The surface of the Moonwell shimmered with silver-blue ripples, as if stirred gently by some invisible force. Raine knelt beside the well, his right arm covered in crystalline growths that glimmered with a sickly sheen under the dim light. The sharp crystals had already crept up to his jaw, forming a slowly growing mask of thorns. Each breath came with a faint crackling—the sound of the crystals spreading through flesh.
He reached out to touch the water. The moment his fingers brushed the surface, the crystalline growths recoiled as if alive, only to surge forward again with renewed ferocity.
"Your mutation is progressing faster than expected."
Yunice's voice came from behind, accompanied by the soft whirring of wheels on stone. She had a new wool blanket today—dark red fabric embroidered with intricate runes and interlocking mechanical gears, swaying gently with her movement. Her mechanical eye gleamed cold blue in the gloom, like two stars trapped in ice.
Raine didn't turn around. He kept staring at his broken reflection in the well. That face was no longer entirely human—the crystals had spread from around his right eye like a parasitic lifeform, slowly devouring his flesh.
"Ravenna's condition?" he asked in a low voice, his tone rough—like sandpaper scraping against metal.
"The stabilizer is working better than expected." Yunice rolled her wheelchair closer, her mechanical fingers tapping lightly on the armrest, summoning a floating data projection. "The energy flow in her mechanical heart has stabilized, but..."
"But what?"
"But your mutation is accelerating." Her mechanical eye locked onto Raine's right arm. "If this continues, in three days your internal organs will begin turning into magical crystal."
Raine fell silent for a moment, then suddenly asked, "Why is my magic spiraling out of control? I've already reached the 'Branching' stage."
Yunice's mechanical eye narrowed slightly, the iris ring adjusting rapidly three times. "Where did you hear that classification?" she asked, surprise clear in her voice.
"From an ancient Elven tome," Raine frowned. "Is it wrong?"
"Incomplete—and..." Yunice tapped the armrest again, and a new set of holographic projections unfolded in the air.
Three entirely different models of power systems appeared, each intertwined yet independent from the others.
"'Branching'—as you call it—is only the second tier of the Elven magic system," Yunice said, her voice growing grave. "But in this world, power has never been one-dimensional. The crystals in your body are being influenced by three distinct systems simultaneously."
Raine's pupils dilated slightly, and the crystal growths flickered with his rising emotion. "What do you mean?"
"It means," Yunice said as she wheeled herself to the very center of the Moonwell, "your understanding of power is like a blind man trying to feel out an elephant. Now, it's time you saw the whole beast."
She raised her mechanical arm, and several floating magical crystals around the well lit up, projecting a holographic map far more complex than Raine had ever imagined.
"The crystal growths in your body aren't purely magical in nature." Yunice's mechanical fingers tapped on the hologram, causing the image to split into three interwoven energy models—Elven magic, the Abyssal Council's curse marks, and the Holy Covenant's seals. Each twisted around the others, distinct yet impossibly entangled.
Her fingers hovered in midair for a second, trembling slightly. That tiny motion didn't escape Raine's notice. At the joints of her metal hand, a faint trickle of blue coolant seeped out—she was nervous.
"Look closely," she said, her voice suddenly low, carrying a weight that bordered on reverence. As her finger traced across the projection, the three streams of energy writhed like disturbed serpents—splitting apart in bursts, only to re-entangle violently.
The flickering magical runes reflected on Raine's face, their winding paths uncannily mirroring the crystal veins spreading beneath his skin. Yunice's artificial eye snapped to his right arm, its iris contracting to a pinpoint.
"You thought this was just a simple magical overload?" she sneered, a faint electrical distortion creeping into her synthetic voice. The wheelchair slid half a meter forward, and her metal palm smacked the hologram, forcing the three energy models into violent convergence. At their collision point, a burst of blinding golden light erupted, casting deep shadows across her pale face and the fine mechanical etchings etched into her skin.
Raine instinctively stepped back, the crystal growths on his body cracking ominously in response to his movement. A bead of cold sweat slid down his temple, evaporating into white mist the moment it neared the crystals.
"Elven tomes..." Yunice sneered, the expression tugging at the mechanical components on the left side of her face, eliciting a faint metallic creak. "Those dusty relics couldn't even face the truth of their own bloodlines."
She suddenly erupted into a fit of coughing, her mechanical lungs wheezing like a broken bellows. When she finally composed herself, her voice was raspier than before.
"Your body carries cursed pure magic—that is why your flesh is turning into magical crystal."
Without warning, her mechanical arm shifted form, a needle-thin probe snapping out and plunging into the crevice between the crystals on Raine's arm with lightning speed.
He dropped to one knee from the pain, gritting his teeth, but his eyes fixed on the vial at the probe's tip—inside, glowing golden particles floated in the extracted energy fluid.
"And these..." Yunice's voice softened into a near whisper, intimate and chilling.
"...are rule-chains only understood by the High Priests of the Holy Covenant."
She rotated the probe, and under the shifting light, the gold particles revealed tiny etched runes.
"They're meant to seal you—to prevent you from attaining your full power."
Raine's breath came faster, heavier. The crystal growths on his body pulsed with each inhale, sprouting new branches that crept down his chest and over his ribs.
He stared at the golden particles, his pupils narrowing to slits.
"Why are all these forces mixed inside me?"
Yunice didn't answer right away.
Her mechanical fingers danced over the console, inputting a complex sequence of codes. The hologram shifted—now showing a grainy, flickering recording of war.
As a sky-splitting pillar of light erupted in the footage, a faint hiss issued from her cybernetic eye. Two thin trails of blue coolant spilled down her cheeks—like a machine weeping.
"Twenty years ago, when the World Barrier fractured..."
Her voice caught. She paused to reset her voice modulator.
"...an Elven village sat precisely at the confluence of three dimensions."
The image zoomed in on a cluster of treehouses being consumed by gray fire. Figures—Elves—could barely be made out as they turned to ash in the light.
Raine's crystal growths suddenly surged upward, piercing through the stone beneath him. A guttural, inhuman growl rumbled from deep in his throat—
Because the final frame of the projection froze on an Elven woman clutching a baby.
Her face bore an eerie resemblance to Raine's—delicate and defiant. A broken golden spear jutted from her chest.
"You're the only survivor of that cataclysm."
Yunice shut off the projection, her mechanical fingers trembling uncontrollably.
From behind the half-open oak door, Ravenna peeked in. Her orange-red braid swayed with the motion, a few streaks of grease still smudged across her otherwise healthy cheeks. Beneath the translucent synthetic skin of her left chest, the soft blue glow of her mechanical heart pulsed in steady rhythm.
"The hell are you two screaming about?" she snapped, yanking off the repair goggles hanging from her neck.
Woven through her fiery braid were nearly invisible strands of mithril-threaded magic silk.
"I could hear the crystal resonance from outside—"
But the moment her eyes landed on Raine, the words caught in her throat. Her pupils contracted sharply.
Yunice, still facing away from the door, stood frozen. The heat vents along her mechanical spine had flared open, flaring like the frills of a startled reptile.
Her left hand remained poised mid-air, fingers curled in the gesture for zooming the image.
But with her right hand, she silently slid a vial of pale golden liquid into a hidden compartment in her wheelchair.
"Perfect timing," she said, the calm in her metallic voice forced—barely masking the underlying static distortion.
"Come witness your partner's countdown to death."
The hologram jittered violently as Yunice manipulated it. The entangled tri-stream of energies resolved into a nightmare made manifest:
A surge of viridian Elven magic stabbed through the holographic organs of Raine's projection, tearing tissue apart with primal violence.
At the same time, dark violet gears—symbols of the Abyssal Council—rotated against the flow in the very same regions, grinding through him as if time and space had no meaning.
And threaded through it all, golden chains—Holy Covenant rule-seals—crisscrossed his entire projected body, cracking and dimming at a pace visible to the naked eye, like a divine prison falling apart from within.
Ravenna's fingers sank into the oak doorframe, splintering wood beneath her grip.
Her mouth opened slightly, but her synthetic voicebox glitched under the strain, letting out a distorted, broken tremor:
"...what the actual fuck..."
"A legendary-level energy conflict." Yunice finally turned around, her mechanical eye casting two faint blue afterimages in the dim room. She raised a pair of tweezers with chilling precision; the tips shimmered with a cold nano-coating. The moment the tweezers pierced Raine's crystal growth on his right arm, a few drops of blood splattered from his clenched jawline—but not a single sound escaped him.
Yunice slowly pushed her wheelchair forward; the metal wheels crunched softly on the stone floor. She lifted her mechanical arm, fingertips glowing with a faint blue magical aura, and gently touched the edge of the floating "Moonmark Mirror."
The ancient magical mirror immediately emitted an ethereal hum as the runes embedded in its frame lit up one by one. The polished moonstone surface rippled like water, projecting Raine's crystal growth into the moist air. With Yunice's precise control of magic, the image zoomed in layer by layer, finally solidifying into a detailed three-dimensional hologram.
Under the mirror's illumination, the seemingly ordinary golden cracks revealed their astonishing nature—within each fissure curled countless golden chains, like imprisoned spirits of light trapped inside Raine's body, fading visibly by the second. The outermost runes were already shattered, reduced to golden stardust that drifted slowly in the mirror's glow.
"The Moonmark Mirror reveals the most primal forms of energy," Yunice's voice grew otherworldly, as if resonating with the mirror itself. "These are not mere cracks—they are the unraveling 'Chains of the Gods,' the final barrier maintaining the balance of your internal energies."
Before she could finish speaking, a core rune in the mirror suddenly flared violently, flickering like a dying firefly. When the last flicker died out, Raine's crystal growth emitted a sharp, grating crack—shooting out over an inch in length. The sharp crystal tip plunged deep into the hard stone floor, leaving a spiderweb of fractures across the ground.
Ravenna's breath caught sharply. She instinctively stepped forward but stumbled slightly, clutching her chest where the mechanical heart throbbed. Yunice's mechanical eye flickered rapidly, and a metal arm extended from the side of her wheelchair to steady Ravenna firmly.
"Don't be impulsive," Yunice's voice returned to its usual calm. "Look here." She pointed to a new image emerging in the Moonmark Mirror—the shattered golden stardust hadn't completely dissipated.
Raine groaned softly, beads of sweat forming at his temple. He raised his intact left hand, trembling as he pointed at the holographic image. "This… what exactly is…"
Suddenly, Yunice's mechanical arm froze mid-air, sparks crackling at the joints. The hum of the Moonmark Mirror shot up an octave; the smooth surface rippled dangerously in scarlet, and one by one, the magical runes along the edges flickered out.
"Whoa—" Her voice suddenly split into a dual tone, "Look—"
Yunice's mechanical head tilted sharply to the right, the metal vertebrae clicking with a nerve-wracking clack. The once-playful tilt felt disturbingly unnatural on her mechanized body—the head rotated a full ninety degrees, yet her artificial eye's iris stayed locked on Raine.
"Annihilation." Her synthetic vocal cords switched to a cold, metallic resonance, each syllable vibrating with an eerie clang. "More precisely—"
As she spoke, the hologram violently distorted. Raine's virtual image first bloated grotesquely with surging emerald energy, countless root-like veins bulging beneath his skin. Then, the dark purple mechanical gears spun madly, tearing his body apart from within. The mixture of flesh and crystal sprayed outward, forming a dazzling, blood-red and green "flower" in the projection.
Yunice's mechanical finger tapped lightly, slowing the image by a thousandfold. Every fragment of the flying debris flickered faintly with golden runes.
"First comes the magical energy's rampage," her tone chillingly calm. "Then the Abyssal curse's backlash. Finally…" The view zoomed to the molecular level; the golden runes extinguished one by one. "The Holy Covenant's seals completely—"
"Enough!" Ravenna suddenly burst out, slamming her intact right hand against the control panel. Her mechanical heart blared an alarm, energy conduits sparking dangerously. "We're not here to watch this damned display!"
Yunice's mechanical head slowly turned back to normal, her artificial iris contracting to a pinpoint. "Then, do you want to see how it really happened?"