The path was narrow but unwavering, cutting through the brittle outskirts of Drevaloth and curling toward the frostbitten thresholds of Norkenheim. Snow didn't fall—it convulsed sideways, defying gravity. The border shimmered like a wound in the world.
Norkenheim: a land beyond maps, where Varn'Kai roamed in fractured forms, yet their presence remained untraceable due to the terrain's shifting laws. Even Aelenevs couldn't bend this place. Not completely. The Blooming Spire of Pride had long since designated it a Class S Domain—uninhabitable, unsalvageable.
"Even as an Aelenev of Trailblaze who loves travelling, I still hate travelling here," Kairos muttered. His cloak clung to his skin, body already shivering from the brutal drop in temperature. Drevaloth's damp warmth was gone. The cold here wasn't just cold—it was ancient. Intentional.
They crossed the final arc of cracked obsidian soil. Drevaloth vanished behind them, swallowed by flurries. Norkenheim did not welcome. It waited.
"Something feels off," murmured one of the adventurers, her hand already drifting toward her sheath. Her breath curled in the air like smoke, then didn't.
Caelus paused. No need to speak. He scanned the horizon, silent snowstorm blurring the distance into impossible geometry—icebergs hung mid-air, stone spires reversed their peaks into the ground.
"We've already come this far," Caelus said softly, his voice carried on wind that didn't blow. "And yet, we don't know our companions' names."
Time bent around him. His eyes shimmered gold, and the snowflakes before him unraveled mid-air—falling backward, then vanishing.
The adventurers shifted uneasily. It wasn't just his magic. It was the three of them. Something about the Aelenev disturbed the natural order. They spoke softly but were followed by silence. They moved gently but cast wrong shadows.
Then, finally, a voice.
"Allow me to introduce us." The youngest stepped forward, shoulders cocky, confidence worn like armor. "Erenz Kestrel. Leader of this unit. I'm an Attack."
The three Aelenev paused.
"Wait," Alaris asked, tilting his head. "There are types?"
As if responding, a flicker of blue light sparked beside Erenz. A screen—thin as paper, bright as dawn—blinked into view. On it, words assembled in clean letters:
Drevan – Attack
Osyre – Support
Ilvera – Healer
Kalreth – Tank
Nerion – Mage
Thalen – Summoner
Saelin – Marksman
Veyric – Vanguard
Snow swirled unnaturally behind them. Something far away howled without sound.
And Norkenheim watched.
"Space magic?" Kairos murmured, brushing a finger against the floating screen. It pulsed with a soft warmth, unnatural amid the suffocating cold. The moment he touched it, the snowfall froze mid-air—literally—suspended in motion like static on pause.
None of the Aelenev spoke. The environment reacted to curiosity. That alone was disturbing.
Erenz didn't notice. "We use the type system to keep formations tight and roles clearer. We're part of Crimson Hunt—Wrath Division."
"That explains your recklessness," Alaris muttered, arms folded. Erenz only grinned.
He gestured behind him. "We're five, by choice. Veterans. We don't need a full eight. We had five, but... our Mage died before we made it to Drevaloth. Her name was Lyenne."
His voice dipped then, not sorrowful—hollow.
"I was with her. She knew what she signed up for."
Silence again. Heavy. The blizzard resumed its motion as if it had been waiting for him to finish.
He cleared his throat, then turned to the others.
"This is Branick Valeheart," he said, nodding toward the hulking figure to his left.
Branick stepped forward. Towering, built like a siege wall. His shield was nearly as wide as he was tall—dented, scored by deep claw marks long rusted. "Kalreth. Tank." His voice was gravel. "Former soldier. I don't talk unless needed."
He didn't wait for a reaction and returned to his place.
Next came a quiet figure, gliding forward with a grace that felt misplaced in the frozen horror around them. Her cloak shimmered faintly, patterned with swirling sigils.
"Cinna Yurei," she said, voice barely above the wind. "Osyre. Support." She nodded politely. "Half-Elven. I use wind-imbued runes. For shielding, mostly." Her eyes lingered on Kairos for a breath longer than they should have, not in suspicion—but in recognition. Then she stepped back.
Then came the last—pale-skinned, eyes dull with sleeplessness, a gentle weight to her presence.
"Sorei Maelle," she said, her rings floating around her hands like soft orbiting moons. "Ilvera. Healer." Her smile was tired. "I can numb pain. But I feel it in return."
A pause.
Caelus studied them. Not with suspicion, but calculation. Five by choice. Not arrogance—trust. Their formation wasn't tight by force, but by grief.
"Noted," he said.
Then: the ground beneath them cracked without sound.
The snow didn't fall—it reversed, pulled upward into spirals. A shriek bloomed in the distance, broken and stitched with metallic echoes.
Something knew their names now.
And it didn't like them.
The ground trembled—but only for some. Caelus felt nothing. Branick stumbled. Alaris blinked three times before exhaling, "Reality's... out of sync again."
Cinna reached out, but her hand passed through her own shadow. "It's shifting." Her voice remained calm, but her fingers tightened around a charm stitched into her cloak.
The group pressed on, the terrain uncoiling like a reel of corrupted film—ice arches looped into themselves, upside-down stairs led nowhere, and patches of snow appeared twice in two places at once.
Kairos stepped ahead, watching the world flicker at the corners of his vision. "It's not just Discord's doing," he said slowly, the weight in his voice unusual for someone usually carefree. "There's something deeper. Older."
"You sound like a priest," Erenz muttered.
But Kairos didn't flinch.
"This realm rejects rules. Most Aelenevs can't rewrite it. The snow doesn't fall—it remembers falling. The wind doesn't blow—it repeats a moment it once did."
Caelus turned to him, patient. "And?"
Kairos looked over his shoulder. His eyes now faintly glowed with an eerie blue—not magic, but clarity.
"There's a reason no one remembers what stood here before the Domain swallowed it," he said. "This place is marked. Warped by remnants of the First Enofal."
Erenz tilted his head. "The First... what?"
Alaris finally spoke. "The First Enofal. The first war. The one that wasn't fought between nations, but between universes."
The wind paused. Even the storm seemed to listen.
"During that conflict," Alaris continued, "some spells weren't spells—they were collapses. Echoes of gods. Ruptures in the Pattern. Norkenheim… is one of those ruptures."
Kairos added, "It's not haunted. It's echoing the death of things that never existed to begin with. And they're trying to remember themselves."
Erenz stared. "You're saying... this land is a ghost?"
"No," Caelus said. "A grave. With no corpses."
Cinna whispered, "Then what are the Varn'Kai?"
A pulse. Far off. Like a breath drawn in reverse.
Caelus slowly turned his head toward the mountains of inverted frost.
"We'll find out," he said.
The land behind them shifted again. Their footprints vanished.
They had been noticed.
A low hum rolled through the frost. Not from the wind—but from beneath it.
Cinna froze mid-step. Her runes flickered without command. "That's not the storm," she whispered.
The hum rose, pitchless yet dense, like a vibration in the skull. Branick raised his shield. The metal groaned, reacting to something it couldn't see. Ice cracked underfoot—spiraling fractures like a flower blooming upside-down.
Then—
A shriek. Not heard—felt. It tore through thought itself.
Erenz barely ducked in time as a jagged blur launched from a sideways-suspended cliff, arcing midair like a broken arrow. It landed with a crunch behind them—its form warped, skittering on too many legs.
A Varn'Kai. But wrong.
Its body was spined and sleek with frost-armored plates, limbs twisted into sharp crescents. One eye glowed beneath layers of broken glass-like hide. Its maw split open—not forward, but outward—revealing strings that vibrated like harp wires.
Then it spoke—not in words, but in sound.
A warped tone burst out like a sonar pulse. Sorei clutched her ears, instantly pale. "It's speaking pain!"
Branick moved first—shield raised, stepping in front of her. The next pulse shattered the frozen bark of nearby trees into powder.
Erenz yelled, charging in. "Flank it!" His blades hummed with barely-contained energy. He blinked left, then right, striking into its flank. But his steel ricocheted off.
"No vitals," he growled. "Nothing's where it's supposed to be!"
Caelus extended a hand. "Retreating isn't an option."
Kairos stepped beside him, hair whipping wildly. "Want me to distort?"
"Do it."
Kairos snapped his fingers—and the field around the Varn'Kai folded. Space collapsed inward like a crushed map, drawing the beast momentarily into a warped corner of itself.
Cinna threw a wind rune forward. It snapped, forming a prism of force that shattered its equilibrium for a second.
Branick charged in. His shield hit with a quake—but the beast didn't stumble.
It laughed.
Not a sound—a vibration of amusement, burrowed deep into bone.
Alaris raised a hand—and burned its laugh away. The sound evaporated into a blue static, muted completely.
"The Varn'Kai has adapted," he said softly.
Sorei stepped forward now, despite her ringing ears. Her rings swirled—then bound Branick and Erenz in dull golden light. "Pain's yours now," she whispered. "I'll hold it."
The Varn'Kai screeched again—higher this time—and began to fracture.
Caelus narrowed his eyes.
"It's going to split."
The Varn'Kai shrieked again, its cry no longer chaotic but layered—like multiple voices clawing through a single throat.
Then, it began to split.
Jagged arms tore in opposite directions, bones twisting, as if trying to pull itself apart from within. No blood. No muscle. Just unraveling structure—like memory dissolving.
Caelus narrowed his eyes.
For a heartbeat, time around him slowed.
His hand rose—not to command light, but to draw from a deeper place. Gold threads emerged from his palm, weaving into shape—a bow, ancient and transparent, strung with something that didn't exist in this timeline. He drew it slowly, and the arrow formed on its own: a glowing fragment of memory.
"What are you doing?" Erenz shouted, still fighting on reflex. "Just kill it!"
The arrow released—not with force, but intention.
It flew in silence and struck the Varn'Kai between its fractured shoulders.
The creature froze mid-split. Not in pain—but in recognition. Its body shimmered. Frost peeled like cracked paint. One of its eyes, buried deep behind layers of mutated glass, blinked—human.
Alaris saw it too. Wordless, he flicked his fingers and cast Sierno. This time, the scale didn't vanish. It balanced—barely. As if the creature's soul had been dragged back just enough to weigh again.
"She's regaining form," Alaris said under his breath. "But her strength is unstable."
"Then hold her down," Caelus replied.
Kairos leapt forward, spinning his celestial spear into a spiral. It struck into the ice beside the creature, pinning a tether through shadow and body alike. The ground beneath it flickered, bound by his Trailblaze domain.
The Varn'Kai collapsed. Breath heaved through its fanged mouth.
Then—
"…Erenz."
A voice. Clear. Shaky. Human.
The frost sloughed off in shards, revealing parts of skin, patches of a once-familiar face. Eyes clouded by grief. Hands trembling as if remembering how to shape fingers again.
Erenz stumbled backward, his blades limp.
"Lyenne…?"
The others said nothing. The wind held its breath.
Caelus lowered his bow, eyes dimming as the time-magic receded.
"She's not gone," he said, softly. "Not yet."
The wind stilled, not by nature—but as if the world itself held its breath.
Lyenne collapsed onto the fractured snow, bones half-shifted, flesh phasing between human and something crueler. Her voice barely remained her own, words tumbling out in broken cadence.
"…Erenz…"
He took a step forward, his breath catching.
"I'm here," he said. "I never left."
Her form spasmed violently. Limbs twisted. Her teeth elongated, skin cracking like ceramic under strain. She forced her head upward. Her eye—just one—still shimmered with who she once was.
"I… I followed you," she said, barely above a breath. "I tried to stay… myself."
Caelus stood still. He didn't move. Didn't reach for his bow. In fact—he dismissed it entirely. With one slow motion, he unclipped P.R.I.S.M. from his belt and set it gently on the snow.
Erenz blinked. "What are you—"
Caelus raised both his bare hands.
"Caelus—no—" Alaris stepped forward, but the glow had already begun.
From Caelus' fingertips to his forearms, sigils unfurled like constellations etched directly into his skin. Golden veins of radiant mana pulsed underneath, crackling softly like morning fire through frost. He closed his eyes.
"I wanted to save her," he said, voice low. "But saving isn't always healing."
The ground around him warmed—slightly. Just enough to let the frost evaporate in soft mist.
Lyenne trembled, clutching her head. She looked to Erenz one last time. "I'm so… sorry…"
Then her eye darkened again. Her hands contorted into claws. Spines tore from her back, pulsing with black frost. Her corrupted side surged.
"She's losing herself," Cinna whispered, stepping back.
Alaris cast Sierno again, anchoring her collapsing form to a single point in space. Kairos slammed his spear into the ice, freezing time around her heart.
The three locked her in place.
Caelus stepped forward.
Light pooled in his palms, quiet and blinding. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't summon theatrics.
He simply looked at her—then at Erenz—and whispered:
"This is the mercy she asked for."
He pressed both hands together. The glow expanded, swirling in circular runes and ancient script, orbiting his fingers like planets spiraling into eclipse. His breath grew heavier. His hair fluttered upward, caught in the rising pressure of the Light converging above him.
Then he opened his eyes—radiant gold.
"Astraburst."
The spell ignited in an instant.
From his hands erupted a column of pure light, not harsh—but absolute. It sang as it burned, humming with sorrow and finality. It struck Lyenne full-on—no scream, no sound, only a moment of stillness.
Then, she disintegrated.
No blood. No ashes. Just light dissolving into the air, like a soul returned to something greater.
The beam faded.
Silence reigned. Even the wind didn't dare return.
Caelus staggered a half-step back, his hands dimming, eyes no longer glowing. "It's done," he said.
Erenz dropped to his knees.
And above them, the storm resumed, softer than before. As if, at last, Norkenheim had let something go.