Chapter 10
The silence of the smuggler’s hollow was worse than the howling wind of the Wastes. It offered too much room to think.
Drystan Harrow sat cross-legged on the cold basalt floor, his back pressed against the damp cavern wall.
His icy gray eyes were open, staring blindly into the pitch-black void.
Beside him, Nymeria Shade’s breathing had finally leveled out into a deep, exhausted rhythm.
The bitter mana-resin had stabilized her, but Drystan’s mind was running a thousand miles a minute.
He was a man who used to obsess over quarterly projections and risk assessments. His brain was fundamentally wired to seek patterns, to understand the structural integrity of his environment. Right now, he was flying completely blind.
He knew Evander Cross had deployed the Vanguard. He knew the golden zealots were scouring the Ashen Wastes. But knowing they were coming was not enough. He needed to know their exact vectors. He needed to understand the mechanics of the god hunting him.
He looked down at his left arm.
In the absolute darkness, the crude, horrific patch job of his Weave-Gauntlet pulsed with a very faint, sickly green light.
The aether-threads he had manually jammed into the cracked Memoria Core were bleeding residual kinetic energy.
Earlier that morning, the gauntlet had accidentally tapped into the academy’s automated surveillance network, projecting a brief hologram of Evander in the courtyard.
It had been a glitch. A mistake.
Drystan decided to weaponize the mistake.
If the gauntlet could catch a stray frequency from the academy's wards, he could theoretically force it to tune into a specific channel. He could hack the Weave-Interface.
He didn't have a keyboard. He didn't have a monitor. He had only his own nervous system and a shattered piece of mythic engineering.
Drystan gritted his teeth, suppressing a groan as his broken rib ground against his sternum. He brought his shredded right hand—still slick with the acidic blood of the Scavenger-Hound—over the glowing green knuckle plate of the gauntlet.
He closed his eyes, visualizing the intricate, geometric architecture of the Weave he had absorbed from the hound’s core.
He pressed his thumb directly against the exposed, sizzling aether-threads.
The pain was immediate and blinding. It felt like driving a rusted nail into an electrical socket.
His left bicep seized violently. The smell of oxidized copper and burning hair flooded the small cavern.
He didn't pull away. He used the localized agony as a conduit, forcing his own willpower down the wire, demanding the shattered Memoria Core to reach out across the freezing expanse of the Ashen Wastes and connect to the Obsidian Spires.
Find him, Drystan’s mind commanded. Find the golden boy.
The gauntlet shrieked. It was a high-pitched, digital squeal of tearing metal and corrupted magic.
A violent beam of strobe-like aether shot from his wrist, striking the flat stone wall opposite him.
The projection flickered frantically, spitting static and jagged lines of Eldritch-Cant across the basalt.
Drystan pushed harder, bleeding a fraction of his own life force into the crystal to stabilize the feed.
The static cleared.
The cavern was suddenly illuminated by a blinding, sickeningly perfect white light.
Nymeria gasped, startling awake. She scrambled backward, her hands raised defensively, before her glowing amber eyes adjusted to the projection on the wall.
"What did you do?" she whispered, her voice tight with panic.
"Reconnaissance," Drystan ground out through clenched teeth. Sweat poured down his pale face, his left arm trembling uncontrollably.
The hologram was breathtaking in its sterile beauty.
They were looking into the Apex Spire, the highest, most secure sanctum in all of Fate Academy.
It was a massive, circular chamber constructed entirely of polished white marble and veins of glowing, liquid gold.
There were no shadows here. The aether-lamps burned with an intense, surgical precision.
In the center of the room stood a long, obsidian table.
Evander Cross stood over it.
He was not wearing his gleaming silver armor. He wore pristine, form-fitting white silks that highlighted the flawless, genetically engineered perfection of his physique. His golden hair caught the light like a halo.
But it was what Evander was doing that made Drystan’s stomach turn.
Pinned to the obsidian table was a captured Umbral-Fae, one of the twilight creatures native to the deep under-realm. The creature was still alive. Its chest was sliced open, held apart by precise, golden retractors.
Evander held a slender silver scalpel. He wasn't interrogating the creature. He wasn't torturing it for pleasure. He was methodically, clinically dissecting its mana-veins while it breathed. His beautiful face held absolutely no emotion. No anger, no sadistic joy. Just a cold, calculating boredom.
He was treating a living being like a faulty piece of machinery.
"Fascinating," Evander murmured. His melodic voice echoed perfectly through the aether-feed into the damp smuggler’s hollow. "The twilight resonance is highly inefficient. It wastes nearly forty percent of its kinetic output on thermal radiation."
The heavy, gilded doors of the sanctum hissed open.
Corin, the lesser acolyte who had beaten Drystan in the corridor, stepped into the pristine room. Corin looked terrified. His yellow silks were perfectly pressed, but his face was pale, and he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the marble floor.
"Lord Cross," Corin said, sinking to one knee.
Evander did not look up from the vivisection. He carefully extracted a glowing, pulsing purple vein from the creature's chest and placed it into a crystal vial. The Umbral-Fae let out a weak, agonizing whimper.
"Report, Corin," Evander commanded softly. "Have the Vanguard secured the perimeter of the Wastes?"
"Yes, my lord," Corin stammered. "The perimeter is locked. But... the tracking hounds have lost the scent. The Chromatic Storms are scrambling the thermal signatures. Moros and the Shadow-Weaver have vanished into the dead forest."
Evander paused. He set the bloody silver scalpel down on a pristine white cloth.
He finally turned to look at the kneeling acolyte. His summer-sky eyes were terrifyingly blank.
"Vanished," Evander repeated. The word hung in the air, heavy and absolute.
"We found the remains of an Ironwood Chimera," Corin added quickly, desperation bleeding into his tone. "And the corpse of a Scavenger-Hound near the western ridge. Both were obliterated by raw, unstable kinetic energy. It matches the corrupted signature Moros displayed in the courtyard."
Evander wiped his hands on a silk towel. He turned his back on the dying creature on the table and walked slowly toward the massive, arched window overlooking the bruised twilight of the academy grounds.
"The Script is flawed," Evander said. He didn't sound angry.
He sounded profoundly disappointed in the architecture of the universe.
"The Doomed Mid-Boss was a localized variable.
He was meant to provide exactly eight thousand experience points upon his execution.
He was meant to drop the Runic-Steel Signet, allowing my progression into the upper tiers of the Light-Weave. "
Drystan listened from the dark hollow, the Weave-Gauntlet burning his skin.
Experience points. Drops. Progression.
Evander wasn't speaking in metaphors. He wasn't a religious zealot fighting a holy war. He possessed the same meta-knowledge Drystan did. But Evander didn't view Kaelen-D?r as a reality to survive; he viewed it as a spreadsheet to conquer. He was maximizing a build.
"He is an anomaly, my lord," Corin said, still staring at the floor. "He is corrupted. The Vanguard will find him and purge the code."
"No."
Evander turned sharply, his pristine robes flaring. The sudden, absolute command in his voice caused Corin to flinch violently.
"You will not purge him," Evander stated, walking slowly back to the obsidian table.
He leaned his perfectly chiseled face over the dying Umbral-Fae, his eyes distant.
"I have analyzed the kinetic blast he used to shatter my executioner’s halberd.
It wasn't just raw power. It was a glitch.
He has forcibly rewritten the runic architecture of his own bloodline. "
Nymeria grabbed Drystan’s right shoulder in the dark, her fingers digging painfully into his heavy leather duster. She understood exactly what Evander was implying.
"Lord Cross?" Corin asked, confused.
"There is a hard level cap written into the foundation of this world," Evander explained, his voice taking on the manic, obsessed tone of a fanatic discovering a new scripture.
"No matter how many beasts I slaughter, no matter how perfectly I adhere to the Light-Weave, the system halts my progression.
I am bound by the mathematical limits of my own divine flesh. "
Evander reached down and picked up the crystal vial containing the pulsing purple vein.
"But Moros broke the math," Evander whispered, his summer-sky eyes wide and bright. "He intercepted a lethal strike that should have mathematically severed his arm, and he survived by glitching the kinetic output. His blood is no longer bound by the Script. He is a walking, breathing loophole."
Drystan’s heart hammered against his broken rib. The horrific realization was a tidal wave of cold dread.
"Issue a new directive to the Vanguard," Evander commanded, his voice echoing with absolute, terrifying authority. "Vorian Moros is not to be killed. He is the most valuable resource in Kaelen-D?r."
Evander walked toward Corin, stopping just inches from the kneeling acolyte.
"They are to cripple him. Break his legs. Sever his functional arm. But keep his heart beating. Bring him to the Apex Spire alive."
Evander smiled. It was a beautiful, flawless smile that contained absolutely no humanity.