The rotary saw screamed, a discordant wail that vibrated in the fillings of their teeth. The Sentinel Construct, a brass-and-corruption monument to a dead era, advanced along the catwalk. Its singular, leech-infested "head" twitched, the collective mind of the swarm calculating the trajectory of slaughter.
"Persya is drained," Aurora noted, her voice dangerously calm. She stepped in front of the slate-grey hybrid, the Kristal Biru veins in her axe pulsing with a hungry, azure rhythm.
"I can still... hold the line," Persya wheezed, forcing his internal furnace to flare. The orange glow in his neck veins was dim, flickering like a dying ember in a gale. He tried to raise his segmented Kayaçelik blade, but his hands trembled—not from fear, but from the distinct, hollow ache of mana exhaustion.
"You are a wall with no mortar, Persya," Aurora said, not looking back. She reached out with her free hand, her fingers brushing the heavy pauldron of his armor. It was a fleeting touch, intimate in its brevity. "Today, you don't break the wave. You fix the leak. I'll be the violence."
"Aurora, that thing is Cægcraeftes tech," Alyia warned from the rear, her amber eyes narrowing behind her glasses as she analyzed the construct's plating. "Old World metallurgy. Star-Metal alloy. Standard Infusus impact will shatter your axe before it dents that shield.".
"Good thing I'm not standard," Aurora murmured.
She didn't charge. She vanished.
Lumen-Step.
One heartbeat, she was standing on the rusted grating; the next, she was a streak of golden velocity, reappearing in the air directly above the Construct. Gravity reasserted itself with brutal prejudice. She brought the axe down, channeling a massive surge of Infusus into the weapon at the moment of impact.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening, a bell-toll for the damned. The Construct raised its scavenged Null-Plate shield just in time. The impact buckled the brass giant's knees, sending a shockwave through the catwalk that rattled the chains of the piston engine. Sparks of raw mana—blue from the axe, purple from the Void corruption—cascaded into the abyss below.
"Move!" Aurora screamed, struggling to hold the blade against the shield. The Construct pushed back, its rotary saw inching toward her exposed midriff, the teeth spinning with a blur of grey death.
Persya moved. He didn't run; he slid, his boots finding traction on the slick metal where others would have slipped. He scrambled past the duel, ducking under the sweeping arc of the Construct's saw arm.
He reached the valve wheel. It was massive, rusted solid, and caked in the same purple barnacles that plagued the engine.
"Turn it!" Roui yelled, flinging a Tenebrae shadow-coil to snare the Construct's saw arm, buying Aurora a fraction of a second.
Persya grabbed the wheel. He pulled. It didn't budge. The mechanism was fused on a molecular level, the iron bonded to the rust. Under normal circumstances, a pulse of Recomposere would unzip the oxide bonds instantly. But his mana reservoir was dry; the "Orange" tier limit was a cruel shackle.
"Persya!" Aurora gasped. The Construct had broken Roui's shadow tether. It backhanded her with the shield, sending her skidding across the grating. She stopped inches from the edge, her boots hanging over the infinite drop.
Persya looked at her. He saw the flash of fear in her blue eyes—not for herself, but for him. It was the same look she had given him in the slave pits of Basilea Elpidos ten years ago. The look that said: You are not a thing. You are Persya.
He roared—a guttural, ugly sound of frustration. He couldn't use magic. So he used physics.
He didn't try to turn the wheel. He jammed his Kayaçelik sword into the spokes to create a fulcrum. He slammed his shoulder into the blade, dumping the last dregs of his Augmentation affinity not into a spell, but into a single, suicidal burst of muscular torque.
Give me leverage, and I will move the world.
The metal groaned. The purple barnacles shattered. With a screech of tearing iron, the valve turned.
A hiss of pressurized steam erupted from the engine, scalding Persya's face, but he didn't let go. The piston slam-fired—KA-THOOM—and the gears ground back into motion. The blockage was cleared.
But the Construct was still active. It ignored the engine now, its leech-mind fixating on the source of the disruption. It turned its back on Aurora, raising the rotary saw high above the exhausted Persya.
Persya looked up, his vision blurring. He had no mana. He had no weapon (it was wedged in the wheel). He was just a man in a vest, staring at a machine built to kill gods.
"Aurora," he whispered, accepting the math.
"No," a voice said right beside his ear.
Aurora was there. She hadn't Lumen-Stepped; she had sprinted, fueled by pure, unadulterated panic. She threw herself between Persya and the saw, raising the haft of her axe in a desperate, two-handed block.
The saw hit the haft. Wood splintered. Sparks showered over them. The sheer weight of the machine crushed Aurora down to one knee. She was strong, but she wasn't a tank.
"Do something!" she gritted out, her arms shaking under the pressure. The saw was cutting into the axe handle. Inches from her face.
Persya was behind her, his chest pressed against her back. He could feel the heat of her Infusus struggling against the cold Void steel. He was empty. He was useless.
Or was he?
He looked at the Kristal Biru embedded in her axe. It was glowing violently, leaking raw mana radiation. He looked at the Null-Plate shield the Construct held.
He didn't need his own mana. He just needed to redirect hers.
Elyisum story 1
Custom Gem
The roar of the rotary saw drowned out thought, but it couldn't drown out the math.
Persya calculated the variables in a fraction of a second. Aurora's Infusus reserves: falling. The Construct's torque: increasing. Structural integrity of the axe haft: critical. Probability of winning a contest of strength against a machine built by dead gods: Zero.
He didn't need to win. He just needed to change the rules of the game.
"Alyia!" Persya bellowed, his voice cracking with the strain of the shout. "Foundation! Sector Four!"
He didn't wait for a confirmation. He didn't look to see if the sniper was ready. He simply let go of the valve wheel, wrapped his arms around Aurora's waist, and threw his weight backward into the empty air.
"Jump!"
Aurora didn't hesitate. She didn't ask why. She released the pressure on her axe, allowing the Construct to surge forward into the space she had just occupied, and kicked off the railing, syncing her momentum with his.
They fell.
For a heartbeat, there was only the rushing wind and the terrifying, weightless suspension of the abyss. Above them, the Sentinel Construct flailed, its rotary saw biting into empty air, its leech-infested head twitching in confusion. It stepped forward, trying to pursue them, its massive brass foot landing heavy on the rusted grating.
CRACK-ZAP.
A single, blinding beam of superheated plasma—Alyia's Flamebeam—streaked from the shadows above. It didn't aim for the monster. It struck the oxidized bolts anchoring the catwalk to the spire wall.
The metal shrieked. The bolts sheared instantly, turned to slag by the Heafon lens's precision. The catwalk groaned, tilted, and then collapsed.
The Construct, too heavy to correct its balance, plummeted. It fell past Persya and Aurora, a flailing mass of brass and corruption, crashing into the darkness below with the sound of a collapsing building.
"Brace!" Persya roared, twisting his body in mid-air to take the brunt of the impact.
They didn't hit stone. They hit water.
The impact was like slamming into a wall of concrete. The dark, stagnant reservoir at the bottom of the spire swallowed them whole. The cold was absolute, a physical shock that seized the lungs and threatened to stop the heart.
Persya sank, the weight of his armor dragging him down into the gloom. His vision blurred, the bioluminescent orange in his veins extinguishing as the freezing water sapped his remaining heat. He felt a hand grab his collar—Aurora. Her Lumen affinity flared, not as a weapon, but as a beacon, cutting through the murk.
They broke the surface, gasping for air that smelled of ancient decay.
"Land," Aurora coughed, hauling him toward a shelf of Void-Glass that protruded from the water. "Get to land, you heavy idiot."
They collapsed onto the smooth, dark glass. Persya rolled onto his back, his chest heaving, water pooling around his slate-grey skin. He was alive. Every inch of him hurt, but he was alive.
"That," Aurora wheezed, lying next to him, her hat missing and her hair plastered to her face, "was the worst plan you have ever had. I loved it."
"It worked," Persya grunted, forcing himself to sit up. He checked his gauntlets. Intact. "Statistically... it was the only option."
He looked at her. She was shivering, the Infusus adrenaline fading, leaving her vulnerable to the biting cold of the Lacus Mortis. Without thinking, Persya reached out, placing his hand on her shoulder. He couldn't cast a spell—he was dry—but his body still held the residual heat of his internal furnace.
"You're freezing," he muttered.
"I'm fine," she said, leaning into his touch instinctively, seeking the warmth. She looked at him, her blue eyes searching his face, stripping away the cynic's mask he wore so tightly. "You trusted Alyia to make that shot. You didn't hesitate."
"Alyia doesn't miss," Persya said simply, looking away to scan the darkness. "And you don't break. We all played our roles."
"Is that all we are?" Aurora whispered, her voice barely audible over the lapping water. "Roles? The Wall and the Blade?"
Before Persya could answer—before he could retreat behind his walls again—a flare of white light illuminated the cavern.
Alyia and Roui descended, utilizing a slow-fall Aero cantrip Roui must have had scrolled away. They landed softly on the glass shelf.
"Trajectory calculated," Alyia stated, though her hands were trembling as she holstered her wand. "Target neutralized. Impact depth... sufficient." She looked at Persya, a rare flicker of relief behind her glasses. "You are... durable.".
"And wet," Roui added, grimacing as he shook out his cloak. "Though I must say, the synchronized diving was spectacular. Very dramatic. 8 out of 10."
"Look," Isla's voice drifted down. She was climbing down the shattered remains of the scaffolding, her Sea-Leather gripping the wet stone. She pointed to the center of the reservoir.
The water was draining. The piston engine above, freed by Persya's suicidal leverage, was pumping again. As the water level dropped, it revealed what the Sunken Cathedral had been hiding.
In the center of the lake bed stood a massive, sealed sarcophagus made of pure, translucent Void-Glass. It pulsed with a rhythmic, violet light—the source of the Mana-Surge. But the glass was cracked.
And inside, something was moving.
"It's not a battery," Isla whispered, her dark eyes wide with horror as she sensed the currents around it. "It's a prison.".
The crack in the glass hissed, leaking purple vapor that smelled of ozone and wrongness. The seal was failing. Varrick hadn't sent them to fix a leak; he had sent them to be the final lock on a cage that was bursting open.
"We have a problem," Persya growled, standing up and drawing his segmented blade, though the metal felt heavy as lead in his exhausted hand. "If that glass breaks, whatever is inside comes out. And we are in the splash zone."
Aurora stood up, her axe tip resting on the glass floor. The blue light in the blade was dim, but steady. She looked at the crack, then at her squad.
"We can't seal it," she said, her voice hard. "Not with magic. The pressure is too high. If we pour mana into it, it explodes."
"Then we reinforce it physically," Roui suggested, stepping forward, his Null-Plate gleaming in the violet light. "Or... we open it on our terms.
"It's not a battery," Isla whispered, her dark eyes wide with horror as she sensed the currents around it. "It's a prison."
The crack in the glass hissed, leaking purple vapor that smelled of ozone and wrongness. The seal was failing. Varrick hadn't sent them to fix a leak; he had sent them to be the final lock on a cage that was bursting open.
"We have a problem," Persya growled, standing up and drawing his segmented blade, though the metal felt heavy as lead in his exhausted hand. "If that glass breaks, whatever is inside comes out. And we are in the splash zone."
Aurora stood up, her axe tip resting on the glass floor. The blue light in the blade was dim, but steady. She looked at the crack, then at her squad.
"We can't seal it," she said, her voice hard. "Not with magic. The pressure is too high. If we pour mana into it, it explodes."
"Then we give it what it wants," Isla said. Her voice was no longer a whisper; it was the flat, resolute tone of someone calculating the cost of a harvest.
She walked past Roui's outstretched hand, stepping to the very edge of the Void-Glass shelf. The water below was rising slowly as the engine pumped, but it wasn't enough. The vapor was thickening. The thing inside the glass slammed a limb against the pane—a shadowy, indistinct shape that made the air vibrate with a psychic scream.
"Isla, what are you doing?" Roui asked, stepping forward, his charm cracking under the strain.
"The seal held for centuries because of the weight," Isla explained, not looking back. She raised her Heafon Wand. The crystal tip didn't glow with its usual gentle azure; it flared with a deep, oceanic indigo. "Miles of water pressing down. We released the pressure when we fixed the engine. Now the gas expands."
She turned to them, her large, dark eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "I have to put the weight back. All of it. Now."
"That will flood the chamber," Alyia stated, her amber eyes widening. "Analysis: If you over-pressurize this depth, the structural stress on the walls will collapse the exit tunnel. We will be entombed."
"Better entombed than eaten," Isla murmured.
She didn't wait for permission. She didn't ask Aurora for a plan. For the first time, the shy healer took the lead. She slammed the butt of her wand into the wet stone.
"Submerge," she commanded.
It wasn't a spell; it was a summons. Isla's Una cum Aequor physiology flared, the Kaeloid Membranes on her neck opening as she synchronized her mana with the lake above.
The effect was cataclysmic.
The water didn't just rise; it crashed. High above them, in the shattered plaza, the lake poured into the spire with the violence of a collapsing dam. A wall of black water, tons of it, roared down the shaft.
"Climb!" Aurora screamed, grabbing Persya's harness. "Get to the gargoyles! High ground!"
They scrambled up the inverted architecture, hauling themselves onto a cluster of stone saints hanging upside down from the ceiling-turned-floor.
The water hit the bottom of the spire with a thunderclap that shook the foundations of the earth. The Void-Glass sarcophagus vanished beneath the churning black tide. The pressure spiked instantly.
SCREEEEEEEE—
The psychic scream of the entity was cut short, strangled by the crushing weight of the Lacus Mortis. The purple vapor ceased. The crack, forced shut by the immense hydraulic pressure, sealed.
The water kept rising. It surged past the shelf they had stood on seconds ago, swallowing the walkway, licking at the stone saints.
"Isla!" Persya roared, reaching down.
Isla was still on the lower ledge, knee-deep in the rising flood, channeling the flow to ensure the pressure held. She looked up at them, her hair floating in the anti-gravity of the water, her skin glowing with a bioluminescent pulse.
"I can't let go!" she cried out over the roar. "If I stop channeling, the current reverses! It needs a continuous anchor!"
"Grab my hand!" Roui shouted, extending his glaive. "We are not leaving you to drown in a hole for Varrick's mistake!"
Isla looked at the glaive. Then at the dark water swirling around her waist. She made a choice.
She didn't let go of the spell. But she grabbed the glaive with her free hand.
"Pull!" Roui grunted, his boots slipping on the wet stone. Persya added his weight, grabbing Roui's belt. Together, they hauled the healer up, her wand still glowing, dragging the weight of the ocean with her.
They collapsed onto the highest ledge—a small, air-filled pocket in the inverted arches of the cathedral roof. Below them, the water churned, black and deadly, filling 90% of the spire.
They were alive. The monster was trapped. But so were they.
The air in the pocket was stale and getting thin. The exit tunnel they had fallen through was buried under a hundred feet of water and debris.
"Oxygen levels... critical," Alyia wheezed, holstering her wand. She slumped against a pillar, her crystalline skin dull in the gloom. "We have... perhaps one hour. Before carbon dioxide saturation."
Aurora leaned against the wall, sliding down until she hit the floor. She looked at Isla, who was shivering violently, suffering from mana-shock.
"You crazy, brave idiot," Aurora whispered, wrapping her own cloak around the healer. "You actually did it."
"My family..." Isla chattered, her teeth clicking. "Dead heroes... don't pay debts. I had to... ensure the payout."
"We have the payout," Persya said, his voice grim. He tapped the pouch of Kristal Biru at his waist. "Now we just need to survive to spend it."
He looked at the trap they were in. The water blocked the way down. The ceiling (the foundation of the lake bed) blocked the way up. They were in a stone bubble at the bottom of the world.
"Options," Aurora demanded, though her voice was weak.
"We can't swim out," Roui said, looking at the black water. "The pressure Isla created would crush us before we reached the surface. And the Leeches are waiting."
"We need a backdoor," Persya said. He looked at the wall behind them. It wasn't natural stone. It was a mural, ancient and faded, depicting the Void Wars. But in the center of the mural, there was a seam.
"Hidden passage?" Roui asked, hopeful.
"Maintenance hatch," Alyia corrected, squinting. "For the cooling pipes. But it's sealed with a Code-Lock. Arcane cipher."
Persya touched the stone. "I can't force it. My mana is gone. If I try to Recompose this wall, I'll pass out."
They had a door, but no key. And the air was running out.
"Oxygen saturation... 12%," Alyia announced, her voice devoid of emotion, though her chest heaved with the effort of pulling thin air into her lungs. "Hypoxia imminent in four minutes. Cognitive decline has already begun. I... I am having trouble factoring the prime integers."
"Stop counting and start solving," Aurora rasped, her head resting against the damp stone saints. She watched her two "quiet" squad mates step up to the wall.
It was a study in contrasts. Isla, fluid and organic, placed her pale hands flat against the cold stone surrounding the lock. Her Kaeloid Membranes flared, tasting the moisture in the air, seeking the microscopic condensation inside the mechanism. Alyia, rigid and crystalline, leaned in close, her amber eyes narrowing until the pupils were pinpoints, dissecting the arcane geometry of the lock.
"The mechanism is... hydraulic," Isla whispered, her eyes sliding shut. "Fluid-based logic gates. Ancient. I can feel the water trapped inside the tumblers. It's stagnant."
"Variable state cipher," Alyia muttered, her fingers twitching as she performed mental calculus. "The lock requires a specific pressure sequence to align the pins. If you push the wrong tumbler, the anti-tamper reservoir floods the lock. Permanent seal."
"Guide me," Isla said. She didn't look at Alyia; she didn't need to. She pushed a pulse of Hydro magic into the stone, not to break it, but to become it. She felt the water inside the lock as an extension of her own veins.
"Tumbler one," Alyia dictated, staring at the faint runes etching the dial. "Rotational torque... 15 degrees. Pressure... high."
Isla visualized the water inside the first pin. She compressed it. Click.
"Tumbler two," Alyia continued, her speech accelerating as the oxygen dwindled. "Counter-rotation. 40 degrees. Pressure... feather-light."
Isla obeyed. She thinned the water, letting the pin float gently into place. Click.
"Tumbler three..." Alyia paused. She swayed, her vision graying out. "Sequence... sequence is non-linear. It's... a prime number progression. Void-logic."
"Alyia!" Persya barked, stepping in to steady the sniper as her knees buckled. "Stay with us, Eyes."
"The pattern..." Alyia gasped, shaking her head to clear the fog. "It's not math. It's music. A harmonic frequency. Isla... pulse the water. Rhythmically. Like a heartbeat. 60 beats per minute."
Isla didn't question the logic. She felt for the central reservoir. She pushed. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The wall groaned. The ancient fluid logic accepted the "heartbeat" of the living water. With a heavy, grinding thunk, the arcane bolts retracted.
"Clear!" Roui shouted, kicking the heavy stone door.
It swung inward.
The air that rushed out wasn't fresh—it smelled of dry rot, grease, and ozone—but it was breathable. They tumbled through the hatch, collapsing onto the dry metal grating of a service tunnel. The door slammed shut behind them, sealing off the rising water just as it began to lap at the threshold.
They lay there in the dark for a long moment, just breathing.
"That," Roui wheezed, wiping sweat from his forehead, "was entirely too close. Remind me to give you two a raise."
"We don't get paid," Alyia mumbled into the floor grating. "We get 'experience'."
"Then remind me to buy you a drink," Roui corrected.
Persya sat up, igniting a small Recomposere flare in his palm to light the tunnel. They were in the "veins" of the cathedral—a labyrinth of pipes, gears, and narrow walkways designed for the engineers of the Void Wars. The walls were lined with brass tubes carrying glowing violet mana-fluid.
"We are behind the walls," Aurora said, standing up and dusting off her cloak. She looked stronger now, the air reviving her. "This tunnel system... it has to lead somewhere. Maintenance access usually connects to the surface."
"Or deeper," Isla warned, pointing to a junction ahead.
They reached a crossroads in the dark metal intestines of the spire.
To the left, a ventilation shaft sloped upward. A steady draft of cold, fresh air blew down from it. It was narrow, steep, and required a grueling climb, but it smelled of the Shadow Border surface.
To the right, a heavy iron door stood slightly ajar. A sign in Old World script read Arcanum Tabularium (Secret Archives). A soft, flickering light spilled from within, and the sound of scratching quills—mechanical, repetitive—echoed softly.
Straight ahead, the tunnel widened into a loading bay. Crates marked with the Vanguard Intelligence seal—Varrick's seal—were stacked high. It looked like a supply depot... or a smuggling operation.
"We have a choice," Aurora whispered, the blue light of her axe reflecting off the brass pipes. "We survived the trap. Now, do we escape, or do we find out why we were sent here?"