"Codex."The impact, carried by Asheras' voice, split the air like a muffled thunderclap, sharp enough to make even the ents' branches twitch in an involuntary spasm.
"Hall of Machinery."The glasses that had once rested against her chest began to fracture like glass under searing heat. But instead of shattering, the shards floated, spinning with mechanical precision. Inner components rearranged themselves, connectors snapped into place, and fine threads of pale blue energy flickered to life.
What formed in her hands was something entirely new. A Mezuzah, but not one of parchment and sacred ink.
It was a mechanical reliquary, long and metallic, adorned with tiny golden gear-teeth and caligraphic lines etched across its surface like living circuits. A thin, translucent veil, faintly pulsing, wrapped around the artifact.
"…" The eyes behind Mazzareth's mask shifted abruptly, composing an expression that was almost human: unfiltered confusion.
The three froze for an instant, tension sharp between them.
Ezra, in contrast, allowed himself a brief moment of ease. But their sudden recoil unsettled him more than it comforted. His gaze narrowed. Something was wrong.
They knew. They knew something he didn't.
"Stitch, Karmen, now!" the one-eyed man shouted, rushing toward the girl, chainsaw roaring back to life.
"You won't." Ezra was faster. He shoved a smaller ent into the enemy's path like an improvised shield, then sprang off the twisted body of another, vaulting between the attackers and Asheras. His feet barely touched the ground: vine, trunk, root, leap, dodge, spin. He moved as if the forest itself carried him.
"Tch, it's just a utility Codex. What's with the panic?" Karmen muttered, trying to slip around the flank.
"It's a damn Arcane-level Codex! Utility or not, that Codex is why we lost her last time! Enough games!" the one-eyed man snapped, spitting on the ground.
Ezra faltered for a fraction of a second. 'Arcane Codex?' The words struck his mind like a silent hammer. He had always known Asheras carried a Codex, but never thought much of it. It was deeply personal, after all. He wanted to ask, needed to, but this was not the moment.
The gears of the Mezuzah spun faster, opening to reveal its heart. Not runes, not common words… but a blueprint. A complex, living schematic map, etching itself into being as the Codex aligned.
<"As the design unfolds, so say the Laws: Where the Machinist goes, the Workshop follows.">
Reality tore around Asheras.Or more precisely… it folded.
A circular field of Vis surged outward, violent as an inverted bubble, halting just meters above the ground in perfect suspension. Its surface flickered between blue and amber, as if the colors wrestled for dominion.
To the others, it was nothing more than a circle of raw, chaotic energy.But within…
"What…?" Ezra whispered, stumbling as the edge of the field brushed the back of his neck.
Inside, the world was something else entirely.
At the epicenter, Asheras stood in awe of an impossible chamber, part laboratory, part workshop, part living archive. It wasn't built of wood, metal, or stone, but of intention. Of memory. Of function.
To the others, it remained only an anomalous phenomenon: a pulsing sphere of Vis, unstable to the eye yet flawless to the senses.But to her… it was the Workshop.
Translucent holograms materialized around her, gears of suspended light, turning, processing, awaiting command. Asheras herself didn't move. But inside the sphere, her eyes and her mind were hammer and anvil.
With a subtle motion, she drew one of the floating projections closer, opened a design window, scanned the coded lines with practiced ease. She smiled.
"Ezra! Catch!" The artifact shot toward him as if launched by an invisible mechanism.
Ezra, already in motion, caught it midair. Heavy, metallic, alien to the touch, and the instant he recognized it, his eyes widened. Planting his feet, he stepped back and, without hesitation, hurled it against the ground.
A muffled crack echoed around them. And then—
VWOOOOM.
A translucent dome surged outward in all directions, swelling like a bubble of molten glass that swallowed both Asheras and Ezra. Within moments it thickened, not fully opaque, but dense, vibrating with a pulsing white radiance.
It was Vis in its purest form.
The barrier thrummed with shifting technical inscriptions, its edges circled by living runes that wrote and erased themselves in endless motion. Outside, the reaction was immediate: their three enemies recoiled on instinct alone, and even the ents faltered, their vegetal bodies quivering like leaves before a magical storm.
The one-eyed man was hurled back several paces, stumbling to keep his footing. A curse died on his lips as he saw the dome solidify.
Ezra tore his gaze away from the barrier and fixed it on Asheras. For a moment, neither spoke. Yet if his eyes could form words, they would have been hurling a dozen questions.
She only answered with a tired look.
Ezra broke the silence first. "Nice idea with the force field, but… an Arcane Codex? Seriously?"
Codex's were ranked in five tiers: mundane, inferior, superior, arcane, and primordial. Some scholars argued for a hidden sixth rank, somewhere between lesser and greater, though nothing official had ever been established. What everyone knew was simple: the higher the rank, the more Laws bound to it, and the more unpredictable it became.
Arcane meant everything. Rarity. Power. Instability. And, above all, value.
Ezra couldn't hide the astonishment in his voice.
She inhaled deeply, visibly drained. Her hands trembled faintly as she maintained the link with the Codex, even though the Workshop was already "open." The mental toll was steep, and she knew it.
"How about we talk this over later?" Asheras managed a half-smile. "We'll have plenty of time to chat… if we deal with the three outside first."
Ezra nodded slowly. "Any ideas? Three Codex users out there, and they're already a pain even without activating their own."
Her brow furrowed, a quick glance flicking toward the barrier before locking back onto him. Strange.
"Of course I have an idea," she said curtly. "Or do you think I'd pull this out for fun and risk blacking out halfway through?"
"…" Ezra's eyebrows rose.
Asheras noticed the delay in his reaction, waiting him out.
"Okay…" he said at last, blinking slowly. "What's the plan?"
She didn't answer right away. A sigh slipped out first. Her fingers were already moving, sliding through holograms with mechanical familiarity, but not without fatigue. One by one, items began to materialize before her, each arrival punctuated by a sharp crack and a brief distortion in the air.
The first was a thick, opaque disk, its edges scorched with grooves and its center pressed inward as though crushed by something far stronger than itself. It resembled the device Ezra had used to raise the Vis-field, only smaller. Rougher. Unfinished.
"This one was meant for emergencies," Asheras murmured, turning the disk in her hands. The material gave a faint dry screech, like stressed metal under friction. "It's missing stable circuits. If we use it… maybe five minutes. Maybe."
She tossed it back into the hologram, which shattered into dim fragments of light.
Soon after, a new selection took shape, a small arsenal, worn down by time and battles past.
Pistols and rifles, most of them ancient; some with shattered scopes, others with chambers split open like deformed mouths. The drum of a revolver dangled halfway loose, held together by a makeshift wire. Scattered among them lay crooked rounds, cracked casings, a few tipped with a viscous, unstable gleam.
"These fire, but don't ask me where," Asheras muttered, nudging one with her foot.
Ezra raised a brow but kept silent. His eyes were still searching… for some logic that wasn't there.
"Great way to get friendly fire," Mazzareth murmured, his tone so low only Ezra could hear.
Smoke bombs and flash charges sat stacked beside them, plastic shells, scratched and grimy. One carried, in faded marker and shaky handwriting, the words: Might Work. Next to it, a pulsing sphere drew the eye: layered in concentric lines that seemed to shift ever so slightly, alive. At its core, a slow, hypnotic glow throbbed between amber and violet.
"Careful… slightest touch and KABOOM," Asheras warned, not even glancing at him.
A little further on were climbing hooks of mixed models, some bent, some patched with crooked bolts. One, apparently the most intact, still bore flecks of dried blood crusted into its spring mechanism.
Knives with chipped blades, a machete without a handle wrapped in a filthy rag. Scattered between them: odd, nameless scraps, cylinders, cases, empty glass vials, chains, screws, a needleless syringe, and something that resembled a detonator, its button fixed in place with worn-out tape.
Ezra circled the ramshackle display in two slow steps. The corner of his mouth twitched, almost imperceptibly. To him, this looked less like a plan… and more like a final prayer.
"We're well stocked," he muttered, not sarcastic, just weary. Maybe resigned.
"This is what's left," Asheras said, crouching to straighten the leg of a collapsed tripod. "Either it stalls someone for five seconds… or it blows up in our faces."
"Or both," Ezra added, leaning slightly to pick up one of the smaller bombs.
"Don't. That one sticks to your fingers."
He pulled his hand back with a faint click of his tongue, then folded his arms slowly. His shoulders dragged with weight. His temples throbbed. But his eyes began combing over the items more carefully. Something was connecting… or maybe unraveling even further.
But they weren't alone there.
Mazzareth, technically unseen by Asheras, circled the meager stockpile like an old auctioneer… or a crow savoring a feast of rust. His steps made no sound, yet Ezra felt his presence: a cold, subtle weight, like the warning of a fever.
"Curious scrap…" Mazzareth whispered, contemplative. "But useless in the hands of a fool."
Ezra clenched his jaw. 'And where will we find a genius to wield such scrap?'
"You are one, aren't you?" Mazzareth replied, already drifting away, indifferent.
Ezra ignored him, or tried to. The corner of his left eye twitched. A finger jerked faintly against the crease of his arm. Small motions, barely visible, like involuntary reflexes.
Mazzareth leaned over a large metallic cylinder in the corner. The piece was sturdy, carved with grooves and half-eaten inscriptions. At the base, it bore a grip, or something that faintly resembled the handle of an ordinary tool.
But before Ezra could say a word, Asheras moved.
Quick.
Her hand swept across the floor, pulling the cylinder close with a motion almost rehearsed. Almost. Because her eyes, locked a heartbeat ago on Ezra, flicked for a fraction of a second, toward the empty space beside the artifact.
Ezra noticed. And frowned.
"What does this one do?"
A muscle beneath Asheras' left eye twitched. She hesitated, just long enough for it to matter, then buried it under a colder stare. "Nothing obvious. Better nothing worth mentioning."
Ezra didn't answer. 'Best to keep quiet,' he thought. After all, everyone had their secrets.And he was far from the exception.
The silence lingered, broken only by the faint clicks of trinkets being stored away. Each touch on the hologram gave off a soft crackle, and every item dissolved into pale particles. Asheras packed them up with swift, precise gestures, like someone who had done this countless times. There was a logic to it. But not one Ezra shared.
He didn't ask.
"Oh?" Something caught his attention. Mazzareth had stopped, turning his face slowly toward Asheras.
The demon's mask bore no expression, just three hollow openings: two for the eyes, one for the mouth. Yet there was something in the tilt of his head, the way it leaned ever so slightly, as if studying a painting from a new angle. A trace of… curiosity.
Ezra wet his lips. A faint tremor ran through his fingers. He clenched his teeth without realizing.
'And now… what is it you see?' he thought.
Mazzareth didn't answer.
Before Ezra could press further, Asheras had finished storing the last of the trinkets.
"Originally," she said, "I was going to use one of these scraps, a little luck, and some creativity to make it out. Alone, of course."
She activated the watch.
A brief sound—tchzz—and a hologram flickered out from the bracelet. A bluish projection hovered there, a schematic landscape drawn in white strokes and pulsing lines. A map, or something close to it. At the center: a single mark. Them.
"Not ideal," she murmured, eyes on the map like someone critiquing their own mistakes. "We'd come out wounded. Maybe lose an arm. But… it would've worked."
She closed the hologram. A dry click. Silence.
Then, the hint of a smile. Short. Crooked. Neither mocking nor encouraging. Just… there.
"Except…" She turned her face toward him. Her gaze was direct. "…maybe your little masked fairy has a better solution."
Ezra frowned, confused. "My what—?"
She tilted her chin, pointing not with words but with her eyes.
Ezra followed the gesture. Slowly. His gaze slid down to his own shoulder.
He froze, eyes widening. A small spasm clenched his jaw. His shoulders stiffened. His hands, once half-relaxed, closed into fists, slow and deliberate.
Silence fell again—but this time, it wasn't empty.