The administrative chambers of Cuzcia's record hall stretched deep into the mountainside, carved from living stone generations ago by master craftsmen whose names had long since faded from memory. Torches flickered in their sconces along the walls, casting dancing shadows across the intricate murals that depicted the great history of their people - conquests, ceremonies, and the sacred pacts that allowed Naturals to wield their magic, though he had never been allowed to touch those.

In one of the smaller archive rooms, far from the bustle of the main halls, a young man sat alone on a simple wooden stool. Ussun's fingers moved with practiced precision across the knotted strings of a quipu, the complex recording system that served as the backbone of their civilization's knowledge. Each knot told a story - grain stores, population counts, tax records, astronomical observations. His light purple eyes, clouded since birth, saw nothing of the colorful threads, but his sensitive fingertips could read the intricate patterns better than most could see them.

The quipu he currently examined recorded the harvest yields from three mountain villages, and something in the pattern troubled him. A discrepancy in the numbers, perhaps an error made by a tired administrator or a deliberate falsification. It was well past the end of his shift, the other scribes having departed hours ago for their evening meals and family gatherings. His replacement should have arrived to take over the night watch, but Ussun suspected the young man was once again distracted by romantic pursuits rather than professional duties.

The stone chamber held the accumulated wisdom of his people, from trade agreements with distant kingdoms to the sacred calendars that governed planting seasons. As a keeper of these records, Ussun bore the responsibility of ensuring their accuracy. Each mistake left uncorrected could ripple outward, affecting harvests, tributes, or even military deployments. The weight of this duty pressed upon his shoulders as heavily as the mountain itself.

The air in the chamber carried the familiar scents of wool, cotton dyes, and the faint mustiness of aged llama hide scrolls stored in the deeper archives. Ussun had grown accustomed to working in solitude, preferring the quiet concentration it afforded him. Too much social interaction exhausted him, overwhelming his heightened senses with a cacophony of voices, emotions, and physical presences.

Footsteps echoed through the chamber, measured and purposeful, unlike the hurried shuffle of his tardy replacement. These steps belonged to someone unfamiliar, someone who moved with unusual confidence through the winding passages of the record hall.

"Mh? Hello, how can I help you?" Ussun kept the irritation from his voice - it was not this newcomer's fault that he found himself working a double shift. Though privately, he would rather have been left alone until his second shift ended so he could finally return to his modest dwelling and rest. He had done far too much talking today already.

Before the visitor even spoke, Ussun's sensitive nature registered something extraordinary. Emotions crashed over him like a highland flood - concern, affection, and a warmth so encompassing it seemed to embrace not just him but everything living within leagues of this place. The intensity was overwhelming, far beyond what any normal human could project. Along with this emotional torrent came an organic scent that seemed to carry the essence of growing things - fresh grass, wildflowers, the rich loam of fertile earth. This was the signature of Nature-aligned Rhythm, marking his visitor as one of the Naturals, those beings who wielded the forces present in Riterra's world.

"I was actually hoping I could help you, Ussun!" The woman's voice carried a mixture of nervous energy and genuine cheer that seemed to brighten the torch flames themselves. Had Ussun possessed sight, he might have noticed how her eyes sparkled with an inner light, as if stars had taken residence in her gaze.

The fact that she knew his name immediately put him on guard. How could a Natural know a minor scribe's identity? Her voice sounded remarkably human for one of her kind, and the emotions she projected were far more complex and nuanced than he had ever experienced from the few higher beings he had encountered in his life.

"Help me?" Ussun's confusion was evident in his voice. The quipu slipped slightly in his hands as he tried to process this unexpected development.

"Yep!" Her enthusiasm increased dramatically, as if his bewilderment only fueled her determination. "My name is Lanvi, and I'm here to give you a gift - and a quest!" Beneath the cheerful words, Ussun detected undercurrents of guilt and sorrow, emotions that seemed at odds with her proclaimed purpose. "A tool with which you can work magic alongside your destined partner."

Magic. The word hung in the air between them like an impossible promise. Ussun's people knew of magic, certainly - they lived in a world where the Naturals wielded forces beyond mortal comprehension, where those connected to mountains or storms could reshape the very landscape. But magic was not for humans, especially not for a humble record keeper born without sight in a small mountain community. Beyond that- he'd never heard of a magic that required a partner to work, not that he was well-studied in such.

"I uh... that's nice and all, but I think you've got the wrong person?" He gestured vaguely toward the chamber's exit, hoping to redirect her attention. "Aren't you here for Apocatequil?"

Apocatequil worked the day shift in the main archive hall, a young man whose Natural blood granted him the ability to channel lightning. Surely a being of Lanvi's apparent power would seek out someone with actual magical potential rather than a blind human scribe.

"Completely impossible!" The certainty that flooded from her was so intense it nearly knocked Ussun from his stool. "One, that's the wrong name - I know I'm here for someone named Ussun." She took a deep breath, and when she continued, her voice carried the weight of absolute conviction. "And two, that thunderous friend of yours is a Natural. I'm here for a human!"

The implications of her words settled over Ussun like a heavy robe. A being of obvious power had come specifically seeking him, a human, to grant magical abilities. Either she was gravely mistaken about his identity and nature, or forces beyond his understanding were at work. Given his practical nature and lifelong experience with disappointment, he strongly suspected the former.

"Right, well, perhaps we can talk more about this after I'm done working? Unless you have any records you want to check or contracts to record?" His customer service training took over, a shield of professional politeness that he hoped might deflect this increasingly surreal conversation.

The emotional atmosphere in the chamber shifted abruptly, Lanvi's enthusiasm deflating like a punctured water skin. "You're not taking this seriously, are you?" Her voice carried a pout that needed no visual confirmation, disappointment pooling around her like spilled honey.

"What gave you that idea?" Ussun's response was perfectly calibrated professional courtesy, the tone he had perfected over years of dealing with frustrated citizens seeking specific records or clarification of complex regulations. He was fairly certain his customer service mask was functioning properly, though he doubted it would be sufficient to handle whatever this situation was becoming.

The woman's emotions underwent another dramatic transformation, resignation washing through the chamber like a cold tide. Beneath it lay layers of more complex feelings - frustration, perhaps, or a deep sadness that spoke of repeated rejections and failed missions.

"Nothing I can say to convince you?"

"Highly unlikely." The bluntness of his response surprised even him. Perhaps exhaustion had weakened his professional filter, allowing a hint of genuine irritation to slip through. But given the absurdity of the situation, such honesty seemed justified.

"Very well, I'll... come back later, then. Perhaps you'll be feeling more open then. Keep yourself safe, Ussun." She sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of centuries. "Oh, and try not to die."

"Ma'am?" Ussun called after her, the ominous nature of her parting words finally penetrating his fatigue. But when he reached out with his enhanced senses, he found nothing. She had vanished completely, leaving no trace of her passage. The speed and completeness of her disappearance troubled him - he should have been able to sense her movement for much longer, to track her emotional signature as she departed. How had she managed such a feat?

The question barely had time to form fully in his mind before chaos erupted.

Shouting voices echoed through the stone corridors, followed immediately by a tremendous crash as a boulder punched through the chamber wall. Dust filled the air, and through the newly created opening poured sounds of battle - the clash of weapons, screams of terror and pain, and the rumbling thunder of collapsing masonry.

Consciousness returned slowly, accompanied by a symphony of destruction. Ussun's first sensation was pain - a sharp, burning agony in his chest where stone fragments had embedded themselves in his flesh. Then came the cacophony that threatened to drive him back into unconsciousness: screaming voices raised in terror and rage, the roar and crackle of flames consuming everything they touched, the boom of thunder that spoke of elemental forces unleashed in anger.

The emotional chaos was even worse than the physical sounds. Waves of fear, hatred, bloodlust, and despair crashed over him in overwhelming succession. His own feelings, already weakened by pain and shock, were nearly swept away entirely in the torrent of alien emotions.

"Stop..." The word escaped his lips as either a whisper or a scream - he could not tell which over the din. "Please..." His plea went unheard and unheeded. The invaders - for that was clearly what they were - continued their destruction with single-minded fury.

Through the haze of pain and sensory overload, Ussun gradually became aware that he was not alone in the ruined chamber. Heavy footsteps approached, accompanied by the distinctive sound of talons scraping against stone. A voice spoke, harsh and warbling, pitched far deeper than any human throat could produce.

"Oi, look, we missed one!" The creature's foot slammed down on Ussun's leg with crushing force, grinding broken bone and torn muscle against the stone floor. He gasped and choked on the dust-filled air, his vision swimming with stars he had never seen. "Ugh, one of those bald monkeys. Not even worth casting for."

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The pressure on his leg lifted, and for a moment Ussun felt a flutter of hope. Perhaps the avian Natural would simply move on, leaving him to die slowly rather than adding to his torment. But then something heavy and cold struck his chest with tremendous force - a war club embedded with shards of crystal that burned like a cold flame where they pierced his flesh.

The scream that tore from Ussun's throat was primal and broken, expressing an agony that transcended physical pain. It was the sound of a soul being shattered, of hope dying in darkness. Air rushed from his lungs carrying with it everything that had made him human - his dreams, his hopes, his quiet determination to find meaning in a life of service.

The attack had accomplished its purpose. Ussun lay dying among the ruins of his life's work, the precious quipus scattered and trampled underfoot. The records that had seemed so important hours ago were now just colored strings in the dust. If he had possessed the clarity of thought for such things, he might have felt regret - for not taking the strange woman's offer seriously, for not recognizing the signs of impending disaster, for wasting his final hours on mundane tasks when he might have been seeking something greater.

But pain had stripped away such complex emotions, leaving only the fundamental experience of a body failing and a spirit preparing to depart. Eventually even the screaming stopped, partly from exhaustion and partly because his damaged lungs could no longer sustain the effort. The sounds of battle faded as the invaders moved on to other targets, leaving behind only the quiet weeping of survivors and the whispered prayers of the dying.

Time passed - minutes or hours, Ussun could not say. The chamber grew quiet except for the occasional shifting of rubble and the distant sound of flames consuming what remained of his world. No one came to check on him. Why would they? There were so many others to help, so many whose chances of survival were better than those of a blind scribe trapped beneath fallen stones.

Then she returned.

"Oh, oh no. You - you were supposed to fight back! Run! Something!" Lanvi's voice carried panic and concern as she knelt beside him in the debris. Her emotions washed over him again, but now they were tinged with self-recrimination and desperate urgency. "Oh, Cievo. Let me-"

A sound rang out unlike anything Ussun had ever heard - not quite music, not quite speech, but something that seemed to resonate with the fundamental frequencies of life itself. Then came warmth, flowing through his broken body like liquid sunlight. The pain that had defined his existence for the past eternal moments simply... ceased. Muscles knit themselves back together, bones straightened and strengthened, damaged organs resumed their proper functions.

This was not the healing magic Ussun had witnessed before, performed by those Naturals blessed with the ability to mend. Those healings were simple, careful and direct processes that either fixed a simple problem, or helped the body to recover on its own. This was something infinitely more profound - a complete restoration that seemed to reach beyond the physical realm to touch the very essence of what made him alive.

He tried to speak, to express his gratitude or confusion or the dozen other emotions swirling through his restored mind, but-

"No! Hush! Just wait a minute, you need to relax. I fixed your body, but... the rest will take a bit more than I can give." Lanvi held him gently, her small- and surprisingly human -frame supporting his weight with surprising strength. Every aspect of her being radiated guilt and apology, emotions so intense they threatened to overwhelm even her naturally powerful presence. Her feelings, it seemed, truly did not do anything by halves.

The combination of magical healing and emotional exhaustion proved too much for Ussun's restored yet weary mind. He felt consciousness slipping away again, but this time it was the natural sleep of recovery rather than the dark embrace of approaching death. In his final moments of awareness, he wondered what would await him when he woke - and whether the strange woman named Lanvi would still be there to explain the gift that she had promised him.

A young man returned to the land of the waking with a bleary, not-quite-comprehensible noise that resembled an old door squeaking open, if one were inclined to make such comparisons. Ussun's eyes twitched open, though the gesture held little significance for him. The familiar darkness remained unchanged, yet something felt fundamentally different about his awakening.

He wondered why everything simultaneously felt better than it ever had in his life while also being beyond sore, as if every muscle had been stretched to its limits and allowed to snap back. The paradox of perfect health layered over bone-deep exhaustion confused him, and he opened his mouth to voice his bewilderment when he was rudely interrupted by a spike of excitement and cheer that crashed over his consciousness like a mountain stream.

"Oh good, you're awake! I was starting to worry that I might have to shoot you again!" Lanvi's words bubbled out in a rush, referencing her earlier act of healing. The sound she had made during the process, now that Ussun reflected upon it, did somewhat resemble certain explosive magics he had heard described - just far more pleasant and infinitely more effective. Beneath her cheerful words, however, he detected an undertone of anxiety that set his nerves on edge.

"Shoot me? What... ow." Ussun winced as he attempted to piece together the events of the past few hours - or what he assumed were hours. His sense of time had become thoroughly scrambled, and he was not entirely certain how long he had slept or what had transpired during his unconsciousness. It was then that he registered his current position: he was still lying down, cradled in the arms and resting upon the lap of Lanvi, who had apparently been watching over him throughout his recovery. "Oh uh, sorry, let me just-"

"Aaand up you go!" Lanvi helped him to his feet with surprising strength for someone of her diminutive stature, her hands steady and supportive as he found his balance. He could sense her eyes studying him carefully, her anxiety practically radiating from her small form. "So, how are you feeling?"

"Mostly good? Physically at least, thank you for healing me, but..." Ussun paused, his gratitude genuine despite his confusion. "Why are you asking?" It was then that he noticed an irregularity - something foreign residing within his chest. His fingers traced over his sternum, feeling nothing unusual on the surface of his skin, but there was definitely something below, embedded in the bone perhaps, positioned uncomfortably close to his heart.

"Ah, I was... hoping to tell you about that later. Remember how you got hit in the chest by that macuahuitl?" Lanvi queried gently, her tone carefully modulated in a way that suggested she was preparing to deliver unwelcome news.

The mention of the weapon - a war club embedded, traditionally, with obsidian blades that the invaders had wielded - brought the traumatic memories flooding back with startling clarity. "I was what!?" The panic rose in his voice as the full horror of his near-death experience reasserted itself. "How-"

"Moving on from that!" Lanvi diverted his emotional spiral with practiced efficiency, clearly having anticipated this reaction. "The uh, incident that left you... in need of my healing... wasn't really clean per se. One of those chunks ah, broke off?" She spoke nervously, her words carrying the hesitant cadence of someone delivering bad news piece by piece. Ussun felt a sinking sensation in his stomach as he began to grasp the implications. "Well, when I used Land Lock to heal you, Imight'velodgedthatpieceinyourchestI'msosorry."

The words came out in such a rush that it took Ussun's mind several seconds to parse them into meaningful language. His first thought was a wordless expression of bewilderment, followed almost immediately by a more vocal "What?"

"Yeah... oops." The embarrassment that flooded from Lanvi was so palpable that Ussun almost found himself cringing second-hand from the intensity of her emotional projection.

"'Oops.'" he echoed hollowly, his voice flat with disbelief. 'Oops' she said, after leaving Sol-knew-what embedded next to his heart. How in the depths of the underworld could that possibly be considered 'healed'?

"It's... not all bad? It probably won't kill you, I won't need to give you anything for you to link to your partner, it didn't leave a scar..." Lanvi didn't sound terribly convinced by her own reassurances, but her words were at least factually correct as far as Ussun could determine through careful self-examination.

"Wait, what was that second part? Something about my partner?" The phrase triggered a memory from their first encounter, when she had spoken of magic and destiny and gifts he had been too skeptical to take seriously.

"Oh, yeah! It's made of a rhythmically-active material, and there's another piece... here!" The rustling of cloth suggested she was retrieving something from her garments, holding it up for an inspection he could not provide. "I was able to reinforce the link, so if you just give this to your partner you should be able to transfer rhythm. No need for both of you to hold onto something... probably don't try to surgically implant this piece, though."

Now that Ussun focused his attention on the foreign object in his chest, he experienced the deeply unnerving sensation that his own emotions were flowing out of the embedded stone just as much as they emanated from his own body. The feeling was profoundly disturbing, as if his very essence was being shared with something alien and unknown.

"Right... how does all of that work, exactly?"

"Oh, right, right! I almost forgot! Okay, so- what do you know about magic?" Lanvi's mood shifted back to cheerful enthusiasm with startling speed, her earlier embarrassment apparently forgotten in favor of educational excitement. "And walk with me as we talk - might as well get you out of here."

Ussun began to move carefully through the rubble-strewn chamber, using his enhanced hearing and spatial awareness to navigate the debris. "There are spells? Naturals can use them if they're the right element-" He barely managed to voice the basics of his limited understanding before being interrupted.

"Mmmmsorta. Naturals can do magic on their own, but! But! Technically, humans and..." Her emotions wobbled with uncertainty, and he sensed a deeper complexity to this topic than he had initially realized. "...partners. We really need a proper name for them, soon." She whispered the last part as if speaking to herself rather than to him. "Partners! They can also cast magic. If a human gives their rhythm to their partner, that partner can cast the same spells as a Natural - more, even. The human needs to know the spells' names, and the uh, partner has to be capable of that kind of magic, but that's about the only limitation."

Ussun was forced to stop walking as the implications of her words sank in. Throughout his entire life, he had been told that Naturals were his betters - wielders of magic, wise and powerful beings who stood far above ordinary humans in the cosmic hierarchy. The possibility that magic might be accessible to him, even indirectly, fundamentally challenged everything he had believed about his place in the world. The revelation required more processing time than he was comfortable admitting before he could refocus on the conversation.

"And I... have one of these partners, somewhere?"

"You could say that! Now- I know what you're going to ask, but I can't just be straightforward about it, as much as I wish I could point you in the right direction." Ussun almost missed the emphasis she placed on some words, only the accompanying bursts of mischief alerting him to pay closer attention to her phrasing. "Against the rules, I'm afraid, I'd love to just say 'go northeast and you'll find them' but... I can't, so you'll have to find all of that out for yourself."

"Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight." Ussun drew the word out slowly, beginning to understand that there was more to this conversation than appeared on the surface. "And uh, you wouldn't be able to give me instructions on exactly how to cast a spell either?" He hoped he was reading her intentions correctly, and based on the excitement that suddenly radiated from her, he was probably on the right track.

"Nope, can't tell you! Not even how to cast, like, the basic nature spells 'Foglie a Lame' or 'Colpo di Vite.' Nothing about saying 'Pianissimo' after each one... y'know how it is." Ussun was fairly certain that Lanvi was not actually capable of genuine subtlety, but since her ham-handed attempts at circumventing restrictions were benefiting him, he supposed that was perfectly acceptable.

"Well, thanks anyway I guess. I suppose I'll get going, then." He shuffled carefully until he found an intact wall, wincing as his fingers traced over the new cracks that marred the familiar stone surfaces. At least the carvings remained intact enough for him to determine his location within the damaged archive complex. "I don't suppose I'll see you again?"

"Yep! I'll show up after you've found your partner! Good luck!" The cheerful energy in her voice along with the sound of cloth moving suggested she was probably waving at him in farewell, though he could not confirm the gesture. Her emotional signature provided a useful reference point as he began to walk carefully through the ruins, feeling the warmth of sunlight on his skin almost immediately as he stepped from the shattered chamber onto bare earth. Apparently it was daytime already, marking the end of the longest and most transformative night of his life.

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