The door sighed open, metal sliding aside with a slow, tortured breath. Thalia stepped through and clapped her hands briskly. "Right! Welcome to Sector Nine, Workshop Division. Try not to touch anything unless you are particularly fond of losing fingers."
Lysandra came to an abrupt halt just outside the doorway, her nose wrinkling as she peered into the chaotic, clanging interior. She crossed her arms. "I have no interest in touring a glorified scrap heap. I will be in the library. Try not to blow yourselves up."
Without waiting for a reply, she turned on her heel, her proud posture cutting a path back down the sterile hallway. Seraphina watched her go for a moment, then gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod, as if this was the expected outcome.
I followed in a daze. The corridor beyond was stark, sterile stone and brass veins at first, but it spilled out abruptly into chaos. It was 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.
Thalia did not flinch. "Ah, good. They are testing the new combustion lens. That means Veylan is in. You will 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 were lit with a curious blend of awe and comfort.
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 had not slept in a week and liked it that way.
Thalia 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 is a lot of mana for someone your size. Too clean, too stable. Either you have got a royal class core or you are not exactly human, are you? Fascinating. Utterly fascinating."
There it was again. The same kind of probing intensity Thalia had shown. 'Too clean.' 'Too stable.' What did that even mean?
Sora immediately stepped closer to Arden, a subtle, instinctual shift. It was not pure fear, but a guarded reflex to stay near her master and shield her true nature from prying, magically enhanced eyes.
Arden did not move, but his presence seemed to solidify into an unbreachable wall.
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."
My mind snagged on the words. Too clean, too stable. A cold prickle ran down my spine. Thalia had said the exact same thing. This was not a coincidence. They were both seeing something in Sora that I could not, something that marked her as different, as other.
Sora immediately stepped closer to Arden, a subtle, instinctual shift. It was not pure fear, but a guarded reflex to stay near her master and shield her true nature from prying, magically enhanced eyes.
Arden did not move, but his presence seemed to solidify into an unbreachable wall.
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."
From beside me, Thalia piped up, a note of vindication in her voice. "See? I told you! I said it was too clean! It is not just me!"
Seraphina's gaze, cool and unamused, swept from Veylan to Thalia, silencing her with a look.
My mind was still looping on Veylan's words about Sora 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 has a knack for making sense of the senseless. He did not invent it, but he cracked the old language, repurposed the designs, and redesigned it for a modern army. 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 had deciphered and weaponized it.
"Wait," I said slowly. "Radames figured all this out? The magi trains, the magi guns, the constructs. He understood it all?"
Suddenly, that charming grin of his looked a lot more like a magician's smokescreen. Behind it was the kind of mind that could read the blueprints of gods and then build a siege engine from them.
"Well," Veylan mused, fiddling with a cog the size of a dinner plate, "he lit the fuse. The rest of us are just running with the spark."
It did not 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 understand and command others to build.
Thalia 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 is not made without a few singed eyebrows, apparently."
Thalia 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 is not ready for field use yet. Still too unstable when exposed to ambient blood magic. But! We are getting closer. And with your team running real world data, well. Let us just say your cultist problem might have a very loud, very short lived solution."
I peered at the thing. It did not 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 is getting there."
Great. So a magical migraine bomb with side effects.
Thalia gave me a thumbs up like this was all going brilliantly. I was not convinced.
My skin still prickled from the disruptive energy in the air, and I was halfway to wondering if I would 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."
Veylan blinked. "You want to siphon her mana? That's... not a standard procedure. A direct siphon would tear her core to shreds. You'd need a buffer. A conduit." He rubbed his chin, his mind already racing through the problem. "The only stable models for that kind of transfer are in high-end beast contracts, where the familiar acts as a living regulator."
Arden watched him, unblinking. "A living regulator would work."
Veylan stared for a second, then his eyes widened in dawning horror and fascination. "You're not talking about a beast, are you? You're suggesting a bilateral mana bond. Between people." He took a half-step back. "Gods, that's not just complicated, that's Lost Magic territory. The formulas for that... they're theoretical. You'd need a relic to even attempt it, something with an original transference lattice to build on. Those aren't exactly lying around."
As if he had simply been waiting for the request, Arden pulled something from his coat. It was a small, inert object of stone or metal, its surface etched with spirals that seemed to resist the eye. He offered it without ceremony.
Veylan took one look and hissed through his teeth. "That's a real one. A functional relic." He stared from the artifact to Arden's impassive face. "Where in the hells did you even… no, don't tell me. I don't want to know."
Thalia 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, and looked back at Arden. "Did you plan this? Did you have this specific relic just... waiting for this?"
Arden's expression didn't change. "I have a lot of things. This one seemed useful. She needs to feel her mana move." He glanced at me, then back to Veylan. "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," Thalia 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," Thalia said with a gleam in her eye, "you have seen what they do, but here is what you did not know. Each magi gun has a bound core of crystallized mana that interfaces with the wielder's flow. But it is not a passive connection. It pulls mana with every shot. Like siphoning lightning through a straw."
I frowned. That sounded expensive.
"It is," Thalia confirmed, as if reading my mind. "That is why our soldiers carry regulated mana potions and a standard issue dampening circlet. It 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?"
Thalia's expression became clinically thoughtful. "We had a test subject. A prisoner with no innate mana. He managed four shots before his nervous system gave out. It was... instructive, but ultimately a dead end. The mana drain induces systemic shock in the mana void. The project was shelved."
Seraphina watched Thalia, her face an unreadable mask. "A necessary, if wasteful, experiment."
"I prefer the term 'conclusive'," Thalia replied, her focus already returning to the weapons. "The principle is sound. The vessel is simply too fragile." She then gestured toward Seraphina. "Her, on the other hand. She does not even have a proper mana core. Her race cannot channel spellcraft. Yet she can interface with magi tech through pure will alone. She lasted four full mana vials before her body shut down. No magic, just sheer bloody mindedness."
Seraphina did not dignify that with a response, but her silence felt like a confirmation. I, on the other hand, felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room's temperature. I tried not to imagine myself on the wrong end of that research.
"Anyway," Thalia continued, her chipper tone returning as she waved to a gleaming rifle with gold silver plating and a floating crystal chamber, "this one here is the latest model. It adjusts draw rate based on user output. Still volatile, but sleek. Want to try it?"
I hesitated, fingers inches from the sleek, floating rune monstrosity that Thalia 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—
BOOOOMMM
The floor shook. A sharp, percussive thunderclap cracked through the workshop walls, followed by the rising wail of sirens, long, warbling notes that did not so much warn as command.
I flinched. Sora jerked toward me, her eyes wide. Thalia 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 have been slipping through the outer wards more frequently. We think they have developed their own magi tech. Primitive, but effective."
"Wait, they built stuff like this?"
"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."
Thalia darted after us, clutching a humming container she'd grabbed to her chest like it was a stuffed toy. "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."
Thalia blinked at her, clearly preparing to argue, to give some dramatic retort, or maybe just list all the ways she might die.
But I did not hear it. Not really. The screaming in the distance was louder now, shouting muffled by stone, panicked and chaotic. A cold, familiar dread washed over me, memories of another attack, another home destroyed.
But the memory felt distant, muted, as if viewed through a thick pane of glass. The potion's influence held my terror at bay, leaving a strange, hollow calm in its place. Beneath that calm, a spark of determination flickered. I would not be useless 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 produced a smooth, dark stone from a pouch at her belt. As she held it, a pale blue circle of light shimmered into being above its surface, arcane runes orbiting like a clock face.
She listened, her head tilted, her lips pressed into a tight line. She murmured a few quiet, clipped words into the stone, too low for me to catch, then fell silent again, listening.
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 would not work, and the only thing I could offer her was a tight nod I was not sure I believed.
Seraphina lowered the stone, its light dying. Her expression had not changed, but her eyes had sharpened.
"Change of plans," she said.
Every muscle in my body tensed.
"You are not being evacuated," she continued, turning toward me and Sora. "New directive just came through. I have 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 did not flinch. Did not even blink.
"They did not 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 was not 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 is where the fighting is, right?" she asked, her voice just barely above a breath. Her fingers gripped my sleeve again. Tighter this time.
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 Thalia. The engineer 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."
Thalia blinked, like she had 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.
Thalia 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 safety. She had a direction and a door to shut behind her.
We didn't.
Seraphina's gaze came back to us. Her posture had not changed, still composed and 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 did not 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 did not flinch. She just kept her hand steady, her face calm and 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.
The second cultist tried to crawl back, breathing hard, panic all over his face. Seraphina was on him in seconds with 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. 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.