The silence in the waystation was absolute.

Ronan knelt on the dark blanket, his knees sinking into fabric that felt too soft, too carefully placed, too much like something Sarael had left there knowing he would find it.

Silver embroidery caught the violet moonlight spilling through the window, flashing like threads of starlight trapped in cloth.

She wasn’t coming.

The system had made that painfully clear. Lacking energy. Unable to manifest. The words sat in his chest like stones dropped into still water, sending out ripples he didn’t know how to calm, let alone solve.

"Alright," he muttered. "Think, what gives a goddess energy?"

Prayer, obviously. That was the most basic exchange between gods and mortals, wasn’t it? Belief for blessings. Worship for power.

His grandmother had spent years whispering prayers into the dark, and Sarael had survived on those prayers, dimmed, perhaps, but never gone.

So prayer should have worked.

But it didn’t.

"It’s too early to say for certain," he murmured, though the uncertainty in it did little to reassure him. "I’ll try praying more. Maybe that will help."

Ronan shifted on the blanket, settling into a proper kneel, the same posture his grandmother had once taught him when he was six years old and still believed in the Dark Mother watching over forgotten children.

He pressed his palms together and closed his eyes.

"Dark Mother," he began, the words returning to him as easily as breathing. "Who walks between shadows. Who loves the forgotten and the lost. Hear me."

***

He prayed for hours.

But the waystation stayed silent. The warmth in his chest never grew. The shadows in the corners remained exactly where they were, flat and unmoving against the stone walls.

[(Bond) unable to manifest, lacking energy]

Ronan opened his eyes and frowned at the notification.

"Still not enough?" he said quietly. "What kind of energy do you need if prayer doesn’t work?"

The silence that followed his question felt heavier than before.

Ronan remained kneeling on the blanket, his palms still pressed together, the echoes of his grandmother’s prayers fading into the dust and stone. Hours of devotion, and the system still hadn’t budged.

"Alright," he muttered. "Prayer’s not it. Or at least not that kind of prayer."

He lowered his hands and sat back on his heels, staring into the empty air in front of him as if it might offer a clue.

It didn’t.

"What else...?"

She’d appeared in the shrine. She’d appeared after the bow incident. Both times, he’d been feeling something intense.

Fear.

Pain.

Desperation.

And then later, confusion and frustration and that strange, reluctant tenderness that had made him open his arms to a goddess who’d just nearly killed him.

Maybe it wasn’t about the right words. Maybe it was about the right... state of mind?

"Worth a shot."

He closed his eyes and tried to summon the fear, the desperation, the memory of crawling through that archway with his side split open and blood pouring through his fingers.

Nothing.

His heart rate stayed steady. He couldn’t just manufacture terror on command.

"Okay, that’s not working either."

He tried gratitude next. Not the prayers his grandmother had taught him, but actual, directed thankfulness. For the healing. For the power. For the way she had looked at him like he mattered.

The warmth in his chest pulsed once. Barely noticeable.

"Was that something? System?"

[(Bond) unable to manifest, lacking energy]

"Guess not enough of something."

Ronan exhaled and ran a hand through his hair. This was ridiculous. He was sitting in a dead world on a blanket that smelled like night-blooming flowers, trying to emotionally troubleshoot a goddess back into existence.

"Sarael, if you can hear me, a hint would be nice. Anything could work, maybe flicker the lights, move a shadow. I’m not picky."

The waystation stayed silent.

"Right, low energy. You probably can’t even do that much."

He sat with that thought for a moment. She was there, he could feel her, a faint warmth behind his sternum that pulsed in time with his own heartbeat, but she couldn’t reach him.

She was trapped.

Or cut off.

Alone in the dark while he sat three feet away and couldn’t figure out how to bridge the gap.

"Must be frustrating," he said quietly. "You’ve been alone for centuries, and now I’m right here, and you still can’t reach me. That’s..."

He trailed off. What was the word for that?

Cruel? Unfair? Exactly the kind of isolation she’d been trying to escape?

"Is that what this feels like to you?" he asked the empty air. "Like I’m just out of reach? Like you’re watching me through glass and I can’t hear you?"

The warmth in his chest flickered, stronger this time, almost like a flinch.

"Oh." He sat up straighter. "Is that, is that it? Not the gratitude or the fear, but..."

He didn’t finish the sentence. It felt too presumptuous. But the flicker had been real. He’d felt it.

"Okay, let me try something. Tell me if I’m wrong."

He shifted on the blanket, no longer kneeling in a prayer posture.

Just sitting and talking.

"When I was twelve, I stopped believing in you. Not because I wanted to. Because the other kids made fun of me, they called me ’shrine boy’ and ’ghost worshipper’ and asked if I prayed to my imaginary friend before bed."

The warmth didn’t flicker. But it didn’t fade either. It stayed steady, like she was listening.

"I told my grandmother I’d outgrown it. She didn’t argue. She just looked sad and said you’d understand. I didn’t think about it again for years. Not until I was bleeding out and crawling toward your shrine because I had nowhere else to go."

He paused, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I don’t know if that counts as an apology. I don’t even know if you want an apology. I’m just... trying to explain. You said you’d been alone for centuries. Some of that’s my fault. My family’s fault. The last people who remembered you, and we stopped."

The warmth pulsed once.

"Was that a ’yes, keep going’ or a ’shut up, you’re making it worse’?"

No answer. But the warmth didn’t recede.

"Great, I’m going to assume it’s the former because I don’t have any better ideas."

He leaned back on his hands and stared up at the waystation’s intact ceiling. The stone was pale, almost white, veined with faint silver lines that caught the moonlight.

"I spent forty-seven days watching people die. Hunters, Porters, People who were stronger than me, and people who weren’t. I survived because I was too weak to be a target and too useful to abandon. I carried their equipment. I set up their camps. I stayed out of the way while they fought and died."

His voice dropped.

"And when I was the last one left, I didn’t feel relieved, I didn’t feel lucky, I just felt... tired. Like I’d been waiting for it to be my turn, and it never came. Like, even the monsters didn’t think I was worth killing."

The warmth in his chest tightened.

"And then you showed up. And you looked at me like I was worth something. Like I wasn’t just a pack mule or a D-Rank nobody. Like I mattered." He let out a short, humorless laugh. "I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at me like that before."

The shadows in the corners of the waystation stirred.

Ronan didn’t notice. His eyes were still fixed on the ceiling.

"So if you’re asking me what kind of energy you need, I think... maybe it’s not about the prayers or the rituals or the right words. Maybe it’s just... this. Me talking to you like you’re actually here. Like you’re a person instead of a goddess. Like I’m not afraid of you."

He paused.

"I mean, I am afraid of you. But not the way I probably should be."

The warmth flared.

Not gently or gradually this time.

It erupted, heat flooding his ribs and spreading down his arms and up his throat until he gasped.

And then he felt her.

Her presence pressed against the inside of his mind like a hand against glass. Desperate and trying to reach him.

"Ronan..."

The whisper came from everywhere and nowhere.

He sat up straight, heart hammering. "Sarael? Was that, did that actually work?"

[Presence acknowledged, forgotten entity’s existence elevated]