1. Leaving the Edge
The Skimmer rose from Dr. Dreik's outpost with a low, steady hum, its patched hull holding together through equal parts engineering and stubbornness. The Dead Zone stretched beneath them like a scar—ashen plains, fractured rock, and the faint shimmer of distant, unstable Fluxite storms.
Roy stood near the forward viewport, one hand resting over the SS-rank Fluxite core in his chest, the other feeling the cool press of the Faelis tuning band on his wrist. It beat softly in rhythm with his pulse, a constant reminder that every surge of power from him could undo their entire mission.
"Course is locked to Dreik's resonance corridors," Taro said, eyes flicking over the instruments. "As long as we stay inside these safe bands, your core won't scream across half the continent."
Jean nodded, gaze sharp. "Then we don't stray. No detours. No heroics. We get to Vergo fast and quiet."
Lyra lounged in her seat, blades resting against her legs, trying to mask her own nerves with a crooked smile. "Fast and quiet. Two things this group is historically terrible at."
Kira checked her shield one more time. "Let's try something new."
2. Roadblock in the Wastes
They had barely cleared the worst of the interference fields when the first warning ping lit up Taro's console.
"Contact," he said. "Multiple heat signatures. Stationary. Ahead."
The Skimmer dipped lower, hugging the safer resonance line. Through the thin morning haze, the shapes came into focus: a makeshift barricade thrown across the cracked transport road—a cluster of burned-out vehicles, scrap metal, and jury-rigged Flux pylons.
Jean narrowed her eyes. "Bandits. Of course."
As they approached, a burst of distorted radio chatter crackled through the comms, followed by a crude, amplified voice.
"Unregistered Skimmer, cut engines and step out nice and slow. Toll collection day. Hand over your tech and any Pulsar cores, and you get to keep breathing."
Lyra leaned forward, peering through the glass. "They're using dampeners. Those pylons are bleeding Flux. Cheap, illegal… and unstable."
Roy could feel it—the way the air ahead twisted, the faint drag against his core as the pylons tried to bite into any nearby energy source. The tuning band tingled, not quite a sting, but a warning.
"We could punch through," Kira said, eyeing the barricade. "But the pylons might latch onto Roy's resonance instead of the engines."
Jean's decision was instant. "We take them from the ground. No resonance spike. No citywide beacon. We keep this small."
3. Illegal Teeth of Neutrons
The Skimmer settled a safe distance away, engines dropping to a low idle. As the ramp lowered, the bandits stepped into view—half-armored, half-wrapped in scavenged cloth, weapons mismatched but clearly dangerous.
At their center stood a man with a jagged, homemade chest harness glowing sickly green. At his hip hung a crude device that hummed with corrupted energy, its casing veined with familiar, unpleasant patterns.
Taro's eyes widened behind his visor. "Those aren't just bandits. That harness is using repurposed Neutron tech."
The leader spat to the side, eyeing Roy's group with greedy calculation. "Academy coats and noble armor. Lucky day for us. Drop the weapons. Especially you, glow-boy."
Roy's core pulsed, reacting to the pull of the stolen technology. The tuning band flared hot, a brief sting that snapped his focus back into place.
Jean stepped forward, flames still suppressed, voice cold. "You have ten seconds to move your barricade and walk away."
The bandit leader laughed, patting the Neutron harness. "You think your ranks and pretty armor mean anything out here? This tech drains Pulsars dry. You're just batteries with legs."
One of his lieutenants hefted a gun-like device, its barrel wrapped around a chunk of darkened Pulsarite—Neutron-tainted, unstable. The moment it powered up, the air vibrated with an ugly, hungry frequency.
Roy felt the core in his chest recoil, like a living thing tasting poison.
"Jean," he murmured, "that weapon—"
"Yeah," she said tightly. "I see it."
4. Swift Strike, Silent Storm
They moved first.
Jean's Pyrrion aura snapped to life—but held tight, a compact, focused blaze instead of a roaring inferno. A burst of red light seared across the dirt, not to kill, but to slag the nearest Flux pylon, cutting off part of the dampening field before it could bite any deeper into Roy's resonance.
Lyra became motion and water and steel, sliding past the half-melted barricade as blades of condensed Veyra cut through weapon straps and power cables. She struck with precision, not flourish—disabling, not grandstanding.
Kira advanced like a moving fortress, Terralith shield drinking in the first wild shots of corrupted energy. Each impact rang, dull and heavy, but the shield held as she drove forward, using her weight and training to shatter the crude Neutron-tech rifle with a single, brutal bash.
Taro hung back, palms raised, weaving a tight, controlled Puls field. Threads of pale light snaked out, latching onto the nearest illegal devices, forcing their resonance into safe, inert patterns before they could cascade out of control.
Roy pushed in alongside Kira, blades sheathed. He didn't dare open the core fully—not here, not with unknown Neutron scav-tech pointed at him.
When the bandit leader raised his harness and triggered it, a wave of corrupt pull surged toward Roy, trying to latch onto the SS-rank core like a hook.
The tuning band on Roy's wrist went white-hot.
He gritted his teeth but held the power down, refusing the instinct to answer with overwhelming force. Instead, he stepped in close, grabbed the harness with one gauntleted hand, and channeled just enough controlled Umbryon energy through his fingers to short it out.
The harness screamed, overloaded, then snapped offline in a shower of sparks. The leader crashed to his knees, gasping as the artificial pull broke.
Around them, the remaining bandits dropped their weapons or tried to run. Jean's flames and Kira's shield made sure no one got brave again.
In under a minute, it was over.
5. Symbols in the Scrap
The bandits were disarmed and bound at the side of the road, glowering but silent. Jean had no time or patience for speeches; a single warning about approaching Academy patrols convinced them to cooperate.
Roy knelt near the wrecked Neutron harness while Taro scanned it with a portable reader. Up close, the device looked even uglier—crudely welded plates over refined, pulsing cores, cables patched with whatever wire the bandits could scavenge.
"There," Taro said, pointing. "Under the shield casing. That marking—"
Roy peeled back a bent fragment of metal. Beneath it, etched into the core's housing, was a familiar spiral: sharp, jagged lines coiled into a vortex.
The symbol of the Vanes.
Jean's expression turned to stone. "They're not just hunting cores anymore. They're distributing tech."
Kira's jaw clenched. "Arming bandits with stripped Neutron devices. Creating chaos, softening borders, stretching security forces thin."
Lyra nudged a fallen pylon with her boot. "And making sure the roads are too dangerous for regular people to travel without 'help' from whoever can resist this junk. It's a business model."
Taro's readings stabilized. "These weren't built by scrap-scavengers. The modulation layers are precise. Someone high in the Vanes is designing mass-producible, corrupted tech. The bandits are just delivery systems."
Roy looked at the spiral, feeling the quiet core in his chest, the sting of the tuning band fading back to a faint warmth.
"The cult is spreading faster than the Academy wants to admit," he said. "They're not just chasing legends anymore. They're building an empire in the shadows."
Jean straightened. "Then we can't stay at B-rank problems and A-rank thinking. We have to get stronger—and smarter—before this breaks open."
6. Three Days to Vergo
They left the bandits alive but stripped of every Vanes-marked device, piling the illegal tech in the Skimmer's cargo hold for later analysis—or destruction. As the transport rose back into the air, the barricade shrank behind them, one small wound in a road full of deeper scars.
For three days, they followed Dreik's resonance corridors through the fringe of the Dead Zone and into the outer veins of the Vergo Region. The world changed slowly, then all at once.
The ashen ground gave way to soil that looked *alive*, faintly luminous in places where Flux currents ran close to the surface. Stunted, colorless scrub became towering trees whose leaves shifted hue with the Puls flow, bending ever so slightly toward unseen energy streams.
Every time Roy's core fluttered too high, the Faelis band on his wrist burned just enough to remind him to breathe, to dial the power back, to *listen* instead of dominate. There were moments when the SS-rank core seemed to push back, wanting to expand, to resonate freer—but he held the line.
"We're crossing into their outer field," Taro said on the third evening, watching the instruments. "Ambient Flux is… organized. It's flowing like a designed system, not natural chaos."
Lyra pressed her face to the viewport. "I don't see them, but I feel like something is watching."
Kira rested a hand on her shield, more out of habit than intent. "They know we're here. They've probably known since we touched their first current."
Roy stood silent, eyes on the landscape. Part of him had expected relief when they finally neared Vergo—an end to running, a clear goal ahead. Instead, a tight knot had settled under his ribs.
"What if they don't accept us?" he asked quietly. "Dreik was one man with broken tech. I'm walking in with an unstable SS-rank core and a cult hunting me."
Jean stepped up beside him, gaze fixed forward. "Then we prove we didn't come as conquerors. We came because if we don't learn what they know, the Vanes will write the future instead."
The Skimmer slipped deeper into Vergo's domain. The sky took on a richer shade, Flux streams glimmering faintly like distant auroras. The instruments began to lose meaning; the environment itself *felt* like a giant, breathing stabilizer.
The tuning band on Roy's wrist warmed again—not a sting this time, but an almost welcoming pressure, as if the field around them was testing his resonance, weighing it.
Roy exhaled slowly, letting the SS-rank core settle into the lowest, cleanest hum he could manage.
"Whether they accept us or not," he said, more to himself than anyone else, "we're already in their world."
Somewhere ahead, unseen eyes watched the outsider Skimmer trace a careful path along invisible currents, bearing a human storm toward the heart of the Faelis' hidden harmony.