When the world rebuilt itself around him, it did so not with noise or drama, but with the smooth, seamless layering of sand, sky, and sea.
ProlixalParagon stood once again on the salt-kissed coast of the Lunar Empire, a lean figure silhouetted against the low tide moonlight. The wind tugged gently at his travel-worn cloak, threading through the torn seams like it, too, sought answers. His silver fur shimmered under twin moons — luminous, almost metallic in tone, but marked throughout with swirls of charcoal black. The marbling was natural, distinct — like ink spilled through snow. His digitigrade legs flexed automatically as he shifted weight, claws lightly clicking on the scattered stone beneath the grass.
He blinked once. Then again. The gold in his eyes caught the horizon’s gleam — thoughtful, fox-sharp, already parsing the world anew.
[Welcome Back, ProlixalParagon]
World State: Synced | Location: Lunar Coast (Unmarked Shoreline)
Party Status: Nearby (3.1 km – Vermillion Troupe Campfire Detected)
Current Quest: The Lost Workbenches of the Master Tinkerer (3/7)
With a quiet exhale, he raised a clawed hand and summoned the full arc of his character interface. The pale hexlight pane unfolded before him, flickering with soft sound — his reflection dimmed within it.
Player Name: ProlixalParagon Level: 19
Class:Umbral Synthete
Subclass:None
Profession: None Specialization: None
Currently Active Title: -
Most used Skill: -
Alignment: Chaotic Grey
Health: 200/200 Mana: 220/220 Stamina: 115/115
Points Earned: 20
Reputation:
-OakHaven - 10
-Vermillion Troupe - 115
-Pella - 0
-Marx - 50
-Lyra - 200
-Kaelthari - 10
-Arelis - 5
-Lord Elmsworth - (-100)
-DustReach - (-100)
-Draggor - (-100)
-Yendrals Hollow - 50
-Soohan - 50
-Haidrien - 0
-Sern Ka’torr - 0
Character Attributes:
Strength:18 Constitution:18 Dexterity:33 Intelligence: 32
Wisdom: 32 Charisma: 16 Piety: 0 Luck: 18
Karma: 10
Combat Attributes:
Attack: 14 Accuracy: 12 Agility: 18 Speed: 10
Critical: 0.21 Endurance:14 Focus: 21 Defense:10
Magic Def: 10 Armor:10 Hygieian Meter: 12 Perception: 17
Affinities:
Earth: 0 Water: 0
Fire: 0 Air: 11
Blood: 0 Soul: 12
Celestial: 0 Abyssal: 38
Lightning: 0 Ice: 0
Metal:14 Wood: 0
Currently Equipped Gear:
Worn Leather armor (Durability: 5/45)
Tinkerers beginners tool set (Durability: 22/45)
Low grade iron dagger (Durability: 8/25)
Makeshift trash Caltrops (Qty: 31 Pcs)
Marx’s Woven Cuff (Durability: 45/45) (Accessory — +1 Dexterity, +5% Mana Efficiency)
Active Status Effects:
-
Abilities:
Entropy Handling, Fracture Weaver, Dreamtide Recoil, Fathom-Glint Vision
Titles
Marked by the Fractured Sea
Passive Skills:
Improvised weaponry , Salvager’s Insight , Master Tinkerer’s Insight, Herbalism (Novice), Soul Sensitivity, Metal Sensitivity, Prototype Device Adaptation, Anchoring Reflex, Resonant Instability
Feats:
Inversion Array, Paradox Bloom, Anomaly Stabilization (Minor),
Character Background:
Fennician, Scholars Apprentice, Cursed Bloodline
Character Traits:
Lunar Reflexes , Unrooted Identity , Magical Burnout, Knowledge Retention, Dark Affinity, Fractal Instinct, Tidefract Echo
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Currently active Quest:
The Lost Workbenches of the Master Tinkerer (3/7)
Prolix scrolled through the interface, lingering on the reputation line for Lyra.
Lyra: +100
His hand hesitated, claws still against the projection. That number meant more than most quests. More than loot or blueprints or the chaos he'd left back in Draggor. He exhaled again and closed the interface with a flick.
The horizon was soft now — dawn beginning to bleach the night from the sky. Somewhere ahead, just past the brush-choked ridge, the Troupe would be stirring. Lanterns doused. Wheels checked. Children ushered into vardo bunks and sharp eyes turned outward for riders that never stopped chasing.
But not yet.
For now, ProlixalParagon sat down in the grass, tail curled around one leg, and simply watched the sea. Letting it move. Letting the character settle.
Then he stood, golden eyes sharp once more.
Time to go home.
The grass changed first.
It thickened as he moved inland, turning from salt-stiffened blades to soft bramblegrass threaded with moonvine, glimmering faintly in the pre-dawn dark. Each step muffled his presence — not with magic, but with old wilderness. This land had not forgotten the feet of wanderers.
ProlixalParagon moved low, ears twitching with each shift of wind or rustle of underbrush. He followed no road, no path — only instinct and the flickering pulse on his HUD: 1.1 km – Camp: Nomadic, Alert Tier Yellow.
The Troupe was being careful.
Good.
A snapped reed brought him to a ridge where the grasses dipped around a shallow rise — and there he saw them.
The Vermillion Troupe had settled in a natural depression ringed by stone and scrub, their vardos drawn into a half-circle like a crescent moon left behind in the dirt. A single fire pit smoldered low in the center, shielded beneath an iron pot hung on a collapsible frame. No more than coals now. Caution burned slow.
He saw silhouettes — faint, watchful movement between wagon wheels. No voices. Just the quiet tension of a group that knew how to vanish, even while waiting.
Then a flash of movement.
A pale figure standing guard.
Ralyria.
Her metal-forged form caught the faintest glint of starlight, spear replaced by a staff of sand-hardened driftwood. She stood with inhuman stillness, only her eyes flicking once—then again.
Locking onto him.
She didn’t shout. She didn’t run.
Instead, she tilted her head. Curious. Measuring. And after a beat, she lifted one hand in a slow, deliberate wave.
It wasn’t a signal.
It was welcome.
Prolix’s throat tightened slightly.
He stepped down from the rise, making no effort to hide now, hands visible, cloak unfastened.
More heads lifted in the camp.
Kaelthari, horned and gleaming, emerged from between two wagons with his bardiche slung over one shoulder. His posture tensed — then eased as he recognized the marbled silver and black of Prolix’s fur.
A door creaked open on the eldest vardo, the one painted with lunar phases and edged in burnished gold.
Lyra stepped into the morning.
Her silver fur looked thinner in the coastal light, but her gaze had lost none of its precision. She stared at him for a long moment. Said nothing.
Then turned, cane tapping softly as she walked back into the wagon.
A simple signal: Follow.
ProlixalParagon crossed the final stretch in silence. Marx appeared beside the firepit as he passed — arms crossed, heavy boots planted, a small toothpick rolling between his teeth.
“You look like you rolled through a cursed forge and came out with extra trauma,” the big Goblin muttered, not unkindly.
Prolix smirked. “You should see the other kingdom.”
Marx snorted, then thumped him on the shoulder hard enough to jostle a lung. “Welcome back, fox. We were about two hours from sending Kaelthari in after you with a sack and some bad intentions.”
“I’d have let him,” Kaelthari rumbled as he approached. “Eventually.”
Ralyria moved to his side then. She hesitated — just slightly — before offering a small object.
Prolix blinked.
It was a silver-threaded ribbon. Frayed. Faintly scented with desert sage and bloodroot balm.
“You dropped it,” she said softly.
He hadn’t.
He took it anyway.
Then, without another word, he stepped up into Lyra’s wagon.
Inside, it was dim and still. The scent of crushed herbs lingered in the air, along with parchment, wax, and something older — the dry, dust-laced smell of buried memory.
Lyra stood with her back to him, sorting jars into a satchel with quiet focus.
“I assume you have what you went to find,” she rasped.
He stepped forward, reaching into his inventory.
With care, he removed the Fifth Blueprint Fragment and placed it on her worktable.
She didn’t touch it. Only looked.
After a moment, she nodded.
“Well,” she murmured. “Seems you found your way back after all.”
Prolix hesitated. “You doubted?”
“No,” Lyra said. “But the world’s made to break things that don’t belong in it.”
A pause.
“You keep refusing to break. That has a cost.”
Prolix didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
After a beat, Lyra looked up — golden eyes sharp, dry voice softer than usual.
“I’m glad you made it back, boy.”
He nodded once.
And outside, the sun breached the farthest edge of the horizon, spilling gold over the salt-painted vardos and lighting the Vermillion Troupe in morning fire.
They were together again.
But the road was far from done.
The sea’s breath lingered in the grass long after the tide pulled away.
ProlixalParagon sat near the firepit, legs folded beneath him, his cloak hung to dry beside a rough stilt-slat post one of the Troupe had hammered into the earth. Someone had stoked the coals with care — just enough to hold warmth, not enough to signal light across open terrain.
For once, he was allowed to be still.
Kaelthari leaned against a nearby wagon, horned silhouette glinting in the morning haze, while Ralyria sat across from him, quietly tending her driftwood staff. The warmth between them was wordless. Shared silence had become its own kind of speech among the Troupe.
Then came the soft, rhythmic squelch of padded feet over wet grass — deliberate, slightly off-beat, unmistakably foreign in cadence.
Prolix looked up.
PillowHorror had returned from patrol. He emerged from between the vardos like a ripple in the land itself — tall and fluid, skin patterned in earthen browns and shadowy greens, scales catching the faint dawn light like wet stone. His long tail curled gently behind him, its tip twitching twice in lazy amusement before coiling low — a casual but respectful greeting posture.
He was Quang, through and through.
A child of the shattered moon-isle whose people had clawed independence from Draggor only a generation ago, whose lungs bore secondary gills hidden beneath his armpits, and whose tail spoke as clearly as any tongue. The scent from the glands there was faint — a mossy tang in the air, layered with sea salt and clove.
“Smells like rotwater and scorched crystal,” PillowHorror said with no small amount of theatrical flourish as he lowered himself beside Prolix with the boneless ease of an amphibious predator. “Tasted any new mana anomalies lately, or did you just bathe in one for fun?”
Prolix gave a long-suffering sigh. “I missed you too.”
The Quang’s gill-slits flexed faintly in amusement. His posture shifted slightly — tail coiling forward and pressing flat to the dirt in a social signal of shared presence. Not dominance. Not submission. Equal ground.
He looked over at Prolix, his golden eyes glittering beneath his heavy brow ridge.
“You really went under the capital alone?” he asked, quieter now. “Again?”
Prolix’s ears folded briefly. “Didn’t plan it that way.”
“You never do,” Pillow replied, reaching into the satchel slung around his hip. He pulled out a folded leaf, unwrapped it with practiced grace, and offered it to Prolix. Inside were thin, crisped fillets of iridescent mushroom — likely one of the Quang-exclusive flora species. Toxic to others. Nutritive to him.
“Brought food. Not for you,” he added with a grin, and ate a piece whole.
Prolix chuckled, leaning just enough to bump his shoulder lightly against the Quang’s. “I remember when you used to offer me snacks.”
“I remember when you still logged off to sleep.”
Their eyes met.
“I’m glad you made it,” Pillow said, softer now. His tail curved slowly in a half-circle around them both — not touching, but close enough to feel. A gesture of protection. Of scent-marked loyalty.
ProlixalParagon sat still for a long moment.
Then exhaled.
Ralyria, without speaking, leaned forward and added another dried herb bundle to the fire — the scent was cleansing, resinous, laced with wild mint and something floral. Kaelthari nodded in approval from where he sat sharpening his bardiche.
The Troupe didn’t ask for explanations. Not here. Not yet.
They didn’t need them.
This wasn’t just a camp of survivors.
It was his pack.
He let the tension drain slowly from his shoulders, the brine of Draggor’s betrayal finally leeching out beneath the rise of morning.
For the first time since leaving DustReach…
He felt home.
