In the dark reaches of a galaxy far from Orst sits Alexander the Fourth, present-day home to a solitary monarch. Within a void if Alexander lies Shal'raya, a floating city home to no one but still finds itself brightly lit. It is in the recesses of this floating city where our monarch can be found on most days; sometimes sparring an Aspect of the planet's leader, sometimes staring listlessly into the night sky. On this particular day, the majority of her morning was spent training.

The sounds of blades clashing echoed through the air with a mixture of grunts, groans, and the occasional swear. Beads of sweat trickled down the sides of her face and along various crevasses of her body as she swung Cisa forward to collide with the sword her opponent wielded. "Ready to yield?" her opponent taunted before applying pressure with his blade to push her back. "In your dreams," was her reply, sweeping her left leg forward and aiming for his ankles in an attempt to knock him off balance.

Before the leg could collide, she tensed and immediately withdrew from range. A distant chime sounded in her ears. If she were on any other planet, it might not worry her so much and would probably be a normal occurrence. Here? It set off a dozen red flags. The chime was part of a security system she'd inacted in her psyche to alert her when a presence entered a specific radius she set up when venturing to new places, or in this case, whenever something entered the atmosphere around Alexander. Given how far from the nearest civilization they were, it was a major red flag when the chimes went off.

"We need to put a pin in this. Something's wrong." As the last word fled her lips, the air around their bodies shimmered before they disappeared only to reappear in a large circular room in the Hive. She stepped away from her companion and advanced towards the massive computer setup in the center of the room, sheathing Cisa in its holster at the small of her back in the process. Manicured fingers moved expertly across the keyboard before her while emerald eyes flickered from one side of the screen to the other.

Behind her, a noise of discontent filled the otherwise silent room. The Aspect's voice followed shortly thereafter. "How much longer?" Another noise now, louder to emphasize his annoyance with being ignored. "Just because he isn't here doesn't mean I won't knock the taste out of your mouth. How much longer I said." He folded muscular arms across his chest. Had his shirt not already been a tattered mess from their duel, it would've stretched over his biceps to the point of fraying.

She knew ignoring his protests was less than wise, his whose temper was destructive at the best of times, cataclysmic at the worst, but she persisted. A frown had begun to crease her face as an anomaly blinked in the corner of the monitor. Despite the vast network of 'eyes' she had on all of Alexander, none of them could get a clear visual of what had spawned within its outer limits. Before the volcano behind her could erupt, she lifted her left hand and motioned him to come closer. "Look at this. I didn't think anything could reach us out here, given the distance between us and the nearest planet and the shields." Her voice was airy but held an edge of concern. In all her years on Alexander, nothing had ever just 'spawned in' unless she created it.

The Aspect stepped up behind her and leered over her shoulder at the various camera angles on screen. "What the fuck is it? It's like the eyes can't focus on it, like their frequencies don't mesh." It was his turn to frown, leaning closer until he was pressed against her. "We have no other angle? Can we send someone out there to investigate?" By someone, he meant one of her many constructs that were planted throughout Alexander as a security measure. Plugging in coordinates for the nearest construct, she pulled open the view of another camera before tapping on a microphone icon. "Veles. Advance to the coordinates I've sent you and report back on your findings."

"Command received. Action cannot be taken at this time. Please provide new directive." Veles' robotic voice echoed through the chamber. The frown on both their lips deepened. "That can't be good. Why can't it take action? Is your little toy broken?" The arrogance tried and failed to mask the irritation that festered beneath the surface. "It's not broken. It received the command, but something is preventing it from getting closer. Maybe because it senses it's not humanoid by nature?" She scraped her nail across her bottom lip as her eyebrows furrowed. If it wouldn't allow the construct near because it's not a living, breathing entity, then that meant she would have to investigate it herself which proved problematic.

They didn't know what it was or the dangers it posed. But unless she went to see for herself, they would never know which posed an even bigger risk. She knew which way the scales would tip.



The Monarch and her Aspect materialized several yards back from where the Hive had first detected the anomaly. Even at this distance she knew what it was. "A portal? How peculiar' she said mostly to herself, her body already in motion to advance closer towards the swirling gateway. Before she could extend a hand out to touch the edges with her fingertips, a strong hand snatched around her wrist and yanked her back.

"Were you dropped on your head, girl? He'd kill us both if I let you go touching that thing. You don't even know where it leads." The words were a hushed growl, paranoia seeping in. Surely there wasn't anyone on the other end of the portal spying? That would be crazy talk. But the Aspect had grown paranoid in his time with this unruly Monarch whose danger sense seemed to be lost ever since her ascension. His grip on her wrist tightened on instinct, as it his subconscious sensed she was about to do something chaotically stupid. "I'm warning you now, Aless. Don't. I don't want his ire and if you were half as smart as you looked, you wouldn't either. Even if you are his wife." He spat the last word full of venom. Their time together had not changed his feelings, despite being a multiversal piece of the Ruler, there was still some resentment there.

"Where's your sense of adventure, LyLy?" She was taunting him, her body half turned to him while the other angled closer to the portal. The nearer she got to it, bits and pieces of her long dark hair floated as if she had suddenly become electrically charged. "You should be more worried about my ire." Something in her gaze darkened before a triumphant look plastered over her features. Her husband was terrifying, true, but she was within touching distance whereas he was not. Her immediate ire would be more trouble than it was worth.

Without another word, she pulled them both through the blue and purple portal.



Their vision was blackened the moment they stepped through the portal but it was fleeting. A sunburst exploded in the monarch's vision, leaving her temporarily stunned. Without sight, the rest of her senses were heightened including her sense of smell and touch. It hit her immediately - salty, vaguely sulphury and tangy assailed her nose while the mostly smooth texture of sand settled around her bare feet. As the breeze hit her face, glimmers of her surroundings slowly filled her view frame.

A port town of unknown origins loomed in the distance, huts and other buildings sprinkled here and there. They'd portalled near the town's edges on a deserted beach. As she stood soaking in her new surroundings, a rush of cold water swelled around her ankles before receding. "Where are we and why is it so fucking bright." The male beside her hissed, fingers still latched about her wrist but slowly loosening the intensity of their hold. His other hand shielded his eyes. Where they'd come from, it had been night but wherever they ended up, it appeared to be mid-day based on the sun's placement in the sky.

"I don't know but I can't reach the Hive from here." Her tone managed to remain calm but beneath that brewed fear. If she couldn't connect with the Hive, they were far from Alexander which meant her powers were greatly limited. It didn't pose a problem for her now but she couldn't speak for the future and that troubled her. "Shall we see if we can find some townies and figure out where the hell we got sucked to?" Without waiting for a response, she took to movement, trudging through the sand in the direction of the town she'd seen.

With a heavy sigh, the Aspect followed in her footsteps, his attention wandering from her lithe form ahead of him to their surroundings, mentally preparing for any surprise attacks on their way towards the port town.

Location: The Veylthorn Eyrie, New Katur

There was a bloody murder! Vaelith's pupilless eyes on full display—cold, flawless, like two perfect diamonds. Silver staked through the heart, the felled queen’s delicate right arm dangled off the bedside, a jangling constellation of bracelets adorned her wrist, and the slender backside of her left hand rested at her pale forehead.

It was a tragic scene.

The oversized dagger sheathed into the Katuran ruler’s heart impaled even the bed frame. It was peculiar for a vampire of her maturity to forgo resting in a coffin, but no lid would have spared her from this untimely assassination. Approaching the cherry-blotted mattress soaking up a vampire’s buffet worth of blood was Luthienne, one of several daughters of the Veylthorne estate. Borderline unmoored from reality, the young vampiress’ sleepwalking habit brought her before the slain queen. Standing at the foot of her mother's literal deathbed in a white Edwardian ruffle nightgown, behind Luthienne's moppy draping hair, her sleep-deprived hazel eyes barely widened. It wasn't because she was heartless. The blood supply shortage due to the war affected the surviving Vampires aboard the Château du Sang in varying ways. Luthienne, classified as a feaster, required consuming copious amounts of blood to offset the frequency with which she involuntarily used her powers. Any ounce of empathy and sorrow normally shown in a situation rocketed off the other end of the balance scale when weighted against her intrinsic nature as a vampire.

In awe of all the blood in front of her, quickly the young vampire’s thoughts veered towards “If only Mother were human.” She'd wring the bedsheets of their last drop were it the case. Luthienne was hungry, bed-headed, and vampire blood was about as appetizing as a Bordeaux glass of cod liver oil. Regardless, her sleepwalking, deemed prophetic by her father, brought her here before anyone else. As much as she wanted to return to her canopy coffin and close the curtains, her subconscious brought her here for a reason. Her hunger did not blind her to that aspect.

Instinctually grabbing the teal satin sheets with no reserve like any sleepwalker would a fridge handle, Luthienne had no hesitation as the first witness to the crime scene. The smart thing, the normal thing, would be to avoid tampering with evidence as it could only draw suspicion. However, the Veylthorne family operated by a peculiar set of rules and customs rebuking familial norms. In this family, the narrative is always up for grabs. Whoever can dictate and insert their self-serving will via schemes takes all. It is instilled in them at a young age that their meritocracy of family dysfunction made each generation stronger as iron sharpens iron. Programmed by that instinct, the brazen teen went to work, uncovering the recently crowned late matriarch. Conducting a half-assed autopsy with just her sleep-deprived eyes. It didn't take a coroner to realize Vaelith had been dead for less than an hour.

Further inspection made Luthienne's eyes narrow. The murder weapon of choice was… bizarre. Dull, unpolished, sinuously twisting into a helix, and engraved with a twin snake-themed insignia. The dagger resembled a prop more than a practical assault instrument. Something so unique should have instantly attached itself to a memory in the vampiress' thoughts, but its craftsman origins sat on the tip of the girl's tongue. That information tittered much closer to her fangs than the assailant probably was comfortable with.

Though she’d pretend otherwise, the girl was more than busybodied. She was offensively intrusive in things that interested her. Clearly, her mother’s death met that criterion. Or did it? Her body language certainly didn’t say so. Probably to the glee of the perpetrator, if they somehow watched, the young vampire's head nodded a bit. Despite the circumstances, mystifyingly, Luthienne fell asleep standing at her mother’s bedside.

She stood there for more than a minute, giving ample time for someone to approach, and for a second, a shadowy figure almost had. This was not some act of politeness. Luthienne, like most of the Veylthornes, had a moniker—The Nightmare Eyes. She saw reality through an extended scope of clarity when sleeping. The room dissolved into her unconsciousness, a melding kaleidoscope until it took on an inverted palette. Not only was there a visible residual aura on the weapon, but it did not manifest in her dream as a dagger. It was some strange, gold, gem-embedded artifact in the shape of a closing hand resting quite calmly on Vaelith’s chest. The aureate glow of the artifact appeared to rebuke her control over the space. Every time Luthienne’s hand crept near, it began to phase away. It was a deliberate foil to her psychometry.

Stubborn, she attempted to force it, but like a bolt of lightning, a surge of energy shot through the vampiress, jolting Luthienne wide awake, severing her from the oneiric landscape she had been maintaining.

“Hmph! I’ll find another way.”

Pouty, the vampiress failed to realize her hunger had been mysteriously satiated. About-facing, the young vampire departed, mood much fouler than when she had arrived, though her problem was solved. She returned to her corner of the Veylthorne quarters—part of a massive, vast, labyrinthine castle confined by dimensional magic within the Château du Sang, the final pride of the Katur. As the only intact testament to the might of their former space empire, the Veylthornes and the fractionated populace of surviving Katurans had no choice but to call it home.

Few found any joy in it, least of all Lazarel, eldest son of House Veylthorne. The noctivagant noble moved through the castle’s corridors in silence, cowl serving as another layer covering his stoic face, masking his thoughts. Inside, the vampire’s heart played his rib cage like a drum. He felt anxious. For someone not only known as, but quite literally cold-blooded, his mind needed convincing.

Barely a day had passed since landfall, and already the heir made a decision shaping the fate of the surviving empire in this unfamiliar land. Other than his mother, who vehemently opposed it so much the prince could no longer face her, no one knew Lazarel had placed his father in The Sanguine Rest, a cursed artifact his family had been designated to guard for generations. He did so without the approval of the rest of the Curceată. While he attended to familial matters, much of their time was devoted to investigating the means by which Chiro, one of their disgraced own, escaped. Lazarel didn’t take her as one to sell out her people like they feared, but law is law.

Frankly, the prince was thankful for the distraction she provided as it delayed the Curceată’s oversight. However, they would find out soon enough, as the hematite-black coffin with its agleam carmine crown was more than some magical artifact. It was living, possessing a sick sense of humor in the ways it rewarded usage. From the beyond, Lazarel could feel his father’s spirit condemning him. The way of the Veylthorne would be for the eldest son to take over and seize as much power as he could amongst the confusion, yet he chose to dishonor the king and his sacrifice.

A thousand voices echo in the dark, yearning for the gift of another breath— but at what cost? What will the entity within the Sanguine Rest offer the Veylthornes this time in return? The first time it was used, centuries ago, is the reason their family was cursed as vampires. The last time, it gave rise to the Dream Wraith, a spirit born from Luthienne’s nightmares that possesses her to this day. The time before that, it snatched thousands of Katuran souls to forge the Scarlet Shell armor, a great asset at a pricey cost. And the time before that, the most consequential, opened a portal to the Shattered Lament, a dimension of nearly infinite resources. Initially seen as a blessing, it microwaved a renaissance in technology and sorcery but ultimately led to the invasion and demise of Katur. There was no telling what curse Lazarel just inflicted on his family, or even the new planet they settled on, but it would reveal itself soon enough. The least he figured he could do was check on the present family members he cared about.

First, the prince checked on Miuccia. He scanned her room, walls draped in deep, velvety purple and midnight blue curtains adorned with silver thread. His little sister wasn’t asleep. In the corner, she knelt, long, jet-black hair nearly touching the floor as she played with her dollhouse. Soft plush toys were scattered about the floor, next to her open black-wood coffin. Many of the toys stared at Lazarel with deep, human eyes full of sadness, one painfully mouthing, 'He...lp...us...' Miuccia turned to her brother with her big brown eyes capable of capturing anyone's soul with sheer cuteness. With genuine concern, she said “Big brother, I think Lulu is sleepwalking again. She passed my room earlier.”

That didn’t sound any alarms, but out of precaution, he checked Luthienne’s room. She, too, was wide awake, pillow behind her back, reading a yellow grimoire.

“Luthienne, Miuccia said you were sleepwalking. Did you encounter anything odd in your visions?”

With the most pathetic poker face in the world, his sister simply replied “Nope” before returning to her book. He left, and a brief laugh escaped her lips, thinking she had fooled him. He’d figure out what she was up to soon enough. Things often worked that way.

Shaking his head, Lazarel moved on, not even bothering to check for Bastien. Considering his younger brother has been gone wandering about the Château since its landing, he could say without the faintest whisper of uncertainty, Bastien was using the hierarchical chaos surrounding their father’s death to womanize his way into unauthorized feeding sessions. Lazarel had other matters to worry about than searching for someone who attempted to take his life more times than he had fingers. If something happened to his brother, it was safe to say this prince’s heart remained unmoved. Similar could be said about the eldest sister, Elara, an individual only capable of viewing him as an obstacle to the throne.

Just when Lazarel exhaled at the realization of not having to deal with that insufferable side of the family tree, the pendant hugging Lazarel’s chest, a deep crimson stone set in a silver, barbed filigree halo mount, pulsed intensely in tune with Elara’s heartbeat.

“My eternal junior, you’ve been quite busy, haven’t you?”

His sister’s incessantly patronizing tone rang through every vowel like a cacophony, far from music to the prince’s ears.

“What.”

Lazarel’s retort was blunt, sharp, and devoid of patience.

“Not in the mood for banter today, are we? Shame. Shame… I’ll keep it short. While you’ve been playing the internal cleaning service, I’ve been attending to more important matters. Like, for one, surveying our surroundings. You know, you’ve always lacked that innate Veylthorne intuition. Come to my palace, brother. We have much to discuss. So much, I’m afraid I can’t leave even you in the dark.”

Eyes turned away from the iridescent boulevards and towers of Knō and peered up in trepidation, locked on a night sky that was unexpectedly livid. A brief, white line tore across the troposphere, west to east. Imperfect in form, it came as a radial arc blurred and staggered from atmospheric interference and departed over the distant horizon. A moment as ephemeral as a meteor shower, but juxtaposed by a portent as dark as the line was bright. For a moment, for those who saw it the isthmus city felt quiet.

On the microband Port Solt crackled in a singular paroxysm of static violence, then returned nothing.

On the scattered map of Orst’s photomagnetic infrastructure, its signature was blotted out.

Minutes after the arc, most residents of Knō were back to the immediate affairs of life. Then the ground shivered, the buildings swayed, and the air roared. Weakened by time and space, the concussive wave nevertheless evoked shock and action. Activity on communication hubs surged, and many learned the horror of what had transpired; of missing loved ones, of opportunities lost, of how — on Orst — there seemed never, ever to be any warning.

Atop a cliff that overlooked the narrow waterway betwixt the Inner Sea and Grand Abyss, a woman peered into a telescopic lens at the Eitemōr Astronomical Sodality. She jotted keen, precise figures on a one-use pad embossed at the top with the letters E, A, and S overtop a constellation arranged such that it called to mind a tome or open book. Readings verified, she keyed her numbers into a digitized interface. To her right a massive, wall-mounted screen transformed from matte black to a live satellite feed of what was Port Solt, rendered in infrared, standard eye, and full spectrum. The final corner flashed with an inbound call indicator, which she dutifully answered.

“Status?”

“Epicenter, Port Solt. Total infrastructure destruction, some survivors. Nothing on the causal agent. The feed on the screen is live, just pointed celestial watcher TB-tetgon-af. We’re both likely the first to see it.”

An active pause, and the bottom-right corner of the screen split in two; it indicated an outbound call, which was answered without formalities.

“Triage teams being assembled. Heck, it hit Port Solt dead-on. We’re going to need more people, more teams. What’s the priority?”

“Chatter localization indicates Oblin activity precipitated the event. ”

“Survivor extraction, first. Then medical, housing. Inform the hospital admins, show them frames from this feed so they understand the severity. Focus on Solt, but don’t forget the rural populations near the epicenter if we can get to them.”

“Any wends functional?”

“Your people don’t know? Nevermind. Maybe the one in the Terrfoch Sands, but it is two days by land from Solt. What about boats?”

“In distress, fighting a terrible current, high winds, massive waves. Every last one within a day of Solt. Zoom in on the waterline. See that? Unnaturally low. Trawlers far south of Solt went signal-dead, but last word consensus was: ‘The island rises; it moves!’”

“Is TB-tirgon-af avai—”

“Already on it,” she cut in, “on screen now. It—it isn’t where it should be. Zooming out and—.”

There was a terrible silence where they all thought the same thing, but refused to say it out loud; perhaps they felt it would add more life to the spectacle. At length, which was only a few seconds:

Floatplanes—no, the water is too violent. Hovercraft for sea rescue. On the desert, north of Solt—use the floatplanes there. It’ll take a few hours to get them there, but that’s our best bet. Load one up with some Esos, fresh water, emergency supplies. Maybe they can revitalize Solt’s wend.

Interlocked hands absorbed the faint chill of the concrete beneath their palms as two adventurous souls sat side by side, feet dangling from the edge of the only structure in the Château that dared stand half as tall as the Veylthorne estate. Despite the monolith, symbol of the might of the throne, domineering over the remaining Katurans aboard the mothership, in this moment, it was just them. Dragoș and Mărseana.

“Look at them up there...We're your saviors! Worship the ground we walk on! They’re everything Leontin said they are.” Dragoș was not enamored by the very people he served.

Not everyone was thankful for the Veylthorn’s wartime heroics. Some even blamed them. The war, as brutal and grotesque as it was, had served as a useful tool—a convenient distraction from the centuries of systemic, socioeconomic division between the people and the elite. Katuran’s for decades could only focus on survival. In the aftermath, people lost their champion, Leontin Bradin. The resistance movement once led by him vanished on the battlefield, with many still believing he’s out there somewhere… lost in the vast expanse of space.

The man was gone, but the vision remained…

“That was your hero, wasn’t it?” The woman beside the soldier teased him a bit, as he often quoted the absent leader of the revolution.

Trying not to ruin the moment, Dragoș quickly understood the point of the tease.“Mărseana, how long has it been since you've seen a real sunset?”

He turned to her as she blinked slowly, turning just enough for her wine-red irises to catch the light. She gazed back at him through as much as her auburn bangs with silver roots allowed her to.

“I don't know. You probably weren't even a teen yet.”

He grinned. “Funny. Your hair may be losing color, but you're not even thirty yet.”

“I still look younger than you, four years your senior. Don't forget that,” she said with a half-smile. But then, her gaze turned distant.

“The last sunset that ever meant anything to me…It was the day we all bid farewell to Katur. I miss it—” she sighed deeply.

“Maybe that chapter has written its last line. We’ve only just set foot on this world, and perhaps… It’s time we look at dawn for once.”

Stunned a little, Dragoș understood her sentiment to the core of his soul. He stood up, hands clenched loosely at his sides as he stared toward the looming estate in the distance.

“That would be nice. Let's see a real dawn then and every night after that, forever.”

“What about your sist–”

“Don't worry. Crina’s pretty tough. It's not like the military will let her go so easily. She’s way too important compared to my standing in it. Plus, she has Franche to look over.”

Mărseana raised an eyebrow. “You didn't tell her about your plan either?”

“Of course not. She'd try to follow me. Plus, once we find something nice–”

“If.”

“Whatever. The orbital scans picked up signs—cities, infrastructure, patterns in the wild. There’s life here. And I’m legally obligated to scout for Katur.”

With a bit of a puzzled look, Mărseana started to think, instinctively placing her index along her bottom lip. “My request was denied for some reason, and I rank higher than you. It could be that the regime sees me as a promising military mind?”

“Or perhaps they don't mind if young troubled soldiers like myself with a history die off. I guess I’m expendable now that the war is over.”

“That's also an option.” She laughed a little.

Failing to return a chuckle, Dragoș spoke very clearly and with the utmost conviction in his voice.“Perhaps. But you're coming with me.”

Shocked, Mărseana immediately thought of the potential consequences but attempted to turn it into a joke.“I don't know. What if they send Scions after us?”

“Shhh! Don't say that too loud!” Dragoș' expression turned intense.

“What, you believe the stories I found in my grandmother's cellar are true? Conspiracy, Elder Vampires, The Cruciata, blood sacrifices, the silent war? You believe all of that?”

“I know it. Veylthornes and many of the noble families. They’re not regular Katurans. They’re vampires. I’ve seen it… Prince Lazarel–”

Mărseana’s hands stiffened in his. Her jaw tensed. Her eyes, now turned inward, lost their focus entirely.“My grandmother wasn't well when she wrote all of that… She tried… to kill me once–” Her lips parted, but it was hollow with no sound as the thought of her past strangled her vocal cords.

Swallowing, Dragoș squeezed her hand a bit. “Only God knows what else she knew that drove her to try to take out her only living relative… The truths she carried…”

Mărseana's heart skipped. Their previously playful conversation turned dark as she couldn’t bridge the depth of the trauma she had just revisited. Looking deeply into his still youthful but war-weary face bearing a jagged scar running diagonally across his left brow, she couldn’t reply. As their exchange faltered, the entire Château itself quaked beneath them, obsidian bones flexing. It trembled, not from within, as it often did when dark magicks stirred, but from the outside.

A colossal swell, a tsunami, summoned by the anomaly moving in the Inland Sea, bull-rushed the ship’s northern face, even nudging it a bit. Built to withstand the harshness of space warfare, the ship was by no means in danger, but it was unprecedented how strong this surge managed to become. Within moments, crimson emergency sigils ignited along the halls as divisions of the Caelira were mobilized. Knights in carmine exo-armor stormed to triage points and breach locks, while the command choir chanted stabilization protocols to ensure reality seams were intact. Internally, and externally, there was no damage, but half the armada docked on the shore was ravaged by the blackened sea.

Still clad in uniform, Dragoș and Mărseana moved without hesitation, stepping into their duties as soldiers, the notion of escape locked away—for now. What a timely interruption, breaking the awkward silence, but their thoughts lingered on. This was about as good a time as possible to do it.

The low-hanging moon puts its ear to Orst's air—

The unseen moon cast madness with its loathsome stare. This was known. The oracle Tirir quivered atop a stone table, laid there by her fellow Earth Riders, the Skogatti of the Moving Island. Lying under the open sky, she saw the unseeable pinprick hole and uttered nothing-words in nothing-tongues that did not exist, each futile to describe what she saw.

It was a blisteringly hot midnight. Two maidservants tended to her while a third stoked a campfire to cook their game. They'd constructed a roof of leaves the size of men to prevent her deep blue fur from bleaching and save her eyes from the same sunlight. It did not save them from that moon. It scraped across the sky, across her haunted view, and never left; even a moon wouldn't be visible at day, not without a vibrant surface or size great enough to count. But that "black" dot... as camouflaged as any true black moon would be in a starless sky, Tirir couldn't ignore it while her spiritual stupor lasted.

And the moment her stupor lapsed, so would her ability to see that accursed moon.

Visions of a catastrophe on Port Solt plagued her. The rise of a titanic Oblin. Waves crashing against the flank of Vari Ikna—the Moving Island—as it exits its slumber and the Inner Sea. She runs to her father to alert her clan to both giants. Their home will be no more.

—eavesdropping, soon to gossip.

Insanity ceased, and Tirir's murmurs ditched frenzy for focused speech. "Need... talk to..."

The maidservants patted her head and wiped the fever sweat from her brow.

"The island rises... it moves..."

"Sure it will," one said, picking up a wooden bowl. "Now here, drink some water-"

"No!" Tirir slapped the bowl out of her hand and jumped to her feet. Her head spun. The bowl clattered down beside the startled servants; night vision revealed claw marks and that servant's blood marked its bottom. Were her claws so eager to cut? That could not be among her worries right now, she told herself. She started running south to the tribe's home. "I must tell my father!"

The maidservants reared back, agape and afraid to learn that she was lucid—and that the fact that'd left her mouth was truth. The one stood up and shouted, "The chieftain is northwest, at the shore!"

Tirir planted her feet in the dirt. The rest of her body fell forwards into a tumble, though she righted herself facing the three, frowning. "What? That makes no sense. He should be at the... no, he must be at the speaker's cave. I saw him there." And when she said 'saw', she meant her vision: Telling him there about the great Oblin attack, and everyone evacuating from the Moving Island before it may perform its namesake and carry them off to a place unknown.

"He heads north to talk deals with two locals from Port Solt who want the Salt-Hide off their hides." She gestured with her wounded hand to the other direction.

Tirir's jaw and ears dropped. That shore lay miles away. To get there and back would take too long. She had to think fast; it was fortunate she was a fast thinker. "Head back to the heart of the island and spread word: I awakened and my warning is urgent."

They nodded. They started collecting the bowl and other things they'd brought, some baskets drawing her eyes to a tent one began to disassemble.

Tirir took a hold of that one's tail, yanking her close languidly, then shoved her in the direction of home. "It is urgent! Move!"

She had no skill with tooth, nail, or martial art, and little strength for a Skogatti, but her importance—and more importantly, her screeching yet hideously growling tone—made up for it. They abandoned the miniature camp they'd set up around this table. The fire earned no quick extinguishing by water.

Very soon afterwards, she booked it for the northwest shore on all fours. Purple bark and leaves and crimson fruit frenzied her view. She leapt over a ditch and, with a good kick, rebounded off a 4 foot wide stump, shooting herself through a patch of thorny bushes—no prickly nonsense, as the thorns all tugged at her dark blue fur and skin, but her naturally tough flesh tugged harder and ripped out the thorns in her scramble to recover. Her scant cloth carried some thorns away with her. Clacks and clinks she abandoned: she might've lost a few pearls or trinkets. They were of no concern. New ones could be found or made. This home was unique and singular. To lose that would be devastating. It was her duty to her people to prevent that.

The Skogatti definition of "shore" is a little loose. Silhouettes slipped off like a hood, and suddenly she was no longer surrounded by trees or foliage. Tirir skidded to a stop at a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean's surface, a nocturnal mirror. Some of the reflections of visible moons looked... wrong. Too different cycle-wise from when she'd been struck by her anti-eureka. A terrible thought came to Tirir: When was "when"? How long have I been incapacitated?

She took a whiff of the salty air. Her father's incense staff had a particular smell; her nose pointed her towards the east. She loped after the smell. Her hands already ached from traveling this far on all fours. If she had muscle, she could easily overcome the pain. She had grit instead. And desperation.

Thankfully, it didn't take a very long beeline before she clambered on shaky limbs into a clearing where her beefy, bespangled father and his less conspicuous retinue camped.

He recognized who she was and stood immediately. His commanding voice cracked, he seemed that overjoyed. "Tirir, you have awakened! What have you seen?"

She collapsed near their firepit, then pulled herself onto a log, panting. He knelt beside her and waited a full minute for her to recover. She stood in a shadow from the fire cast by his great form and cape. He readjusted to better see her face. Only now did it hit her how much the light hurt.

Once she'd caught her breath, she told him, "Vari Ikna will rise once more and rove! I saw it. And the reason will be a grand Oblin that will pierce-..."

The heavens.

A hellish haze glanced off the peak of a new monument, lighting them up as if by daylight; the forest's purples and reds became orange. Tirir flipped over to watch as it filled the sky and formed an image she'd been fearing for all of... all of...

"How long was I out?" She looked back to her father.

His face was grim, fixated on the beast and its halo of hellfire.

"Father?"

"Months, Tirir."

She stared at him blankly.

"For months you have half-slumbered. Our other shamans could not piece together all the fragments that you said; they were too many and spread too wide in topic. Nothing they pieced together made sense."

Her eyes pried themselves open. That could not be! It had never lasted more than a week, never. The most dire incidents and losses punctuated days-long excursions into the field her mind wandered when she foresaw those events—and she always had time to prevent them. She had no idea how she could sculpt the future now to avert that beast.

She stiffened, as did her hackles. "We must... we must return home! Before there is no home to return to!"

Her father nodded. "We go home!" He waved his hand at the fire; the wisps of ectoplasm marked where spirits forced a bucket up three feet into the air, pushed it over the fire, and poured out water to smother it. The brightness of the area did not drop at all. With a yip, the chieftain took off. They followed. Tirir ran side by side with him.

They didn't even make it back to the stone table in time for the island to start moving. A shockwave from Port Solt brushed through each inch of canopy lit, blasting countless giant fruits off their branches.

A flash of the future: Cascading branches and fruit falling from the trees and striking her father dead, stabbing him with jagged wood and impaling his back and neck. She hadn't the energy to delay its passing or move her father out of the way. No alert would be both fast and complex enough to warn him adequately.

Perhaps her dumbest decision in years, Tirir rushed to the side faster than feasible for her slim frame and shoulder-charged him out of the way. Most of the branches missed her, but a fruit crashed right onto her noggin and split. Weak already, she went out cold.

---

Tirir awoke for the second time that night. Apparently she needed to make up for all the mornings she hadn't woken from her catatonic state.

It was day. She had to sit up to make sure this truly was day and not doom. She groggily scanned the place she'd been carried. Blue-furred skogatti walked or loitered. Wind carried the salt-stench of the ocean in from her left. The rock formations here were complex; she was in a cove. Simple huts, wall shelters, and numerous cave entrances abounded. This was the home of the Cliff Climber clan, who had recently moved in—at her father's allowance, a most gracious man that he was—and made their living in the nooks where cliff sides changed angle, catching glidefins and wall-crawlers with nets. This place wasn't too far from the northwest shore. It was not home. But these people deserved her attention all the same, because her family ruled all the tribe's folk.

Tirir felt an odd lifting that urged her onto her feet. She stood. Somehow it exacerbated her light-headedness. Ignoring it, she started walking towards the edge of the village, feeling uneasy.

Half a minute after the "lifting", she felt something of a burden. No. Literal weight, increasing. Her legs gave out and she got compressed into the ground by an inertia she hadn't realized she'd been beholden to. Everyone else stopped to keep their balance, not casually but as though they knew this weighty feeling was coming. They, before the tribe's oracle? What did they know?

Her gaze gravitated to the unfamiliar horizon. She expected to see Green Peak, the oasis at the tip of the island southwest from the Moving Island. What she got instead proved to be total displacement, not in time but in space. The island was moving, no doubt about it.

She began searching the village for her father. When she couldn't find him, she headed out despite the protests of medicine men and women and their apprentices. She felt a great need to walk home... wherever Vari Ikna was ferrying it.

Far their destination,

Brine cut acerbic in the air, mingled with faint hints of the highly-toxic mesopelagic algae dredged skyward by Turifaar’s rousing. Even high on Knō’s penultimate plateau, where the air was fine and brisk, drones swept the sky followed by sideways plumes of biologic counter-agents.

A sour concoction, his nostrils flared and his snout puffed out bursts of rejected particles.

Siepf lounged, rear and paws pulled up on a sculpted bench in the shadow of the torii gates that marked Knō’s various wend ways. It was a campus park, elevated and with views that overlooked much of the strait and city. It was also empty, customary given its mystic association that dominated the park’s midst: a shrine to ██████, a structure made of colossal rutilated slabs of foggy quartz with gaps in-filled by flash-cooled molten brass. While the gates were made of the same materials, Siepf felt them orderly. Contrariwise, the shrine emanated a chaotic, primal, and ancient aura, or perhaps natural phenomenon like the snow-swept bluffs of his forested homeland.

He wagged his tail slowly, his starsuck black fur occluding vision rather than inviting a description. Occasionally, vibrations of light escaped its depths, outlining a stray hair or whisker. Even his eyes were that dark. A trait that made him a perfect predator in his natural forests, especially at night. A shadow, with a bite of death. Adorned here in a classic reflective red raincoat with matching earbuds attached by a thin wire to a digitized radio, he was somewhat more conspicuous. Thus, when Talt exited the wend he readily noticed the whereabouts of his new partner assigned to him by the Sodality.

“During the auroral festivals, the gates are said to shine with a thousand colors, some of which only exist for those fleeting hours in which the daystars sleep,” Talt quietly said of the gates, his tone almost reverent, as a way to intrude on Siepf’s consciousness.

Head bowed and unmoved, Siepf waited for a break in the lyrics, whereat he yawned a lazy reply: “Guess we should meet up with the rest of the crew.”

As they plodded along the granulated glass path that led through the park and around the shrine, Talt assessed his new travel companion who was not much interested in questions and informative tidbits; instead, the dark furred person seemed absorbed in the harsh, yet somehow still melodic noises emanating from red stones that sat inside of his sharp, lupine ears.

As for Siepf, he was content in the silence. As it was, the city was too noisy, and he missed his native pine groves, tall and still in the moonlit night. The juxtaposition of a dew-soaked early morning with the raucous revelry that he and his pack perpetrated around the lone dilapidated videographic screen in the den. Perhaps to his new and, he was sure, temporary travel companion, he came across as aloof and disinterested.

The fact was, he was anxious and masking.

If there was anything useful he needed to know, he already gleaned it from the mission update absorbed through his helemb on his way to the shrine. This was to be a rescue operation, but a complex one. And the tools at their disposal were limited due to the unusual nature of the disaster, and the reality that it was still unfolding. He was preoccupied with Knō’s decision to send into the field inexperienced children, for all intents and purposes. When he glanced out the corner of his eye at — Talt, yes, that was his name, he remembered from the update — Siepf felt confident they would both likely require their own rescue, hopefully later rather than sooner.

“This’ll be my first time in the live field,” Siepf muttered, hunched over, paws in his deep, wide coat pockets.

To Talt’s ears, the words came across as a gruff snarl, or a growl. Yet he withheld judgment, as he didn’t know where Siepf came from or what constituted a normal range of emotions and expressions. All they had done is exchange names — actually, not even that. Only he had. Yet Siepf’s was provided and inferred, along with where to meet, and immediate next steps.

“This is my first time anywhere outside of Hōm,” Talt answered wistfully, his voice skipping like seafoam across the fangs on a warm, windy day.

Siepf then really did snarl.

It wasn’t directed at Talt; rather, at the organization they were employed by. This was just more proof that they were about to walk into chaos, and accomplish very little that could be considered positive.

_We’re doomed. Things are bad. They must be desperate for volunteers._

They both stood in front of the wend and waited. Their teammates were suppose to arrive. Then their helembs chimed, and they received another update — due to resource coordination hurdles, you two are to continue on immediately and begin rescue operations. Meet up with Ukrutupi’s unit, coordinates to follow.

They exchanged a mutual, anxious glance.

It was time.



A young, male pair enter anachronistic in their differing modes of dress into the wend’s spectral forest mist. They paused and listened. Beneath them, they felt the shift of the ground. Around them, they heard and saw the wind howl with wild abandon, leaning trees, raking limbs and loose moss up from the forestation like so much chafe. Talt listened to his helemb, but it was silent. No, there was static. A type sort of interference was at play. Meanwhile, Siepf, at his side, sniffed the air, his ears perked up high and alert.

*“Skogatti blues, at their village still near the northwest shore, if you remember the map,”* Siepf barked, then dropped to all fours and began running through the jungle in that direction.

Unable to keep up, Talt watched as Siepf disappeared.

It does not matter what we called ourselves. Who we once were is no longer important. There is nothing in our history that knowing would save you.

What matters is only this: that we considered ourselves a powerful people. We were gifted in magic. We were explorers, artisans, and natural philosophers. We understood the limits of our world and knew to tame its dangers.

There was a danger that came from without our world.

This is a warning. Heed the signs.

It began when our green sky turned orange. Day and night vanished, replaced by a dim twilight.

The air began to grow dryer. Plants withered under the glow of a pale light incapable of sustaining them. Our rivers grew brackish and oceans turned still. Mold survived us all, in the end. Our livestock grew lethargic, then blighted. They perished. We joined them ere long.

Our lives ended, but we did not cease. At first there was chaos. We were mobs within mobs as we adapted to our new state. Somehow, we began to move forward as one. We grew to understand one another more instinctively. We found words went unsaid more and more. Soon our civilization no longer required sounds. At last we believed ourselves to have weathered the worst. We began to move forward. We had grown complacent.

Gradually a voice emerged. One that stirred our masses, one that corralled us into new shapes. At first, each among many thought we recognized that voice. At first, each among many thought that voice was his own. Gradually, we came to know the will that chained us as our Death's Head, as our first tyrant.

There was rebellion, a spark of resistance born of those few of us who could not be battered into submission. Pledging new allegiance to a strange alien god, they reclaimed our ancestral magic. Beneath the light of the dim orange sky, their blood began to warm, and soon they drew breath again. They broke free, and tore away as many of us from the great will of the dead as they could.

We returned, living and dead, to the crumbling ruin of our long fallen cities. We began to build anew, to defend ourselves against the unruly dead at our borders. At the direction of the living, we built great pyramids, not as shrines to death, but to the life that once was. Far beneath the stone walls and safe from the orange sky, plants began to sprout and flourish for the first time, and animals not seen in centuries of unlife were bred again from dust. The dead among us soon began to hope that they too would live again. Far too many of us would.

The surface of our world had become a desolate place. As we dug deeper, the earth shook in response. Moats of molten rock began to flow, keeping the enslaved dead at bay. Generations were born below. Few would live, and none would perish, and of those who lived longest, the first declared himself our Sun King. And always we continued to dig, deeper, and deeper.

Rebellion stirred again, among the youngest generations of the living. They came into their own the masters of long forgotten knowledge, machining weapons and armaments from the distant past. Under their command, we who could still be reached took up arms against the magic of the living, and the unceasing will of the dead. And so we marched, deeper, and deeper, underground until the earth seemed to shake itself apart. Each of us always at the behest of one man, one will.

THIS IS A WARNING

STOP

THE DANGER EXISTED LONG BEFORE OUR TIME

STOP

THE DANGER ENDURES IN YOURS

STOP

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-

There was a dim yellow star, faintly visible directly overhead Solaria during the winter solstice.

After a journey of one-thousand twenty three years, a radio transmission reached Orst. It passed unheard.

And then, the yellow star grew dark.

It was not the first star to vanish from that corner of the night sky.

Thousands of miles from the massive planet known as Orst a small moon explodes.

The debris is ejected at high velocity, many pieces of which simply shatter into the smallest of fragments, while the larger chunks are sent spinning end over end into the recesses of space. In the stillness that follows a previously unseen vessel crept out from behind the cover of an otherwise barren planet, traversing carefully towards the debris. It bears no distinguishing marks, no proud sigils, and is little more than a thousand yard black ovoid that bristles with jutting rods and shafts that end in grappling claws. As it draws closer to the largest of the moonrocks the extremities of the ship swivel in their mounts and fire their hooks into the whirling junk, the impact sending shudders through it but not with enough force to break it down further. Sturdy chains connect the hooks to the ship itself, and they are drawn taut, holding fast to the moonrock and forcing its gyrations to end. Their prey caught, the ship then reels it in for the waiting work crews who will repurpose it for the Herald’s needs.

Many hours later a collection of meteoroids are hurtling towards Orst, and among their number are the landing pods that carry the agents themselves along with their much-needed gear. The pods are disguised carefully to appear as though they are just solid pieces of rock, though greater efforts still have gone into threading each pod with treated sheets of Mortem metal to not only prevent life signs from being detected within but to impart durability for the sake of the inhabitants.

“Begin operation: Order of the Falling Rocks.”

The disembodied voice is androgynous, and the utterance can only be heard in one of the pods now starting to blaze through Orst’s atmosphere. The pocket within the camouflaged pod is small, barely big enough to fit a body, and is adorned with an array of monitors and tubes. The monitors all light up as the first syllables of the sentence are uttered, and the tubes themselves protrude and punch into the only other object inside that lies atop a full chair: a large, pinkish membrane that pulses with the heartbeats of the man inside of it. They are slow and steady due to the state of hibernation he has been kept in, but as the pod’s tendrils bite into the membrane the pace quickens with the flow of blood and the siphoning of the cocoon itself. A few excruciating minutes pass as the protective sheen is sucked away and life is breathed into Karis, and he awakens with a sharp, wet cough. His dark skin is covered with sweat and his green hair is little more than a wet mop of thick strands. It takes some effort for him to push his heavy lids open, revealing synthetically steel blue eyes. The Herald groggily sweeps his gaze along the shining monitors, observing the data but not comprehending it yet, and it is only thanks to the restraints keeping him in his chair that his bulky limbs do not instinctively stretch out and strike an interior component.

“Fuck. Grell, get these things off of me.”

There is a harshness in his tone that cuts through any fondness of familiarity. The artificial intelligence within his body does not laugh, but when the same strange voice echoes from the pod once more, there is a sign of amusement in how matter of factly it responds.

“Negative, operative T’amor. You are not clear for freedom of movement, we are still making entry.”

Karis says nothing else, scowling as he surveys the displays before him. All of the numbers showed positive readouts: the exterior hull was still intact, the landing site was on target, and the atmosphere was just as breathable as the initial scans of the planet had surmised. He and his team would be landing in a heavily wooded area that would be rich in prospective soft resources. The forge could be set up there temporarily for material conversion, and once the scout had done their work they would move on.

I still can’t believe you’re joining the Rangers. That’s worse than a death sentence.

The former Enforcer’s scowl thickens at the memory, the blocky features of his face becoming contorted in his irritation. The work was going to be dangerous, but the rewards would be great. Enacting the will of the overlord had already been far more perilous than he thought it would be, and he believed that by taking even more risks for something of his own he would finally get what he desired - true power. The officers he had left behind were foolish cowards, lazing around in the bulk of the fleet. The Heralds were the shapers of the armada’s destiny, paving a way for a better future for their people to advance down. Orst in particular was a gem among the stars, full of riches waiting to be plundered.

Still, there was something to be said about the snide comments about the “long-rangers,” and the experimental methods that they used to reach their destinations unnoticed. Blowing up a moon to create a diversionary scattershot to land a group of operatives on the planet seemed like a lot of extra steps. At least the engineering crew had put in a lot of work on carving up and hollowing out the rocks that would be used to house them.

One of the monitors flickered red, then bright orange.

Even as Karis’ head swiveled to look at it, the AI’s voice droned the information inside his skull.

“There’s a minor breach. Sealant is being deployed.”

A few seconds drew themselves out before Karis’ eyes. He began to sweat more. The monitor stayed orange, the data displaying some truly unfortunate news. The sealant had failed, and the hole had grown wide enough to start venting oxygen. If he was lucky he would just asphyxiate before the heat buildup from the orbital drop cooked him alive.

“Grell, give me a solution.”

The Artificial Intelligence inside of you will serve as an assistant with tactical analysis. Keep in mind that it has no real will of its own. Please do not give it a name. It is not a pet.

All of the monitors shut off immediately, a switch flicked by an invisible hand.

“Do not panic, operative T’amor. Regulate your breathing. I will divert all power into cooling the interior, and I urge you to use as little energy as you can.”

The Herald ground his teeth as he clenched his jaws tightly shut, and took a short breath in through his nostrils.

It doesn’t make much sense to keep talking to you under code names and numbers. If you’re going to be in my head all the time, you’re going to be something more than a figment - I’m going to call you Grell.

He had seen the data projected on the orange monitor before it had winked out, and even without the aid of his so-called assistant he could run those numbers just fine by himself. His chances of survival were roughly six percent, and keeping the heat down was mostly going to be for his own comfort before he passed out.

What kind of name is Grell? I’ve read your case file as part of my installation. Your family had not been allowed to keep an animal, the food stocks were too low at the time of your childhood. Your adult living quarters have never been cleared for multiple occupancy, either.

“Don’t let me die. Don’t let me become meat.”

Karis’ eyes were squeezed shut, and a few trickles of moisture descended along his cheeks. Neither one of them were willing to admit if those were tears or not. The AI paused, as if uncertain of how to respond. An idea formed in the Herald’s mind, and he spared a few more breaths to intone it.

“Redeploy the stasis membrane. Override five five four five.”

Case files don’t cover everything. I know I’ve only spoken the basic rites and attended the required ceremonies for promotion, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know the Fables. There is a…character named Grell within Myth. Why don’t you look that one up? You’re not just some pet, after all.

The membrane was designed to be recycled into food and fuel for Vitae forging, but aside from those utility purposes the side effects of landing while still in stasis had often shown short term memory loss and organ failure. Denial of those potential resources and the hazard of a damaged operative could compromise the mission. Grell processed the override, but the pod did not spring into action yet. Karis suddenly opened his eyes wide, and his mouth gaped into a furious roar.

“DON’T LET ME DIE!”

I see. Grell was a symbiote designed for the fourth generation that allowed them to survive in deep space when drives were down and gravity was too light for bone density to remain consistent. It was later subsumed into the evolution of the fifth generation. Is that how you see me, operative? Something to aid you and to eventually be consumed by you?

The tubes snaked back out on the AI’s command, pushing past the system’s resistance of the operative’s inadequate passphrase.

That’s not how I see Grell. They lived as one with us, kept us together in the face of desperate times, and became a part of us forever. The new breed could not have existed without Grell, and a hive mind like that does not simply die out. Grell was not a tool. Grell was a people that integrated into our own, like so many have in the past, and we honor it. Even if you are just a computer system, you’re still a part of me now.

Thousands of miles away, a status screen flared to life. A bald man in a pressed silver and gray uniform turned to stare at it, a frown creasing his lips. Getting a report out of sync was never a good sign. It took him only a few moments to absorb the contents of the log, and with each passing moment his brow only furrowed into a deeper knot.

Back on Orst, a series of thuds ushered in the arrival of extraterrestrial interlopers as fiery rocks crashed into a thicket amidst the woods of a wild zone. The Heralds had made landfall, though it remained to be seen how they all fared. The first of the pods to crack the earth began to tremble, then shed its smoldering outer layers to reveal the metal framework beneath. Inside the chamber a lone occupant stirred, hands groping and straining against the walls of a strange mass of biological matter.

My name doesn’t matter. Who I am means nothing. I mean nothing.

Location: The desert outside Port Solt, somewhere to the north.

The ground rumbled with the destruction of Port Solt. It shuddered and shook with the force of destruction wrought upon it. It shook the world to the core - to the foundation. Perhaps not physically but the screams of souls passing beyond the veil shakes the foundation of everything to those attuned to its sound. A slumbering beast awakens in the darkness of those ancient folds of land, buried beneath the sands.

{ Location: Unknown, somewhere far away from Port Solt }

Screams echoed through his bedchamber and his body convulsed against the bonds holding him in place. A constant writhing, twisting of his limbs against the buckled leather straps holding him down. He awoke quickly - sitting up, as much as he could, against the bonds. Sweat beaded down his forehead, covered his neck and chest. His body shivered despite the unnatural heat coming from the fireplace in the corner. He recalled his dreams, the nightmares which fueled those screams of pain and torment which awoke him - screams coming from his own lips, fleeing rapidly.

“Port Solt is gone.” He muttered to himself, his voice hoarse and his breathing ragged and unsteady. Here, so far away, the reverberations of its destruction weren’t felt. Not in the way others might have - even their sages and sensors might not have picked it up yet. He knew, from his nightmare, that it just happened. His hands closed around the buckles at his wrists, one moving to the other to unlatch it - then down to his ankles doing the same. He swung his bare feet onto the marble of the floor - shivering both from the touch of flesh on cold stone and the memory of his nightmare as it faded.

“I don’t even know of any place named Port Solt…” he realized, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his palms. He searched his bedside table for his glasses, pushing them aside once before finding them in the dark. He put them on and stood up, looking around the dark room. Tapping the side of his head with one finger, his sorcery flowed from his fingers and into his eyes - illuminating the darkness to his vision. Stumbling down the hallway to the bathroom, he ran the cold water for a moment - coating his hands in it and splashing it on his face - before taking a handful to drink.

Looking back into the mirror, he jumped back and nearly screamed. The face looking back at him didn’t belong to his body. A monstrous face with pale flesh and black eyes, a gaping maw of a red like fire. The beast’s mouth seemed to scream in pain though, a pain that touched every part of its face. He looked back at it for a moment and breathed.

“What…what are you?” He whispered into the mirror, not expecting it to answer.

“I…am….hurt….” a voice seemed to project into his mind.

“Wh…wha…” he whispered again, his face twisting in confusion.

“I…need…help.” The voice said again - the pain in it growing less, but not disappearing.

“How can I help?”

“Come…to…me…” the mental voice grated against his mind, giving the impression of a gravelled voice.

“I can’t…I don’t know who you are, or what you are. I don’t even know where you are.” He tried to reason with the monster in his mirror, which seemed less monster and more human by the moment.

“Come. To. Me.” The voice screamed - and his vision went black.

{ Location: Outside Port Solt }

The ground still shuddered with aftershocks. A man stood on the sands of the desert looking down over the destroyed port town below. Sighing, he looked down on it with dismay - face twisted in pain at the suffering.

The loss.

He pushed his glasses back up on his face - turning his gaze down on the city. A hundred years ago he predicted this moment in his dreams. Nightmares, really. The memory of that night still haunted him - the disembodied voice, the bloodied face in the mirror. A flash of pain in his mind which blacked him out. He awoke in a chamber that same night. Millions of miles from home. Locked beneath the sands of the desert.
He looked down on the ruined city and tightened his right hand around the wooden haft of his staff, his knuckles turning white with the pressure of his grip. The memory of how he got here, to this moment in his life, flashed in his mind.

I awoke in the darkness of my chamber - the pain of the ruined souls of Solt screaming in the back of my mind. The pain of it. It cut me deeply, wounded me to my core. Of all the scars on my body - of all the blemishes on my flesh - that one hurt the most. I called out to you, Traveller, to come to my aide. I called for your help. And you gave it to me. Not through your own choice, but through the choosing. You were the one I chose.

You are here now. I am part of you. I am given unto you myself, or a portion of it, that you may avenge my fallen city. You may not save it. We do not have those capabilities - my power upon awakening is not that great. With time, perhaps, you may undo what has been done. For now, though, I shall make you my avenging demon.

His eyes snapped open for a second time that day. He didn’t know where he was anymore, what was going on. He remembered the face in the mirror - the pain in it. The voice in his mind. He recalled it all - and he looked about himself quietly. His vision spell was still active, which meant he’d never gone fully unconscious. He looked into the darkness around him - and his grey vision blurred for a moment before clearing again.

The room seemed large. Well, no. It wasn’t a room. It was a cavern. A huge cave system it seemed, one massive cavernous room within it. Looking around he couldn’t begin to understand how he’d come here. He’d heard that, once, travelling was possible through magic - but for his people that talent was long lost. But he knew he wasn’t in his house anymore.

The darkness at the corners of the room seemed to pull back from his gaze. He turned about himself as the color began to return to his vision. He instinctively cut off his spell, as light began to flood the cavern. Brighter and brighter. The darkness seeped into that light - and a small creature stood there on the far corner. His head tilted curiously to the side, as he attuned his magic to enhance his vision.

The face was the same. Gaunt and clearly malnourished - the face of a human unfed.

“Are you…are you the face in my mirror?”

“Yes. I chose you to help me. You must help me.”

“I don’t know what kind of help I can provide. I don’t even know where I am.” He stepped back against the wall behind him - letting his magic flood through his veins. A blue flame appeared around one hand - burning white hot but he seemed unbothered by the heat. He wasn’t sure if this thing was dangerous to him - but he wasn’t going to be undefended.

“I chose you.” The creature in the corner said - turning its gaunt face toward him. Fear paralyzed him for that moment - and the creature lurched. It cleared the distance quickly. It slammed into his chest and the flame went out on his hand.

For many years following that, the voice and his body seemed to merge. Their souls entangled one another. He learned quickly that this creature, this thing, was part of the world itself - the world it referred to as Orst. His knowledge of magic traded with the knowledge of the planet. It taught him so much.

I hope I chose wisely in picking you, Taelion. You have a pure spirit. I need that - I need you to protect me. You are my champion, my Avatar.

Taelion pushed the wire-framed glasses tighter against his face - and began a descent down the sand dunes of the desert on a long trek to what remained of Port Solt - to seek those who needed aid.

His cloak pulled tight around his robes - the hood up and shadowing his face. Each step across the sand seemed unimpeded, as if walking along the loose sand harbored no detriment to his movement.

“I will do my best for you, Mistress.”

“The dark feels warmer than it should… like it… knows me…”

Pleasant, almost lyrical somniloquies slipped from the bed-headed princess’s lips in soft, stuttering breaths. Thin traces of dried blood crusted at the corners of her mouth. A subtle smile settled on her slumbering face. At last, her hunger was sated. Her arms crossed over her breast as she nestled in. It was the first true sleep she had known since the Château’s landing.

At her coffin’s foot, a man who could only be assumed to be a butler trainee left slumped, head resting in a pool of blood beside an iron-banded coffer. Twin punctures on his neck, paired with unblinking, glassy eyes, made it clear he had no struggle left. His dead stare greeted the returning shadow in Lazarel in the doorway. The prince patiently waited for his younger sister to fall into a deep sleep so he could find the connection between her earlier antics and his elder sister, Elara. Lustery black heels squelched against the blood-soaked plush carpet as he approached.

“Can I rest… just for a moment… I am… tired… I am scared… I...”

Luthienne was asleep, but her body was aware of her brother's presence. Murmurs, far more introspective than she ever liked to be, unraveled, revealing thoughts she kept buried even from herself. As her lips parted, the faintest glint from her elongated, razor-sharp canines caught the withering lights of the coffin-side candelabrum.

“She will take my life… I know she will… but what is death, in the end?

….

….

Far worse than I imagined?”

The young vampress’ voice took on a conversational tone. It was now clear to the prince. Someone else or thing was there.

Lazarel’s heart raced, even through his ice-cold veins, and for a brief, unmistakable moment uncharacteristic of him, he hesitated, silver thorned chain dangling as he knelt on one. His multiple ringed fingers carefully lifted the slain butler's head like it was a newly fallen fruit. The prince lodged his thumbs into the butler’s sockets for grip until he heard a squelching pop, sharp nails digging into the back of the head. Lazarel split the skull’s occiput like an egg. There was no regal or dignified way to do this. Enacting a Brahmaparusha Rite, his teeth grew more serrated than they already were, many overlapping like the maw of a goblin shark.

His pointed tongue traced the grooves of the gyri before voraciously rending the juicy nervous tissue from the bloody, makeshift bowl the skull had become. The flesh, still warm with the residue of stolen life, retained more than memories. The flavor of everything was clear. From the butler’s final thoughts to the wound left in his psyche when Luthienne’s fangs pierced his left carotid.

For every mortal drained, there remained a faint but unbroken tether for a short period of time back to the undead that fed. Lazarel latched on and followed that spiritual thread. To walk that line meant, ultimately, trespassing into another’s domain. This was no wise endeavor to attempt, but it was precisely what Lazarel intended to do. He did not knock; The door to the princess's mind flew off the hinges.

Her room kaleidoscopically folded upon itself, dissolving into a milky dreamscape. The prince waded through the fog, seemingly unnoticed, as distant muffles became clearer with each tread forward. The prince started to make out the shape of two individuals before him.

“... Mother … will … I see her…?”

“…You will not follow her into that place… I will not allow… Your sister decieves you…”

The form coaxing Luthienne was a slender, wispy, unstable phantasm, like a body formed from memory. Its limbs undulated long and short with a posture elegant one moment and impossibly obtuse the next. It didn’t necessarily have skin—just a shifting texture, like lavender flames fluttering in oscillopsia. Even so, it held the unmistakable silhouette of a woman… though that, perhaps, was merely the shape it chose to present itself as.

“… If she finds her way into my dreams again, I will not let her leave them… Anyone.”

The wobbily vinyl of an antique gramophone subtly cracked, simmering as a lone cymbal shimmered in. Incoming spiraling saxophone runs leaned from smoky subtones into shrieking altissimo as a vampiress with skin as rich as espresso, eyes closed, rhythmically jerked her head left to right. She swept her silk-pressed, glossy, back-length obsidian hair, with bleach-white tips all around.

A lover of free-form jazz, there were few things Elara truly loved. She was cut from a cloth of Vicuña wool, dipped and dripping with the most odious black ink masquerading as perfume. The firstborn of House Veylthorne was a true example of beauty only being skin deep.

She undoubtedly was up to no good…

Settling into the zone for her studio session, in front was a blank canvas resting on an antique mahogany lyre and brass easel. In her pirouette across the room, she clapped her ring-bedazzled hands above her head before grabbing an elegant paintbrush carved from black petrified wood nearly the length of a longsword. It was a weapon disguised as an artist’s instrument. Known as The Last Stroke of Saint Orphielle, its bristles were impossibly white except for its curled tip dipped in blood.

No palette was in sight. Her available swatch was supplied entirely by a silver urn filled to the brim with not just any blood but Type Rh-null, virgin blood. Whose in particular? And how she acquired such? No telling, but the moment since the Katurans landed on Orst, she had been at work in her castle, if you would even consider the odd structure as one.

Elara's primary residence wasn't as much a castle as it was a leaning crystal-mirror spike, embedded deep into the land strangled by overgrowth of thick, oxblood thorny vines turned spires. The majestic tangle of stalks, hard like enchanted metal, deeply rooted in the ground, kept the unsteady secure. Twisting upward, they penetrated the structure at multiple points, forming dozens of pathways and corridors carved into their hollowed frames.

In the very top spire, Elara painted away, her Apollo and Artemis earrings twinkling with every delicate stroke as scarlet energy funneled through her hands, twirling around the brush with a nebulous glimmer. Her burgundy eyes remained closed; she was not painting with sight, but with spirit.

In this studio session, galleries’ worth of scenes were rendered, varnished with magic. Upon the completion of each piece, Elara’s slim, sleek figure, draped in a red silk tea gown with bold patterns, retrofitted with a rhinestone-trimmed bustled corset, sashayed gracefully toward the next canvas. She was in a trance…

For just a moment, the inks of the universe became clear to her. Each mural in oneiric gothic surrealism…

“A pair embarks…”

“And The World Remembered What It Buried…”

“And Survival Precursored Hunger…”

“And Dark Knew Her Name Before She Spoke It…”

“And Then the Stars Forgot to Witness Us…”

“And The Sky Began Sending Itself As Fragments…”

“And The Island That Began To Remember It Was Moving…”

“Hath The World Spoke Through Its Wounds…”

Elara’s smoky lids parted over her fox-like eyes, initially showing little emotion before the weight of bureaucratic irritation settled in.

“How fascinating. Everything important arrives at once or not at all…”

——Knō to Du Sang, Siepf's Perspective

Around him, the air that rolled from the wend grasped wet and heady. Siepf sniffed, and took in the herbaceous, sharp scent the wend wind carried. In his bowels, it stirred passions of ancient hunger, of fragrant, medicinal decay obscured by root-burned incense and confined as in a shroud by peels of sap-slickened bark. It reeked like the wound-temple above Vor’zat, or as he imagined from its ghastly, ancient yarns. A puff of air erupted from his nostrils, and by that he rid himself of the thought.

At his side, Talt fiddled with his pith. Siepf huffed, eager to get along with his mission. The need for Turifaar to be evacuated was, as expressed by the Sodality, imminent.

“Come on, already,” Siepf barked, and dropped to all fours. Pressed back against his skull, the uneven fringes of his large and pointed black ears vanished into the carmine shadow of his raincoat hood. Tension built in his hind legs. It was time. Heedless to his companion’s readiness and with a primal grunt, he dashed peremptory into the wend. Ghosts of trees writhed before him, trunks napped with bright verdant moss. Vines heavily grasped their curvaceous branches, if vines they were — aloof shadows, they seemed, that skulked and menaced at the fringes of the mist-bound lattice of argent prisms, but ever kept their distance. That same mist that dominated his vision dampened his black snout.

Ever to him a capricious enchantress, light seemed as eager to obscure the world as she was to expose it to plain, simple view.

Soon the trees straightened, the vines faded, and he felt a soft, familiar crunch underfoot. Pine barrens, perhaps. He sniffed, and into his nostrils flooded that sharp scent of home, but he missed another: Talt, his companion on this mission. Instead, a third, alien aroma assailed him, almost to the point of a fearful oblivion. He stepped back, and glanced over his shoulder. Talt was not there, and the tell-tale shimmer of the wend likewise seemed absent. A shiver ran down his spine, and he opened his mouth to mutter a stray oath. He thought better of it, for what he felt wasn’t merely the terror of a wrong turn into an unknown grove, but a herald of death that lurked at the edge of his awareness.

His eyes narrowed, and he took in the lightened mist. No longer silver. It was pink. A faint crimson. His tongue flicked out, and he tasted blood. By instinct, he felt he should turn and leave. But no wend remained behind him, nor was he certain of his ability to find it again. He stood upright, and extracted his pith from the satchel fixed upon his chest strap. Communication matrix toggled, yet he heard only his nerve-rattled breath. That was a fact on which his training touched, that within a wend there was no communication.

I must still be inside, Siepf thought, then realized that it would be unwise to dwell here too long, that he needed to pass through, not linger, lest he become bound to the distortion through which he meant to be only a brief visitor.. He plodded along, and the red mist deepened. His dread increased, along with that foul, alien stink. All scents eventually betrayed their inherent natures, and this stunk of a kind with which he and his pack possessed an ancient enmity toward.

Too late, he saw wall tower out of the thick, crimson fog. Too late, he heard the crunch of desiccated twigs and grass beneath the stride of his stalker.


——Knō to Port Solt, Talt's Perspective

“Siepf, wait!” Talt shouted, his hand futilely outstretched.

He grasped the mist-laden stillness, his clenched damp palm.

Within the wend, travel was dangerous and natures deceptive. Empiricism and time were often unreliable. What mattered was one’s mental focus, as the convictions of the mind influenced the stability of the destination. This was information direct from the guidebook. Meanwhile, Siepf was fleet, and though Talt struggled, he inevitably ceded to stillness his steady, slow trot once his faster companion departed from his vision and he no longer heard the tell-tale thrash of disrupted forestation.

“Well, Svotaktak, what do you think?” Talt worried.

Along the nape of his neck, his dralif tattoo pulled away from his skin. He couldn’t see it directly, but he felt it—like dried gum or a wound-treating plaster ripped away, but only in part. A constellation that scintillated citrine at his periphery, it hovered a few centimeters behind his ear. Into it, it whispered with a voice deep and rustic, like the scent of warmed toegi bread or the groan of a pulo tree’s fruit-laden ebon branches in the season of harvest, “Remain calm, proceed at a steady pace, visualize as specifically as possible where you are going.”

Exasperated, he resumed his walk. It frustrated him to be told what he already knew, already suspected. Turifaar was his destination, the island that moved. Numerous ecosystems competed upon it, from karsts, to deserts, to jungles that robed its shell in dense tropical vegetation. Did it have beaches? He closed his eyes, and walked on. Maybe. Frayed strands of the warped space caressed his flesh and shifted around his garb. Barefoot, he felt how the warm, large, flat stones of the park transformed, crunched as autumn leaves, and then disintegrated entirely to soft, hot sand. The moisture in the air dissipated, and an arid breeze struck him full in the face.

All at once, static buzzed at his hip.

Another step took him onto a broken shore, and the grainy audio smoothed to something he deciphered as the pith’s wideband. It played lilting orchestral music, the bass of the drog tempered by an orgz that undulated and droned. It was the same station he set it to before his departure, although the melody was further advanced in its performance. Quietly, he scanned the horizon. No Siepf. No jungles. A broken, shattered shore. The ruins of a city. In his nostrils, the acidic stink of dust and ruin and a poisoned sea.

“Svotaktak, is this Turifaar?” Talt wondered. Again, he suspected he would be answered with his fear, rather than a solution. Again, his fear manifested as reality. “No,” his ano-form dralif answered, “This was Port Solt, a cycle of what you call Red Brother after the catastrophe.”

Anxiety filled Talt, and he dropped to his knees. The hot day stars pounded down on his head, and he pulled his hood up to preserve his precious moisture. Late and in the wrong place. How did it go so wrong? Fist lofted, he slammed it down upon the beach. Unexpectedly, he struck something solid. A smooth, hard shape stirred out of the depths by either the quake or the tsunami, now covered only by a thin camouflage of sand. Curious, he dusted it off. It seemed black, at first, but not like the pulo tree. It seemed more the absence of color, or a hue that sat beyond his ability to perceive.

“Svotaktak, what is this?” — a moment that stretched, unanswered. He began to think his ano tattoo had broken. Then, after several minutes, wherein Talt examined the object — it was cold, fist-sized, and shaped like a thick crescent with a reverse of itself that penetrated its core — his tattoo responded: “Inconclusive.”

As he strained his sight on the distance, Talt attempted to pierce the bronze sky occluded by dust and dominated by low nimbostratus clouds that angrily rolled north, away from the inland sea. Through the murk, he imagined miniature outlines of rescue craft that hovered like so many gnats over a corpse. For over an hour, he walked. As he came nearer, he tuned his pith to the worldband search and rescue frequency. Now nearer, he easily observed the wires that dangled and twisted out of the guts of the metal, wingless vehicles that floated in the sky and heaved rubble off of those trapped below.

Also, he saw a man who. Like him, he walked toward the city from the sandy dunes that girded its north and west and extended as far as starling’s flight. Talt fell into step with him as they neared the outermost ring of collapsed structures and frenzied aid workers, just as a rather famished, gaunt, and unfamiliar type of humanoid brushed past them: a figure who, while hunched, towered over Talt. She reeked of — was it rust? Unsure and afraid of her, Talt shifted his eyes down. Rather than the dark, rough-armored form, he searched for someone to whom he might report.