The vertigo of torn space receded like ebbing tide.
Raine found himself kneeling on cold stone tiles, Merry unconscious in his arms. The silver-blue–haired girl who had called herself Gamma was gone—only a faint trace of ozone lingered in the air, and at his feet the alchemical teleportation array still turned slowly, its light already fading.
"Gamma…" The name rolled over his tongue, stabbing through his skull with fresh pain, stirring more fractured memories: a lab consumed by explosions, desperate voices shouting, the grinding of gears. But whenever he reached for them, the fragments dissolved back into the muck of oblivion, leaving only hollow echoes.
The Red Moon's glow spilled through the empty window frame, draping the ruined clinic in a blood-colored pall. Master Hank lay collapsed not far away—his breathing ragged but steady, as though sunk in an unnatural slumber. Beyond the town walls, the howls and chaos had vanished at some unknown hour. What remained was silence—so profound it seemed the Weaver's shadow had stolen the very souls of Ashen Town.
Raine's mechanical right eye swept the surroundings, tagging exits and possible threats. His left arm ached from overstraining the Seed of Life, its emerald glow dim. Worse still, the crystalline arm now bore searing crimson tracery, faintly resonating with the Red Moon beyond the window. A chill, alien energy crept up his bones.
He set Merry down on the least-broken bed, then checked Hank. The old alchemist had no mortal wounds—only magical exhaustion and trauma. Raine rose silently and began sealing the half-shattered wall of the clinic, using whatever he could salvage: snapped planks, thick pelts, even solidified salves. His movements were steady, practiced—as though he had built too many shelters in too many ruins before.
When the task was done, exhaustion crashed down on him. He sank against the wall, the crystalline arm humming faintly where the moonlight touched it. In the haze between waking and sleep, the fragments Gamma had stirred clawed their way up again—until they coalesced into one sharp, merciless image:
Ravenna.
Her eyes cold, resolute.
The dagger in her hand blazing with violet-gold light as it plunged, unerring, into his back.
The pain was not of memory but of the soul itself.
Raine jolted awake, drenched in cold sweat.
"Was it… real?" he muttered, fingers brushing his chest, where phantom agony still lingered. The foundation of trust within him cracked violently. If even the closest one would betray him—then in this strange world, who could he trust at all?
The first thin strands of gray daylight forced their way into the clinic, pushing back some of the crimson hue, but not the deathlike silence that hung over the town.
Merry stirred first. She jolted upright with a scream, hands fumbling instinctively for the bolts at her waist.
"Easy," Raine rasped, his voice raw from fatigue. "It's safe… for now."
She panted, eyes darting in wary panic, before settling on him. Confusion and fear flickered across her pale face.
"Last night… that silver-haired girl… and the thing in the sky…" She shivered. "Where's old Hank?"
"He's alive," Raine said, low and steady. "Just needs rest."
By midday, Hank finally awoke. He looked older, more worn, and spoke even less than before. After checking Merry and himself, he confirmed there were no lasting traces of mental domination. But when it came to what had happened the previous night, he remained evasive—only casting Raine a long, complicated glance from his clouded eye.
"You've brought us no small amount of trouble, boy," he rasped at last. "But you saved us, too. That makes us even. Once you've healed, leave Ashen Town. A 'big man' like you doesn't belong here."
Raine nodded silently. Leave? But where could he go? He knew nothing of this world.
Yet plans to depart soon fell away. Ashen Town's wounds ran deeper than anyone expected. Nearly half the townsfolk, broken under the Red Moon's control, were left witless and vacant. Many homes lay in ruins. Though the Deep Dwellers had withdrawn, the corrupted mist around the town only thickened. At night, twisted silhouettes prowled the haze.
Survival, not fear or suspicion, became the townspeople's instinct. And when Raine revealed his inhuman strength—hoisting collapsed beams with one arm, soothing villagers' injuries with strange emerald energy, even lashing out with his unstable crystalline limb to drive away corrupted beasts—the eyes that once held terror now filled with something far more complex: dependence.
Hank's own stance softened, though pragmatism guided him more than warmth."If you're stuck here, you won't be eating for free." He tossed Raine a set of roughspun clothes and a rusted hoe. "The 'Sanctuary Soil' behind the clinic needs tending. Merry will show you the work."
The so-called "Sanctuary Soil" was a half-acre plot behind the clinic, bounded by low stone walls. The earth there was an unhealthy gray-white, yet stubbornly sprouted a few faintly glowing herbs. Half-buried in one corner lay a warped crimson crystal, radiating both heat and unsettling energy waves. It seemed to be the only reason the little garden could exist at all.
"That's Bloodcrystal," Merry explained, her cheer returned though shadows lingered in her eyes. "We stole it from a Deep Dweller mine. It neutralizes some of the soil's poison… but it makes the crops turn out… odd. Don't touch its core, or you might find mushrooms growing from your hand."
Raine hefted the hoe. A strange familiarity coursed through him. When his rough, human left hand gripped the wooden shaft, his fingertips sensed the earth's faint pulse. And when he dared channel a thread of emerald energy into the barren ground, something astounding occurred—
The pale soil blackened into richness before his eyes. The drooping glow-herbs straightened, their leaves unfurling, their light stabilizing into steady brilliance, even exhaling a gentle fragrance.
"By the Eclipse!" Merry clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. Her beaked mask dangled at her hip. "How—how did you do that? Hank needs a dozen potions just to perk them up a little!"
Raine himself froze. This delicate command of life's essence felt innate, etched into his very blood and soul. He could even feel the herbs' joy, their quiet hunger and relief.
From that day, Raine gained a new name in Ashen Town—Gardener Raine.
Most of his hours were spent in the Sanctuary Soil, carefully wielding a power he could not explain, nurturing the herbs that kept the town's medicine alive. The work steadied him. The crystalline right arm, usually restless, grew calm in the presence of the Bloodcrystal. Its scarlet tracery no longer burned, but pulsed gently, like breathing—locked in a strange equilibrium with the stone.
Over time, the townsfolk began to accept his presence. Children would sneak up to the low stone wall, peeking wide-eyed at "Gardener Raine"—the handsome half-man, half-crystal figure—who could make plants surge to life with a single touch. Women brought coarse but filling food in exchange for a pinch of calming pollen to soothe frightened children. Hunters, before setting out, came to him for ointments that could knit wounds shut in hours.
Life slipped into a fragile rhythm of peace.
Until, a few days later, the peace was broken.
A wagon—pulled by massive mountain yaks and covered in heavy tarpaulin—rumbled over the muddy road into town and halted before the clinic.
From the driver's perch leapt a young woman, no older than her early twenties. She wore a dust-stained travel cloak of deep green, beneath which fitted leather armor outlined her agile form. Her hair was a rare, sunset gradient of crimson, bound loosely with leather thongs, with stray strands brushing against her sun-bronzed cheeks. Her eyes were a clear amber—sharp, alive—as they swept across the battered clinic and its surroundings, her brows knitting slightly. Strapped across her back were two unusual weapons: long and slender, halfway between needles and swords.
"In the name of Wandering Healer Liana," her voice rang clear, edged with a professional authority that brooked no refusal, "who's in charge here? I need to replenish rare supplies—and hear some news."
Hank shuffled out, squinting at her.
"Wandering healer, eh? Not many dare run these roads alone nowadays. What's it you're after?"
Liana drew a parchment list from her cloak and handed it over. Hank's frown deepened as his eyes skimmed it.
"Bloodmoss… Gravecap mushrooms… Moonlight ferns… All poisonous growths near the Deep Dwellers' mines. What in blazes do you need those for?"
"Detoxification. Counterpoisons. Or research you don't need to concern yourself with." Liana's reply was seamless, clipped. But then her gaze flicked past Hank—toward Raine, who had just emerged from the Sanctuary Soil, his hands still caked in earth. More precisely, toward the crystalline arm that glimmered faintly in the daylight.
In her amber eyes flashed a jolt of pure, visceral shock—disbelief so raw it seemed to tear through her mask of composure. But she smothered it almost instantly, so swiftly it might have been imagined.
When she spoke again, her tone was quieter, more measured.
"It seems… your little town hides more than it lets on."
Hank snorted. He offered no answer.
In the end, Hank admitted that most of the items on Liana's list were out of stock, or too scarce to sell. Liana did not seem surprised. She offered instead to gather what she needed herself in the outskirts, in exchange for high-grade potions of her own making and news from the outside world. For now, she would lodge at the clinic for a few days.
Her arrival was like a stone dropped into the stagnant waters of Ashen Town.
She was a skilled physician—relieving townsfolk's lingering headaches from moon-induced trauma with only a few deft needles and a vial of medicine. She was worldly, speaking of the shifting lands beyond: ley-lines boiling with unstable magic, new creatures springing into existence, and the Holy League's increasingly strange maneuvers.
And always—whether by chance or design—she drew close to Raine. She asked probing questions about the Sanctuary Soil, and eyed his crystalline arm with the hunger of a scholar studying a living riddle.
"This arm of yours…" she remarked one evening, watching him work among the glowing herbs as dusk bled into the soil, her tone casual but her eyes sharp. "I've never seen its like. Is it the product of alchemy? Or… a curse?"
Raine set down his work, shaking his head in silence. Something about this bright, clever healer unsettled him—especially the way her amber gaze lingered on his arm, heavy with meanings he could not name.
"Amnesia, then?" Liana mused aloud. "Perhaps I could help. I know techniques for untangling the mind… for restoring memories—"
"That won't be necessary." Raine cut her off, voice flat. He hefted the hoe and walked back toward the clinic. At his back, the crystal of his arm felt suddenly cold, as though aware of her amber eyes still fixed upon him, their depths smoldering with some hidden purpose.
That night, the red moon rose again. Raine lay sleepless on his makeshift cot. Liana's presence stirred the depths of memory he had fought to suppress: Ravenna's dagger flashing toward him, Gamma's desperate cry, the Weaver's looming shadow… Fragments colliding with the image of Liana's watchful eyes—eyes that seemed kind, but burned with secrets.
He lifted his crystalline arm. The red veins within pulsed faintly in the moonlight like living arteries. Hank's warnings. Meili's reliance. Liana's probing. The prowling shadows beyond the walls. All converged into a single truth: Ashen Town's fragile calm was nothing more than a veil before the storm.
And he, Raine the gardener with no past, could not hide here forever. Each time the crimson moon waxed, some dreadful countdown pressed closer. He had to recover himself—his memories, his truth—before he was consumed by the storm, or discarded when his usefulness ended.
As for Liana, the wandering healer—what was she truly after?
Friend? Foe? Or something far more dangerous?
Raine stared at the baleful red moon outside the window, and felt the tightening of an unseen net around him.