Around him, the gardens were eerily silent—too silent. The nobility had barricaded themselves inside, but the distant screams of the Awakened still seeped through the air like smoke. Shaw was found unconscious in the inner garden and taken to his private quarters. When he awoke, the noblewoman—Lira, he now remembered her name—watched him with the detached focus of a surgeon.
He had already died twice. Once out of ignorance, once by choice. This time, he wouldn't walk in blind.
"Seems you've died a few times in quick succession," she said. "Yet your core hasn't destabilized. Interesting."
Shaw sat up, flexing his fingers. The crystal was gone, but its presence lingered in his veins. "You knew the assassins would come."
"A gamble. I needed to see if you'd survive." She tossed him a dossier. Inside: sketches of the winged serpent sigil, repeated across artifacts, contracts, even carved into the skulls of fanatics. "The Serpent Pact. The fanatics call it 'Liberation.' Forcing Awakenings with those… artifacts. They believe they're wielding the beings from the battlefield, but no one knows who's truly using whom."
Shaw assessed the situation and asked, "You oppose them?"
"I use them. Their forced Awakenings create soldiers for the war." Her smile was thin as a razor. "But now they've dug too deep. They're trying to crack open the First Inventor's vault. But you, Shaw—you're different. Your behavior is unusual. A man who won't speak of his origins, appearing in the middle of a forest out of nowhere, with no fluctuations. Some of the guards might be shallow enough to think I took an interest in you because of your looks, but that would be a foolish, naïve thought—and in our current society, naivety is a grave mistake. Follow me to my study. I want to show you something."
He found her at her desk, fingers stained with ink, city maps spread before her. Her guards were gone—likely dispatched to the riots.
"Did you take anything from them?"
Shaw didn't answer.
"You don't trust me." A brittle laugh. "Wise. But that crystal was a tracker." She tapped the contract on her desk—its serpent sigil identical to the one on the crystal.
Shaw's mind raced. The contract's penalty—soul erasure—wasn't just a threat. It was a leash.
"Why recruit me, then?"
"You're an unknown variable. I couldn't let you roam freely, creating more instability. The situation is already precarious," she said softly. "And the Predators? They're just scavengers—beings who lost their home [dimension] and got trapped between worlds. The real war runs deeper."
An explosion rocked the palace. The window shattered.
She seized his wrist. "If you want answers, find the First Inventor. He's buried beneath the city. But hurry—they're already digging."
Beneath the city, the air tasted of rust and rotting metal. Shaw moved silently. Then—voices. Fanatics chanted around a vault door engraved with the serpent sigil—inverted.
Shaw pressed into the shadows, watching. Their leader, a gaunt man with a melted face, raised a corrupted sphere like the one that had detonated in the square.
"Tonight, we claim the First Inventor's legacy and forge a permanent gateway to the Battlefield!" he croaked. "Tonight, we break the First Seal!"
Shaw's core twisted. The energy from the vault felt familiar—like the being he had once been part of.
The sphere had the same design as the one from the square, but larger—older. As the chanting swelled, the shadows behind the fanatics rippled.
They weren't shadows. They were holes—distortions in the air where things with too many legs scuttled into view. Predators.
Lira's advisor pulled him back. "They're not just in the Battlefield anymore," he whispered. "The Seals keep them out of our world. But the Pact is breaking them—on purpose."
Shaw didn't need to die this time. The moment the fanatics' chant peaked, his vision split. One moment, he was in the tunnel. The next—he was on the plateau, now cracked like broken ceramic. The sky bled amber. The woman in bone armor from before stood beside him, her mask split by a grin.
"The First Seal is almost gone," she sang softly. "When it falls, the real hunt begins. Your world will be tethered and slowly absorbed by the Battlefield—and those fools don't even know what they're truly doing. In their minds, they're just forging a passage."
Beneath Shaw's feet, the ground trembled. Something vast stirred in the fissures.
"The First Seal is breaking," she crooned. "That means the fun begins."
Shaw's core burned. The crystal he'd absorbed earlier formed something in his pocket—a key.