Agwyn touched her face to see if the pain was an illusion. It stung whenever she looked at the… ‘mound? shrine? altar?’

The collection of bone spike shafts, gheist hide walls, and mudrock foundation stood right under the floating spire in the sky. The single large pillar in the middle, a vertical set of branches and vines with an animal eye drawn in its centre, was what attracted her tearing pupils the most.

Painted a blue and white, the eye blazed in the colours of the aurora but with calmer intensity.

A stream of that multicoloured light spilt up from the top of the pillar with a trickle as it tried to reach the sky. But each time, it fell down like a bird without the strength to fly; the patterns in the altar would dim as if it too was doomed by the failure.

Yet a blink later, it would again shine and try to shoot another stream of light to the heavens.

In front of the altar lay horizontally a massive rock tablet, which looked more like a slab. Its top was polished as smooth as a mirror, with the bottom as jagged as grey granite.

Unlike the altar, the slab looked ancient. As if it was always there, before even the mountains and lakes were formed.

A proof of unchanging eternity, like the spire in the sky. They told the world of its immutable rules.

Elrhain stopped. He looked at her intently with a question in his gaze, and Agwyn realized why.

「Oh, so this is what these do.」 She muttered. Her eyes following the patterns on Elrhain’s face as they shifted and roiled. Akin to a march of ants not knowing where to go.

The paint didn’t glow or shine like everything else magical tended. They merely swam, flowing down from his face in streams into his neck and collar.

From under his feet, they crawled out again, connecting both him and Agwyn to the grooves at the altar’s ends.

「That was creepy, to be honest.」 Elrhain shuddered.

When the last paint poured into the groove, pictures of two tiny children appeared on the slab’s mirror surface. They were in the style of the murals they had seen under the Loch Sagathan Temple, inside the Elder’s rest.

The pictures showed them what they had to do, and what would happen after.

「The ancestor’s guidance,」 Agwyn whispered, studying the murals in trepidation.

The steps showed fewer acts, and even after a few minutes, no apocalyptic vision barged in to create fire and blood.

Just when she was about to sigh in relief, the mirror surface broke down.

They both tiptoed with bated breaths to peer at what rested underneath, only to discover a black, empty chamber.

「No, look closer.」 Elrhain examined the hollow in more detail, sniffing the air and looking tempted to lick the stone too.

Agwyn followed, and then the fragrance hit her. It smelled like manna if manna was a fruit, yet more than ten times more complex. It warred with the scent of the moist wind and earthy foliage of the altar but was never overpowered by them.

By the minute, it got more potent, and suddenly the black hollow began to boil.

The black was actually a thick, inky liquid reflecting not even the shine of the aurora above.

Agwyn took a sharp breath to calm herself but hardly succeeded.

The sound of the world around her faded as she flustered about what to do. But the silent moment also gave her a respite to remember the acts on the murals.

She nodded, now resolved. Elrhain whispered her an encouragement, then stepped back to give her room.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just follow the ancestors guidance!’

Agwyn angled the jar’s mouth down right above the bubbling black muck. The magical barrier covering the jar cracked, and indigo blue water rushed out in torrents.

It was far more than what could conceivably be held inside a jar this size. Agwyn’s arms started hurting, and even the chilly wind so up high could not stop her from sweating.

The blue and black mixed like a witch’s concoction.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the jar emptied.

The liquid inside the hollow churned, creating a slurping noise. At the same time, the patterns on the altar lit up many times brighter than before, like neon street signs of the red district colonies.

Agwyn hurriedly backed away. The odour from the liquid stung her eyes like kerosene.

In her place, Elrhain stepped forward, nervously glancing at the spectacle.

He heaved as he lifted up one end of the staff and plunged it inside the concoction. The liquid mess splashed all around, but luckily no droplets flew out of the slab.

Elrhain paused for a few seconds to adjust his bearing, then stirred.

The boy looked like a cute little witch mixing his gloomy brew in a cauldron all too large for him. And the magical elixir was fighting back, bent on making the little witch’s life miserable.

Sweat dripped from Elrhain’s scrunched up face, and his tiny hands strained red from the force.

The celestial lights flickered on his frame before hiding behind the clouds again, their pearly sheen glistening off his sweat.

“Ugh!!” With a last cry, he completed one revolution through the mudlike soup and let go; the staff continued to stir as if it had a life of its own.

Agwyn quickly supported him from behind lest he tumble down backwards from the inertia.

The moment they steadied themselves, the brew blazed to red like fire, and the many lines connecting the slab to the altar burned.

It was fuel, they both realized, as the trickling light started expanding.

Then, before they could even gasp in shock, it burst out like a supernova and shot up to the sky like a beam of a hundred million lumens.

It hit the spire right at the base, splashing liquid light all over its surface. The obsidian rocks changed in response; the patterns flared like thunder. Agwyn could almost hear a loud cheer of joy chorusing out from the floating edifice.

Even the gale escaped the area in fright, forcing the lowest of the spiral clouds to scatter with it.

A burnt smell tickled Agwyn’s nose, and Elrhain sneezed from beside her. The spire wasn’t the last haven of the fuel lit lumen as it seemed. The radiant beam simply stayed there for a rest. Wafting, gathering its strength, compounding it a thousand times over.

Then, as if a quasar had formed, light that abashed even a supernova lasered out till the celestial brilliance of the stars and moons hid their faces in shame with a shawl of blackness.

The quasar scorched the loftiest clouds and the midnight blue skies themselves till the sky cried out in pain.

Agwyn waited for a few seconds and then uncovered her hastily covered eyes. The impossibly bright light was nevertheless there, but unlike the sky, her eyes didn’t hurt.

The former looked like the injured flesh of a giant. Bright splotches of wounds painted the endless expanse.

Then suddenly, those gashes connected, and space itself ripped apart. The beasts in the forest roared, the birds hiding under leaves chirped, and the spirits of water howled in joy, swimming freely in the wounded heavens.

A cheer bearing the hopes of uncountable living souls swept in from Lochuir down below and rushed up till it shattered into pieces.

Every living thing in the Earthloch Siorakty, both above and beneath, beseeched to the lacerated firmament, to the swirling white void that slept behind, as if it were a god.

As if it could answer every question, grant every wish, and correct every mistake.

But when the light beam to the sky flickered to dark, when the liquid in the hollow slab dried up, and the white void replied to their pleas, the cheering voices and howls of both dhionne and not, abruptly cut off.

A vortex of manna in the hues of all the colours imaginable and as endless as an ocean cascaded down from the gaping maw like a one-way waterspout.

It hit the Loch Sagathan Temple with the speed of a meteorite as Agwyn’s second life flashed past her eyes.

But the expected death did not come. She lifted her head from Elrhain’s shoulder, letting go of the tight embrace.

Her skin felt ticklish as the manna flowed down and away, like the stroke of a plume on her tender skin.

It passed through the stone under her feet like the aether, but when it reached the earthen surface of the disc, the vortex splashed outwards in a circle.

A tidal wave of mystical energy a hundred kilometres high rose from the impact zone.

From East to West and North to South, the tsunami travelled. But unlike the ruinous natural disaster, this razed no house, uprooted no trees, and swept away no dhionne.

It merely went anywhere the forces demanded, uncaring to even harm those in its path.

A glimpse of the tsunami of manna could still be seen many breaths later, on this world’s boundless horizon, thousands of kilometres away.

The crest of the tide gradually grew weak and weary, like an old titan at the end of its life. It slowed, then ceased.

The tide collapsed into a tranquil flow, which was thus devoured by the clan's forests, mountains, and lakes.

As the murals on the slab had foretold, the manna would nurture these lands for cycles to come, as if the towering titan was returning its flesh and bones to the soil, where a new forest of life would thrive.

Agwyn stood at the top of the temple, taking it all in with all her senses.

It was overwhelming what the actions of two tiny souls could result in this magical world.

She gently clasped Elrhain’s hand, weaving her fingers with his own. The two together looked at the misty scene below, still unsure of what to feel.

Leftover manna floated about the earth as if the clouds were tired and had come down for a rest.

Above, the stars and the moons had reshown their shy visages, and the spirits had all left without the clamour with which they came.

The cacophony of insects and animals choired once again from the forest all around. The smell of fresh air and the rain harmonized with the land itself, bringing with it a hymn both new and old.

Just as things were, before the ritual had started, but by the breaths, it was not.

Everything had gone from magical to apocalyptic too fast for Agwyn’s tiny brain to cope.

Now the night wind soothed those tense neurons and muscles. The sense of incongruity was replaced with the routine.

The ritual was at last completed.

The Earthloch, both lake, land and life, had been blessed, and the world was back to normal.