They left the Maintenance Bay not as victims, but as scavengers. They had raided the armory—Roui had scavenged a heavier shield plate, and Alyia had refilled her capacitors from the bay's power cells.
They descended the final ramp toward the Processing Center.
The heat grew oppressive. The hum of machinery was deafening. They emerged onto a catwalk overlooking a cavern that stretched into the darkness.
What they saw stopped them cold.
It wasn't a factory. It was a lake of souls.
Below them, hundreds of glass vats were arranged in concentric circles. Inside each vat floated a human form—some dead, some sleeping—hooked up to mana-siphons. The tubes ran into the floor, feeding a central, pulsing conduit of Void-Glass that disappeared deep into the earth.
"The battery," Isla whispered, tears streaming down her face. "He's draining them. Drop by drop."
"They aren't just rookies," Roui said, spotting a tattered Silver Tier cape in a pile of discarded belongings. "Veterans. Missing squads. He's been doing this for years."
Aurora gripped the railing. "We blow it. All of it."
"If we blow the tanks, the shock will kill the ones still alive," Alyia warned. "We need to sever the main conduit. The feed line."
She pointed to the massive glass pipe in the center. It was guarded by a squad of Elite Constructs—heavy units with Schismite cannons.
"We can't fight them all," Persya said, calculating the odds. "Not in this condition."
Suddenly, a siren wailed. The lights shifted from amber to combat-red.
"Intruders in Sector 9," a voice boomed. "Lockdown initiated. Purge cycles activated."
The vats began to glow brighter. The draining process was accelerating. Varrick was flushing the evidence.
"We have to move!" Aurora yelled.
They didn't have time for a plan. They had time for a reaction.
"The conduit!" Aurora screamed, leaping from the catwalk. She fell toward the central pipe, her axe blazing with blue fire.
She hit the Void-Glass with everything she had.
CRACK.
The glass didn't shatter; it screamed. A fissure appeared, leaking raw, white soul-mana. The energy arcana was volatile, whipping around the room like lightning.
"Ride the surge!" Persya roared, grabbing a loose chain.
The explosion of escaping mana blew the blast doors off their hinges at the far end of the chamber. The "Purge" backfired, blowing the pressure valves of the facility.
Water from the subterranean aquifers—breached by the explosion—began to flood the chamber.
" The canal!" Roui shouted, pointing to the breached wall where water was pouring out into a subterranean river. "That leads to the Port!"
They scrambled through the chaos, dodging construct fire and falling debris. They leaped into the rushing black water of the underground river, letting the current carry them away from the collapsing hellscape of the Gnashfang Caverns.
Hours Later.
They washed up in the Canal District of the Port of Brotherhood. They were battered, soaked, and exhausted. Persya's piston-brace was bent, Roui's armor was dented, and Aurora's axe was flickering.
But they were alive. And they had seen the truth.
They crawled onto a rotting wooden barge, hidden by the fog of the harbor.
"We can't go back to the safehouse," Alyia coughed, water dripping from her cracked glasses. "Varrick knows we survived. He'll burn the slums to find us."
"We need to hit him where it hurts," Aurora said, wringing out her hair. Her eyes burned with a cold, terrifying focus. "We can't win a war of attrition. We need to cut off his supply."
"The Void-Glass," Isla said, remembering the crates in the warehouse. "The Ledger said a new shipment is arriving tonight. From Estrada. If he gets that glass, he can rebuild the conduit."
"We steal it?" Roui asked, looking at his ruined boots.
"No," Persya growled, standing up, the piston on his arm hissing. "We hijack it. And we use it to buy an audience with the only people Varrick fears."
"The Triumvirate," Aurora finished. "We capture the courier. We find out who holds Varrick's leash."
"So, let me clarify the tactical parameters," Roui whispered, adjusting the collar of his rain-slicked coat. He gestured vaguely at the murky, oil-streaked water of the canal. "Aurora and I stand on the bridge, look pretty, and scream insults at heavily armed guards to draw their fire. Meanwhile, you two sink into that... soup... to perform underwater grand larceny with a man whose arm is held together by gardening supplies."
"It's structural engineering," Persya corrected, tightening the strap on his brass piston-brace. He tested the mobility of his shoulder. It groaned, a sound like a dying hinge, but it held. "And the water isn't soup. It's sludge. Higher viscosity. Better for shock absorption."
"It smells like a dead fish wrapped in a wet sock," Aurora added helpfully, checking the edge of her axe. "But it's the only way to get the Void-Glass without getting shot. Varrick's Aero-Signifers watch the surface, not the floor. They don't expect anyone to be crazy enough to swim in this."
Isla stepped forward, her Sea-Leather suit gleaming faintly in the fog. She looked at the black water not with disgust, but with a strange, calm familiarity. Her large dark eyes seemed to catch the little light available, reflecting it back with a predatory sheen.
"The water hides everything," Isla said softly. She placed a hand on Persya's good arm. "Even the heavy things. I won't let you sink, Persya. Unless you want to."
Persya looked down at her. For a moment, the cynical "Wall" of the squad looked remarkably like a man who had forgotten how to breathe. The orange glow in his neck veins flared—not with combat heat, but with a sudden, flushed warmth.
"I prefer... buoyancy," he muttered, looking away. "Statistically, drowning decreases combat efficiency by 100%."
"Go," Aurora ordered, slapping Persya on the back—carefully avoiding the vines. "Roui, look dashing. We have a convoy to annoy."
The transition to the canal floor was a descent into a cold, silent world.
As soon as the water closed over their heads, Isla changed. The shy, hesitant girl from the tavern vanished. In her place was a creature of the Silva Profunda. The Kaeloid Membranes along her spine and arms flared, catching the current with effortless grace. Her neck gills fluttered, tasting the oxygen in the water, filtering out the harbor filth as if it were nothing more than sea-dust.
Persya, by contrast, sank like a stone anchor. His heavy boots, reinforced with Kayaçelik, hit the silt bottom with a dull thud that vibrated through the mud.
He held his breath, his cheeks puffing out, looking like a slate-grey pufferfish in armor.
Isla swam circles around him, her movement fluid and weightless. She placed a hand on his chest, and he felt a strange sensation—a bubble of air forming around his head, drawn from the water itself and held in place by her Hydro mastery.
Breathe, she mouthed, her voice a ripple in the water.
Persya gasped, inhaling the stale, magically recycled air. "This," he grumbled, his voice tinny inside the bubble, "is undignified. I feel like a goldfish in a bowl."
"You look like a very dangerous goldfish," Isla's voice drifted back, clear as a bell underwater. She drifted closer, her face inches from his. The bioluminescent sheen of her skin cast a pale blue light on his scarred features. "Relax your muscles. You're fighting the pressure. The ocean... even this dirty little canal... it wants to hold you. You just have to let it."
Persya watched her. In the Great Salt Flats where he was born, water was a currency, a scarce treasure to be fought over. He had spent ten years in chains, digging for water he wasn't allowed to drink. To Isla, water was freedom. It was the "Hero's Endowment," the living legacy of Cesario Estrada .
"I don't float, Isla," Persya admitted, his voice low, the vulnerability slipping through his defenses. "I was bred for chains. Heavy things stay down."
Isla's eyes softened. She reached out, her webbed fingers intertwining with his heavy, gauntleted ones. "Then I'll be your tether. In Estrada, we don't leave anything in the dark. Not even heavy stones."
A deep, thrumming vibration shook the canal bed.
The Convoy.
Above them, the dark shapes of the Mag-Gondolas sliced through the surface, their Aero-engines humming.
"Showtime," Persya growled, the moment of intimacy instantly replaced by tactical focus. "Get me under the lead boat."
Isla grabbed his harness. With a kick of her powerful legs, she hauled him through the water, positioning them directly beneath the passing shadow of the lead barge.
"Cutting," she signaled.
She raised her Heafon Wand. She didn't cast a spell; she focused a jet. A blade of hyper-pressurized water, thin as a wire, erupted from the tip. She traced a perfect circle in the wooden hull of the gondola above.
CRACK-HISSS.
The wood groaned. The circle dropped.
Immediately, a heavy crate crashed through the hole, plunging into the water. Persya was ready. He caught the crate mid-fall, his Augmentation flaring to brace his legs against the silt. The weight was immense, driving him knee-deep into the mud, but he held it.
Then, something else fell through the hole.
A man.
He wore the grey-and-gold robes of the Conclave, clutching a scroll case. He splashed into the dark water, eyes wide with terror, bubbles of air erupting from his screaming mouth.
"Bonus prize," Persya smirked. He reached out with his free hand—the piston-brace hissing as it extended—and grabbed the courier by the ankle before he could float to the surface.
"Up!" Persya signaled.
Isla grabbed Persya's belt. She channeled Hydro, creating a powerful updraft of current beneath them. It lifted Persya, the heavy crate of Void-Glass, and the struggling courier, shooting them toward the surface like a cork.
They broke the surface under the cover of the bridge, where chaos was unfolding.
"Have at thee, you aerodynamic varlets!" Roui was shouting from the railing, throwing rocks at the confused guards on the remaining barges. "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! I am a noble of New Earth, and I demand you cease this shipping immediately!"
"Is he... quoting pre-Schism literature?" Aurora asked, watching a guard slip on a patch of ice she had conjured.
"I think he's improvising," Persya wheezed, hauling the crate onto the muddy bank. He dumped the coughing, sputtering courier next to it.
Isla climbed out of the water, her gills sealing shut, the bioluminescence fading. She shook her hair, spraying water over Persya.
"You were... adequate," Persya grunted, offering her a hand to steady her on the slick mud. He didn't let go immediately. "For a fish."
Isla smiled, a tired, genuine thing. "And you were very buoyant. For a rock."
They turned their attention to the prisoner. The courier was retching up canal water, terrified.
"The Void-Glass," Aurora said, kneeling beside the crate. She pried the lid open. Inside, sheets of dark, semi-translucent glass pulsed with a chaotic energy. "We got it. Varrick can't fix the conduit without this."
Roui dropped down from the bridge, landing gracefully in the mud (and immediately ruining his boots). "And we have a guest. Who is our wet friend?"
Persya grabbed the courier by the collar, lifting him effortlessly. "Someone who is going to tell us everything."
The courier looked at the mismatched squad—the glowing giant, the shadow-noble, the sniper with crackling eyes, and the girl who smelled of the deep sea. He broke.
"The Triumvirate!" he blubbered. "I just carry the messages! The Triumvirate of Stasis... they control the feeding! Varrick is just a Hand!"
"Who are they?" Aurora demanded.
"Valerius!" the courier screamed. "Arch-Lector Valerius of Heafon! He's the Censor! He erases the records! And Lady Thorne... she's the Treasurer! Please, I don't know the third!"
"The Censor and the Treasurer," Alyia analyzed, stepping out of the shadows. "Information and Money. We have cut off the money. Now we go after the information."
Isla looked at the Void-Glass. "We need to move. This stuff leaks radiation. And we smell like a sewer."
"Speak for yourself," Roui sniffed, trying to wipe mud from his Null-Plate. "I smell like victory. And wet dog."
"Heafon," Persya repeated, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. He looked up at the bruised violet sky, where the distant, glittering speck of the floating continent mocked gravity. "You want to go up. To the place where the ground is optional."
"It's the only play," Aurora said, her voice hard as she kicked the crate of Void-Glass shut. The chaotic purple light vanished, leaving them in the gloom of the bridge's shadow. "Valerius is the Censor. He controls the information. If we want to find the Architect and the final seals, we need the records he's hiding in the Archives of the All-Seeing."
"Logic sound," Alyia noted, wiping canal sludge from her cracked glasses. She pointed her Heafon Wand at the courier, who was shivering in the mud. "Arch-Lector Valerius is a Cǣg cræftes. He values logic and rare data above all. This glass... it is a ticket. A scholarly offering. It will buy us access that our criminal records would deny."
"And the small matter of us being the most wanted squad in Elpis?" Roui asked, wringing out his silk coat. "The Conclave will have the Aero-Signifer patrols on high alert. We can't exactly book a ticket on a luxury sky-ship."
"We don't need a sky-ship," Aurora said, a dangerous smile touching her lips. She pointed the haft of her axe toward the eastern horizon, where the ocean met the sky in a defying column of rushing water. "We have a boat. And we have the Æsterstrēam."
The Æsterstrēam—the Eastern Upward Waterfall. A hydrological anomaly where the ocean flows upward into the clouds, carrying ships to the docks of Heafon.
"That bucket?" Persya kicked the side of the rotting barge they had commandeered. "It'll break apart in the shear winds. And I'll fall. And I will be very upset on the way down."
"It won't break," Isla said softly. She stepped onto the barge, placing her hand on the gunwale. Her Hydro mana pulsed, seeping into the wood. "The water wants to carry us. I can stabilize the hull pressure. I can make it... slippery to the wind."
She looked at Persya, her large dark eyes holding a fierce promise. "And I won't let you fall. I told you. I'm your tether."
Persya looked at her, then at the piston-brace creaking on his shoulder, and finally at the sky. He sighed, a sound like a collapsing mine shaft. "Fine. But if I vomit on anyone, it's not my fault. It's physics."
"Roui," Aurora commanded. "Get us moving. Alyia, keep that courier unconscious but alive. We're leaving Elpis."
"Aye, Captain," Roui mocked a salute, pushing the barge off the mudbank. "Next stop: The worst headache of my life."
As the barge drifted into the main channel, catching the current toward the open sea and the gravity-defying waterfall beyond, Aurora looked back at the sleeping city of Limani tis Adelphótitas. They had won the battle for the canal, but the war was moving to a new front.
They were leaving the mud and the blood of the surface for the pristine, cold logic of the sky.
"Valerius thinks he can erase history," Aurora whispered to the wind, her hand resting on the Void-Glass. "Let's go teach him that the past has a way of punching back."
The Æsterstrēam was a violation of the senses. It was a cathedral of rushing water that defied the fundamental laws of the world, a roaring column of the ocean ascending into the bruised violet sky. Gravity here was a suggestion, twisted by the colossal Aergestānas buried deep within the floating continent of Heafon miles above.
The stolen barge groaned under the stress. It wasn't sailing; it was falling up.
Persya sat slumped against the gunwale, his slate-grey skin slick with spray. The brass piston-brace Isla had jury-rigged to his shoulder hissed rhythmically—chhh-kunk, chhh-kunk—a mechanical wheeze that matched his labored breathing. The vines of Sera-Vine holding his flesh together pulsed with a faint green light, feeding on his dwindling mana reserves.
"Status," Aurora demanded. She stood at the prow, her boots locked to the deck. She wasn't looking at the miracle of the waterfall; she was watching the wake below, paranoid of pursuit.
"Hull integrity at 64%," Alyia reported. The sniper was huddled over the stolen courier's scroll case, her cracked glasses sliding down her nose. She wasn't looking at the boat; she was rewiring the courier's Echo-Crystal communicator. "Isla's Hydro lattice is the only thing keeping the keel from shattering under the shear-force. If she loses focus, we disintegrate."
Isla didn't speak. She knelt at the center of the deck, her hands pressed flat against the wood. Her eyes were rolled back, the nictitating membranes fully closed. She wasn't just casting a spell; she was negotiating with the water, convincing the violently rising torrent to cradle their rotting vessel.
Roui Mirtout sat near the captive courier, polishing a smudge of mud from his Null-Plate with a piece of silk torn from his ruined coat.
"We are fleeing the scene of a crime," the noble muttered, "riding a waterfall into the sky, smelling of dead fish and treason. My father would be apoplectic. It's... magnificent."
"Quiet," Alyia snapped. Her fingers danced over the runes of the stolen device. "I have breached the encryption. This isn't just a transceiver; it's a relay node for Varrick's shadow network."
"Can you trace him?" Persya grunted, wincing as the barge lurched.
"Better," Alyia whispered, her amber eyes widening. "I can hear him. He's transmitting orders. Priority One."
Aurora turned, the blue veins in her axe dimming as she focused. "Play it."
Alyia tapped the Echo-Crystal. Varrick's voice, tinny and distorted by distance, cut through the roar of the water. It was cold, precise—the voice of a man balancing a ledger.
"...Asset Liquidation authorized. Squad Iron-Heart has entered the Lacus Mortis perimeter. Threat level upgraded to Red. Do not engage the Void-Leeches until the squad is fully engaged. We need the mana-surge from their deaths to reset the Anchor. Ensure Garrick falls first; his soul yield is critical for the stabilization."
Silence slammed into the barge, heavier than the water pressure.
Roui stopped polishing. "Iron-Heart? That's Garrick's squad. The man who let us walk away at the docks."
"He's feeding them to the seal," Isla whispered, her concentration slipping for a terrifying second. The barge shuddered violently before she regained control. "Just like he tried to feed us."
"We're halfway to Heafon," Persya said, his voice grinding like gravel. "We have the glass. We have the courier. We have an escape route."
Aurora looked up at the distant, glittering speck of the floating continent—safety, leverage, a future. Then she looked down, toward the dark stain of the Shadow Border far below to the west. Toward the Lacus Mortis.
"He let us walk," Aurora said softly.
"He insulted my boots," Roui countered, though he was already standing up, gripping his Aether-Glaive. "But... he didn't arrest us."
"Calculation," Alyia stated, her voice trembling. "If we divert to Lacus Mortis, probability of survival drops to 12%. Probability of Varrick realizing we are alive rises to 100%."
"And probability of me sleeping tonight if we let them die?" Aurora asked, hefting her axe.
"Zero," Persya sighed, unlocking the safety on his piston-arm. "Damn it. I hate being a hero. It pays terrible wages."
Aurora spun to Isla. "Isla! Can you steer this tub out of the stream?"
"Out?" Isla's eyes snapped open, dark and terrified. "Aurora, we're two thousand feet in the air. If I push us out of the gravity well, we don't sail. We fall."
"Then aim for the deep water," Aurora grinned, a feral, terrifying expression. "Roui, Alyia—brace for impact. We're going down."
Isla screamed a command in the tongue of the Una cum Aequor. The water beneath them heaved. The barge was shoved violently sideways, ejected from the protective column of the Æsterstrēam.
Gravity reclaimed them with a vengeance. They plummeted into the clouds.