The city of Velith was gone.
Not destroyed — just erased.
By the Guild's morning broadcast, Velith was never anything more than a failed mining sector struck by a chemical fire. No Mirra distortions. No mention of the Nineveil. Just another piece of rewritten history.
But some stories refuse to die quietly.
---
The forest east of the ruins was cloaked in a heavy mist.
Not natural fog — this one shimmered faintly, the kind that left Mirra detectors blinking erratically. The Guild's pursuit unit trudged through it with weapons drawn, scanning every motion, every rustle.
> "No signs of life," one of them whispered. "Not even animals."
"There's something wrong with the readings," another said, tapping the side of his scanner. "The signal's bending."
"Bending?"
"Yeah. Like it's… watching us back."
Their commander, a man named Loran, didn't reply. He'd been in the field long enough to know what that meant — someone had twisted the Mirra field itself. Someone was still here.
And then the fog shifted.
---
A low hum vibrated through the air, faint but distinct — the kind that made every heartbeat feel off-rhythm.
One of the scouts froze. His light caught on something standing at the edge of the mist.
A figure.
Calm. Still.
Hands in his pockets as if out for a stroll.
The man didn't speak. He just looked at them — eyes unreadable beneath the drifting ash.
> "Identify yourself!" Loran barked.
"..."
"This area's restricted by Guild order! You'll—"
The commander stopped mid-sentence. His throat went dry as the man took a single step forward, and the ground buckled. Not cracked, not shattered — bent, as if space itself had forgotten how to behave.
> "Pull back!" Loran ordered. "That's—!"
Too late.
The nearest scout's weapon twisted in his hands, metal shrieking as it curled like paper.
A faint smile crossed the stranger's lips — not cruel, not kind. Just… amused.
> "You shouldn't have come," he said, voice calm enough to freeze the air itself.
And then the fog moved with him.
---
It wasn't a fight.
It was a massacre painted in silence.
Every motion from the man was deliberate — slow, almost lazy. Yet each gesture unraveled the world around it. Bullets vanished midair. Knives bent backward. Even Mirra-based shields cracked like old glass.
One of the Guild men screamed as his leg dissolved into smoke — no blood, just dust.
Another raised his gauntlet, shouting something desperate before being hurled through the air like a ragdoll.
Only Loran managed to stay standing, his Mirra blade flaring white as he shouted:
> "You think you can just walk away after what you did to Velith?!"
The man tilted his head slightly, his expression unreadable.
> "Walk away?"
He stepped closer.
"That's all I've ever done."
And with that, he raised his hand — not a gesture of power, but of dismissal. The fog swallowed the commander whole.
---
When the haze finally lifted, the forest was empty.
Only faint traces of distortion remained, flickering like dying embers.
Guild reinforcements found nothing — no bodies, no footprints, not even a whisper on Mirra sensors. The entire squad had vanished without a trace.
But there, carved faintly into a tree at the forest's edge, was a single line of text scorched into the bark:
> "Even lies leave traces."
---
Far away, in a dimly lit train compartment heading north, Mael sat by the window — jacket torn, hand bandaged, gaze fixed on the fading horizon. His reflection in the glass looked tired, older somehow.
He exhaled softly, murmuring to himself:
> "A waste of effort. They never learn."
A faint voice from behind him — one of his surviving crew — spoke quietly.
> "You could've just killed them all outright."
Mael didn't turn.
"I did."
The train rattled on, cutting through the mist like a scar.
Outside, the smoke of Velith thinned into clouds, leaving only silence in its wake.
---