Aldric walked alone through the brush, the sun filtered by a canopy of thorned pines and fog-wrapped boughs. The moss was thick, dry, disturbingly warm underfoot.
Veylor had sent him to fetch water from a stream a few clicks east. A test, obviously. He didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t have to. Aldric could feel it in the silence between them that morning. In the way the knight handed him the canister and said, “Stay aware. Things grow weird out here.”
His hands still reeked of ash.
They always did now.
He ducked beneath a low branch, the stream gurgled nearby, hidden by reeds.
Then a sound.
The creak of bending wood.
No—
Not wood.
Ribcage.
Aldric froze.
He turned slowly, mouth dry. Something moved.
It wasn’t large.
But it was wrong.
Too many joints. Muscles folded the wrong direction. The creature resembled a man-sized hound, if a hound had no fur, no skin, and seven limbs. Its teeth clicked against its mandibles like nervous fingers.
Vermal. Kraus Rating: 2.1. Subspecies: Ridgeback.
He remembered the illustration. Page 142 of Fundamentals of Organic Hostiles. Weak to fire. Resistant to blunt force. Target the mouth. Avoid the midsection split. It could snap shut like a bear trap.
His fingers twitched. He reached for spellform: Resonance for support, Radiance needle for offense. One-two combo, practiced.
Too slow.
The thing moved.
One blink: crouched. Next: gone.
Aldric dove sideways, hitting the moss hard. The canister bounced away. Claws dug into the earth where his head had just been.
He raised his hands to cast—
Then came the snap.
A sound like a tree collapsing.
The Ridgeback twisted mid-lunge, but it was too late. A wall of flesh and muscle slammed into it from the left, crushing it against a rotting stump with enough force to split bark and bone.
Aldric blinked.
The creature twitched once. Then nothing.
Standing over its corpse was not a soldier.
Not a mage.
A mountain.
A man built like a foundry if it was given bones.
Two meters of fat, muscles, and sinew wrapped in a frayed cloak and leather-bolted plate.
His shoulders were wide, reinforced with metal bands stitched into the cloak itself.
His boots looked like they could kick down a gate, and his knuckles were stained with oil.
One of his eyes gleamed gold. The other wasn’t.
It was a device. Somewhere between a monocle and a targeting scope. It whirred softly as it focused, clicking as if it’s calibrating.
Then the man looked at Aldric.
And smiled.
“You’re lucky I was nearby.”
Aldric stared. His heart still hadn’t caught up.
“...You killed it.”
The man nodded, as if he'd stepped on a particularly annoying spider.
“It was loud. Poor thing must’ve been starving. Didn’t even try to flank you.”
Aldric stood slowly. His heart still hadn’t slowed.
“Name’s Tyrenor,” he said. “Just Tyrenor.”
Aldric blinked. “That’s not a Dominion name.”
“I wasn’t born in the Dominion.”
He crouched beside it. Prodded the muscle. Studied the twitching mandibles. No fear. No disgust. Just curiosity.
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“Kraus 2.1. Standard new world patterning. Thought this place was cleared,” Tyrenor said.
“So did I.” Another voice cut through the trees.
Veylor stepped out, one gauntlet resting on his sword hilt, armor dusted with pine needles.
Tyrenor stopped.
Stared.
And then, with something close to a laugh in his voice:
“You’re still alive.”
“Still upright, Lemon Edward. You too, apparently.”
Tyrenor sighed.
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
Tyrenor hadn’t changed.
That was the first thing Veylor said once they’d passed the treeline, now walking through an open field that didn’t look like much. No guard posts. No warning sigils. Just weeds, flowers, and the scent of dirt.
“Still using the same hideout?” Veylor muttered.
Tyrenor’s smile widened. “Unexploded ground is safe ground.”
Then, casually, like opening a pantry, he kicked at a crooked patch of stone. Something clicked beneath the grass. A few gears churned. With a low groan, a steel hatch opened from the earth, revealing a descending spiral of iron stairs.
Aldric stared.
“Is this… yours?”
Tyrenor winked. “What gave it away?”
Veylor went first, boots clinking against metal. Aldric followed, ducking slightly under the curved ceiling.
Lights flickered on.
One by one.
At the bottom, the corridor widened into a chamber. About the size of a university lecture hall, lined with dull steel plating and thick mechanical tubing.
The air reeked of machine oil. Rows of inactive consoles lined the walls, their displays dark but intact. A large table sat in the center, covered in maps, documents, and a few strange mechanical tools Aldric didn’t recognize. One corner of the room had a makeshift living space: A cot, a shelf full of old books, and a workbench stacked with half-finished machines.
“Welcome to civilization, such as it is.”
Aldric circled the space slowly, eyes scanning between terminals and rusted framework. Most of the machines were broken. Some were clearly scavenged, soldered together with no concern for matching parts.
"This is where you live?"
“Sleep. Eat. Tinker. Repeat,” Tyrenor said.
Aldric passed a wall of notes written in at least three languages, some with arrows crossing each other like battle maps. One drawing was circled twice in red ink: a stylized bird with outstretched wings, coiled around a sun.
“Soviras crest,” Veylor murmured behind him. “Old design. This was before the Concord.”
Aldric stopped just before a pile of clothes in the corner of the bunker. Nestled carelessly atop a rusting cot and a half-assembled gauntlet, lay a pristine garment.
A uniform, white and gold, edged with reinforced seams and subtle fabric plating. The shoulder bore a triangle of metal. The sigil of the Dominion’s Research & Engineer Division.
Aldric froze mid-step.
“You were… in the Division?”
Tyrenor looked up from the workbench, one lens of his mechanical eye adjusting.
“Still am.”
“That’s not… retired engineer kind of gear. That’s—”
“Clearance Level 3A,” Veylor muttered behind him. “Vault access. Black-site clearance. He’s not bragging.”
Aldric blinked. “I thought the Division only took people directly from the Central Rings.”
“They do,” Tyrenor said, walking over and brushing a layer of dust off the uniform with one callused hand. “I was pulled in after my first deployment. Turns out if you design something that doesn’t break down when charged with Luminance, they want to keep you around.”
“Why leave?”
Tyrenor’s voice turned quieter.
“Didn’t leave. Just… stopped going back.”
Aldric frowned. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Not when you’ve seen what’s in the vaults.”
Veylor moved past him and paused at a sealed case near the wall. A quiet reverence fell over him.
“You still have it?”
“Not just one,” Tyrenor said.
He turned and walked to the center of the room, where a cylindrical container sat under a suspended filtration system.
Glass. Reinforced. Hanging plates of infused Radiance and Aegis that automatically deploy if you get inside.
Simple, yet the absurd amount of them made Aldric chuckle.
Aldric stepped closer to look inside, his breath fogging the glass.
At first, it looked like pebbles wrapped in velvet. Their surfaces aren’t glossy but instead have slightly fuzzy texture. The strands interlock, fusing them together. Muted dark green, shadowed at the center, almost translucent near the edges.
It was still. Perfectly inert.
Aldric leaned forward. “What is this?”
Veylor’s voice was quiet.
“Tenebrith.”
The word landed like frost. He’d seen it in exactly two textbooks, both were clear with warnings.
“UNSTABLE.”
“Do NOT interact.”
“NOT to be stored in organic proximity.”
“This is Tenebrith?” Aldric whispered.
“You expected more sparkles?” Tyrenor said. “Most people do. But this is the good stuff. Untouched. Undegraded. Born from a hotspot zone west of old Blackmarch.”
He tapped the glass gently. It didn’t move.
“Think of it like… what happens when magic doesn’t decay. Just collects in on itself over time. Refuses to leave. Like soot in a chimney.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Same,” Tyrenor shrugged. “I made the analogy up fifteen years ago. Still holds.”
“But… this shouldn’t be possible,” Aldric said, voice dry. “Magic dissipates. That’s the whole law. Even infused items—”
“Decay. Yes,” Tyrenor said. “Unless they don’t.”
He walked to the far wall, flipped through a bunch of documents, and pulled out a graph.
“This sample hasn’t lost a fraction of energy in twenty-seven years. We’ve tested cold storage. Heat. Arcane feedback loops. Still there.”
“What’s the cost?”
Tyrenor looked up.
“You’re asking the right question.”
He gestured for Aldric to follow.
To the back of the room, behind a curtain of tarped cables and metal crates, was another chamber.
Not a lab.
A vault.
One wall was covered in failed machines. Devices made from silver-gold alloys, all etched with precise geometry, abandoned mid-build. But not because they broke.
Because they stopped.
Aldric examined one. “What are these?”
“Engines,” Tyrenor said.
“For what?”
“Tenebriths.”
“And?”
“They work.”
Aldric blinked. “That’s… good, right?”
Tyrenor smiled. But it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Define good.”
Veylor stepped in and pointed to a device, clearly standing out among others.
In that moment, Aldric Valen stared down at a weapon too large for understanding
A device so big and intricate, it made the others look like children‘s toys.
On the top edge of a glass window, it printed:
PROJECT SOLACE-M-PUNCTURE
INVERSION FRAME: REACTION CORE — DO NOT TOUCH
AUTHORIZATION: TYR#9982-R
PRODUCTION PAUSED INDEFINITELY
CAUSE OF “SUNFALL” INCIDENT
Aldric looked up.
Outside, the wind began to rise.
He stared at the name on the print, rereading it.
Again.
Again.
As if some part of him believed that if he said it enough, it would stop being true.
And in the silence that followed, Aldric asked Tyrenor the question he hadn’t meant to speak aloud:
“…What are you?”