The door sighed open, metal sliding aside with a slow, tortured breath, and Tania stepped through with a brisk clap of her hands. "Right! Welcome to Sector Nine, Workshop Division. Try not to touch anything unless you're particularly fond of losing fingers."
I followed in a daze. The corridor beyond was stark, sterile stone and brass veins at first, but it spilled out abruptly into chaos—a cathedral of clanging noise and surging magical light.
Calling it a "workshop" barely scratched the surface. This place sprawled like a small city block, and every inch of it buzzed with activity. Golems with etched runes stomped past wheeled carts of glowing crystals. Thin, insect-like contraptions zipped along overhead rails, sparking occasionally as if arguing with the air itself. Something exploded in the distance, followed by a cheer.
Tania didn't flinch. "Ah, good. They're testing the new combustion lens. That means Veylan's in. You'll want to meet him."
Arden slipped under a dangling cable as if nothing could touch him. Sora hovered at his side, clutching his coat—her wide eyes lit with a curious blend of awe and comfort.
I tried not to trip on a coil of living rope. It slithered off with an offended rustle.
"We try not to ask what's sapient," Tania said over her shoulder. "It saves on paperwork."
I wasn't sure whether to laugh or run.
At the heart of it all, surrounded by a whirlwind of assistants, half-finished constructs, and scattered blueprints, stood a man with wild silver hair and thick goggles. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week and liked it that way.
Tania waved. "Veylan! Tour group for you!"
He looked up, blinked at us, and smiled like a lightning strike. "Marvelous. Fresh eyes! Come, come, what do you think of recursive enchantment matrices and morally ambiguous power sources?"
Then his gaze landed on Sora, and the grin somehow got sharper. He flipped down a pair of additional lenses over his goggles with a click-click, a soft humming whine following as the enchantments activated. "Oho... what have we here? That's a lot of mana for someone your size. Too clean, too stable—either you've got a royal-class core or you're not exactly human, are you? Fascinating—utterly fascinating."
Sora immediately stepped closer to Arden, who didn't move but somehow gave the impression of a shield slamming into place.
I blinked, trying to catch up. Not exactly human? Tania had said something similar. Who was Sora?
Veylan's mouth opened again, but before he could launch into whatever mad scientist epiphany he was about to drop, Seraphina appeared like a guillotine in a velvet dress.
"Veylan," she said calmly. "Rein it in."
The man made a strangled noise of disappointment but straightened. "Yes, yes, I know. Not without consent forms and a controlled environment. You take all the fun out of empirical research."
I looked at Sora, who was still half-hiding behind Arden's arm, and frowned. What had he meant by too clean? Too much mana, and none of it wild. Like someone had polished her soul smooth with intent.
My stomach dropped. It felt like I'd admired a portrait for years—then blinked and found it breathing.
My mind was still looping on Veylan's words about Sora—"too clean, too stable"—when he broke in.
"Wondering how all this came about?" he asked, sweeping an arm toward the spinning golems and crackling crystals. "Ancient tech—what little we managed to dig up from the ruins littering the wastelands—was mostly broken, dangerous, or inert. Useless to most. But Radames, well... he's got a knack for making sense of the senseless. Cracked the old language, repurposed it, redesigned it—hell, he made it useful. We just refined his groundwork."
I stared at him, unsure which part was more baffling—that there was ancient, magic-infused tech just lying around the continent or that the charming, too-casual emperor was the one who'd invented half the terrifying stuff we'd seen so far.
"Wait," I said slowly. "Radames made this stuff? The magi-trains, the magi-guns, the constructs—he invented all of it?"
Suddenly, that charming grin of his looked a lot more like a magician's smokescreen—and behind it, the kind of mind that cracked open forgotten ruins just to see what would scream.
"Well," Veylan mused, fiddling with a cog the size of a dinner plate, "he made the first sparks. The rest of us are just keeping the fire going."
It didn't make sense. Arden had made Radames sound like a battle-hardened noble with too much charm and not enough seriousness. But now I was starting to think that the man might be the empire's biggest weapon—not because of what he could fight, but because of what he could build.
Tania puffed out her chest with no small amount of pride. "I was instrumental in the production of the magi-guns, you know. Stabilized the recoil enchantments, fine-tuned the crystal regulators—"
"—and nearly incinerated half the barracks during 'stress testing,'" Veylan added helpfully without looking up. "Real progress isn't made without a few singed eyebrows, apparently."
Tania pouted, which on her somehow looked like a cat caught doing something smugly illegal. "That was one time."
"Three," Veylan corrected.
Seraphina sighed. "And yet, here we are, still funding you."
Veylan ignored that and turned toward a sealed chamber at the far end of the hall. The hum of enchantments intensified as he approached, and he keyed in a sigil sequence on a glowing panel. "Now then," he said, as the door unsealed with a satisfying hiss, "I believe this little number will be of particular interest to you all—especially considering your... cultist problem."
Inside, the lights flickered on to reveal a sleek, coffin-sized container suspended midair in what looked like a glowing web of force. Runes along its edges shifted in lazy patterns, and within, something dark and gleaming pulsed faintly—like it had a heartbeat. Or was faking one. Either way, it was definitely the kind of object that came with a price tag labeled 'morally dubious and probably explosive.'
Veylan clapped his hands together, the sound sharp and oddly musical. "This," he said, pacing around the containment field like a proud father, "is what we call a null-core disruptor. Fancy name, I know, but what it does is shut down any sustained mana field within a limited radius—very useful against cultists who rely on sustained enchantments or summoned entities."
He tapped the glass gently, like one might pet a particularly dangerous cat. "It's not ready for field use yet. Still too unstable when exposed to ambient blood magic. But! We're getting closer. And with your team running real-world data, well—let's just say your cultist problem might have a very loud, very short-lived solution."
I peered at the thing. It didn't look like a solution. It looked like a heart forged by a sadistic god, suspended in a lightshow of migraine-inducing arcane geometry.
"How portable is it?" Arden asked, calm and unreadable as ever.
Veylan scratched his head, fluffing up already chaotic hair. "Working on that—should fit in a backpack soon. Still hums like a swarm of wasps, but it's getting there."
Great. So a magical migraine bomb with side effects.
Tania gave me a thumbs-up like this was all going brilliantly. I wasn't convinced.
My skin still prickled from that disruptive blast, and I was halfway to wondering if I'd ever sit still again—when Arden moved.
He stepped out from the shadows of runed machinery, tall and unreadable as always. I barely had time to register the shift in the air before he spoke.
"I need something," he said, as calmly as if he were ordering tea in a tavern.
Veylan turned, half an eyebrow raised. "Do you now?"
Arden nodded at me. "Something that can help her expel mana safely. Rapidly. Like a siphon. But controlled. Alive would be better."
Silence.
Veylan blinked. "You want to siphon her mana? That's not— Wait. Are you suggesting a mana bond? Like a beast contract?"
Arden gave the faintest shrug. "Kinda. Just... not with a beast."
Veylan stared at him. "Between people? Gods, that's worse. That's Lost Magic territory. You'd need an ancient binding weave—mana-sharing through sentient vessels isn't just complicated, it's been forgotten. You'd need a Relic or something equivalent—those kinds of magic formulas are buried in dungeon ruins, not textbooks."
Arden pulled something from his coat. A small, inert object—stone or metal, etched in spirals that hurt to look at directly. He offered it like he was handing over a rock, utterly unbothered.
Veylan took one look and hissed in disbelief. "That's a real one. A functional relic. Where in the hells did you even—no, don't tell me. I don't want to know."
Tania clapped her hands, delighted. "Ooh! Uncharted territory! With ancient artifacts!"
Seraphina made a noise like a tired lion. "Why am I not surprised."
Veylan had already snatched up a piece of chalk and was racing toward the nearest wall. "We'll need a limiter matrix, a feedback loop—gods, if this works, it could redefine mana theory. Wait, wait—if we repurpose the relic's original transference lattice and stabilize it with a bounding ward... yes, yes, this could work. This could actually work."
He paused, chalk hovering. "Arden. Did you plan this?"
Arden shrugged again. "I just thought it'd help. She needs to feel her mana move. I can move it."
Veylan muttered something extremely unflattering under his breath and started drawing with manic speed.
I felt like a piece of furniture. A dangerously overcharged piece of furniture they were about to plug into a wall socket for science. I didn't like being treated like a mana battery. Or a magical guinea pig. Or a footnote in an ancient magical experiment.
But—I also wasn't saying no.
Before I could second-guess myself, Veylan clapped his hands and practically dragged Arden away by the collar, muttering something about setting up resonance dampeners and tether anchors. Arden shot me a mildly apologetic look before being swept into the depths of the workshop.
"Come on," Tania said brightly, gesturing for me, Sora, and Seraphina to follow. "We'll leave the relic-wranglers to their scribbles. I'll show you the shooting range. You'll like this part."
We trailed after her, weaving through humming constructs and errant spell sparks until the cacophony faded into the rhythmic whine of charged air. A large chamber opened up before us, ringed with enchanted barriers and bristling with mechanical stands—each holding a magi-gun in various shapes and sizes.
"Now," Tania said with a gleam in her eye, "you've seen what they do, but here's what you didn't know. Each magi-gun has a bound core of crystallized mana that interfaces with the wielder's flow. But it's not a passive connection—it pulls mana with every shot. Like siphoning lightning through a straw."
I frowned. That sounded... expensive.
"It is," Tania confirmed, as if reading my mind. "That's why our soldiers carry regulated mana-potions and a standard-issue dampening circlet—helps reduce strain during prolonged use. Even then, too much too fast can knock a trained caster flat."
Sora tilted her head. "What about someone without mana?"
Tania gave a dramatic sigh. "We tested that. There was this woman—zero innate mana, but stubborn as a mule. Managed four shots before she could barely stand. Couldn't tell if it was a success or a medical liability. Still mad they wouldn't let me test it further. Apparently, experimenting on civilians is 'frowned upon.'"
Seraphina gave her a sideways glance. "Imagine that."
Tania huffed. "I'm just saying—purely in the interest of science, a more comprehensive sample size would be useful. Seraphina over here lasted four vials before she tapped out—and she doesn't even have a proper mana core. Just sheer bloody-mindedness and good posture, I guess."
Seraphina didn't dignify that with a response. I, on the other hand, tried not to imagine myself on the wrong end of that research. Or worse—volunteering for it.
"Anyway," Tania continued, far too chipper as she waved to a gleaming rifle with gold-silver plating and a floating crystal chamber, "this one here is the latest model—adjusts draw rate based on user output. Still volatile, but sleek as hell. Want to try it?"
I hesitated, fingers inches from the sleek, floating-rune monstrosity that Tania had all but shoved at me. It looked like something that could tear a hole in the sky—or, more likely, my shoulder. My mouth opened, about to politely decline the opportunity to dislocate a limb in the name of science, when—
BOOM.
The floor shook. A sharp, percussive thunderclap cracked through the workshop walls, followed by the rising wail of sirens—long, warbling notes that didn't so much warn as command.
I flinched. Sora jerked toward me, her eyes wide. Tania squeaked—an actual, honest-to-gods squeak—as a few tools clattered to the ground behind her. Somewhere far off, the dull roar of panicked shouting began to rise like a storm tide.
"Incoming," Seraphina said, calm as the eye of said storm. Her long coat fluttered as she turned, already moving. "With me. Now."
"What the hell was that?" I asked, already hurrying to keep up.
"Cultists," she said, voice clipped. "Same as last week. Same as the week before. They've been slipping through the outer wards more frequently. We think they've developed their own magi-tech—primitive, but effective."
"Wait, they built this stuff?"
"No," she said. "They stole it. Reverse-engineered scraps, patched them together with blood rituals and salvaged etherium. The results are unstable, volatile, and mostly designed to kill civilians."
Tania darted after us, clutching a humming container to her chest like it was a teddy bear. "Shouldn't I… stay behind? I mean, what if they break into the lab? There's a whole wall of mana-conductive crystals that could shatter and implode, and the last time someone knocked over the phase coil—"
"You're coming with us," Seraphina said, calm as ever. "You'd last two minutes on your own."
Tania blinked at her, clearly preparing to argue, to give some dramatic retort, or maybe just list all the ways she might die.
But I didn't hear it. Not really. The screaming in the distance was louder now—shouting, muffled by stone, panicked and chaotic. And all I could think about was my village. The one I lost. The blackened ruins, the silence. The smell of burnt cloth. The faces I'll never see again.
Was it going to be like that again?
Was I going to have to do something this time?
My hands were slick with sweat, and I hadn't even touched a weapon yet.
We slipped through a maintenance corridor lit with flickering enchantments, walls humming softly with distant power lines. Pipes groaned as the city's defense wards powered up—too late, from the sound of it. The whole district felt like it was holding its breath.
Then Seraphina stopped. She raised a hand to her ear, and a pale-blue circle shimmered into being—arcane runes orbiting like a clock face.
She didn't speak at first. Just listened, head tilted, lips tight.
Sora leaned into me, whispering, "Are we going to be okay?"
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say something at all. But my throat wouldn't work, and the only thing I could offer her was a tight nod I wasn't sure I believed.
Seraphina lowered her hand. Her expression hadn't changed, but her eyes had sharpened.
"Change of plans," she said.
Every muscle in my body tensed.
"You're not being evacuated," she continued, turning toward me and Sora. "New directive just came through. I've been ordered to escort you to an active breach point. The northeastern cargo tunnel."
"What?" I blurted. "Why would we—why are we being sent toward the cultists?"
Seraphina didn't flinch. Didn't even blink.
"They didn't give a reason," she said flatly. "Just a command."
That was it. No explanation. No context. Just a cold directive from somewhere high above, as if we were chess pieces being nudged across a board none of us could see. My stomach twisted. I wasn't sure if it was fear or nausea—or if there was even a difference right now.
The room felt tighter. Like the walls had leaned in closer without moving, and the air had thickened. My pulse was loud in my ears. Even Sora's whisper felt like it echoed too loud in the moment.
"But… that's where the fighting is, right?" she asked, her voice just barely above a breath. Her fingers gripped my sleeve again. Tighter this time.
I nodded, even though the truth was—I didn't know. We didn't have a map, or a strategy, or even a real clue what the hell we were being thrown into. Just a name: "northeastern cargo tunnel." It sounded industrial. Forgettable. Like a place you'd never care about until people started dying in it.
Sora's grip on my sleeve turned ice-cold. My heart thudded so loud I swore it echoed off the walls.
Seraphina's voice cut through us: "Escort priority. We move now—no delays, no detours."
Then her eyes shifted, laser-focused, to Tania. The girl had frozen a few paces behind, still clutching that glowing container like her life depended on it. Maybe it did.
"You," Seraphina said. "Head back to your lab. Lock it down. Reinforce all containment seals and brace the inner gates. That lab is one of the hardest places in this sector to breach."
Tania blinked, like she'd just been told she won a ticket out of a collapsing mine.
"Oh. Oh! Yes—yes, of course," she stammered, already backing up. "I'll activate the alloy shelling and layer the secondary glyphs—nothing's getting in there, not unless they've got a gods-damned phase drill."
"Go," Seraphina said, her voice brooking no hesitation.
Tania turned and ran. She didn't look back. Her boots rang out on the stone floor, fading quick around a corner. I envied her a little. Not the panic—she was probably sweating bullets—but the clarity. She had a direction and a door to shut behind her.
We didn't.
Seraphina's gaze came back to us. Her posture hadn't changed—still composed, steady—but her eyes had. They were sharp now. Cold enough to cut glass.
"Move."
That was all she said. Then she turned, already walking.
We followed.
The hallway stretched ahead like a throat waiting to swallow us. Pipes groaned overhead. Somewhere deeper in the district, another distant boom shook the stone under our feet. Maybe a breach. Maybe a collapsing wall. Maybe worse.
I didn't know where we were going. I didn't know why. All I knew was I was being marched toward a warzone with no weapon, no training, and a girl clinging to me like I was someone who could actually protect her.
And the worst part?
I still hadn't found the nerve to tell her I couldn't.
Seraphina led us out through a narrow side gate, one clearly meant for slipping out quietly rather than grand exits. The metal hinges groaned as it shut behind us, and the cold night air hit like a reminder that things were very much not okay.
We'd barely made it past the gate when everything went to hell.
Two figures stood in the archway, draped in charcoal hoods—still as statues, except for the shadowy stuff leaking from their hands and curling across the stones. Before I could even react, one of them lunged into a group of merchants—and exploded.
Black ichor sprayed everywhere, hissing on the cobbles as steam rose in greasy tendrils. Screams tore through the night. People ran, tripping over crates and each other, desperate to get away.
Sora didn't hesitate. She stepped forward, palm out, her voice barely above a whisper as she chanted. A dome of water spread over us, catching the worst of the ooze before it could touch skin. It sizzled harmlessly away, leaving only scorch marks and fading heat. Sora didn't flinch—just kept her hand steady, her face calm. Determined.
The second cultist burst through the mist, dagger gleaming. Sora glanced at me—a quick look, full of apology and nerves—and then lashed a tendril of water at his wrist. The blade flew from his hand and clattered to the stones. He stumbled.
Seraphina stepped in like a storm front. Her sword whispered free, and in one clean, sharp arc, the first attacker was down. The runes on his robes flickered once before going dark. No flash, no drama. Just done.
The second cultist tried to crawl back, breathing hard, panic all over his face. Seraphina was on him in seconds—three quiet steps, a boot to the chest hard enough that I felt it—and then the dagger went in, fast and final.
Silence fell. The only sound was the soft drip of Sora's magic as her shield melted into a puddle.
She dropped her arm, exhaling like she'd been holding that breath the whole time. "We—"
Seraphina didn't wait. She wiped her blade clean, slid it away, and nodded toward the shadows up ahead.
"Tunnel's close," she said, voice low. "And we're not alone."
My pulse hammered. Beyond that arch lay the breach point—and whatever horrors waited there. No turning back now.