The heavy transport rover, a behemoth of rusted steel and reinforced treads, chewed through the mud of the outer perimeter. The engine's vibration was a constant, tooth-rattling hum that had settled deep into Kaelen's bones over the last six hours. The transport rattled over another root, and Kaelen's head smacked against the metal ceiling for the third time in as many minutes.
"Maybe if you weren't so tall, you'd fit better," Maya said, not looking up from the Soul Core she was examining. The crystalline object caught the filtered light coming through the vehicle's slit windows. Pale green, shot through with veins of deeper emerald. Vitality-type. Worth at least forty silver at current market rates.
"Maybe if Thomas didn't drive like he's trying to kill a beast with the damn wheels..."
"I heard that," Thomas called from the front, one hand on the steering column, the other absently running along the fire-etched tattoos that spiraled up his forearm. His Soul-Etching pulsed faintly orange, like embers breathing. "Not my fault, the Safe Season's ending in three weeks. Everyone's scrambling for last-minute contracts before the Exhale."
"Three weeks," Clair muttered. The wind-user sat across from Kaelen, lean and wiry, her short hair shifting in a breeze that had nothing to do with the vehicle's movement. "Prices are going to spike even harder. Did you see the posting board yesterday? Common-grade cores going for twenty silver. Common-grade."
"Supply and demand." That was Captain Ben, filling the front passenger seat like a boulder wedged into a crack. His voice carried the kind of calm that came from being Level 3. Strong enough that most problems could be solved by simply existing with them. "We're not the only crew thinking one last run before the Exhale. Every team in Valterra's doing the same math."
Kaelen shifted, trying to find a position where his spine didn't protest against the transport's metal bench. At Level 1, his body was still fundamentally human. Glass cannon, as the saying went. Power without the durability to back it up. His Soul-Etching wrapped around his temples like a crown of silver filaments, marking the Mind-type core he'd fused two years ago. Focus. Clarity. And the unexpected gift that had come with it.
The Vis-sight.
He'd never told anyone the full extent of what he could see. How the world looked different to him. Every living thing is wrapped in a corona of light, Vis moving through the environment like invisible currents in water. The others could sense it, feel it the way someone might feel heat or cold, but Kaelen could see it. Map it. Track it.
It had kept them alive more times than he could count.
"How's our route looking?" Ben asked, glancing back at him.
Kaelen closed his normal eyes and looked.
The world shifted. The metal walls of the transport became transparent shadows. Beyond, the forest pressed close. Ancient trees thick with Vis, their roots drinking deep from the earth. Small signatures moved through the canopy. Birds, mostly. A few tree-climbers. Nothing threatening, but the density was increasing. They were getting close to the fluctuation zone.
"Clear for now," he said, opening his eyes. "But the concentration's rising. We'll need to go on foot soon."
Thomas grunted. "Of course we do. Can't make anything easy."
The transport lurched again, and Maya finally looked up from her core, tucking it carefully into a padded pouch at her belt. Her Soul-Etching ran down her arms in patterns that looked almost like vines. Organic, flowing. Vitality-types always had that quality, as if their power was trying to grow beyond the bounds of skin. "What's the contract paying again?"
"Eighty silver," Ben said. "Each."
Clair whistled. "For an investigation? The Magistrate must be spooked."
"They should be," Kaelen said quietly. "Vis fluctuations like this? Outside of Calamity Zones? That's not normal."
The forest thickened around them, old growth that had stood for centuries. The Safe Season was winding down, but the beasts were still sluggish, conserving energy for the coming Exhale. It was the best time for runs like this. Dangerous enough to be profitable, safe enough to be survivable.
Usually.
The transport shuddered to a halt.
"This is as far as I'm taking her," Thomas announced, killing the engine. "Terrain gets too rough ahead, and I'm not risking the suspension for eighty silver."
They filed out into the green-filtered light of the forest floor. Kaelen's boots hit soft earth, and immediately his Vis-sight painted the world in overlapping layers of light. The trees here were saturated with it, decades of accumulated power making them glow like slow-burning torches. Small signatures darted between branches. Nothing aggressive.
"Formation," Ben ordered, his voice carrying easy authority. "Kaelen up front with me. Maya, center. Clair and Thomas on flanks. Standard hunting line."
They moved with practiced efficiency, weapons drawn. Kaelen carried a simple steel blade. He didn't have the cores or the control yet for complex techniques. His job was to spot threats, not necessarily kill them.
The forest breathed around them.
"Got something," Kaelen murmured after twenty minutes of careful progress. His Vis-sight had caught movement. A signature brighter than ambient, low to the ground, moving perpendicular to their path. "Thirty meters, ten o'clock. Terrestrial. Probably a ridge-boar."
"Common-grade?" Ben asked.
"Yeah. Alone."
"Thomas, it's yours."
The fire-user moved forward without a word, his Soul-Etching flaring brighter. Heat rippled the air around his hands. The boar never saw him coming. A spear of flame punched through the underbrush and caught the creature mid-charge. It squealed once, then collapsed in a heap of smoking fur.
"Clean," Clair commented.
They harvested quickly. The Soul Core came out of the beast's chest still hot. A crude thing, barely larger than a knucklebone, dull red and shot through with cracks. Maybe worth five silver to a desperate buyer. The tusks were useful though, and Maya carved them free with practiced hands while Thomas checked the pelt.
"Burned," he muttered. "Useless."
"Then leave it."
They continued.
Over the next three hours, they encountered seven more beasts. All common-grade. All easily handled. A pack of tree-stalkers that Clair shredded with wind-blades. A stone-beetle that Ben simply crushed beneath one metal-clad fist. A jumping viper that Kaelen spotted before it could strike, letting Thomas roast it from range.
The cores went into pouches. The useful parts were harvested. The rest was left for scavengers.
The forest took its due.
"We're close," Kaelen said as the sun began its descent toward the western mountains. His Vis-sight showed the fluctuation ahead. A distortion in the normal flow, like watching water spiral around a drain. "Half a kilometer. But there's something else."
Ben stopped. "What kind of something?"
"Bigger signature. Not moving. Elite-grade at least."
The team exchanged glances.
"We signed on for investigation," Clair said carefully. "Not elite contracts."
"We don't know if it's hostile," Maya pointed out. "Could be territorial. Could let us pass."
"Could also decide we look tasty," Thomas countered.
Ben was quiet for a long moment, his metal-etched hand resting on his sword's pommel. The captain's weapon was a beast-crafted blade, the core of some iron-scaled serpent forged into steel. It had cost him three years of contracts. "Kaelen. Details."
Kaelen focused, letting his sight push deeper. The world became painful. Too much information, too much light. He could see the elite's signature clearly now, a roiling mass of pale blue-white Vis that seemed to breathe with its own rhythm. "Mist-type. Sub-category of Water. Not moving, but it's aware. It could be denning, or it could be hunting. Hard to tell."
"Can we go around?"
"Maybe. But it's close to the fluctuation point. If we're doing the job properly..."
"We go through," Ben finished. He drew his sword. "Combat formation. Maya, stay back and support. If anyone gets injured, you're our lifeline. Clair, harassment and control. Thomas, damage when you see openings. Kaelen..."
"Your eyes. I know."
The elite beast was coiled in a natural depression, a place where three massive trees had grown together, their roots forming a hollow. In his Vis-sight, it looked like a serpent made of fog, constantly shifting, never quite solid. In normal vision, it was almost invisible. Just a vague distortion in the air, like heat shimmer turned predatory.
It noticed them when they were twenty meters out.
The forest went silent.
Then the mist-serpent uncoiled, and the world became teeth and cold.
"Left!" Kaelen shouted as the beast struck. Ben was already moving, his sword coming up, metal-type Vis flooding into the blade until it rang like a bell. The serpent's fangs met steel with a sound like breaking ice.
Clair's wind-blades cut through the air in scything arcs, trying to pin down something that had no solid form. Thomas's fire roared, but the mist drank the heat, turning it into steam that hung uselessly in the air.
"It's regenerating faster than we can damage it!" Maya called, her hands glowing with vitality, Vis, ready to pour healing into anyone who needed it.
Kaelen's mind raced, his Vis-sight tracking the beast's movements. There. A denser point in the shifting mass, right behind where its head should be. The core. The serpent was pulling ambient Vis from the saturated forest, using it to repair damage faster than they could inflict it.
"The core!" he shouted. "Behind the head, three inches down! Thomas, everything you've got!"
The fire-user heard him. Drew deep on his own core. His Soul-Etching blazed so bright it hurt to look at, and the temperature spiked twenty degrees in an instant. Thomas's signature technique. The one that cost him a week of recovery every time he used it.
"Inferno Lance!"
The spear of flame that erupted from his hands was white-hot, barely controlled. It punched through the mist like a javelin from the heavens and struck the beast's core dead-center.
The serpent shrieked, a sound like wind through a graveyard, and dissolved into rapidly dissipating vapor.
The core clattered to the ground. Pristine, unmarked, glowing with captured moonlight. Elite-grade. Worth at least two hundred talents.
They stood in the sudden silence, breathing hard, covered in cuts and frost-burn.
"Everyone alive?" Ben asked.
"Define alive," Thomas muttered, collapsing to one knee. His Soul-Etching had dimmed to barely visible embers. Using that much power at once always took its toll.
Maya was already moving, vitality Vis flowing from her hands into Thomas's chest, into Clair's lacerated arm, into the deep gash on Ben's shoulder where a lucky strike had gotten through his guard. Kaelen had stayed back, as ordered, and had only minor scratches.
They harvested the elite core in reverent silence. The mist-type signature felt cold even through the leather of the pouch.
"That's our yearly bonus right there," Clair said, voice tight with exhausted relief.
The sun touched the horizon.
"We camp here," Ben decided. "Too dark to push on, and we're all running low. Clair, perimeter check. Thomas, rest. You're off watch rotation tonight. Maya, Kaelen, help me set up the concealment array."
The device was an Iron Magistrate issue. A small cylinder that, when activated, projected a field that blended its occupants with the surrounding environment. Not invisibility, but close enough to fool common-grade beasts and most elite ones. The Vis signature it produced mimicked the forest's natural background radiation.
They set up camp in the depression where the serpent had denned, claiming it by right of conquest. A small fire, carefully managed by Thomas even in his exhausted state, provided warmth and light. Rations were distributed. Injuries were tended.
Kaelen took the second watch, sitting with his back against one of the massive tree roots, sword across his knees. The concealment array hummed softly, its sound blending with the night-chorus of insects and distant beast calls.
His Vis-sight painted the darkness in familiar colors. The forest at night was actually more active. Nocturnal beasts with dim signatures moving through the canopy, small scavengers approaching their camp and then veering away, confused by the array's camouflage.
Then he saw the rabbit.
It was small, unremarkable. The kind of common herbivore that survived by being beneath the notice of anything dangerous. It hopped into the depression, nose twitching, investigating the lingering scent of the mist-serpent.
Something was wrong.
Kaelen blinked, then looked.
The rabbit's Vis signature was... impossible.
Normal beasts glowed with their internal power, a single color determined by their core's affinity. This rabbit had no internal signature. It was empty, like a human. But the Vis around it moved strangely, flowing into the creature rather than away from it, pulled by some invisible current.
He watched, transfixed, as the rabbit sat perfectly still for thirty seconds, absorbing ambient Vis like a sponge. Then it hopped away, utterly unconcerned, its empty signature unchanged.
Kaelen opened his mouth to wake the others, then closed it. What would he even say? I saw a weird rabbit. They'd think exhaustion was making him see things.
He made a mental note, filed it away, and continued his watch.
Nothing else unusual happened.
Dawn broke gray and cold. They packed with efficient movements, veterans at wilderness survival. The concealment array was disassembled and stored. Weapons were checked. Cores were counted. Fourteen common-grade, one elite. A good haul, even before they completed the investigation contract.
"According to the Magistrate's scanner, the fluctuation point is another kilometer northeast," Ben said, consulting a handheld device that looked like a compass made of dark crystal and silver wire. The needle pointed steadily in one direction, vibrating slightly. "Strong reading. Whatever's causing this, it's significant."
They found it an hour later.
The structure rose from the forest floor like a broken tooth. Half-buried in earth and centuries of overgrowth, made of a material that looked like stone but caught the light wrong. Kaelen's Vis-sight showed it practically bleeding power, the fluctuation centered on its core.
"Pre-war," Maya breathed. "Has to be."
Before the Void Era. Before the last Level 9 had fallen and the world had descended into the current carefully-balanced stalemate. The ruins were supposed to be picked clean by now, scavenged for every scrap of ancient knowledge.
"I've never seen this in any of the survey maps," Clair said, circling slowly. The structure had an entrance. A massive doorway that gaped like a mouth, darkness beyond. "How did the Magistrate even find it?"
"Vis-fluctuation detection," Ben said absently, still staring. "The arrays monitor for anomalies. This must have been dormant until recently."
"So... better loot?" Thomas asked hopefully.
"Or worse danger," Kaelen countered. His Vis-sight showed him nothing useful. The structure was so saturated with power that it was like trying to look into the sun. Just painful, overwhelming light.
They debated for ten minutes. Unknown danger versus potential ancient treasures. The lure of what might be inside versus the wisdom of reporting and letting someone else handle it.
Greed won. It usually did.
"Stay tight," Ben ordered. "The moment anything feels wrong, we retreat. No heroics. Understood?"
They understood.
The entrance swallowed them whole.
Inside, the structure was surprisingly intact. Walls that Kaelen's Vis-sight showed as geometric impossibilities. The Vis flowed through them in ways that hurt to perceive. The architecture was clearly artificial, but there was something organic about the layout, as if it had grown rather than been built.
"Got movement," Kaelen warned. "Flying-types. Small. Dark affinity."
The bat-creatures came in a swarm. Common-grade, easily handled. They exploded into ash under Thomas's fire and scattered under Clair's wind. The cores they left behind weren't even worth collecting.
"Traps," Kaelen called, his Vis-sight catching the telltale patterns of ancient arrays. Pressure plates that would trigger stone-fall. Trip-wires connected to spear-launchers. Vis-draining wells disguised as a safe floor. He guided them through like threading a needle.
The hallway ended at a door.
Not a doorway. A door. Massive, made of the same impossible material as the walls, covered in script that none of them could read. It had no handle, no visible mechanism.
"How do we..." Thomas started.
Ben simply pushed. The door swung inward on silent hinges, revealing...
Everything changed.
The chamber beyond was clearly artificial, aggressively so. Smooth walls of dark material that drank light. Floor tiles arranged in precise geometric patterns. And everywhere, everywhere, the suffocating pressure of concentrated Vis.
The door slammed shut behind them.
"No..." Clair lunged back, trying to force it open. It didn't budge. Ben joined her, metal Vis flooding into his muscles, and the door didn't even shiver.
Then the Vis began to flow.
Not the gentle ambient current of the forest. Not even the violent surge of an elite beast's attack. This was a tsunami, crashing into them from all sides, forcing its way through skin and bone and directly into their Soul Spaces.
Kaelen's core screamed in protest. Too much. Too fast. His Soul Space couldn't filter it, couldn't moderate the influx. He felt something inside him start to crack under the pressure.
Maya fell first.
The vitality-user had the highest Vis-sensitivity of any of them. It was what made her such a good healer, that awareness of power and life. Now it was killing her. She collapsed to her knees, hands clawing at her chest, her Soul-Etching blazing so bright it left after-images.
"Maya!" Thomas scrambled toward her, but he was barely keeping himself upright. The fire-type Vis in his own core was going wild, responding to the influx with surges of uncontrolled heat.
"She's losing it," Clair gasped. Her wind Vis whipped around her in violent eddies, responding to her panic. "The core... it's taking over..."
Maya's scream was barely human.
Her body changed. Bones lengthening with sickening cracks. Muscles twisting and reforming. The vitality core that had spent two years integrated into her Soul Space was rejecting her humanity, forcing her flesh to match its nature instead.
Chimerism. The nightmare every Soul-Master feared.
The beast that had been Maya lunged with speed nothing human could match, muscles enhanced by vitality, Vis pushed beyond natural limits. Thomas got his hands up, fire surging...
She was faster. Claws that had been fingers punched through his chest and out his back.
Thomas made a wet, surprised sound, then collapsed as she threw him aside like garbage.
"RUN!" Ben roared, grabbing Kaelen and Clair and hauling them backward. The Chimera-thing shrieked and charged, all bestial rage and twisted power.
Its rampage was indiscriminate, mindless. It slammed into walls with bone-breaking force, carving furrows into the ancient material. And in its thrashing, something gave way. A hidden door cracking open, spilling cold light into the chamber.
"There!" Kaelen pointed.
They ran. The Chimera followed, but Ben stopped at the threshold, sword raised, metal Vis turning his body into living armor. "Go! I'll hold..."
"Captain..."
"GO!"
They went. Behind them, Ben met the Chimera's charge with a bellow of defiance. The sounds of their battle faded as the hidden door swung shut with terrible finality.
Kaelen and Clair stood in the new chamber, breathing in ragged gasps, covered in blood. Thomas's blood, Maya's blood, their own blood from where the Vis pressure had forced it from their pores.
"Ben can win," Clair said, voice hollow. "He's Level 3. He can..."
She trailed off. They both knew she was lying.
Kaelen looked up.
The chamber was immense. A throne room, perhaps, or a place of judgment. And at its far end, sitting on a throne carved from a single piece of black material that seemed to drink the light itself, was a figure.
Seven feet tall. Skeletal, the flesh dried and mummified against bones that looked too thick, too dense to be human. Draped in clothing that had once been rich but was now rotted to scraps and tatters, held together by embroidery thread that glimmered with embedded power.
Dead. Obviously dead. Dead for centuries.
Kaelen's Vis-sight showed him differently.
There, in the figure's chest. A gleam. Something that contained more power than Kaelen had ever perceived in one place, condensed down to the size of a fist. A core. But not like any beast core, not like any human legacy core.
This was something other.
Then the chamber moved.
Every particle of Vis in the space, in the air, in the walls, in Kaelen's and Clair's bodies, was violently yanked toward the throne. Toward the figure. Toward that gleaming core in its chest.
The sound it made was like the world inhaling.
The atmosphere went silent. Oppressively, terrifyingly silent.
Then pressure erupted from the figure like a physical blow.
Kaelen's knees hit the stone floor before he realized he was falling. Blood burst from his nose, his mouth, his ears. Beside him, Clair was in the same state, choking on her own blood, her eyes wide with the kind of fear that came from facing something so far beyond your ability to comprehend that your mind simply shut down.
The figure moved.
Just slightly. A twitch of dead fingers. A settling of ancient bones.
Then the voice came.
It didn't come from the figure's mouth. It came from everywhere. From the walls, from the floor, from inside Kaelen's skull. It resonated in his bones and made his Soul Space shiver like a struck bell.
Two words. Just two words.
"WHAT YEAR?"
The pressure increased. Kaelen felt something in his spine creak dangerously. Clair was sobbing, pressed flat against the floor, barely conscious.
Ben's voice came from behind them, weak and shaking.
"Year... 428... of the Void Era..."
The pressure lessened. Marginally. Enough that Kaelen could lift his head, could see.
The figure's head turned. Not toward Ben. Toward him.
Kaelen felt it. The attention. Something vast and terrible and utterly inhuman focused on him with the weight of a falling mountain, looking not at his body but through it, past flesh and bone to the core of whatever made him him.
Studying his Soul Space. Seeing what no one should be able to see.
Seeing his gift.
The voice came again, and this time there was something in it. Curiosity? Interest?
"Interesting... a person with Origin-Eye."
Origin-Eye.
The name his gift had always lacked. The answer to what he was.
Ben tried to speak, tried to move...
The captain turned to mist. Literally turned to mist, his body dissolving into particles of light that dispersed into nothing. His Soul Core clattered to the ground, now just an inert piece of crystallized Vis.
Clair screamed. Then she too became light, became nothing. Her core joined Ben's.
Behind them, beyond the now-open door, the Chimera's core hit the floor of the previous chamber.
Three cores. Three lives. Gone.
Kaelen remained.
He understood. Of course, he understood. The figure had spared him because of his eyes. Because Origin-Eye meant something. Because he was useful.
An invisible force grabbed him, pulled him across the floor like a puppet on strings. He couldn't resist. Couldn't even try. His Level 1 power meant nothing here; he was less than an insect before a titan.
He stopped floating three feet from the throne. From the figure. This close, he could see details. The ancient clothing had embroidery that formed patterns similar to Soul-Etchings, but far more complex. The bones were wrong, too dense, the skeleton of something that had gone so far beyond human that even death couldn't hide it.
Something appeared in the air between them.
Liquid. But not liquid. It moved wrong, writhed like it was alive, red and black swirling in patterns that hurt to watch. Kaelen's Vis-sight showed it as pure power, unfiltered, unaligned, raw Vis given physical form.
It expanded. Lunged forward. Wrapped around him like a living thing.
Kaelen's Soul Space shattered.
Pain. Not physical pain. Something worse. The sensation of having the core of yourself, the metaphysical space that made you a Soul-Master, broken. Like having your identity stripped away piece by piece.
His core, his carefully-nurtured Mind-type core, the one he'd survived the fusion with, the one that had given him his sight, dissolved. Simply ceased to exist.
Something else appeared. From the figure's chest. The gleaming core he'd seen earlier, floating free, pulling away from the ancient corpse.
It entered him. Fused with him. With him.
It was too much. Too alien. His mind couldn't process it, couldn't integrate something so fundamentally other into his Soul Space.
Kaelen died.
His awareness dimmed, flickered, went out like a candle in a hurricane. The pain stopped. Everything stopped.
The body fell.
The figure on the throne crumbled. Seven feet of mummified corpse turning to dust in seconds, the ancient clothing falling away, everything that had been a person reduced to nothing but ash that dispersed on a breeze that shouldn't exist in this sealed chamber.
The body lay on the floor, still wrapped in the red-and-black substance. Still. Silent.
Then the substance hardened. Like a chrysalis. Like a cocoon.
Seconds passed. Minutes.
A crack appeared.
A hand emerged. Pale. Perfect. Unmarred by any scar or callus or sign of use. The fingers were long, elegant, the hand of someone who'd never known manual labor.
The cocoon shattered.
The figure that stood was human in shape but not in presence. The same height as Kaelen had been, the same general features, but perfected. No imperfections. No asymmetries. Skin like polished marble. Musculature that looked carved by a master sculptor.
It stood there, naked and newborn, and drew a breath.
The Vis in the chamber rushed to it, drawn by some impossible magnetism. It breathed in, and the world breathed with it. Exhaled, and the chamber seemed to shudder in response.
Again. Slower this time. Savoring each inhale as if air itself was the greatest luxury imaginable, as if breathing was something that had been denied for so long that its return was ecstasy.
The figure's eyes opened.
Blue. Brilliant blue, glowing with inner light, the color of a clear sky seen from the top of the world.
The voice that came from its throat was different from the one that had asked about the year. This was human. Male. Rich with satisfaction and dark amusement.
"I am reborn."
The chamber was silent.
The figure smiled.
END CHAPTER ONE