The quartz fields glittered under what was left of Anabeth's light, and it looked beautiful. The prismatic clusters reflected stray illumination like bottled stars. The trick, he reminded himself, was to look for what didn't respond to his spell. No, not the light. His spell, Sedimental Recall. The null returns. The silence between harmonics.

Right. Simple enough.

He crouched by a formation and pressed his palm to the surface.

[Activating: Sedimental Recall (Rank II)]

Immediately, the Eidralith spat out results.

[Sedimental Recall Failed. Probability of success: 57% + 3% from RES. No valid imprint retrieved.]

He frowned. "Well, that's just rude."

He tried again with a smaller vein nearby. The quartz thrummed weakly under his palm, as if trying to remember what it used to be.

[Sedimental Recall Complete.]

[Result: Common-grade Basalt. Imprint Retrieved: 'Daily Labor – Grain Grinding']

[Estimated Historical Depth: ~100–300 years.]

Right. I shouldn't just grab whatever stone. This one is obviously common.

Still, the rock itself wasn't uninteresting. It had an odd, swirling impurity pattern he didn't recognize. He turned it over twice, muttered, "Potential study sample," and tucked it into his pouch.

On the third try, something different happened. The quartz he touched gave off three sharp beats, quick as a heartbeat, and a streak of pale green light rippled across its facets.

[Sedimental Recall Complete.]

[Result: Trinav Quartz (Common). Imprint Retrieved: 'Skyline Conduction.']

[Estimated Historical Depth: ~5,400 years.]

[Passive Bonus (Stone Resonant Carry): +1 RES when equipped.]

"Oh!" His voice cracked. He fumbled in his satchel for a cloth, polished the crystal like it was an exam prize, and slid it neatly into the side pocket.

And that was, technically, when the mission ended.

Because after that, the cavern turned into a museum of extremely interesting but objectively useless stones.

[Sedimental Recall Complete.]

[Result: Common-grade Limestone. Imprint Retrieved: None detected.]

[Note: Mineral memory degraded beyond viable cohesion.]

[Sedimental Recall Complete.]

[Result: Common-grade Shale. Imprint Retrieved: 'Thermal Sedimentation Cycle – Passive.']

[Estimated Historical Depth: ~2,000–3,000 years.]

[Sedimental Recall Complete.]

[Result: Common-grade Granite. Imprint Retrieved: None.]

[Note: Trace patterning suggests proximity to mundane construction residue.]

[Sedimental Recall Complete.]

[Result: Common-grade Quartzite. Imprint Retrieved: 'Environmental Compression – Subsurface Strata.']

[Estimated Historical Depth: ~8,000 years.]

[Sedimental Recall Complete.]

[Result: Common-grade Slate. Imprint Retrieved: 'Storage Layer – Non-aetheric.']

[Note: No detectable resonance patterns. Possibly quarry discard.]

[Sedimental Recall Complete.]

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

[Result: Common-grade Sandstone. Imprint Retrieved: None detected.]

[Note: Grain lattice unstable. Excessive elemental dilution.]

He drifted from cluster to cluster, completely forgetting about Anabeth, the Stormglass, and possibly the concept of time itself. One formation resembled petrified lightning veins; another buzzed when he exhaled near it, though that might've just been imagination. Every new quartz held some curious imperfection that begged for a thesis he'd never write.

He might've stayed like that for hours if not for the resistance under his hand in his 24th scan.

[Sedimental Recall Failed.]

[Result: Invalid tier for standard calibration.]

[Reason: Material exceeds Common-grade threshold.]

[Classification: Rare (Unregistered Variant).]

His brain took a few seconds to catch up. Slowly, he lifted his hand from the stone and held it up to the dim light of Anabeth's departing flame.

It wasn't particularly luminous—not like the others that scattered her glow into fractured rainbows—but rather withheld it. The surface refracted in a strange way, bending the light inside instead of out, a glassy spiral that seemed to consume its own reflection.

"That's—" He tilted it, squinting. "Too condensed in the core. Maybe a subform of Tempest quartz? Or one of the conductor families." He tilted it again, studying the inner filaments. Those types—if he remembered correctly—were better at storing volatile charge than releasing it. High resistance, good grounding properties. The kind of thing that liked to be near lightning-aspected stones.

"That'd make sense," he muttered. "Stormglass is a lightning variant. If this one's the grounding type . . . maybe it'll balance instead of refract."

Anabeth's voice came echoing through the cavern, bright and self-satisfied. "Kestovar! How many promising samples did you collect? I got six!"

He flinched, nearly dropping the quartz. "Three!" he called back automatically.

"Try to keep up, Kestovar! Let's see which one of us gets to ten first!"

Her footsteps receded down a side tunnel, and the echo took a few seconds to fade.

He stared down at the single crystal in his hand and sighed. Now he had to actually find at least three of them.

He looked around the quartz field again, this time with something like panic disguised as scientific intent. Rare or higher-grade quartz. He could probably find them if he paid attention to the right cues like luminosity differentials, refractive density, pattern asymmetry. Easy, in theory.

Except the cavern's thousand glittering facets all looked equally convincing.

He crouched again, scanning the nearest outcropping with renewed focus.

[Activating: Sedimental Recall (Rank II)]

[Sedimental Recall Failed. Probability of success: 57% + 3% from RES. No valid imprint retrieved.]

This was going to be a long night.

By the time Fabrisse stumbled back to the chamber where Anabeth waited, his knees ached, his pouch was several rocks heavier, and his dignity had gone the way of sediment erosion.

Anabeth stood near the knight's side, her nine samples laid out on a strip of conjured light like gemstones in a jeweler's case. Each crystal glittered in a deliberate arrangement, sorted by hue, opacity, and something that was probably either resonance frequency or sheer aesthetic pride.

She looked very pleased with herself, despite still being one short of ten.

Fabrisse approached, trying not to sound winded. "Four," he said, holding up his haul.

Anabeth turned at his approach. "Only four?"

Fabrisse adjusted his grip on the samples. "And they're probably rare-tier or higher."

"Your probability of getting a reaction would be lower then. Now we shall see which one of us gets the Stormglass Aetherquartz to react!"

She held up her first quartz in front of the Stormglass and performed her kindling spell.

A burst of white light immediately flared from the knight's left gauntlet, so bright it threw both their shadows across the cavern wall. The quartz in Anabeth's hand vibrated with a shrill, crystalline note, then detonated into glittering fragments.

Fabrisse flinched backward, arm up to shield his face. "Holy socks! How much aether does that thing hold?"

Anabeth stared at the empty space where the sample had been. A few translucent shards drifted lazily to the floor like snow. ". . . That's a reaction," she said. "But we need the stones, well, intact. Now, your turn, Kestovar."

He held up his first quartz. Nothing.

That seemed to be the general pattern.

One by one, the next stones met the same fate: total indifference. Anabeth's second attempt sputtered, and her third, fourth, and fifth attempt bore no reaction whatsoever. Fabrisse's next two didn't so much as hum.

By the sixth attempt, he frowned at his own reflection in the Stormglass's surface. "What kind of reaction are we even looking for?" he asked.

Anabeth tilted her head, her tone still maddeningly confident. "A true resonance would manifest both visually and aetherically. You'd see a stabilization in the quartz, and you would feel it. The aether threads harmonize for an instant, like a chord resolving. That would mean the sample and the Stormglass share a signature frequency."

"So it's like when two crystals enhance each other," Fabrisse said slowly, "but on the scale of, what, artifact synergy?" This was the kind of knowledge he had yet learned about.

"Precisely," she replied, eyes glinting in the Stormglass's pallid light. "If one of these stones aligns properly, it could elevate the artifact's conductive range beyond known limits. The knight's power might—at least theoretically—reach cosmic thresholds."

Fabrisse stared at the armored figure's chestplate as he slumped against the cavern wall. The knight hadn't moved once since they'd arrived. The gauntlet still gleamed, but otherwise he was as animated as a particularly expensive statue.

He squinted. Cosmic thresholds?

This man hadn't done anything except stand there and look menacing. He hadn't even spoken. For all Fabrisse knew, the knight wasn't a divine sentinel at all, just some poor soul permanently bonded to his armor and now cursed to serve as a glorified lightning rod.

Still, Anabeth was already reaching for her next sample, her expression the picture of calm scientific enthusiasm. Fabrisse sighed and picked up his final quartz.

Anabeth lifted her seventh crystal, a slender column of translucent blue quartz veined with gold, and the reaction was non-existent once again.

Fabrisse turned his final sample in his palm. It was heavier than the rest—opaque at first glance, but threaded through with veins of deep green that seemed to twist under the surface like roots seeking light. The structure wasn't perfect, but the pattern density was wrong for common quartz. He could tell that much even without activating the Eidralith overlay.

He stepped closer to the knight and, with a deep inhale, held it up.

The Knight spoke before anything even happened, "At last. A conduit that remembers."

The syllables dragged like tectonic movement. It was too low, too anciently modulated, like the mountain itself had decided to imitate speech. Fabrisse flinched as he felt the intimidating cadence in his ribs, in the roots of his teeth.

That's . . . scary. But how does he know that this rock would react—

Then the Stormglass trembled.

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