Cadwyn feels like breathing has gotten easier.
The glow around him doesn’t flicker and his body is not screaming for mercy anymore as he stretches out his magic towards the small village above him.
The one village he is going to save.
He can feel the tentative tendrils of his divine core reaching out into the world where Gerd plants little seeds of Cadwyn’s essence into the ground to let them grow.
He can feel the lives that Gerd has touched, he feels the two shrines, the small wooden talisman carried by one of the lost sheep, already less lost than she was before they found her.
There are many lost people around Gerd right now, Cadwyn can feel their despair and their fear.
A tiny seed of hope has already been planted in their midst as Gerd and his friends hand out food and promise to help.
He speaks all their names into the silence like a prayer.
“Kieran. Ernest. Nash. Ovak. Kit. Meera. Zaron. Halvalin--”
It helps him drown out the whispers that press against his ears from below ground, the darkness that closes in around him and the growing despair deep down under the mountains.
It feels familiar, but it frightens him.
Cadwyn pushes the fear away and keeps repeating the names as he closes his eyes and settles back into his meditative stance to direct his thoughts and his divine magic back to the village and back to Gerd.