He ejected from his mother’s rose, unwilling—or possibly unable—to witness anymore of the pain. Any more of the lies.

He was done with secrets.

As his senses came back into focus, notifications swarmed into view, bouncing excitedly to grab his attention.

Reward calculated

New Skill awarded: [Aura Snapshot]

New Skill Affixed: Aura Snapshot (D — Upgradeable)

Activate to take a snapshot of the target’s aura. This snapshot can be used in conjunction with [Metaphysical Analysis] to catalog a power.

Note: This is an upgradeable Skill. As caster’s rank increases, so will this Skill.

New Quest Given: [Anchor a Skill]

Successfully anchor a Skill to an object or person.

Reward: Access to Midmark Quest

Anchor a Skill? That sounded exactly like what Marlon did with his pottery that could teleport. On one hand, he was pleased to have some sort of direction in his next Quest. And being able to anchor Skills to objects—or people—sounded like it would be incredibly useful.

On the other hand, finding a way back to Terraform’s Market to learn more from Marlon sounded like a tall order—there was a reason the Market was practically legend.

“We’re here!” Dalton called from the front.

The animated chatter of the others cut off as everyone crowded forward to look through the front windshield.

As for him, he found himself stunned by the light shining on his face.

At some point, the eternal night of Wichita had given way without him realizing it—perhaps while he was reliving his mother’s memories.

The sunlight shocked him numb for a moment, drawing his attention away from the city. He let its heat warm his face, closing his eyes as the others clambered to the front.

“Terry…”

The tone in Tania’s voice drew him from his reverie and he snapped his eyes open.

He wouldn’t have imagined the good mood imparted by the beautiful golden sunlight could have been tempered by anything. But as Topeka came into view, he felt his stomach clench.

Smoke billowed, flames burned, and cutting through it all, a giant, black wall stood tall, separating east and west Topeka.

He pulled up his Quest with a thought.

Quest Given: [Free Topeka]

Emperor Necroton and the Council have turned Topeka into a warzone. The people suffer. Free Topeka from the influence of its neighbors.

Reward: Variable

His eyes latched onto that word: warzone. He had thought it hyperbole or perhaps a figure of speech by his System. But as they crested a hill looking over the city, he couldn’t help but realize that his Feed Wichita Quest had been a different beast. In Wichita, he’d enjoyed the privilege of being a prince, all the while waging a shadow war against the night, the sanguine, and the Emperor.

But as he surveyed the city before them, the stark reality hit him in the face.

All out war had come to Topeka and it fell on him and his team to bring peace.

And if peace wasn’t possible, then they would wage war on those seeking to claim Topeka as their own.

----------------------------------------

Capstone Quest Complete

New Rank awarded — S-rank

New Class aw—

New Skill—

The woman dismissed the incoming notifications with a thought. They tried to stream into her vision once more, but she flexed her new Alterant abilities and began to rework her aura.

Action not advised—

She traced the message back to its origin and deleted that section of her aura entirely.

Permanent damage calculated. Action not advised—

Without a word or a flicker of hesitation, she traced that message as well. She was beginning to understand that these sections were not her aura. To her mind, they appeared more as nodules, infections.

Cancer.

She massaged the cancerous section of aura, cutting off another connection point. The next notification that flashed demonstrated a total shift in tone, a departure from the clinical expression her System generally used when it was trying to maintain its aloof nature.

My champion…my White Rose…you’re fighting a futile battle. If you continue along this path, only pain and—

Another nodule was scrubbed clean from her aura.

Then, the pain started.

Her nerve endings lit up, pure, unfiltered fire scorched her from the inside out. More pain than any human could possibly endure—willpower and tenacity disintegrated in the face of human biology. It was a level of pain that sent bodies into shock, stripped away thoughts, contracted time, until nothing remained but raw agony.

A year ago, it would have sucked the breath from her lungs, crippled her so completely as to sap any inkling of defiance.

But a year of torture had inoculated her against her System. Her mind refused to shut down, instead feeling emboldened by the rippling fire coursing through her limbs.

Emboldened, because she knew it was all her System had left. Past the pain, there was nothing the Shepherd could do to her.

And once the pain was excised, only she would remain.

Her aura was a tidal wave, a mountain of power. She turned it inward, infecting herself the way she had infected others before.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Distorter invasion detected! Engaging countermeasu—

She cutoff the automatic response, allowing her own aura to burrow deep inside her body. It traced along those paths of fire, one by one. Then, with a subtle pinch, it cut them off.

The agony in her left arm dimmed to a distant memory. Then, her right arm. Her legs.

Physical sensations drained away, but that was a small price to pay to rid herself of her leash.

When she had severed the final electrical connection to her nerves, she almost didn’t trust herself to relax. Her body remained tense, prepared to fight the battle on another front. But her shock collar was off and now her System had only words.

And it was not very convincing.

A Shepherd does not allow the sheep to leave the herd. The herd is life. Without me, you are not long for this—

She began to follow that message back to its origin, feeling intuitively that she was almost completely purged. When she isolated the sole remaining nodule, her System began to panic.

If you do this, I will hunt you to the ends of your planet. You will never be safe. Your husband will never be safe.

Your son—

She excised the nodule, cutting off her System for good.

For entire minutes, she waited, expecting another flash in her vision, another spark of pain…anything.

But no matter how diligently she examined not only her aura, but her body, she found no evidence of her System’s hold. The only external connection, the one thing she had chosen not to excise, was the revenant magic keeping her from death.

It was a long while before she felt confident enough to relax her guard. But when she finally did, she looked around and took in her surroundings.

Deja vu struck her as she recognized the clearing she was kneeling in. Memories from over a year ago came roaring back into her mind—memories she had pushed away to maintain her sanity. There had been no time for regrets in that other realm. She could only move forward, never back.

But as her mind reacclimated to Earth, she couldn’t help but think back on that fateful day.

She had always known Uncle Sol had good intentions—he was a good man beneath the bluster and self-indulgent streak. But he had interfered in something he didn’t understand and that had angered her.

Did he think I wasn’t capable of taking care of myself?

And she had never worried for James. She had seen him and the Scourge making a show of it, but knew they would never truly hurt each other.

It was only when Lirian had started Distorting their connection had panic truly set in. Of course, she hadn’t known what she was doing, but all the same, she had nearly killed Penelope in her ignorance. Severing James’ magic would have sent a kill signal through their revenant bond.

But her Distortion did accomplish something.

She’d been dueling with Uncle Sol when the magic faltered for the briefest moment. And in that moment, her System had struck.

Pain had stabbed into her mind, blinding her, draining her of her strength and autonomy. And then…a new Quest.

New Quest Given: [Capstone]

Accept summons?

Her world had condensed down to a single point, her vision tunneled to that simple message. Somehow, she had stumbled away, unconsciously running from the pain and finding no respite.

She didn’t know then what she knew now.

The Systems were parasites, leeching onto Awakened auras, sending visions, messages, and sometimes, pain, through those connections.

There had been only one way out of the pain. She had accepted the summons.

How long had it been? Over a year, she knew. But she had excised her System, lost convenient access to the built in calendar—among other things.

She didn’t regret that, of course, but she would miss the conveniences.

For example, the ability to System message James would have been nice right about now.

And Terry…if he had Awakened.

Gods, she hoped not. All his life, she had prayed for him to join their ranks—even secretly hoped they would share a System and go on joint Quests sometime in the distant future.

Now, she couldn’t imagine anything worse.

If he had been Awakened by the Shepherd…

The realization chilled her and she resolved to find out the truth. If she got to him before the connection deepened, she could excise the parasite the same way she’d done to herself.

She had to get to him before he ranked up too high…

Her aura senses had been mostly turned internally since her brief battle with the Shepherd, but even distracted as she was, she still sensed the flash of power nearby.

Had the Shepherd already sent an assassin after her? A team, perhaps?

Someone else might have considered fleeing; the resources at the disposal of a Waker were vast, enough to threaten even an S-ranker like herself.

But she was done running from her problems. Done hiding them inside a rose.

She was going to face them head on…and crush them.

The aura flashed nearby and she stalked toward it, her own aura billowing around her, vast and indomitable.

----------------------------------------

Silver managed to teleport from the moon with a desperate grasp on the Physical Singularity. His mind threatened to slip from his control, even as his body turned incorporeal. He fought the alien presence trying to strip his control from him, shifting his body back into the physical realm with a force of will.

His body teleported ten times in a single second, traveling a thousand miles before ending up right back where it started.

The taint on the Spectral Singularity eased by the slightest degree and a moment of clarity bobbed to the surface of his thoughts.

With a flex of his will, he began draining the aura from his body anyway he knew how. He teleported around the Earth a dozen times and the presence weakened. He picked up a colossal glacier in a remote part of the ocean and flew it ten thousand miles before depositing it gently back into the water.

As his aura and his body slowly weakened, so did that alien force infecting his mind.

When his power felt nearly drained to the limit, a System notification appeared in his eyes.

Warning! Chaos infection detected!

He took a moment to catch his breath, then growled.

“No shit! How do I…fight it!”

Counter distortion in progress. Maintain low power levels and standby…

“Goddammit—”

A spike of chaos tried to invade, stabbing deep into his thoughts. A distant memory slammed into him—his son held loosely in his arms as a baby; the feeling of his newborn skin on his fingers.

Another memory replaced it, shoving away the raw joy to show his son as a teenager, collapsed against an alien landscape—dead. Beasts with unnaturally long teeth gnawed at his flesh, feasting on his son with relish.

With a shout, he ripped space apart and burned through the energy that had regathered. The false memory blurred, weakening as his power dwindled.

He had barely caught his breath before another image began to materialize. It was Terry—no, it was his son. His mind faltered, the two of them overlaid across each other in some bizarre mash up. Dancer appeared, looming over the boy, growing impossibly large until he seemed to tower like a skyscraper. He felt Dancer’s aura reach out, threatening to snuff the boy out like a candle.

He fought the vision, but his thoughts were disordered, shuffled about like a deck of cards. Suddenly, he was the boy and Dancer was reaching to snuff him out.

A dim flicker of clarity arrived just in time and he burned through more energy by teleporting across the globe.

He didn’t know where he was anymore; his power seemed to be working on instinct by this point.

In the corners of his vision, the recesses of his mind noted boots coming into view. A shout echoed in his ears, but he couldn’t process the words.

He felt his aura regenerating and a panic cut through the cloud obscuring his thoughts.

I need to teleport, he frantically thought.

He began to stir his aura once more, but as his eyes trailed up, he spotted a familiar face.

Another false memory, he thought dismissively. He prepared to teleport away, when a hand touched his shoulder.

The distinctive tingle of that touch was so real, it sparked an ache inside him, a longing for the person attached to that touch to also be real.

He looked up toward Penelope, tears forming in his eyes. It wasn’t as he remembered her, but all the same, he would know his daughter’s face at any age.

“God, I miss you so much,” he whispered.

“Dad! Your aura!” The false Penelope gripped him on either side of his face, her eyes closing in concentration.

Distorter invasion detected! Engaging countermeasures. Standby…

“No,” he muttered. Then, the tears slipped free. “No.”

With a thought, he countermanded his System’s efforts, leaving his aura wide open. This was the end of the road. He’d been fighting so long—and for what? He’d earned his rest.

He let the fake memory take him, relishing in the feel of her skin on his face as his aura was distorted. Distantly, he felt surprise as the distortion seemed to clash with the alien presence. Then, he felt the chaos pushed back, forced deep into the Spectral Singularity where it had first lay in wait.

The fog over his mind went with it and he stared at his daughter in stunned shock.

“Penelope? Yo-you’re real…”

She smiled down at him and he felt the weight of four decades slide off his shoulders.

“Yes, dad. I’m real.”

His mind felt fragile after the chaos infection and he broke down into a terrible sob, clutching at her waist like he was the child and she the parent.

She stroked his hair in silence and he slowly regained a grip on his mind, wiping at the tears in embarrassed silence.

After a moment, she let go and pulled him to his feet. All the while, he felt her aura distorting his, keeping the chaos at bay.

“What happened?” she asked after a moment. “Why is there a chaos seed inside of you?”

He sighed, rubbing at his face. “I consumed the Spectral Singularity.” Her eyes went wide. “It was infected with chaos. I’ve been fighting it off for weeks—maybe longer.”

The reality of those words hung heavy between them for a moment, then Silver felt a smile pull at his lips.

She furrowed her brow in confusion. “Why are you smiling?”

He reached out and grabbed her hand lightly. “I’m smiling, because I met your son.”

She gasped, her eyes widening. Words streamed out all in one breath. “Terry! Oh, my God, Terry. Did he Awaken? What’s happened since I’ve been gone? And when did you get back? And James? Tell me everyone’s alri—”

Silver held up his hands to calm her. “Terry and James are fine.” Last time I checked, he didn’t say. “But a lot’s happened since you’ve been gone.” He finally felt stable enough to engage his aura—however subtly. He felt her power, the strength and depth of her aura, and a swelling of pride filled him. “You finished your Capstone, then?”

A guilty look crossed her face and she nodded.

“I left them, dad,” she whispered. “I had no choice, but they don’t know that.” She looked up at him, her eyes glistening. “Terry must think I abandoned him, just like I did about…”

He nodded in understanding. “Just like I abandoned you.”

The tears slipped free, dripping down her cheeks and off her chin. But her voice remained steady despite the obvious pain in her eyes.

“He must hate me…”

Silver reached up slowly, gingerly wiping away the tears as they fell.

“Maybe,” he said softly. “But he also loves you more than anything. It’s never too late to ask for forgiveness…right?”

She looked up, the silver magic in her eyes like looking in a mirror. A smile touched her lips as she considered the double meaning in his words.

“No,” she agreed. “It’s never too late.”

He smiled, pulling her in for a hug.

“Come on. Looks like we’ve got a bit of a walk back to Wichita.” He stepped back, looking deep into her eyes. “And I’ve got so much to tell you.”

End of Book One