The explosion of Jax's Chrono-Skip device left a ringing silence in its wake. Celia Ashorex blinked, disoriented, as violet lightning from the Veythari storm illuminated the jagged landscape. Beside her, Jax Lobenstein clutched his corroded arm, the Arc Core in his spine flickering erratically. The Reality Shard in Celia's palm pulsed like a heartbeat, its light mingling with the storm's eerie glow.
"Move," Jax rasped, shoving her forward as the Veythari nomads' guttural chants echoed behind them. "Unless you want to become their next sacrifice."
Celia stumbled, her Solaris Veil clattering against her hip. The once-pristine gold was now streaked with ash, a mirror to her fractured faith. She glanced back, catching a glimpse of the nomads—their bodies grotesque fusions of flesh and machine, eyes glowing with the same violet hue as the storm. What have they become?
---
They ran until the storm's howl faded, collapsing in the shadow of a half-buried obelisk etched with forgotten runes. Jax ripped open his coat sleeve, revealing skin cracked like porcelain, veins blackened by corrosion. He cursed, fiddling with a frayed wire protruding from his wrist.
"Your… machines," Celia said, catching her breath. "They're killing you."
"And your prayers nearly roasted a kid alive," Jax shot back, not looking up. "What's your point, Saintess?"
Celia flinched but held her ground. "The Shard's vision—the Third Heart. You saw it too. It's real."
Jax's laugh was bitter. "Real? The Veythari worship delusions. That thing's a fairy tale."
"Then why are the coordinates burned into your maps?"
He froze. The holoscreen on his wrist flickered, displaying the same numbers from the Chrono-Skip's data: The heart of the Wastes.
"It's a death sentence," Jax muttered. "Even if we survive the Wastes, the Ashorex will shoot me on sight."
"You think my family wants me back?" Celia's voice trembled. "I'm a heretic now. The Light Dominion's voice is… changing."
For a moment, the only sound was the wind whistling through the obelisk's cracks. Then Jax stood, tossing her a rusted canteen. "Drink. We move at dawn."
---
The Wastes were a graveyard of dead gods and deadlier machines. Celia stepped over a skeletal hand fused to a rusted gear, its fingers curled around a Luminar Code sigil. Ashorex and Lobenstein, she realized. Their relics are everywhere here.
Jax scanned the horizon through a fractured lens. "Stay close. The ground's unstable—pockets of Voidwell energy. Step wrong, and you'll age fifty years in a second."
"Charming," Celia said dryly, but edged closer.
They navigated trenches of black sand, past crumbling towers that hummed with residual power. Once, Celia glimpsed a mural beneath the dust: two figures, one haloed in light, the other shrouded in gears, their hands clasped over a glowing orb. The Sundered Forge. Before she could ask, Jax yanked her back as the sand beneath her feet rippled.
A creature erupted from the ground—a serpentine horror with scales of molten steel and a maw crackling with Luminar energy.
"Run!" Jax shouted, firing his plasma wrench. The beam seared the beast's side, but it lunged, its tail slashing Celia's arm.
She screamed, holy light erupting from her wound—uncontrolled, wild. The blast tore through the creature's head, reducing it to slag.
Jax stared. "Since when can you do that?"
"Since nothing makes sense anymore," Celia panted, clutching her bleeding arm. The light had healed her, but the skin around the cut was now threaded with faint circuitry.
---
At dusk, they took shelter in a domed ruin, its walls scarred by ancient explosions. Jax lit a fire with a spark from his Arc Core, the flames casting twisted shadows. Celia studied the Reality Shard, its surface reflecting fragmented memories: a child's hands burying the Third Heart, a council of hooded figures whispering in the dark.
"The Vult Council," Jax said suddenly. He tossed her a strip of synthetic rations. "They've been pulling strings for centuries. My mother thought they caused the Sundering."
Celia frowned. "The Sundering was a natural disaster."
"Or a scrubbed one." Jax tapped his holoscreen, pulling up a corrupted file labeled Project Third Heart. "The Lobenstein didn't just find Voidwell energy. We stole it."
The fire crackled. Somewhere in the ruins, metal groaned.
"Your family's machines… they're powered by the same force as my magic, aren't they?" Celia whispered.
Jax's silence was answer enough.
---
They were asleep when the drones struck.
Celia awoke to a searing light—an Ashorex scout drone, its golden hull emblazoned with the Luminar sigil. Torin. Her uncle had sent hunters.
"Get down!" Jax tackled her as the drone fired, the blast vaporizing a pillar. He returned fire with his plasma wrench, but the device sputtered, his corrosion spreading.
Celia seized the Reality Shard, channeling her frayed magic. The Shard flared, and the drone's light warped, bending back on itself until it imploded.
But the noise had drawn worse. From the shadows emerged a Vult Council enforcer—a towering figure in black armor, their face a featureless void.
"The Third Heart belongs to the Council," they intoned, "Surrender, or be unmade."
Jax grabbed Celia's hand, his Arc Core overheating. "Time to go."
"Where?" she demanded.
"Wherever that Shard's pointing."
They fled into the storm, the enforcer's laughter echoing behind them. Ahead, the wastes narrowed into a canyon, its walls carved with a massive symbol: a heart split by a jagged line.
The Third Heart's mark.
But as they approached, the ground trembled—not from Voidwell energy, but from something digging its way to the surface.
Something alive.
---
End of Chapter 2