Jonah Gives Valbrant a Cardinal

Jonah's split-party route became something quieter than the rest of the maze. He led Vala and the two dragonborn allies through the corridors: Helga Wingkin, red-scaled and practical, and Valbrant, blue and electric. They had started as hungry prisoners with a heart piece and enemies behind them. With Jonah, they became people with names, old wants, and memories that had not been completely burned out of them. They talked about wishes. They talked about Djeebus. They talked about creation. The dragonborn wished for things that sounded simple until the displacement underneath them became clear: family, mountains, food from before everything changed. Jonah answered in the way Jonah often answered, not by solving the maze but by making something inside it. He gave Valbrant a carved cardinal, and Valbrant revealed that he once scorched designs into sand and made glass weapons with lightning. That turned the walk into a ministry scene. Jonah was not merely collecting allies for the heart-piece objective. He was inviting displaced people back into the act of making, which in Jericha is sometimes the closest thing to hope anyone gets.