Sergeant Grix sat on the edge of the reinforced stretcher, flexing a hand that was no longer entirely human. His skin had a grayish tone, hard as polished granite, and his veins glowed with a faint emerald green shimmer.
"Pain?" I asked, checking his pupils with a thaumaturgic light.
"None, Sir," Grix replied. His voice was gravelly, like stones rubbing underwater. "I feel... solid. Like I'm made of iron."
"Better than iron," I corrected, clicking off the light. "Iron rusts. You don't."
I smiled faintly. Grix was one of my masterpieces to date. I had rewritten his bone structure to absorb kinetic impact rather than resist it. He was a human tank who didn't need armor.
Sergeant Grix was of House Acheron, just like me.
His battlefield wounds had left him incapacitated for war, but I had brought him back.
Not only that, I had made him superior to his previous version.
The Acheron lineage was already famous for their naturally dense skin, capable of stopping common knives. But what I had done to him put his heirs' natural gifts to shame.
Adding the use of magic and his gifts, Sergeant Grix was a war machine.
A valuable asset to the Empire, and I, his creator, an indispensable asset.
My modifications were no longer dirty secrets in a basement. They were the new standard for the Elite Guard. The generals who once despised me now lined up to have me "fix" their best men.
The door to my lab slid open with a pneumatic hiss, breaking my moment of satisfaction.
I frowned. No one had codes to enter without announcing themselves.
It wasn't an assistant. It was General Thorne, from High Command, a man with a reputation for eliminating problems, not solving them. He was flanked by two Null Guards, soldiers in black armor made of a metal that blocked any magical signal.
An unnecessary precaution. My magic was weak. But the gesture was clear: You have no power here.
Thorne set a black metal briefcase on my workbench, pushing aside my notes and blueprints without any respect.
"Impressive work with the Empire's scrap, Acheron," the officer said, looking at Grix with contemptuous eyes. "But the Empire needs your sight for something... different."
"I'm busy," I replied, turning away. "I have a six-month waiting list. If you want an appointment, talk to my secretary."
Thorne didn't respond immediately. Instead, he shifted his cold eyes toward Sergeant Grix, who remained seated on the stretcher watching the scene.
"Get out," the General ordered. His tone was dry and harsh.
Grix didn't move at his request. He turned his armored head toward me, awaiting my confirmation.
I nodded slightly.
"Wait for me in the hall, Sergeant."
The human tank stood up, shaking the floor with each step until he left. The door sealed behind him with a hermetic hiss, leaving us in a heavy, isolated silence.
Only when we were completely alone did Thorne speak again.
"This is not a request, Acheron. It is a Priority Zero mobilization."
My mind alarmed instantly. "Priority Zero" meant an existential threat to the Empire. One hadn't been invoked since the War of the Three Suns, a century ago. On that occasion, the Empire was almost totally destroyed.
Thorne placed his gloved hand on the briefcase. A scanner read his genetic print, and the locks popped open with a heavy click.
Inside was only a data tablet and a reinforced glass container with a rock fragment inside.
But it wasn't normal rock.
It was black, darker than the void. It absorbed the room's light, swallowing reflections. It seemed to vibrate, emitting a barely perceptible hum.
My Analytical Vision activated on its own, an instinctive reflex to the unknown.
"Ah!" I cried out, bringing a hand to my eyes.
For the first time in years, I felt pain. A sharp prick, as if hot needles had been driven into my retina.
I couldn't read its structure.
Where there should have been atoms, mana, and geometry, there was only... noise. Static. Pure chaos. It was an object that defied the physical laws of Vorakh.
It was like trying to read a book written in a language that changed every second.
"It has no stable atomic structure," I diagnosed, my voice trembling slightly with scientific excitement. "It's not from here. It doesn't belong to Vorakh's geology."
I looked at Thorne.
"But this is incomplete. It is dead tissue." I pointed at the fragment. "The edges are jagged. This was torn from something bigger."
"You're right. This is just a splinter. The source... is much bigger," Thorne confirmed.
"What is this?" I asked, with a certain curiosity; it had been a long time since I encountered something unknown that attracted my scientific interest.
"We don't know, we hope you can help us find out," Thorne said. "It was recovered in the Ash Frontier a few days ago."
The Ash Frontier, one of the edges of the explored map of this vast world. A desolate wasteland where reality was said to be thin.
"Nothing we send to the new section returns alive," the General continued. "Magic doesn't work there. Technology fails. Flesh melts like wax in the sun if one remains too long. On the periphery of this Zone, there is a great monolith. That black thing is part of it. Or we believe it once was, since we found it detached from the main structure."
The General snapped the briefcase shut.
"The mission is simple: you, along with other scientists, will find the truth about the monolith so we can resume exploration. Pack your gear, Acheron. We're going to the Frontier."
There was no argument. I grabbed my reinforced leather case and filled it with the essentials: diamond scalpels, vials of stabilizers, and my calibration glasses.
I stepped into the hall and looked at Grix.
"You're coming with us, Sergeant."
The gray giant nodded, falling in behind me like an armored shadow. If I was going to face the unknown, I wanted my greatest defense creation protecting my back.
As we walked toward the transport, I looked one last time at the industrial lights of Vorakh. I felt the thrill of discovery, the arrogant certainty that I would unveil the Monolith's secrets and return covered in glory.
How naive I was.
I didn't know I wasn't walking toward a mission, but toward my own grave.