Once he made his announcement that they would be heading into the Expanse, a plethora of activities erupted throughout the tower. His officers barked orders, weapons and equipment got prepared, and the corridors buzzed with purpose. Yet amidst the fervor and controlled chaos, there was one thing that Artorius wanted to handle before he led his men forward into the Crystal Expanse.
The Draconic Vector Engine. He paused at the entrance to the chamber, wings tensing as he surveyed the glowing runes and humming machinery. The room was alive with power, elemental energy crackling faintly in the air, almost as if the Engine itself were breathing. Every instinct screamed to retreat but he had made his choice.
"I see you are finally ready," Ouroboros remarked who was already waiting for him.
"Let's get started," he said with a deep, steadying breath, Artorius stepped inside. The ring at the center shimmered to life, runes igniting in concentric spirals. The temperature rose instantly, air shimmering with heat, gravity pulsing subtly beneath his claws.
Ouroboros floated to the control panel and jabbed at several glyphs. The ring in the center of the chamber hummed to life, runes igniting in concentric patterns. The temperature in the room rose immediately, air distorting with heat.
Ouroboros tapped several runes with a claw. "Initiating base parameters. Fire resonance first." A veil of flame shimmered just above his skin, hot but not burning prickling like a thousand needles. His heart hammered in his chest.
"Good," Ouroboros said. "Now breathe. Don't fight it. Let your blood remember." The words sounded simple, but the act was anything but. Every instinct screamed to flee, but he refused. He'd been burned before. He'd survived worse than this.
"Not bad," Ouroboros said, almost approving. "Let's make it interesting." He twisted the control ring. He twisted the control ring. The flames abruptly vanished, replaced by crystalline shards rising from the floor like jagged ice. They pulsed with blue-white energy, humming in resonance. "We got to work on your crystal resistance! Try not to let it pierce your bones."
The shards began to vibrate violently, filling the air with a high-pitched hum before they struck him. They shattered against his body in waves that struck him like a hammer. His vision flashed white, then blue, then fractal.
The next pulse hit harder. Artorius roared, his aura flaring. His body cracking under the strain, fissures glowing with molten light as his body absorbed the crystal energy rather than resisting it. For a heartbeat, he saw the entire room through a prism every movement multiplied, every sound layered in echoes. Then it was gone. "Altight, that's enough," Ouroboros called out. "You're really making me work for this. I have to rump this up."
Lightning followed. Arcs of white-blue energy raked across the chamber, spearing him from every direction. The Vector Engine simulated a storm so intense it tore at his nerves, his heartbeat syncing with each pulse of thunder. "This is another element found in the crystal expanse."
They spent the next hours pushing through trials. Frost coursed through his veins, testing his body heat ability to keep him alive; toxic mists burned his lungs until his body learned to neutralize them; gravity fields pressed him into the floor until his muscles screamed for relief. Each test broke him down and rebuilt him stronger.
Ouroboros adjusted the glyphs once more. "Final phase. Fusion environment. Let's see how your body handles multi-elemental stress."
The world around him exploded into chaos. Fire, lightning, frost, and crystal energy collided in a blinding cascade. Gravity inverted up became down, air became liquid heat, and the chamber became an ever-shifting crucible.
Artorius shouted not in pain, but in defiance. Every fiber of his being ignited, his aura tearing loose in a corona of red-gold fire streaked with crystalline light. His body shone with a faint transparency. When the light finally dimmed, the air was thick with ozone and molten dust. Artorius dropped to one knee, chest heaving, every muscle trembling with exhaustion. His blood steamed. His eyes glowed faintly.
Ouroboros watched, silent for a long moment, then flicked his tail to power the Engine down. The hum faded to a whisper. Artorius looked up, sweat and blood dripping from his chin but his lips twisted into a grin. "Ha…" His voice was rough, ragged but full of mirth. "I can feel it."
He was alive!
-
The dawn rose in broken light.
From the highest spire of the broken tower, Artorius watched as the sun fractured across the horizon, splintering into a thousand colors. Below him, dunes of glass stretched into infinity, a desert made not of sand but of shattered crystal fragments, every surface catching the light and throwing it back as if the world itself were a blade.
The Crystal Expanse.
He had read as much as he could in the Silver Dragon's journals to prepare for this day. The dunes shimmered like oceans frozen mid-wave, and through them, storms of pure reflection rolled in long, singing gusts. The air thrummed with mana so dense it hurt to breathe.
Behind him, the tower moaned as if in its sleep, the sound of crystal settling and wind scraping along its glass bones. Once, it had been a fortress of scholars and torturers both. Now it was his. The first foothold of a rising leader.
"Form up," Artorius ordered.
Thirty-six draconic creatures assembled in the courtyard below; scarred, weary, but willing. At their head stood three lieutenants: Velkra, the mismatched wyvern with iron discipline in his stance; Sereneth, the azure serpentine dragon whose body shimmered like liquid magic; and Tzharun, the bull-headed drake with arms like forged steel and eyes like a blacksmith's fire.
He descended from the spire, lance in hand, the light refracting off the shards around his feet. "Today we begin the first step," he said, his voice low yet carrying. "The Expanse is our trial, our forge, and our feast. We enter not as scavengers, but as claimants. We take what was the Silver Dragon's and make it ours."
The troops murmured with fear, excitement, reverence. Ouroboros coiled at his side, his scales gleaming faintly gold in the dawn light. "Good words," he said softly. "Now make them bleed for it."
Artorius smirked. "That's the plan."
The journey down the slope was treacherous. The dunes shifted underfoot like liquid glass, sliding and reforming. Their passage sang faint crystalline notes that rippled outward across the landscape. Their foot print left no prints, only resonant vibrations that echoed far longer than sound should. Every step risked summoning something.
And soon, something came. A glint beneath the surface, a ripple of motion. "Below!" shouted Tzharun.
The ground exploded. A Shard-Wurm burst from beneath, all serrated glass plates and gnashing mandibles. Sunlight scattered from its hide like knives. "Formation! Spears front!" Artorius snapped.
Turning to the creature facing off against them, it was a long serpentine creature at level 8. Artorius gave it two options, "Surrender and follow us or be crushed underfoot beasts!"
"Hehe, you little worms think I will follow you," it spat back, going for the attack. Artorius could have forced compliance from the thing with his trait and mutation, but since it chose this path, it was going to rest upon it.
The spearmen braced as the worm lunged. Tzharun bellowed, driving his spear through its lower jaw. The impact rang like a bell, splintering scales. The worm convulsed, tail lashing, but Velkra's swordsmen dove in, their blades striking the joints where crystal met flesh. When the blows struck home, the note that rang out didn't fade, it spread, echoing through the dunes like a bell tolling for all to hear. Far away, things answered.
Joining in the action and to finish this quickly, Artorius extended his hand and whispered the Word of Flame, the creature's body ignited in fire, melting in places into slag. The archers also helped out firing shots during openings and at weak points. The thing screamed, a shriek that rattled the air then collapsed, twitching.
They moved deeper. The light thickened, refracting through every dune and storm. The very air hummed, charged with resonance. The sky looked like a dome of fractured mirrors, the sun split into dozens of smaller, false suns burning at different heights. Even the sound behaved strangely. Footsteps echoed before they were made. Voices lingered too long, rebounding off unseen facets.
Occasionally, they'd stumble upon half-buried remains skeletons of draconic creatures turned to glass, forever screaming mid-death. The Expanse kept everything.
Fights came often, too often to count. Shard-beasts, glass drakes, spectral things that wore the faces of lost dragons. Every battle was fast and brutal, and before each, Artorius offered the same choice: surrender and serve, or die.
Few ever chose to yield. The rest became experience and material. Still some did bow before their might and generosity, a handful of the creatures they defeated or rescued knelt rather than fought, a mauled Crystal Drake they rescued from shard-mites, a wandering Glass Wyvern that bowed its broken wings after battle, and others besides. Not many, but enough to matter. Enough to remind Artorius that even in this glittering wasteland, strength could still inspire loyalty.
The rest of the denizens were something else entirely. "Why are these creatures here so…" Artorius began one evening, watching the shimmer of distant wings through the haze. "So… raw?"
"Feral," Ouroboros finished, his tone laced with amusement. "They are not cursed, if that's what you're wondering. Some dragons choose this. To reject hierarchy, words, and walls. They call it the True Way, to live as beasts again, unbound by pact or purpose."
By the fourth day, they had carved a bloody path through the Vale's dangers. Their packs bulged with Shardglass, Prism Dust, and Aetheric Sand, the simplest but most abundant treasures of the dunes. Now and then, they found rarer resources, glints of Prismsteel or fragments of Heart-glass half-buried in the drifts. These were resources used in low-tier crafting and alchemy and they'd bled for it
Everything gleamed with promise and with danger. A wrong note of sound could awaken the storms that slept beneath the surface. Those who survived long in this place learned to step lightly and speak less.
When the Reflective Storms rolled in, waves of refracted light that could crystallize even breath the army huddled close under the sand and outcroppings to keep safe. The world would turn white and silent for long, suffocating minutes. When it passed, they'd find dunes reshaped, the ground unfamiliar, new crystals jutting from the ground where once nothing stood moments before.
By the ninth day, the army moved like a single being. Training and blood had shaped them; the System responded in kind. Levels rose quickly thanks to the constant fighting, 3s and 4s flickering above most heads with some 5s even but the difference was felt in their rhythm. Their attacks synchronized naturally now, strikes landing like music. They were becoming a true army.
Artorius himself felt something stir within. The Word of Crystal that he stole from the silver dragon whispered at the edges of his mind. Sometimes, when he exhaled, the dunes trembled faintly, resonating to his will.
Their march through the expanse continued long days of heat and glass, of mirrored horizons and dangers both living and not. They hunted and harvested what they could. They lost a few, gained a few, and learned the laws of the land: Explore. Expand. Exploit. Exterminate.
Each step carried them closer to the storm-wreathed heart of the expanse, where the Shard Palace awaited. They had survived the journey so far grown sharper, faster, stronger but as the light bent around them in strange, impossible patterns, Artorius could not shake the feeling that the expanse itself was not yet done testing them.
The horizon folded in on itself. Finally they spotted the dungeon, the Shard Palace. It shimmered like a mirage of living glass. The air there was thick with resonance, and every instinct in Artorius's body screamed that something vast watched from within.
At first, it was only a trick of the light, heat shimmer, perhaps, or the endless mirage of glass under sun but as the army pressed deeper into the heart of the Expanse, Artorius began to see repetition. The Shard Palace loomed before them, a cathedral of impossible angles, yet it also loomed behind, to the east, to the south each reflection bending the world until the line between approach and retreat vanished.
"Report distance," he ordered.
Velkra shaded his eyes with a blade-wing. "We've walked a league since the last mark, Commander."
"Then why," murmured Sereneth, voice low and tense, "does it not grow closer?"
The dunes no longer sang underfoot; they hummed, a single note stretching into infinity. Sound delayed and warped. When someone coughed, the noise echoed seconds later, reversed, like the Expanse was answering in kind. Even the wind came in mirrored gusts, one from ahead, one from behind, colliding in a swirl of prismatic dust.
"Hold," Artorius said sharply.
Across the next ridge, another formation crested it, a perfect replica of their column. Same numbers, same banners, same pace. The other Artorius stood upon the glass crest, light haloing his lance. "They're us," Velkra hissed.
The mirrored army moved seconds ahead of them, their motions preordained echoes. When Artorius raised a hand, his reflection had already done so. When he turned to speak, the mirrored lips had already formed the words.
Ouroboros uncoiled at his side, golden scales catching fractured sunlight. "The Palace guards its secrets with itself. These are not ghosts merely the reflections of your intent, walking a few breaths before you live them."
"And if we change our path?"
"Then we break the reflection," the serpent said, smiling with too many teeth. "Calling down the dungeon upon us. We are in the jaws of the beast now and our only option is to continue."
The final stretch to the Shard Palace was a march through unreality. Each step forward scattered the world into fragments; colors bending, dunes folding, sky and ground exchanging places in flashes of mirrored brilliance. The warriors moved cautiously, every movement doubled by a shimmering echo half a second ahead.
Artorius advanced at the front, every muscle tense. His reflection marched beside him now, closer than ever, its body gleaming in hues the real him didn't hold and he noticed it was too perfect that it smiled too easily, as though it knew how this would end.
The Shard Palace rose before them, a jagged crown of living glass that refracted the fractured light of the Expanse. From the moment they crossed the threshold, Artorius felt the familiar pulse of resonance, stronger here than anywhere else in the biome. The air shimmered as if the Palace itself were breathing, its walls bending the light and sound into strange, disorienting patterns. The world outside, the dunes, the storms seemed to vanish. Here, only the Palace existed.
The first corridor stretched ahead, walls and ceiling carved from smooth, translucent crystal that glittered with inner storms of light. At first glance, it seemed like a regular hallway, the army advanced cautiously.
The first tiles sang beneath their feet, harmonic vibrations humming in deep, resonant tones. A wrong step, the stagger of a foot, the misfired clank of metal caused a spike of crystal to erupt from the floor. A foot soldier yelped as a shard nicked his leg. "Move as one!" Artorius shouted. "Step in rhythm, or we all die here."
The army fell into a single synchronized pattern, every footfall, clawstep, and hissed breath timed. The resonance of their motion stabilized the floors, allowing them to move safely. But it wasn't just the ground. Walls responded too. Crystal panels grew toward them, sharp edges extending and retracting with a subtle awareness of noise. Even casual chatter became a weapon the Palace could wield.
By the time they emerged from the final chamber of the Gauntlet, the soldiers were transformed. Footsteps were silent when needed, breathing measured, and movements precise. The resonances of the palace had forced them into perfect coordination. Artorius allowed himself a rare smile.