A blood-orange hue washed over the ruins as the sun finally rose above the jagged skyline. The abandoned city in the human world, once bustling with life, now groaned beneath dust and silence. Vines crawled up the sides of broken buildings. Cracked pavement bore no footsteps but theirs. And in that stillness, every breath from the group felt like a ripple in haunted water.
Liam stood at the edge of a shattered window on the third floor of a crumbling tower, staring down at the street below. His mind was still swirling from what he'd seen—no, felt—in the vision. Elira. Her voice, her eyes, her pain. And the way she whispered to him as if he were a memory trying to be forgotten.
Behind him, Nyra leaned against a rusted support beam, arms crossed, gaze distant.
"You saw her again," she said, not as a question but a certainty.
Liam didn't answer at first. The wind blew in through the broken window, catching his cloak and hair like ghost fingers.
"She's calling me," he said finally. "Not like before. It's clearer now. Closer. But… it doesn't feel like her. Not completely."
Nyra turned to him, brushing her braid back behind her ear. "You think it's a trick?"
"I don't know what to think anymore," Liam admitted. "But if she's trying to warn us… or guide us… we have to understand why."
Nyra nodded solemnly. "Then let's make sure we're strong enough to survive whatever answer we find."
Downstairs, Kael and Aeris were already preparing supplies. Kael had his blades out, sharpening them with quiet intensity. Aeris, unusually silent, was studying the crystal compass—an artifact they recovered in the previous ruins. Its shimmer now pulsed erratically, indicating a source of realm energy nearby… perhaps a hidden protector, or worse, a tainted one.
As Liam and Nyra descended to join them, the group instinctively tightened formation. They hadn't encountered enemies since the city's outskirts, but the quiet was unnerving—unnatural.
"We need to move," Aeris said, voice low. "The compass is fluctuating. Whatever's nearby… it's either cloaked or shifting."
Kael sheathed his blades. "Then we assume both."
They set off through the crumbling city, navigating the twisted metal skeletons of once-proud towers. The tension in the air grew thicker with each step. Shadows danced in the broken windows. Faint echoes of laughter—children?—trickled down alleyways, too distant to be real. Yet no one spoke of it. They all heard it. They all felt the wrongness.
Suddenly, the compass flared.
A violent pulse.
Then it shattered in Aeris' hand.
Everyone froze.
The air shifted—cold, metallic, sharp.
And from the far end of the street, the darkness peeled away like burnt cloth, revealing a cloaked figure hovering inches above the ground. Eyes like obsidian. No mouth. No face. Just presence.
Aetherwrought.
Kael reacted first, blades drawn with a hiss of steel. "Formation!"
But it wasn't alone.
From the shadows, more shapes unfurled. Cloaked specters, distorted echoes of protectors once sworn to defend the veil between worlds. Now, they were something else—corrupted. Twisted. Echoes of Nytherion's kindred who'd lost themselves to the dark influence that still loomed unseen.
"They're corrupted guardians!" Aeris shouted, drawing her twin daggers laced with runes. "Don't let them surround us!"
The first specter lunged, its cloak expanding into a spear of shadow. Liam raised his hand instinctively—an invisible barrier flared before him, but the impact still knocked him back against a rusted car frame.
Kael met the second head-on, his blades a blur as he danced between slashes and parries. The corrupted guardian moved with unnatural speed, matching him strike for strike. Sparks flew as metal clashed with corrupted magic.
Nyra unleashed a barrage of summoned light wisps—golden orbs that spun and exploded on contact, knocking two of the specters into a ruined storefront. Glass shattered. Flames licked at the shadows.
Liam scrambled up and felt the surge of energy inside him—old, strange, deep. He summoned it again, not like a spell, but like a memory. His hand glowed, blue and white, and when he released it, a pulse of pure force erupted outward, sending the nearest specter crumpling into itself with a hiss like evaporating ink.
They fought in brutal harmony.
Aeris moved with precision, cutting through tendrils of dark magic with her enchanted blades. Kael's attacks were ferocious, purposeful, but controlled—every blow meant to end, not delay. Nyra danced with her summons, creating space and cover, while Liam moved between defense and devastating surges of energy that still confused even him.
But the specters were endless.
"Fall back!" Aeris called. "We're being funneled!"
Too late.
A massive tremor shook the ground, splitting the street like a cracked egg. From the rupture rose a grotesque creature—a former high guardian, judging by the remnants of golden armor now fused to black stone. Its roar was a chorus of broken oaths and shattered wills.
The battle exploded into chaos.
Kael and Liam focused on the brute, weaving between its strikes as buildings collapsed in its wake. Liam hurled arcane blasts while Kael aimed for weak points—joints, the back of the knee, exposed chest.
Nyra and Aeris held the flanks, trying to keep the remaining specters from overwhelming them.
Then something unexpected happened.
The brute paused, and its glowing eye socket flickered—not in rage, but confusion.
Liam felt it.
Elira.
A voice, slicing through the chaos.
"Stop. They are not your enemy."
The brute staggered, as if resisting its own existence.
A moment of silence followed.
Then it screamed—a horrible, soul-twisting sound—and imploded into a storm of ash and memory.
The remaining specters paused… then vanished like smoke sucked into the sky.
The city was quiet again.
But not peaceful.
The air still buzzed with what lingered.
The group, battered and panting, regrouped near the shattered street.
"What the hell was that?" Kael muttered, wiping blood from his brow.
"Something intervened," Nyra whispered. "Someone… with power. With history."
Liam didn't say it out loud. But they all felt it.
Elira.
Aeris knelt, gathering the remains of the shattered compass. "We're not alone here. And whoever's pulling the strings… doesn't want us dead. Not yet."
Kael exhaled. "Then we find the protectors. Before the next attack isn't stopped."
Liam stared into the horizon. The city stretched beyond, a maze of stories waiting to unfold. His vision swam with memory and possibility.
Three paths. One truth.
And the first had only just begun.