2025-10-27 01:37:04The streets of Valoria’s upper wards glowed like veins of molten glass, streets pulsing with mana lamps, banners fluttering in the wind, and towers scraping the mist-choked sky.
Terry pulled his hood low as he followed Corvin through the crowd. The smell of rain mixed with steam from mana engines above. Everything felt too bright, too clean, too alive.
“Why here?” Terry whispered. “You said the Circle’s watching.”
“They watch everywhere,” Corvin replied, his voice calm but sharp. “That’s why we hide in plain sight.”
They ducked into an alley between two tall spires. Corvin tapped a sigil on the wall, an invisible rune flared and dissolved, revealing a hidden door.
Inside, the air was heavy with incense and dust. Racks of old scrolls lined the walls, alongside jars filled with glowing herbs.
“Welcome to the Apothecarion,” Corvin said. “A neutral zone for rogue healers and alchemists. Even the Circle hesitates to shed blood here.”
Terry glanced around. “Looks abandoned.”
“It isn’t.”
A woman’s voice drifted from the shadows. She stepped forward, tall, graceful, with silver hair braided tight and eyes like sharpened moonlight. “Corvin,” she said coolly. “You still breathe.”
“Barely,” Corvin muttered. “You still playing god with dead plants, Mira?”
She smiled faintly. “And you still collecting strays.” Her gaze shifted to Terry. “What’s this one? Apprentice? Experiment?”
Terry stiffened. “Neither.”
“Hmm.” Mira stepped closer, her eyes narrowing as faint energy shimmered around her hands. “You reek of blood catalyst.”
Corvin interjected. “He’s learning the Doctrine. He survived the first trial.”
That caught her attention. “Impossible. The last student who tried it”
“Didn’t survive,” Corvin finished. “He’s different.”
Mira studied Terry for a long moment, then sighed. “Different or doomed. Either way, you’ve brought trouble.”
“Trouble follows him,” Corvin said. “We need information. The Circle’s alive again. I saw their marks.”
Mira’s expression hardened. “Then the rumors were true.”
“What rumors?” Terry asked.
She hesitated, then led them deeper into the apothecary. Behind a curtain lay a sealed chamber—walls covered in sigils that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat. In the center, on a steel table, lay a covered form.
Mira peeled back the sheet.
Terry’s breath caught. The body beneath wasn’t human, at least, not anymore. Its skin shimmered with crystal-like veins. Its eyes, half-open, glowed faintly with blue and red energy.
“What… what is that?” he whispered.
“An experiment,” Mira said quietly. “They call it a Resurrected Vessel. The Circle’s trying to bring healers back from the dead, binding life and mana into one body.”
Corvin frowned. “So they’re continuing Project Rebirth.”
Terry’s stomach turned. “You knew about this?”
“I started it,” Corvin said, voice heavy with guilt. “Back when I believed death was a disease that could be cured.”
“And this was your cure?” Terry snapped. “A corpse filled with magic?”
“It was supposed to save lives,” Corvin said quietly. “But the Circle twisted it. They learned how to trap souls instead.”
Mira nodded grimly. “The Vessel’s heart still beats, but not on its own. They’ve found a way to bind a healer’s essence to mana crystals. It’s resurrection without consent.”
Terry stared at the body. “You mean… they’re enslaving the dead?”
“Yes,” she said. “And if they find you, they’ll do worse. You have the same energy signature as their prototypes. You’re proof the process works on the living.”
Corvin turned sharply. “You said they’re moving bodies through the wards. Where?”
Mira hesitated. “Rumor says the shipments go through the Cathedral District. But you didn’t hear it from me.”
Corvin nodded once. “We’ll check it.”
Mira grabbed his arm. “If you go there, you’ll never walk out. The Circle controls half that district through proxies. Even the High Council won’t interfere.”
Corvin’s tone was steel. “Let them try to stop us.”
Before Terry could respond, a faint crack echoed from the entrance. Mira’s eyes widened. “You were followed.”
The lights dimmed. Shadows twisted. Three figures stepped from the corridor, masked assassins, their blades dripping with faint black vapor.
Corvin’s hand went to his sword. “Terry, barrier!”
Terry slammed his palms together. Energy flared around them, blue light forming a curved shield. One assassin struck, his blade shattering against the aura.
Mira hurled a flask; it burst into smoke, the scent of burning herbs filling the room. “They’re Soul Collectors!”
Corvin lunged forward, cutting one down in a blur. “Go for the sigils on their chests!”
Terry focused, channeling his healing power through the pain still burning in his veins. His pulse quickened.
The memory of every wound surged back, but he turned it outward, releasing a burst of red-blue energy. The shockwave threw the assassins back. One crashed into a pillar; another vanished into flame.
Corvin caught the last one by the throat. “Who sent you?”
The masked man laughed, blood spilling from his lips. “You think you can stop resurrection?”
Corvin’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“The Circle doesn’t need the living anymore,” the man rasped. “They already have enough bodies.”
Then his body convulsed, his skin turned to crystal, then cracked apart in a burst of mana light.
The silence afterward was suffocating.
Mira’s voice trembled. “They’re self-destructing now. That means the project’s almost complete.”
Corvin dropped what was left of the assassin’s cloak. “Then we’re running out of time.”
Terry glanced at the corpse again—the faint flicker of life still trapped behind its glassy eyes.
“Corvin,” he said softly, “if they’re bringing people back… what happens to their souls?”
Corvin looked away. “They don’t come back as themselves.”
Terry’s throat tightened. “Then what are they?”
He met Terry’s gaze, and for a heartbeat, his expression was that of a man who had seen hell and remembered every face in it.
“Echoes,” he said. “Empty light pretending to be alive.”
Outside, thunder rolled through the city, shaking the glass towers of Valoria.
The Circle was no longer hiding.
And the price of light was about to be paid in blood.
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Chapter 150: The Shape of a Choice
The camp woke slowly.Not with bells or shouted orders, but with the soft friction of bodies stirring against canvas and earth. A cough here. A murmured complaint there. Someone poking at last night’s embers until they caught again, thin smoke curling into the pale morning air.Terry watched it happen from the edge of the clearing, seated on a low rock with his hands wrapped around a chipped mug of water that tasted faintly of ash. His shoulders ached. His palms stung where blisters had broken overnight. Every sensation felt… earned.The hunger did not comment.That, more than anything, unsettled him.He had grown used to argument, to the constant push and pull between instinct and intention. Silence from something that had never known restraint felt like standing beside a cliff with no wind.Corvin stirred at last, faint as breath on glass.You’re waiting.“Yes,” Terry replied.For what?Terry considered the camp. People moving, arguing quietly over tools, deciding who would fetch wa
Chapter 149: What Remains When No One Calls
The road narrowed again by evening.Not abruptly, nothing ever did anymore, but subtly, like a conversation tapering off when both sides realize they’ve said enough for now. The wide dirt track gave way to packed earth, then to stone worn smooth by years of feet and hooves. Low hills rose on either side, their slopes dotted with scrub and wind-bent trees.Terry felt the change before he saw it.Not through power. Through pace.He was walking more slowly again, not because he was tired, but because his body no longer expected to arrive in time. There was no ticking clock counting down to disaster. No invisible hand pressing urgency into his spine.The silver-haired man noticed.“You’re drifting,” he said mildly.Terry didn’t deny it. “I’m adjusting.”“Adjustment often looks like hesitation.”“Or consideration,” Terry replied.The man smiled faintly. “Or avoidance.”Terry exhaled through his nose. “Maybe.”They continued in silence.The hunger lay quiet inside him, not asleep, not gone.
Chapter 148: The World That Doesn’t Lean
The road widened after the hillcrest, not into a proper highway, but into something older and less certain. Cart tracks overlapped and diverged, some worn deep, others barely ghosts pressed into the dirt. It was a road shaped not by decree, but by repetition. By people choosing it again and again because it worked well enough.Terry walked it slowly.Not because he was tired, though he was, but because something in him resisted speed now. Moving too fast felt like habit, like the echo of urgency that had once defined him. Back when every second carried weight, back when delay meant death somewhere he could feel but not see.Now, delay was just… delay.The silver-haired man walked a few paces ahead, as he usually did. Not guiding. Not following. Simply present, like a boundary marker that refused to tell you which side you were on.They passed a pair of farmers arguing beside a broken fence. One held a hammer. The other gestured wildly, pointing at warped wood and uneven ground. Their
Chapter 147: The Weight of Not Being Needed
Morning arrived without ceremony.No pulse of awareness. No chorus of distant pain. No reflexive cataloging of who needed what and how badly. Terry woke to stiffness in his back and a chill in the air, his breath fogging faintly as he sat up against the stone wall of the waystation.For a moment, disorientation hit him hard.The instinct was still there, the ancient, practiced urge to reach. To check the perimeter of suffering, to scan for fractures, to orient himself around the nearest crisis.There was nothing to reach for.Just birdsong. Wind. The dull ache in his shoulders.He exhaled slowly, grounding himself in the unfamiliar quiet.The silver-haired man was already awake, standing near the road with his back to the shelter, watching the horizon as if it might misbehave if left unsupervised.The travelers stirred one by one. The woman with the knife rolled her shoulders and began packing without a word. The broad-shouldered man stretched and yawned, eyeing Terry with a look that
Chapter 146: When Silence Learns to Speak
The road did not greet Terry.There was no threshold-marker, no shimmer in the air, no sense of arrival or departure beyond the dull ache in his calves and the steady rhythm of his breath. Gravel shifted beneath his boots. Wind moved through scrub and low grass. Somewhere far off, a bird cried once and fell silent again.The world had not noticed him.That was new.For a long time after leaving Valoria, Terry kept waiting for the pull to return, for the subtle tension that always told him where suffering clustered, where fate bent inward, where his presence mattered. He had lived with that pressure so long it had become a second heartbeat.Now there was nothing.No hunger pressing against his ribs.No chorus of distant needs whispering his name.Just the road.Just his body.He stopped walking when the realization finally settled deep enough to steal his breath.“I’m really gone,” he murmured.The silver-haired man stood a few paces behind him, hands clasped behind his back, expressio
Chapter 145: The Shape That Remains
Valoria learned how to argue.Not loudly, not all at once, but persistently.Terry noticed it in the small things first. Disagreements no longer ended with someone storming off to find him. They ended with people sitting down harder than necessary, arms crossed, voices tight but present. Decisions stretched longer. Meetings ran late. Chalkboards filled and were erased, not because answers were found, but because new questions surfaced.Nothing resolved cleanly anymore.And somehow, that was progress.Terry stood at the edge of the southern market at dawn, watching vendors haggle over deliveries that no longer came with guarantees. A woman refused a price, not angrily, carefully. The merchant countered. A compromise landed awkwardly in the middle. Both nodded, dissatisfied but willing.The hunger stirred, uneasy.This inefficiency compounds.“Yes,” Terry replied silently. “But so does trust.”Trust is not quantifiable.“No,” Terry agreed. “That’s why it lasts.”Corvin surfaced, voice m
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