Caden was alone when he woke up this time. Sadie wasn’t sitting beside him. What was beside him was his phone. He whispered to the voice assistant to call Tess.

  She picked up on the second ring.

  "Salutations, dear sister."

  "Don't 'dear sister' me, Caden. You didn't text me at all yesterday, then hit me with 'I fainted' at 4 in the morning. What am I supposed to do with that?"

  "I am not bound to please thee with my answers.”

  “I'm glad you're at least okay enough for Shakespeare," he could hear the relief in her voice. "I still want an answer though."

  He sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. "Look, I… kinda overdid it. But I really didn't mean to ghost you. I crashed for like 10 hours before I even texted you that message. Give me your pardon, ma'am. I've done you wrong. But pardon 't, as you are a gentle woman.”

  There was a pause on her end. "...you gonna tell me what actually happened?"

  "Yeah. Just… can I ask you something first?” He paused. "Is there a way to make the staff warmer?"

  "Warmer?" Tess repeated.

  "Like... hold heat. Or store it. Or emit it."

  "You trying to turn it into a space heater?"

  "Not exactly." He leaned back against the bed's headboard, voice lower now. "It’s just… I have to use heat to do the thing. But sometimes there’s nothing warm enough around, so if it could just give me enough that I could draw from that’d be amazing. Pulling from myself is… not ideal," he paused. "Not unless I want to repeat last night."

  "You didn’t answer the question."

  "What question?" he asked, feigning obliviousness.

  "The one where I asked what exactly happened last night."

  “Tess, men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but I merely swooned. You should be relieved, really.”

  “Drop the act, Caden. You're scaring me. Do I have to speak your language to get a real answer? Because right now, you speak an infinite deal of nothing. Use your words, not Will's.”

  He sighed. "Fine. I pushed myself too hard. My mentor- he was trying to help me figure out how to make fire. I… I wanted it too badly. Pulled heat from myself and my core temp tanked.”

  Tess exhaled. "And no one stopped you?”

  "It was just us, and I didn't tell him what I was doing," he admitted. "He was going to call it a day so I panicked and made a bad decision."

  "Bad decision sounds generous," Tess paused. "I'll start brainstorming."

  "Dear sister, I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks." He smiled faintly to himself.

  "I wasn't done. You have to promise not to act recklessly again until I finish it. Leave your body heat alone.”

  "But I am reckless. A reckless idiot."

  Caden could practically hear his sister's eyes roll through the phone. “You’re not. Stop trying to prove you are.”

  “Fine. Hey, did I tell you I met a cryptid the other night?”

  “A what?’”

  “You know, like Bigfoot, but with acid hands instead of giant feet. I mean I haven't seen the acid yet but I've heard about it. Anyway, I think we're friends now.”

  “Caden, do you even hear yourself?”

  “I do hear myself! I don't think she's dangerous though. She had plenty of opportunities to melt me, but I survived.”

  “That's a low bar, little brother.”

  Caden's fingers fidgeted against the comforter, restless now that the worst of her scolding was over. He finally sat up, shaking out his stiff wrist.

  "That’s weird," he muttered.

  "What is? Your taste in friends?" Tess’s voice crackled in his ear.

  "No, there’s a note here. I didn’t notice it earlier… Hold on a second."

  "Want me to read it?"

  He fiddled with his phone and pointed it at the note. "Nah, could be classified. I got it."

  It took a few tries to line it up properly, but soon, he was listening to the familiar robot in his ear.

  "Says they went out on a mission," he told Tess. "They left me behind."

  "Your healer crush didn’t even wake you up to say goodbye? You poor thing."

  He crumpled the note in one hand. "I'll live."

  “Still. Rude."

  Caden told himself it didn't matter, but his hand had said otherwise.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He slid off the bed and grabbed his white staff off the charger. It was currently about the length of a baton. The rest of the length was retracted into itself.

  Three short buzzes let him know it was ready. “I’m gonna poke around a bit. Haven’t really explored yet.”

  “Alone?”

  “Relax,” he grinned into the phone. “I’ll stay out of trouble.”

  “That’s what you said last time, Cade.”

  He shrugged. “This is different. No fire-bending involved. Just… exploring. Wait-” he tilted his head.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I… thought I felt something,” he muttered, focusing harder. There it was again: a trace of warmth, faint but fresh, like someone had just passed through.

  “Like what?”

  “I was thinking human?”

  “Careful. You don't know what kind of enemies your new team has yet.”

  “Yes, ma'am,” he replied half-sincerely.

  "Are you allowed to answer whether this is more of an established team or full of newbies like you? I'm assuming it's a small team if all of them went on a mission?"

  The further he moved towards the entrance that Grace had shown him, the stronger the signature felt. It was definitely human-shaped, fading fast like he'd already missed it. He couldn't help but wonder- Was it Grace again?

  "Huh? Oh yeah, established. You'd freak if I said names."

  Tess let out a disbelieving sigh. "Sure."

  "I'm serious. Too bad it's classified; you'd be so jealous.”

  As he spoke, he moved to grab his shoes, sunglasses, and a hoodie. It looked like a sunny day, but after yesterday, he'd rather be too hot than too cold. He stepped out.

  "Oof,” he groaned as he flicked the sunglasses down over his eyes.

  By the time he got outside, the human-shaped heat signature was gone. The summer sun blurred the grass into one hot smear- not suitable for determining depth or trip hazards.

  His steps grew slower than they had been inside. He pushed the button to release it into its recognizable white cane with red stripe form.

  “What do you mean, ‘Oof’?”

  “Nothing. Sun's bright," he said dismissively as he gave the now sternum-height stick two test taps.

  He turned, pointing his head towards different warmths. They were smaller and still. The bigger one looked like the remnants of someone who had been seated. The smaller looked like fingers had been there recently, holding something. Both in roughly the same area and both fading, but strangely, not as fast as they should be.

  “Are you outside?”

  “Yes. I'm an adult, sis. I can handle myself.”

  Tess scoffed. “If I thought you'd listen, I'd tell you to get your butt back inside. You fainted yesterday, Caden.”

  Caden continued forward anyways, his curiosity and restlessness overriding his caution.

  After a little while, the echo of his taps shifted. The end of open space. Something cooler lied ahead. Trees planted just far enough apart from each other to seem intentional. His staff vibrated in confirmation a second later.

  “You still there?” Tess asked.

  “Yeah. Just focusing,” came Caden's reply.

  His steps slowed significantly as the ground became littered with roots, patches of dry grass, and crunching leaves.

  Tess caught it instantly. “And now you’re tapping in the forest?”

  “It’s fine,” he muttered.

  She groaned. “Swap the tip out before you eat dirt chasing squirrels.”

  “Nah, I’ll only be a few minutes. Also it has modest stillness, so it’s not a squirrel.”

  “Modest stillness can also describe a dead squirrel, but sure. Maybe it's your acid friend again.”

  His cane snagged as if to prove his sister right. “Fine, I'll swap. And I'll set a timer. 15 minutes, then I turn back.”

  “Thank you.”

  He crouched, unzipping the inside pocket of his jacket. “I brought some of the extras. Aren't you happy?”

  “Wow, you do listen sometimes. So proud of you.”

  He adjusted the disk tip with a small click, sweeping to test it. “Better. Now then, once more, unto the breach!”

  As he got closer to the warmth, his cane swept against something unnatural. Canvas maybe? He crouched, feeling along the edge of what felt like a tarp, half-buried under dry leaves and dirt. A sharp, familiar smell tainted the air. Citrusy.

  “Found something,” he announced. Tess didn't respond.

  “Tess?” he tried again, frowning. Silence. “...Must've found a dead zone.”

  Still, he was too focused to stop now. A faint pocket of heat was lingering at knee height. It was patchy, but distinctly human-shaped. At a guess, someone had been sitting cross-legged. If that was the case, though, it shouldn't still be here. Not in the open air.

  He knelt, bracing the cane so he wouldn't forget his direction. He trailed his fingers along the edge of the tarp until he found a corner. It was folded over on itself, but the second heat signature was somewhere in between the halves. The acidic smell only strengthened as he pulled it back. Not all the way, just enough to sharpen the finger-shaped heat that shouldn't still be lingering.

  He tilted his head by degrees, letting the scene land in his peripheral vision rather than his blind spot. Among what he guessed were the supplies you'd expect from someone camping (and lemons, strangely), he found what he had been chasing: a book.

  He let his fingers trail the cover. Warm. Soft, perhaps leather. He closed his eyes and listened for a bit, half expecting to hear Grace's footsteps crunching through the leaves. It remained silent, however- or at least as silent as a forest could be at this time of morning.

  He hesitated another moment, listening. Birds chirped. Leaves rustled, both on the trees above him and the crumbling ones already on the forest floor. His heart beat in his ears.

  He finally moved from the crouch to his knees and flipped the cover open. It felt wrong to be doing this, but his curiosity was still fully in the driver's seat. The warmth on the page felt like a hand still resting there, and some part of him wanted to reach back. The lingering heat only grew warmer as he gently flipped through.

  He recognized the grey, blurry shapes of animals, nature scenes, and the occasional portrait of children he didn't know. Many pages were ripped out, others scribbled over. Most had something in the corner, roughly the shape of a signature. His eyes weren't quite good enough to read what it said, but he ran his fingers lightly over it on the pages where the artist had applied pressure. It was short, maybe just initials.

  He finally found the page where the heat was strongest. The whole thing struck him as wrong. Warmth shouldn't sit on paper like this.

  He found himself looking at a piece placed after yet another ripped out page. Another grey figure. He couldn't pick out enough details to recognize the face, but the object in the figure's hand was familiar: something long and straight, angling outwards.

  He flipped to the back to check for indents, tracing the outline with his fingertips. The pressure had cut deep in some places, like the lines were carved in the paper rather than drawn.

  The general shape, the posture, the breadth of the shoulders… it all seemed about right.

  “Is that me?” he asked aloud, half expecting the trees themselves to answer. “Is that all she saw? The blind guy?”

  A quiet laugh escaped him, more of disbelief than humor. He wasn’t sure what unnerved him more: that she’d drawn him at all, or that the page wore how hard she worked it.

  His timer buzzed as he sat there, considering what it means.

  When he finally stood, a chill shot up his spine. Maybe his lingering dread at being seen; maybe his body finally acknowledging the damp earth seeping into the knees of his pants. He swore under his breath as he closed the notebook and did his best to put everything back in place. Only then did he wipe the dirt off his pants.

  Soon, he was walking as fast as he dared back in the direction of the base. No sense getting sick again over some cryptid's sketch. Besides, his head was already throbbing with the familiar ache of eye strain. His mind drifted briefly to whether his daith piercing would have actually helped with the pain. It was still sitting in his room where he left it last night. Removing it was probably overkill, but better to remove it himself than let Deflector's magnetics accidentally do it for him.

  He stuck his finger on the scanner at the door, the one near the greenhouse that Grace had shown him.