The revelation hit Kai hard, less because of its content and more because of its source. When it came to so many things—social graces, basic cultivation theory, general common sense—Gin was an absolute imbecile. His understanding of the world was a patchwork of drunken misconceptions and half-remembered tavern tales. The only subject Kai trusted him on implicitly was his seemingly instinctual, genius-level knowledge of alchemy.

  Working off that single, narrow beam of credibility, Kai’s mind immediately jumped to the most logical conclusion. “Does this have something to do with alchemy?” he asked, his tone a mixture of skepticism and genuine curiosity. The alternative—that the drunkard was just making up another fantastical story—was always a strong possibility.

  “Yeah,” Gin confirmed, his gaze growing distant as he recalled his experiments. “It started when I was distilling water to purify it for making more of that medicine. I noticed that there was something… off about the residual impurities I extracted. Most of it was common mineral sediment, but there was one particular substance I couldn’t identify. It had a faint, almost undetectable spiritual resonance, but its structure was completely foreign to me.”

  He held up a finger, making his point. “And this mysterious impurity was only found in water I collected from the Boiling Lakes region. The groundwater near our home, the well water in Azure Sky Haven? Completely clean of it. And as you know, the water from those boiling lakes flows into the rivers…”

  “And the rivers flow into the ocean,” Kai finished, the pieces beginning to click into a terrifyingly plausible picture. He looked out at the water, now seeing it not just as sea, but as a carrier.

  “Exactly,” Gin said, his voice low. “Carrying that impurity all through the watershed. It’s in the water the land animals drink, the soil the plants grow in, and the ocean these fish swim in.” He gestured toward the massive salmon hanging from the cranes.

  “So you think,” Kai said, the implications beginning to dawn on him, “that whatever this impurity is… it’s the reason why everything in the Northend grows to such an enormous size?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure,” Gin admitted with a frustrated shrug. “Correlation isn’t causation, as the smart folks say. But it’s the only consistent variable I’ve found. Whatever this substance is, it is unique to Northend. I’ve never come across it anywhere else.”

  A spark of excitement ignited in Kai. “Is there any way to figure out what it is? To identify it?”

  Gin’s face fell into a look of profound frustration. “Unfortunately, no. I don’t have what I need.”

  “Even with that entire alchemy pavilion Kuro left us?” Kai pressed, thinking of the incredibly advanced equipment.

  “I have the equipment,” Gin clarified, a hint of bitterness in his voice. “The crucibles, the retorts, the arrays for analysis… it’s all there. But I don’t have the specific chemical reagents and catalysts I would need to run the proper battery of tests to isolate and identify an unknown elemental compound.” He sighed, the sound weary. “I would have to travel south, deep into core cultivation territory, to find an apothecary that stocks that level of refined material. Which is not happening. Or…”

  “Or?” Kai prompted.

  “Or I have to figure out if I can recreate those highly refined chemicals from scratch using only the raw, unprocessed materials we have here in Zan,” Gin explained, his shoulders slumping at the sheer magnitude of the task. “And that… that is going to take a long, long time and a mountain of failed experiments. We’re talking about reverse-engineering the entire foundational toolkit of modern alchemy from first principles. It’s not impossible, but it will take a lifetime by myself."

  “Okay, alright, I’m getting the message,” Kai conceded, holding up a hand in a placating gesture. “You don’t have the means to figure out what this substance is.”

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  As he pondered Gin’s revelation, the pieces began to form a disturbingly coherent picture. The Boiling Lakes had always been an anomaly. True geothermal sites—hot springs, geysers—were typically surrounded by the pungent, sulfuric smell of minerals leaching from the earth. The lakes near Titan’s Reach had none of that. They were eerily clean, their steam odorless, as if the water was being heated by something other than volcanic activity. Something pure, potent, and utterly foreign. And if that something was infusing the water with a unique property, it stood to reason that everything in the ecosystem—from the soil to the plants to the animals that consumed them—would be affected.

  This line of thought immediately triggered a more pressing concern: safety. A cold knot of worry tightened in his stomach.

  “Gin,” he began, his voice low and serious, “what does this water do to people who drink it? We’ve been here for a while now and I’ve never come across a person who was as gigantic as the animals here. A twenty-foot salmon is one thing, but a fifteen-foot tall man would be… noticeable. Are people somehow immune? Or does it just not affect us the same way?”

  Gin shook his head, a wry, almost pitying smile on his face, as if Kai had missed something obvious. “Um, I’m not so sure the people aren’t affected. If you haven’t noticed,” he said, nodding his head toward a group of fishermen who were hauling a new catch onto the docks with thick ropes, their muscles straining under the effort, “the people here… are a lot taller than average.”

  The comment was like a key turning in a lock. Kai’s mind raced, flipping through a mental catalog of every interaction he’d had since arriving in the Northend—the shopkeeper in Wonju, the farmers in their fields, the fishermen here on the dock, Haldor from Pillarforge. Gin was right.

  Kai was not a short man. He stood a solid six feet tall, a height that had often made him stand slightly above the crowd in his former sect. It had never been remarkable. But here, it was suddenly, glaringly average. Every local man and woman he had encountered had been taller than him. The difference wasn’t monstrous—just an inch or two—which was why his brain had dismissed it.

  His eyes drifted to Gin, who stood at five-foot-eight. From Gin’s perspective, the entire population of the Cloud Coast must have seemed strange. The effect was subtle, but it was undeniably there. The impurity didn’t turn people into titans, but it seemed to nudge their growth, pushing their natural potential higher.

  “Huh, I guess you’re right,” Kai admitted, a slow nod of dawning realization accompanying his words. His mind conjured images of the local fishermen and farmers—their frames were indeed robust, their stature consistently imposing. “The people do seem taller here. Significantly so.” But then his thoughts immediately leaped to the three-thousand-pound boar Igni had dragged back to the haven just the other day, its tusks longer than his arm. “But compared to the animals and the trees, it isn’t much. It’s like the effect on people is just a… smaller, compared to the effect it has on everything else.”

  “Well, your guess that this substance doesn’t affect people the same way is probably right on the money,” Gin agreed, slipping back into his lecturing tone, the one that appeared when alchemy was involved. “Beasts have fundamentally different constitutions from humans. A substance that supercharges a beast’s growth might just… optimize a human’s. And, people have been living here for generations. If the water did anything particularly nasty or obvious, we’d have heard the horror stories by now. Whole villages turning into giants or crumbling to dust.” He shrugged, his apathetic nature taking over. “So, I’m pretty sure it’s not harmful. And the basic tests I could run on those impurities didn’t show anything overtly toxic about it. It’s just… there. An anomaly.”

  Kai absorbed this, the logical part of his mind wrestling with the instinctual part that screamed caution about the unknown. Finally, he let out a long, slow breath. “I guess… There's not much we can do about it right now. No sense in worrying over a mystery we can’t solve. Best to just file it away for now.” He clapped his hands together, deciding to consciously shed the concern. “Well, whatever it is, you’ve given me something to think about. Ready to head back?”

  “Yup,” Gin said, hefting his gourds and adjusting the weight across his shoulders with a satisfied grunt. His mission was accomplished.

  Together, they left the salty, fish-scented air of Cloud Port behind, walking until the creaking docks and elevated huts were out of sight. They found Snow waiting patiently exactly where they’d left him, a majestic white sentinel amidst the coastal pines. With practiced ease, Kai and Gin climbed onto his broad back.

  “Alright, Snow,” Kai said, giving the great wolf an affectionate pat. “Home.”

  With a powerful lunge, Snow surged forward, leaving the mysteries of the coast behind as he carried them back toward the soaring, silent peak of Titan’s Reach.

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