The sky above Delvinar was a perpetual bruise—dingy gray flecked with streaks of ember red, as if the world had continued to bleed from the moment when the last bomb fell.
Steel spires, once beacons of progress, leaned like broken teeth over rotten streets. Existence was rumor. A demolished billboard spun in ash-stained air, retaining scraps of pre-war lettering: "Tomorrow, Today" in neon that pulsed. Far off, a pulse of resonance cracked, sharp and pitched, then the scream of dying machinery. The city did not breathe—it suspended.
Aevor moved through the ruins like one of them.
His own blackened and copper-wired greatcoat dropped behind him as he dodged a wreckage of a crashed war drone. The streets were empty now, but he kept his hand close to his belt where the sphere bumped gently against his ribcage.
Aetheris.Light blue, purple, almost alive. It wasn't that disquieting flicker of artificial tech. It breathed.
Legends of it lay buried in the mythics—tall tales of a power not crafted, but found. Not made, but revealed. All dismissed those in the Dust Markets. Until now.
Aevor had seen what it could do.
And now, they were stalking him for it.
He trudged through an alley lined with garbage and rusting hulks of solar rigs, then into the entrance of a fallen subway tunnel and disappeared into darkness, feet silent on broken tile. Delvinar's tunnels were unstable, abandoned—perfect for specters.
Aevor Nyreth was one of them.
The name meant nothing anymore. House Nyreth had been erased from all records. Labeled as traitors. Heretics. The very creators of the myths that terrorized the world that remained. But long before the Fall, House Nyreth had discovered about what others feared: the Core—the Aetheris—resonance.
They had not tried to make it a weapon. They had tried to study it.
And they were executed for it.
Aevor was the final one. No flags. No friends. No past. Just the Core, and the secrets buried with it.
His scanner beeped twice. Movement. Six signals. West tunnel. Armed.
"Enforcers," he growled. "Virell. Of course."
He knelt beside the ancient hulk of a ventilation pipe and listened. The sound of boots crunching in the distance. Radio static white noise. The high whine of a hover-drone. Virell patrols moved in groups—all together: drones, ground force, and a single Resonant plugged into the House technology web.
Aevor ventured deeper into the tunnel system, where skeletal hulks of abandoned trains lay like corroding corpses. An old skeletal transit map was little more than illegible through years of soot. It had been bombed out on most lines during the Siege of Delvinar, but Aevor knew of one route that would take him under the ancient data banks.
The Aetheris pulse beat harder now. Answering. He slapped his coat and pushed his palm against it through its armor. Cold, but alive.
For a moment, the world outside of him moved in slow motion.
Dust hanging in the air. The burst of his scanner screen stretched out like melting plastic. Then it was normal, and the pressure in his head let go like a plummeting hammer.
He exhaled. "Not yet…"
The Core was agitated. And he was too.
He walked through a maintenance doorway and down a crumbling stairway, each step groaning beneath his weight. Graffiti covered the walls in multiple languages. Some were threats. Others were prayers to dead machines.
REMEMBER NYRETH had been scrawled in red over a broken power conduit.
Aevor paused. His fingers traced over the paint. New.
Someone remembered.
Before he could think longer, a voice crackled down the tunnel.
"Target acquired. Sector Three." A pause. Then, curtly: "Fire."
Damn.
The wall behind him exploded in a cloud of dust and light as an energy bolt ripped through the stairwell. He rolled to the side, taking cover behind a crashed generator. A second shot struck, burning the rock.
Aevor pulled out a small cylindrical explosive—a jolt grenade, stolen from a Ferrix wreck. He charged it, hurled it over the wreckage.
The shockwave shattered down the tunnel, destroying the drones' neural relays. Sparks poured on the passage.
He ran. Hard.
Halfway to running, Aevor kicked the toe of his boot. A soft hiss, and—
FWHOOSH.
Twin jets spouted from his boots, suspending him in mid-air in a gout of control. He soared up onto a higher ledge, landing in a crouch. Another jet sent him across a shattered beam, changing direction halfway through like a shadow made of fire and smoke.
The enforcers on the ground shouted. A drone exploded up behind him.
Aevor wasted no time. He pulled out a cylindrical hilt from behind his back and thumb-started the ignition.
VRRRRRMM.
A hilt of pure, thrumming energy extended—silver shining with a trembling edge. It was heavy, but seemed not. Air in front of it waved.
The Ultrablade—something he had built himself. A focused beam shaking at ultrasonic velocities. Sufficient to sever steel, or disable a drone.
The leading drone rushed.
Aevor spun around, sidestepped, and swept the blade up in a close arc. The drone cut diagonally in half, crashing to the ground in smoldering pieces.
Another soldier came around the corner, plasma rifle at ready. Aevor jet-jumped off the wall, twirled halfway through the motion, and slammed down behind the enforcer.
Slash. Clean slice through armor.
Two others entered. One fired. He deflected the bolt by twisting his wrist, sending the energy into a wall conduit that burst in a flash of sparks.
He danced like a ghost—one with fire raging at his heels and lightning in his fists.
Aevor took out the last two with a fluid dance of motion—boots flashing, blade singing. In a moment, the corridor was still again.
He breathed a little harder, blade fading as he closed it off and sheathed it.
The Core throbbed once more. This time not in warning but in recognition.