2025-08-26 12:20:28Adrian’s blood still burned hot, his senses sharper than ever. He could smell it, yes, smell, he could smell the monsters’ fear and feel their strange respect for him.
‘Why are they scared of me?’ Before he could think further, his father’s arms wrapped around him from behind. “Son! What are you doing here?” Jorden’s voice cracked as he pulled Adrian tight. Just seconds ago, he was sure he would die. Adrian blinked, stiff in his father’s embrace. Should I… hug him back? He knew one thing, charging in like that had just painted a target on his back. “Yeah, right. Not dangerous, huh?” Adrian smirked, giving his father a mocking look. “Hahaha! Well… not dangerous until today.” Jorden chuckled, patting his son’s shoulder, relief still in his eyes. “Hey, kid! Over here!” one of the Special Squad members called out. Adrian looked at his father. Jorden sighed, then gently pushed him forward. He walked over, the squad captain loomed above him, a tall man built like a wall. “So young, yet so brave.” “Brave?” Adrian shook his head. “More like I wasn’t thinking.” “Hah! If you aren’t crazy, this world will drive you crazy,” a girl’s voice cut in. Adrian glanced, it was the same dagger-wielding fighter who had reported to her captain earlier. She gave him a crooked smile. “What’s your faith, child?” one of the church squad leaders suddenly interjected, stepping forward, silver embroidery gleaming on his robe. Adrian froze. His mother’s faith surfaced in his mind, devotion to the Moon Goddess, Lady Evernight. “…Evernight Goddess.” A thin smile flickered across the leader’s lips. “Praise the Lady,” he murmured, clutching a moon-shaped pendant. Without another word, he turned, the rest of his unit following him. “Bastards,” the dagger-girl spat. “Leave them be.” The Special Squad captain sighed. Then he looked back at Adrian. “Nice meeting you, kid. But listen, don’t throw yourself into battles like that again. Being reckless will get you killed.” Adrian’s face said it all: You don’t have to tell me twice. The captain smirked. “Who knows? We might work together someday. Just don’t be the suicidal one on the team, eh? Hahaha.” With that, he and the girl turned to join the police chief. Adrian returned to his father. “You should head home now,” Jorden said, voice firmer. “Tell your mother I’ll be back before evening. We’ve got to clear the field and burn the bodies. If not…” His eyes hardened. “We’ll have walking corpses in the streets.” Adrian nodded, then rubbed his head awkwardly. “Uh… I think I dropped the money you gave me earlier.” Jorden gave him a look that screamed, Seriously? He was about to reach into his pocket when the Chief of Police waddled over, his large belly straining against his uniform. “Officer Jorden,” the chief said with a grin, “your son’s something else.” “Yes, sir… Seems like he awakened just in time to save me.” Jorden let out a half-laugh, half-sigh. The chief’s smile faded. “You men will stay with the Special Squads. Secure the area. Clear the monsters. Collect our fallen.” His gaze swept across the battlefield, heavy with loss. “Yes, sir.” Turning back to Adrian, the chief added, “I’ll head back to the station. Want me to take your boy along?” An officer led over a horse to give to the Chief . “Climb on, kid.” Adrian swung up, sitting stiffly behind the chief. “You know how to ride?” the chief asked. “No, sir.” “You should learn. Hold tight.” With a kick, the horse shot forward, galloping toward Zion Street. The wind whipped past them. After a moment, the chief asked, “Did you take a carriage to get here so fast… or did you run?” Adrian stayed silent. The chief gave a low chuckle. “I see. You must’ve unlocked something… rare.” Adrian didn’t reply. Small talk with adults was never his thing, he respected them and did greet them, but anything more always felt… uncomfortable. Before long, they reached MoonBrook Station. Adrian slid off the horse. “Good luck, kid.” The chief gave him a final look. “The coming days will keep you busy. Choose your path wisely.” With that, he strode inside. Adrian exhaled. You don’t have to tell me twice. His peaceful days were gone. Not long after, he caught a carriage heading toward home. The streets were crowded with police patrols. Inside, passengers murmured. “The police told us monsters were breaking through the gates earlier.” “Then suddenly, they said it was safe again,” another added. “Maybe the Church squads handled it.” Adrian frowned. “If that’s true that they warn the townsfolk about an evacuation, Shouldn’t the streets still be in panic right now?”, he looked out the window and saw how people were going about their day as if nothing major happened. One man shrugged. “We’re used to it. Besides, if we leave, what’s the guarantee we survive? Better the devil you know than starving as a refugee.” “Hmph. Only the churches and gods can protect us. Praise the True Creator!” a woman declared, clasping her hands. Adrian and another passenger exchanged a glance, the same thought running through their minds… ‘Blind believers…’
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Tallying the cost
The phantom chill of the God-Anchor was a new constant in Adrian's bones, a deep-seated cold that even the morning sun couldn't touch. The brand on his soul that mark of attention from the Hungry Void, thrummed with a low, persistent frequency, a reminder that their victory had come with a price far beyond the battlefield. He sat on the edge of his bed, the silence of the mansion pressing in on him. His first coherent thought wasn't of strategy or power. It was of Alan. He pulled up the System interface, his focus sharp. [Core Character: Alan - The Mystic Maestro - STATUS: COMPROMISED] The red, flashing text sent a jolt of cold dread through him, sharper than any magical chill. "System, full report on Alan's exposure and current status," he commanded, his voice tight. A flood of data streamed through his consciousness, grainy images of Alan's desperate flight through the archives, the collapsing bookshelves, the final, brutal look of comprehension on Sister Anya's face before Alan
Once the issue is all over, we can go back to being enemies
The silence after the rift closed was a physical thing, thick and heavy as wet wool. It was broken by the small, helpless sounds the vessel-boy made, shivering against the obsidian stake. Finn was the first to move, scrambling up the black steps with a knife to saw at the thick chains.Adrian didn't move. He stood over the spot where Mordian had been erased, the God-Anchor cold at his feet. The internal wound from using it was a hollow ache, a piece of him scooped out and fed to the silence. But beneath that, a new, deeper cold was settling in. The brand.It wasn't a pain. It was an awareness. A fixed point in the geography of his soul, a icy pinprick that felt like a distant, unblinking eye had just taken note of his coordinates.Boots scuffed on the stone behind him. He didn't need to turn. He knew Maria's step."You look like shit," she said, her voice rough. She came to stand beside him, looking down at the empty space where the ritualist had been. Her arm was bleeding from a deep
The Vessel
Adrian's boot hit the first step of the black altar. The stone wasn't cold. It was a void, sucking the warmth from his soul. Each step upward was a fight against the hook in his core, the hungry void above pulling him in while the dead weight of the Anchor tried to drag him down.He was halfway up when a wave of force slammed into him, not from the rift, but from the side. It wasn't physical. It was a command, written in pure will.STOP.Adrian staggered, his head ringing. At the top of the platform, Brother Mordian had turned from the raging pillar of green light. His eyes were no longer human. They were pools of the same oily blackness as the rift, his tattooed skin cracking like dry earth, leaking that same void. He held one hand toward the rift, sustaining the connection, and the other was now pointed at Adrian.YOU ARE THE KEY. YOU WILL BE THE GATE. The words weren't spoken; they were branded directly into Adrian's mind.The pull intensified. Adrian grunted, driving the base of t
Don't let it touch you!
The world broke with a sound like a mountain dying.One moment, the only noise was the wind and the distant, maddening drums from the basin below. The next, a concussion of force slammed into the ridge, so visceral it felt like a physical blow. The air didn't just grow cold; it became thin, starved, as if the life was being sucked out of it.Adrian's knees buckled. A white-hot brand seared the core of his being, the psychic hook the Reclamationists had embedded in him was no longer a tug, but a chain, and something on the other end was yanking with the force of a collapsing star. His vision swam, the grim faces of his pack smearing into a blur. For a terrifying second, he wasn't on the ridge. He was nowhere. A vast, gray, silent nothingness pressed in on him, and at its heart was a single, overwhelming sensation: Hunger. It was a cold, simple, and absolute need to consume, and his soul was the brightest thing on the menu.On the Sunken Altar below, the gaunt figure of Brother Mordian
The Bleeding Land
Two days of hard marching north-east had stripped away the familiar. The rugged but life-filled foothills of the Serpent's Teeth gave way to a blighted expanse that seemed to suck the very vitality from the air. The ground was a cracked, grayish-purple, like old, clotted blood. Sparse, twisted trees clawed at a sky the color of a day-old bruise. There was no birdsong, no scuttling of insects. Only the moan of a wind that carried the taste of ash and ozone.The Howling Peak army moved through this desolation with a grim, focused silence. The initial energy of their departure had been replaced by a wary tension. Their enhanced senses, a gift from Adrian's ascension, were now a curse, amplifying the wrongness that permeated everything."It's not just dead," Bella murmured, her boots scuffing the brittle ground. "It's... infected. The earth is in pain. It's screaming, but the sound is too high for anyone but it and I to hear."Adrian felt it too, a constant, low-level psychic static that
Alan has been discovered
The polished marble floors of the Eldrige Mage College’s main concourse had never felt so much like a pane of thin ice over a bottomless chasm. Alan walked with his head down, the hood of his apprentice robes pulled up, a single student among a river of them flowing between lectures. But where their minds were filled with spell matrices and alchemical formulas, his was a tangled snare of hyper-vigilance and remembered terror.Every reflection in a window was a potential enemy. Every snatch of conversation was a coded message. The System was silent, but its lessons were etched into his nerves. He saw the world as a spy now, and the picture was terrifying.He felt it first—a subtle, probing pressure against the mental shields the System had taught him to maintain. It was a feather-light touch, a psychic tendril searching for a crack. It was the same feeling he’d had in the Weeping Stone, just before Sister Anya had grown suspicious. They were here. They were using magic to find him.His
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