Tunde breathed raggedly as he sat among the strewn bodies of the darkhowlers, their corpses littering the area around him. The midday sun filtered dimly through the thick canopy of giant leaves and long tree branches that formed the forest's ceiling. His clothes were torn to shreds, and his body was covered in lacerations. He inhaled deeply, shuddering as he slowly stood up, clenching and unclenching his fists.
It had taken him the better part of a day—and then some—to fight his way through the pack of darkhowlers that had attacked him. All were tier 1, except for their leader, an early tier 2 disciple rank, if one were to use the conventional ranking system. A small pile of their cores lay gathered nearby, weakly glowing orbs that shimmered faintly in the shade. Their bodies looked as though they had exploded violently, a result of his burgeoning, brutal fighting style—kicks, jabs, and fast punches aimed to shatter bones.
His body paid dearly for such close combat. Every movement sent a sharp ache through him, the howlers' claws having dug deep even as he fought on with a controlled frenzy. The urge to run or attack wildly had been there, but the occasional jolt from the bands around his wrists reminded him of his goal, keeping him focused. Especially when facing the alpha howler, a terrible beast whose body seemed reinforced to tier 2 despite being tier 1, Tunde had thrown everything he had into the battle—elixirs, pills, hastily eaten fruits—just to stay in the fight.
Gathering the cores into his ring, Tunde began his trek back to the house, fully aware that he looked like pulverized meat. His skin was torn, bitten, and slashed, but his bones had held firm throughout the battle—a small point of pride considering the circumstances. As he passed the stones surrounding the house, the sounds of growls grew louder, predators drawn to the scent of blood and flesh. He sat in front of the house, washing himself with water from the stream, and tore off the remnants of his tattered robes, staring at the lacerations lining his skin.
He bit into another initiate-grade fruit, savoring the burst of flavor as the energy surged to his heart, nourishing what it could. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath, exhaled, and folded his legs as he began to meditate, cycling the Ethra he had absorbed. The relic on his hand purified the Ethra as he visualized resonance, replaying the movements through his body and replicating them in silence. He felt the power gather in his palm before dispersing again.
He repeated the cycle over and over, maintaining perfect awareness of his surroundings. With each repetition, the strain on his body lessened as the resonance became smoother. He felt his heart reaching the limit of its gain from the initiate-grade fruits and realized he was close to the peak of the initiate rank. It made him wonder how anyone could get stuck at that rank, and then he realized he was advancing thanks to the resources left by Elder Joran.
Those resources must have been worth a fortune, even for an adept-ranked elder like Joran. Most initiates he had met were peak rankers, except for those from Red Blossom House, who had been at the bottom due to political reasons. Opening his eyes, Tunde noticed shapes moving through the forest toward him. With a light groan, he got up, retrieved a fresh robe from his void ring, and prepared to face the new threat.
Large, grey reptiles with red-slitted eyes and mouths that emitted a faint vapor, wilting the grass before them as they moved closer—Hazevipers. Tunde recalled their description from a book left by Elder Joran: toxic creatures with hardened, scaly skin and serrated teeth. As they neared, they paused at the sight of him. Tunde tensed, preparing for what would come next. He moved before they could spit, dodging globs of steaming liquid that splashed where he had stood moments earlier.
Activating his Ethra sight, Tunde flipped through the air, landing on the back of a viper. His fist crashed down on its skull, cracking and exploding it instantly before he leapt back, avoiding another spit. The skull, despite being relatively hard, was the only soft spot on its body. Its dense scales could deflect blades and blunt weapons, at least the regular ones.
Weaving between the trees, Tunde considered gathering resonance but thought better of it, canceling the idea. He rolled away from a claw swipe before delivering a kick to the underbelly of a lunging viper, sending it crashing into another that had tried to sneak up on him. His Ethra sight, growing stronger with each use, now subtly alerted him to disruptions in the Ethra flow around him for nearly a mile—a significant improvement from merely outlining weak spots.
Two vipers tumbled away as Tunde sprang to his feet, hissing as the vapor scalded his skin. He bit back the pain and blew the skulls of the disoriented vipers apart, their bodies thrashing as they spurted black blood. Only two were left, but they had finally recognized him as a true threat. Backing away slowly, they growled, plumes of vapor surrounding them as they retreated into the shadows of the forest.
Tunde released a shuddering breath, staring at his blistered knuckles. He grabbed the bodies of the dead vipers and began dragging them back toward his home. The forest was silent for the first time, the tier 1 creatures realizing that a predator had taken up residence.
Carefully removing the cores with a knife imbued with his Ethra, Tunde hung what remained of the vipers and howlers to dry, hoping they might fetch a reasonable price. Seated back inside his home, he went through the book on Ethra and affinities, marveling at the possibilities he hadn’t considered before. Strength, speed, even pure Ethra—concepts he hadn’t thought possible. But what truly caught his attention was the mention of Ethra fusion, a probability at the rank of Lord known as concepts.
After gaining another Ethra affinity at the Adept rank, rankers could create a core at the Lord rank, fusing those two Ethra affinities into something stronger. The idea excited him, but it was a distant goal. First, he had to survive to become an Adept, then a Disciple before he could entertain any lofty dreams of gaining another Ethra affinity. Snorting to himself, he realized how far off those goals were.
Rummaging through his void ring, Tunde pulled out more meat and fruit, all tier 1, and ate again. His always-hungry body absorbed everything, but he felt the benefits diminishing drastically, the food doing little more than filling his ever-rumbling stomach. Lying on the ground, he was about to drift fitfully into slumber when an overwhelming wave of bloodlust crashed into him.
In a flash, he was on his feet and out the door, stopping dead in his tracks as he caught sight of the creature.
It didn’t belong in this part of the forest; that much he knew. The forest hadn’t gone silent because of him—it had gone silent because of this creature. It moved on six pincer-like legs, its black carapace blending seamlessly with the dim light of the forest. A stinger at its rear dripped with a green liquid that Tunde was certain was venom. For a moment, he wondered why nearly every creature in this forest seemed to use some form of poison.
The creature let out a screech, its beady black eyes fixed on him, then glanced hungrily at the skins of the creatures Tunde had killed and laid out to dry.
This wasn’t a tier 1 beast; he was sure of it. He could only hope it was a tier 2, judging by how strongly the venom’s Ethra permeated the air around it. Tunde crouched, tensing as the creature sprung at him, even from beyond the stone barricades. It crashed through them, Tunde’s eyes widening in alarm as he leapt away from the stinger that stabbed into the ground where he had stood moments before. His body protested wildly—he was hurt, he was tired—but he had Ethra, and thanks to his meditation and the resources he had consumed, an almost full heart.
He grabbed a rock and hurled it with all his strength, the projectile flying straight through the air and blowing away one of the creature’s eyes. It shrieked in pain, but its stinger still managed to slap Tunde into the crumbled stone, knocking the breath out of him. He moved immediately, but not fast enough. The stinger grazed his skin, and a burning fire lanced through him, causing Tunde to scream in agony.
The pain was excruciating, his vision swimming as if a thousand insects were biting him at once, but he couldn’t stop—to stop was to die. His heart beat irregularly as the pain threatened to overwhelm him, but the jolts from the bands on his wrists dragged his focus back. He kept dodging, though his reactions grew slower with each attack.
Finally, the creature caught him in its pincers as he tried to maneuver around it, pulling him closer to its maw. In a reflexive action, Tunde activated resonance, and with one touch of his hand, the limb was blown clean off—or so it seemed to his dizzy sight. The creature shrieked in agony as Tunde fell to the ground, scrambling backward in pain. But he latched onto its other pincer with his remaining functional hand, even as half his body grew numb.
He was a rabid beast, a feral creature fighting to survive, and somehow, the creature realized this too, even as it tried to shake off the weakened Tunde. He let the creature’s thrashing throw him onto its head, where he placed his hand and triggered resonance again, blowing the head cleanly off despite its carapace. The creature staggered, its body moving out of sheer muscle memory before crashing to the ground. Tunde rolled off, gasping for breath.
He struggled to breathe, his eyes swimming with tears from the pain. His heart was slowing down, despite the increasing jolts from the bands. His eyes fluttered as he tried to cycle Ethra, dimly wondering why the relic wasn’t helping him purify the venom—it was Ethra-based, wasn’t it?
Each cycle was pure agony, his mind so focused on that single act that he barely noticed when his body began to spasm and foam at the mouth. His hand clenched into a fist, his eyes fluttered, and Tunde passed out from the pain.
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He was back home, back on Crystalreach, as he had learned it was called, back when his parents were alive. He watched the always cloudy skies and felt the frigid winds as rankers in shimmering, myriad-colored robes descended from flying vessels. He saw them tearing mothers from children, beating the men into submission. He watched himself, the old him, trembling as he suffered beatings at the hands of a ranker. His memory was too hazy to discern the man's rank, but Tunde suspected he wasn’t higher than an Initiate.
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Slowly, he watched his old self plead for mercy as fury filled his mind, a hot lance of anger spearing through his spine.
“No, not like this,” he thought.
He wouldn’t die to some tiered creature in the forest. No, he had made a promise, a vow. It was his driving force, but if he died without learning the true story of his people, they would fade into the recesses of history, just like the thousands who had died before them.
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He forced himself out of the memory, jerking awake as his body spasmed. He sat up, sight groggy, breathing heavily as he dragged in mouthfuls of air. His heart pounded, then gradually slowed as he gripped his chest, struggling to his feet. Staggering, he looked around. The body of the dead creature lay a few meters away, and as he touched himself, he realized the pain had vanished, leaving only phantom aches. He moved cautiously toward the creature, placing one hand on its cool carapace. He carefully avoided the stinger, which still leaked venom onto the ground, and sat on the body, feeling the familiar ache of hunger gnawing at him again, almost ravenous as if it was eating him from the inside.
Reflexively opening his void ring, he dived into what was left of the tier 1 fruits and meat, swallowing healing elixirs that felt like ice cubes sliding down his parched throat. Wincing, he regained his composure and stared at his hands, now healed. His eyes widened as he closed and opened his fingers repeatedly. His Ethra felt denser within him, and his heart beat faster and stronger.
His limbs felt sturdier than when he had first arrived in the forest. Unsure but hopeful, he held back his excitement, realizing the probability of what had just happened. He closed his eyes and meditated, viewing the Ethra lines within his body. The midnight-colored Ethra sparkled brighter, and he immediately understood what had occurred.
A smile broke out on his face as he stood, cycling Ethra again before picking up a large rock. With a slight squeeze, he crushed it to dust. He had ascended to the rank of Disciple, all thanks to the tier 2 creature. He could now sense its fading Ethra, potent and rivaling his current rank, but the question remained—how had he advanced? The creature’s venom hadn’t been Ethra-based. It had been deadly, but it wasn’t something the relic could work with. So, what had happened?
Viewing himself again, he felt his entire bone structure growing stronger, his limbs reacting faster. He spotted a creeping creature moving on the branches above. In a flash, he grabbed a stone and threw it with all his might. The projectile shot through the forest, exploding on contact with the creature, which fell from the branch, landing on the forest floor.
Smiling to himself, Tunde turned back to the destroyed stone rings around his home, then to the creature’s body. He grabbed his knife, imbuing it with Ethra, and began the work of skinning it, relieving the creature of its carapace. A few hours later, as the sun set and the forest was plunged into darkness, he finished his task. He set the carapaces aside, then gripped the stinger in his hand, examining it closely. His Ethra sight revealed the entire forest to him as if it were daylight—nothing could sneak up on him now, especially not the steadily growing hordes of stalkers, vipers, and howlers that crept closer, thinking him unaware.
He was a Disciple now, somehow, someway—perhaps it was the venom. He would figure it out later, but for now, he had to clear the hurdle that was the tier 1 ring of the forest. He was going to purge it of all the vicious lifeforms that wanted him dead. Rising to his feet, he let his void ring swallow all the carapaces and skins with a single touch.
“I must thank you all,” he said to the darkness. “You’ve all taught me a valuable lesson here, in this forest.”
Dropping the stinger, he channeled his Ethra through his body, imitating resonance as he felt his body respond positively, his fists vibrating with pure power.
“But now, it is time for me to move on to the next hurdle. Accept my apologies,” he finished.
Blood and gore exploded around him as Tunde pummeled the assembled hordes into a fine mist, scores of tier 1 creatures dying in the onslaught. He proceeded with the systematic eradication of every living thing within the vicinity. The night became filled with the dying shrieks of tier 1 creatures who either fled in terror or faced obliteration at the hands of what they now viewed as a vicious predator.
By the time he was done, it had only been a few hours, but the ranker who stood within a sea of blood, gore, and bones was different from the one who had stepped into the forest as a confused Initiate, and he knew it.
********************
Elder Joran stepped out of the large building, watching as Celia and the disciple made their way toward the clan's underground prison. A thoughtful expression crossed his face. Time was running out faster than he had anticipated. With the family heads moving and the patriarch’s eyes on him and his student, Joran knew he might need to accelerate his plans. With the speed of an adept, he moved swiftly toward the forest, blitzing past a multitude of buildings and disciples manning the checkpoint. As he landed on a branch, he paused in midair, his senses confirming something unexpected. A light chuckle escaped him, growing into a wide grin as the elder continued to plot.
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Elyria descended the stairs to the lower cells, the flickering glow of orbs lighting her path. Elder Celia and Rhyn followed behind in silence, their footsteps echoing down the wet, humid corridor. They passed by large, humanoid stone figures carved from pure jade, their pale green visages glowing eerily in the darkness. The cell where Thorne was kept was a dark, cold place. The outline of the revenant huddled against the wall, knees drawn up to his chest, head bowed.
Elyria glanced up at the elder and her brother, both of whom stared at her expectantly.
“If it pleases the elder, I would like to confer with the revenant in private,” she requested.
Thorne responded by lifting his head from between his legs, his dull green gaze illuminating the cold cell. The elder gave a curt nod.
“Rhyn stays—at arm’s length, of course—just close enough to do some damage and hold back the adept for a few seconds until I arrive,” Celia replied.
Elyria bowed at the waist, her head low. She wouldn’t correct the elder on the fatal mistake she was making.
“The elder’s benevolence is gratefully accepted,” Elyria said.
In a blink, the elder was gone, leaving Elyria to the sound of rattling chains that bound the revenant. Glowing scripts lit up the prison—wards, she realized grimly.
“Wards etched by the Arcanists themselves. The clan must have spent a fortune to keep you within its hold,” Elyria remarked, breaking the silence, aware of Rhyn somewhere in the darkness, no doubt with one hand on his blade.
“They were there before I arrived. Probably some pet project of their patriarch,” Thorne’s cracked voice replied.
The wards were symbols etched in the mysterious language of the Arcanists, those elusive and esoteric Ethra users who were a hybrid between mages and crafters, known across Adamath. They were united under the banner of a regent known as the Scriptweaver, a supposed power that ruled the fabled Celestis Veil, the hidden city of Arcanists where all knowledge of barriers and wards was studied.
That the clan had managed to acquire the services of the Arcanists was no small feat. It spoke to how they had been able to hold down an adept within their dungeon and to their standing within the empire itself. Elyria nodded silently, mulling over her words before speaking.
“They’ve decided to execute you,” she said bluntly.
Staring into the eyes of the man whose form still kept her on edge, Elyria felt her instincts urging her to strike first and ask questions later. Thorne exuded a lethal aura, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was dangerous. Perhaps it was due to her upbringing on the Silvershade continent, a place of ruthlessness hidden behind masks of smiles and outward calm.
Thorne sighed, nodding as he pushed himself to his feet, bones cracking as he stretched. The wards glowed softly, sapping his strength by leeching his Ethra as fast as his heart could pump it, keeping him as weak as a disciple. But Elyria knew that was no real handicap for the man who had gone toe to toe with a Lord, albeit a freshly minted one.
“I never expected less. No clan would want to be caught with a revenant in their midst, not with the Heralds as neighbors,” he continued.
“They plan to execute you in a few weeks,” Elyria pressed on, searching for any sign of remorse or anger in Thorne. He gave none.
“Giving me time to make my peace? That can’t be right,” he said.
“Apparently, they can’t execute you without the presence of at least one Lord from the Heralds as a witness. They’ve sent a message and expect a reply in about a month,” Elyria responded.
“So I must simply wither away in a cage, never seeing the light of day until my appointed time?” Thorne said, a deadly edge in his tone.
The soft whisper of a blade leaving its sheath echoed faintly across the darkened dungeon, and Thorne snorted.
“I could snap your neck in a second, even in my weakened state. Sheathe your toy, boy,” he growled.
Elyria sighed, silently thanking the Hegemons for small favors as Rhyn gave no audible reply from wherever he stood in the darkness. The dim glow of the orb lights did nothing to reveal his position. She was certain Thorne could see him, though, given that revenants were rumored to see the warmth of living beings, akin to Tunde’s Ethra sight.
“No, the clan doesn’t trust you. In fact, they believe you’re either a willing or unwilling accomplice to whatever the revenants are planning on this continent—something they intend to present to the Heralds when they eventually arrive,” Elyria said.
“They call me a betrayer?” he said, the lethality in his voice now unmistakable.
“Supposedly,” Elyria said cautiously.
“Still, it presents you with an opportunity I believe would work in both the clan’s and your favor,” she continued.
“Oh? And what opportunity is that?” Thorne asked, finally calming as he spoke with bitterness.
“A month from now, the Surge begins. The Heralds might need to delay their arrival, given that the Imperial family will be working overtime to secure their territory from the Artificers’ Guild. The cult won’t be able to move as carelessly as they would like, not when they’re expected to hold down numerous cities and supply lines in preparation for incursions by the Guild and their technocrat factions,” Elyria explained.
“And here I thought you knew nothing about Bloodfire,” Thorne said after a few seconds.
“Ignorance is no excuse, as far as I’m concerned,” she replied.
Thorne sat back down, cracking his neck as he closed his eyes. “The clan expects me to work for them. And what do I get in return?”
“Freedom, at least within Jade Peak itself, limited to their reach within the continent. Naturally, they expect you to stay hidden while working on subtle missions for them,” Elyria replied.
It took Thorne a few seconds to piece together what she meant. He chuckled to himself, shaking his head.
“They expect me to do their dirty work? Me?” he asked incredulously.
“There’s a tier 4 rift opening soon, just on the eve of when the empire predicts the Surge to begin. The mountain sects will be moving to secure the rift as well. It’s rumored to be sponsored by the Acacia clan themselves to sabotage the chances of the Verdan clan getting another Lord in their ranks,” she explained.
Thorne opened his eyes, which glowed even brighter as he smiled.
“And they believe you could persuade me to do this, why?” he asked.
Elyria winced. “Because the life of a certain Initiate companion of ours is on the line,” she said.
“Tunde?” Thorne asked, confused. “How does he come into this?”
“That’s a long story,” Elyria said with a sigh.
Thorne glanced around with his eyes. “Well, we’ve got all the time we need,” he replied, as Elyria nodded.