The rain had not stopped this day. It just changed tone — from a drizzle to a whisper, from a whisper to a small storm. Sometimes, a bigger one.
…This night, it was a whisper
Ashen walked beneath a sky swollen with light pollution and clouds, the air humming faintly with residue resonance.
Every streetlamp flickered out of sync, as if arguing with the wind. Somewhere in the distance, a resonance engine coughed itself awake before dying again. The whole District felt like it was on the verge of remembering something terrible.
[Three blocks ahead, the Old Registry building. That's where the Guild stored energy flow records before the central vault took over. If the shard you found had an official trace, it'll be there.] Nyra said softly, her voice carried through the rain like a thread of warmth.
Ashen nodded, pulling his collar higher. His boots sloshed through puddles tinted by reflected neon — vermilion, violet, and decay.
"And if it's not?"
[Then whoever planted it made sure it wouldn't be.]
He almost smiled.
"You're getting cynical."
[Learned behaviour. Source: you.] she replied drily.
The streets were nearly empty now, save for the occasional Guild sentry magical drone drifting overhead — their scanning beams slicing through mist — and the city guards on watch duty. Ashen ducked beneath a fallen scaffold as one drone passed, its mechanical hum fading into the distance.
The Registry loomed at the end of the street like an ancient courthouse — wide marble steps cracked by time, its brass doors corroded by moisture. He scanned the perimeter, then pressed a gloved hand to the biometric lock in front of him.
[Still active… But running on emergency power. I can bypass it.] Nyra noted.
"Do it."
Her light flickered faintly. The lock clicked, whined, then yielded with a dull chime. The heavy doors creaked open, revealing darkness inside.
Ashen stepped in, pistol drawn. His breath came out as mist. The interior smelled of wet dust and forgotten paper. Rows of tall shelves lined the hall — archives of resonance signatures, mission logs, and identification plates. All marked obsolete.
[No movement detected. But Ashen… the resonance of Kovatar here is unstable.]
He frowned.
"Meaning?"
[Meaning something's still feeding into this building's old conduit network. Low-frequency, maybe hidden beneath standard readings. Someone's been using this place.]
"Someone, or something ?"
[Either. Or both.]
***
He moved deeper into the Old Registry. His boots echoed on the marble, soft but sharp in the silence. Every now and then, the building groaned — pipes expanding with pressure, cables sighing in the walls. The flicker of dying light panels painted everything in brief, haunted colours.
Halfway down the main hall, something caught his eye — a cracked data terminal still blinking weakly. He brushed dust off the screen and tapped the interface.
It flickered alive, displaying fragmented text:
//ARCHIVE ENTRY — CLASSIFIED/
//ACCESS DENIED/
'…Override?'
"Nyra?"
[On it.]
Her tone sharpened, more mechanical now — the shift she always made when fully focused. Unfortunately, for Ashen, it meant that the warmth of his mother was gone for a moment.
[Running adaptive bypass… Estimated success rate: seventy-one percent.]
The screen stuttered. Lines of ancient code raced upward. Then—
…Success.
A cascade of files unfolded, each labelled with designations dating back decades.
"Guild experiments?" Ashen murmured.
[Not Guild…] Nyra corrected.
She analysed the data for a moment and concluded:
[…Cross-reference identifies these as pre-Guild operations — before standardisation. Look at this label: "Nerum-K Core Prototype."]
Ashen's stomach knotted.
"Nerum… as in Nerum Codeum, the Grimoire Of All Magic?"
[Yes… Fragmentary connections. But these were test environments for Neram resonance field manipulation. The first attempts at synthesising divine energy.]
"Neram?!… as in the primordial magic ?"
[Yes. According to legends, this was the first magic. Remains of energy left by the gods after a war against an ancient enemy — all traces of which one has never been found, however.]
The sentient sphere dove on her database for a second more and spoke after that:
[...To date, No signs of extensive Neram manipulation has been possible. Density and purity extremely burdening for living beings. Only small usage are possible… with a great deal of focus and energy.]
"Wait. There's something I don't quite get here. How come the magic energy now is Kovatar magic, then?"
[Simple. The few records gathered from the Age of Change — and the many of them from the Age of Champions — state that the first ever magic was done with Neram, but the arrival of Gates altered the entirety of the magical fabric through the energy liberated from the Elsewhere.]
"Yeah, and?"
[Once they entered our realm, though, the energies collided with the already present Neram and fused in most part of our plain of existence to create the Kovatar we now use and breathe.]
"Still, I don't get how we can now use Kovatar."
Nyra hovered in circles, her sapphire light flickering rapidly.
[If you took the time to listen without cutting me, you would surely know by now, Ashen. Humans are so unnerving. You drive me mad sometimes — Though I cannot really feel anger or annoyance…] Nyra said, her light pulsing in a maddening speed, as if she was indeed annoyed.
"Oh sorry, ma'am! Please continue with your explanations." Ashen said, with a not-so-subtle hint of sarcasm in his voice.
[…Anyways. As I was saying, the energies interfered with each others to create the Kovatar magic which, in short, results from a long process of self-purification from these fused energies. And through constant contact with this new magic, living beings such as you, humans, started being born with it — and also became able to use it — over time.]
"Oh, I see."
[You're welcome.] the AI host companion replied.
Ashen scratched the back of his head, lost in thoughts and processing the information he just received. After a while, he turned to face Nyra again and asked:
"But still, why has no one attempted to harness and use the power of Neram energy — which is apparently much purer and more powerful — despite it all?"
The sphere hovered for a moment, silent and light pulsing slowly. After a long minute, she answered.
[Nearly all experiments have been abandoned in favour of the Kovatar magic, which is more accessible to the mass, easier to control and experiment with, more suited to the everyday life.] she said, tone softer.
"Ah, I get it now! Anyways…"
Ashen scrolled through the data, his expression tightening. Images flickered across the broken monitor — crystalline growths in containment, experimental sigils glowing beneath human subjects, diagrams of resonance cores shaped eerily like the shards he'd recovered.
And then—
A final file. Corrupted, but partially readable.
Subject containment failure.
Codename: F-AE/N-R.
Entity designation:—
Static overtook the rest.
[F-AE/N-R.] Nyra repeated slowly.
She lingered for a bit, as if lost in thought. Her sapphire glow dimmed and lit up again as she searched through her internal database.
[That's… a name fragment… I think. "Faen-Rir"?]
Ashen froze.
The name struck a chord — something from the archives he'd glimpsed in the Guild reports, a long while ago.
"That's a Zexeal designation. The creature species exiled beyond the southern range of the kingdom."
[Could it be connected to our case?]
He didn't answer. His hand tightened around the pistol.
***
A noise echoed — faint, metallic. Like a chain dragging.
Ashen turned sharply, scanning the shadowed hall. The faint blue shimmer of his pistol illuminated only empty air and the curve of broken pillars.
[No life signs detected. But there's a distortion — right flank, fifteen metress. Low resonance cloaking. Possible observer.] Nyra murmured.
"Can you trace it?"
[Already on it. But it's adaptive — recalibrating every few seconds. That's not a drone. That's sentient… A Magitech golem, maybe.]
Ashen stepped carefully, pistol raised. The sound came again — closer this time, deliberate. A whisper of metal against stone, like footsteps cloaked beneath static.
He took another step—
The light panels above exploded in a rain of sparks. Something slammed into him from the side.
He rolled, firing blindly. The resonance blast hit a column, fracturing it. A shadow darted through the debris — fast, serpentine, barely visible. His pistol tracked movement, but the thing moved faster than sight.
[Left! Ashen, left!]
He twisted, just in time to catch a glimpse — a humanoid outline, but translucent, skin rippling with refracted light. A Hopper. But larger and violet-tinted, its form half-stable, half-phase. One of the Market District Gate ones. The second-wave variants.
"How the hell—"
Ashen ducked as it lunged again, claws raking the air. The resonance field around its body pulsed with the same energy as the shards.
[It's not natural.] Nyra hissed.
She paused for half a second.
[…Someone's controlling it remotely. Signal origin — unidentified.]
Ashen leapt backwards, firing two quick bursts. The creature staggered, screeched, its body distorting like shattered glass before stabilising again. Then it vanished.
Ashen spun, listening. Only the hiss of rain through broken windows. His heart hammered in his chest.
[Ashen— directly above!]
He dropped to one knee as the creature fell from the ceiling, claws tearing through where his head had been a second before. He swung his dagger upward, embedding it deep into the thing's shoulder. Resonance energy flared, and the monster shrieked — a sound like static turned to pain.
The smell of ozone filled the hall. The creature convulsed, spasming before dissolving into a pool of faintly glowing residue. The hum in the air died.
Ashen stayed crouched for a moment, breathing hard. His dagger dripped light instead of blood.
[You okay?] Nyra asked softly, her voice trembling slightly — too human to be just data.
"Yeah." He straightened, wiping the blade.
His voice was hoarse. Exhaling, he continued:
"But that thing shouldn't exist. Not outside containment."
[Then containment's been compromised.]
He exhaled through gritted teeth.
"Who the hell's behind this?"
[Ashen… look.]
He turned. In the residue where the creature had fallen, a symbol had seared itself into the marble floor — faint but unmistakable. The same circular sigil from the ruins. And in the centre — a smaller, newer mark. A spiral of intertwined lines, glowing blue.
[Cross-referencing mark…]
Nyra paused.
[…Match found. That's the crest of the Wayfarers' Guild.]
Ashen's pulse spiked.
"That's impossible. The Wayfarers deal with traversal and exploration, not resonance breeding."
[Unless someone inside decided to expand their field.]
He stared at the mark, the spiral fading as the residue evaporated.
"Then it's not just corruption... It's a conspiracy."
[You realise what that means?]
"That whoever triggered the Gate wanted it to happen."
***
He left the Old Registry an hour later, coat soaked and shoulders tense. The night air hit him like cold iron, but his mind was still burning.
Nyra floated quietly beside him — her light faint, almost tired.
[I ran a background check on the access logs… Someone else broke into that terminal two days before you. They erased most of the files you recovered. I reconstructed fragments — enough to get an ID] she said at last.
Ashen slowed.
"Who?"
[A magician. Female. From Todia in the Southern District. Name — Lathea Dolten Nart.]
Ashen's eyes widened.
"Lathea?"
[I think that… Just like the last time, she wasn't working against you, Ashen. The pattern doesn't fit. She was searching too — maybe for the same artefact readings you're chasing. But someone's tracking both of you.]
"She's searching? Why?"
[No idea.]
Ashen looked up at the skyline — towers blinking through fog, lightning weaving through the storm clouds like veins. He didn't know the Mage girl that much, but from what little he knew, he felt that she was someone exceptional. She was clumsy, bright, too kind for a city like this one — one he thought, until recently, was without serious issues…
And she was walking into the same shadow.
This thought made something tighten in his chest. For some reason, he felt uncomfortable imagining this girl being chased by some unknown enemy.
"She's walking into the same fire as me."
[Then you'll have to catch up before it burns her.] Nyra said softly.
They turned down the street, the sound of rain muffling their footsteps. The neon signs flickered overhead.
…And beneath it all, the air pulsed faintly. The same foul resonance pattern, like the heartbeat of something slowly waking beneath the city.