wrong, like something else was operating the strings.

Athy’s eyes lit gold as she ran Analyze, and her expression dropped almost instantly. "Athena..."

"What is it?"

"Their mana’s behaving wrong. It’s not flowing naturally at all. Their bodies move first and the mana follows after, like it’s chasing the motion instead of causing it."

"That’s not how the ones in the river moved," Mithra said.

"No," Athena agreed. "It isn’t."

One of the larger ones lifted its head slowly, body twitching once, and its eyes opened. Crimson flooded straight through the pupils.

Luna stepped back on instinct. "Why are their eyes red?"

Nobody answered. More heads rose around the hallway, one after another, crimson bleeding into eye after eye until the whole corridor was lit with it, every creature that had once moved to the river’s strange rhythm now standing outside it entirely, jerking around to face the group.

"Arthur..." Eden drifted closer, and Star flattened itself hard against his chest, shrinking down small.

He glanced at the slime, then back up at the wall of creatures. "They’re not following the river anymore."

"Then what are they following?" Vedas dropped into a lower stance.

The largest of them, the Frosthorn Behemoth, stepped forward at the center of the pack, its crystal horns catching a faint red glow that mirrored the light in its eyes.

Arthur’s expression went hard. "Us."

The Behemoth lowered its head, and every Glaciermaw around it followed the motion at once. For one long second the entire hallway held completely still.

Then every crimson eye lit up together.

Mithra drew Kusa. Sun’s grip tightened on Long. Athena’s shield came up. Vedas leveled his spear, Athy’s wings spread wide, and Eden slid in close beside Arthur while Star clung to him with everything it had.

Arthur raised Dusk.

The hallway broke into motion all at once.

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