The gangplank thudded against the shore like a heartbeat. The ship settled with a long, weary sigh, and the world ahead opened in tones of bruised violet and ash. The land did not welcome them; it endured them. The sky was a ceiling of torn charcoal stitched with veins of sickly, pulsing light. A skin of smoke clung to the earth, smelling of old iron and rot, of bonfires doused with oil and tears. Trees had twisted into skeletal claws, their bark lacquered black, their roots looped above ground like ribs. Patches of soil shone with a glassy sheen as if once molten, now cooling and cracked—veins of red-orange flickering faintly in the seams like embers refusing to die.
Andy stepped down first. His boots sank a finger's width into the black loam with a slow, reluctant crunch. The air pressed on his lungs, not choking but heavy, as if the land itself was a sea and every breath demanded a swimmer's effort. At his side, Nia's staff hummed a soft silver, answering a malice it could not see; behind him, Aurelia's presence unfurled like warm spice, bold and fearless, an answer of a different kind.
A chime sounded where no one else could hear it—clear, crystalline, intimate as breath at his ear.
[System Notification]
[Corruption Density: 73%]
[Location: Former Dragon Clan Territory]
[Ambient Effect: Aura Suppression (Moderate) | Stamina Drain +12%/hr]
[Recommended Action: Activate Dragon Senses | Maintain ally warding fields]
He didn't blink. He let the figures burn themselves into his sight, let the cool geometry of the system anchor his mind the way surge and tide had anchored his body. Then he slid them away and drew a breath that tasted of iron filings.
"Stay close," he said, not loud, but every ear took it as an order. "We move inland to high ground and set a perimeter."
Nia came level with him, sapphire eyes fixed on the treeline. "Understood." Lumina rose in her hand, crystal tip brightening. She whispered a tone—no word, only will—and light flowed outward like a pale dome expanding from her chest, washing over crew and villagers in a soft tide. The breath of a hundred people evened, shoulders loosening as the pressure on their lungs relented within the silver veil.
[Lumina Ward: Active]
[Area: 30m radius | Warding Intensity: Stable]
[Effect: Reduces Ambient Corruption Ingress by 60%]
Aurelia hopped off the last plank with an unbothered grace and crouched to drag a fingertip through the glassy soil. The black grit clung to her glove like powdered coal. "If I bottled this and sold it in Everhart," she murmured, lips curving, "I'd call it 'Midnight Bloom' and charge a fortune." She straightened, golden eyes slanting to Andy. "But seeing as it probably eats faces, I'll pass."
"Good choice," Andy said, and the corner of his mouth tipped as if he couldn't help it. "Let's keep our faces for later."
Her answering smile said I like later.
They moved together—three points around whom the rest arranged themselves in a protective oval. The ward's silver edge nudged the smoke aside as they advanced, but the land pushed back, testing. Somewhere to their right, something chittered with a sound like a knife being drawn across stone. To the left, a low animal groan dragged through the trees and frayed into a hiss. The ward brightened a fraction, and Nia's shoulders squared in silent answer.
Andy let his eyes unfocus to a warrior's soft gaze and reached inward. The dragon core in him answered with a steady exhale, not raging, not roaring—simply present. He opened that presence like a hand.
[Dragon Senses: Active]
[Scanning…]
[Results: Corruption currents flowing NE → SW | Subsurface pulse detected | Life signatures (Near): 5 | Life signatures (Far): 40+ (Unstable)]
The world changed. The smoke wasn't smoke—he could see it now as threads of tainted mana, fine as hair, drifting like weeds in a black tide. Beneath them, the ground beat a slow, arrhythmic thud, a heart whose chambers were scarred. Ahead, nestled in the roots of the glassy trees, five small flares pulsed like coals under ash. Their beats were wrong—too synchronized, too hollow.
"They're close," he said.
Aurelia had already slipped two blades into her hands, edges matte and hungry. "I'll take 'left snack' and 'right snack' if you want 'center meal'."
"Let him have the center," Nia said, voice gentling even as her eyes were sharp as a hawk's. "We need to see how the land answers him."
"It'll answer," Aurelia murmured, grin returning. "It'll kneel."
The underbrush convulsed. The first creature crawled out on limbs too long for a wolf, joints buckled the wrong way, ribs showing through translucent skin shot with dark veins. Its head was a skulled wedge, teeth like stained needles. Two more burst through flanking it, a pair with splitting jaws that opened too far. The last two loped behind, slower, licking the air with forked tongues that smoked.
The villagers shrank. Men grabbed useless knives. Mothers hugged children into skirts. The ward held—but fear bled under any shield.
Andy stepped ahead of both women. He didn't call fire from the sky or armor from the dragonbone of his blood. He simply let what lived in him answer the call outside.
[Combat Advisory]
[Threat Classification: Low-Tier Corrupted Beasts]
[Recommended Output: Natural Core Sufficient | Form Activation: Not Required]
He raised the Draconic Oathblade. The blade thrummed in recognition, its line as straight as a law, as honest as a promise. A whisper of heat slipped along its edge—familiar, intimate as an old friend's grin—the Ember legacy waking in a blush of ember-red under the steel.
The first beast leapt. Andy stepped to meet it, hips turning, wrists relaxed, letting the blade do the work. The stroke was almost tender. The result was not. The creature parted with a hiss and a rush of soot; the cut cauterized as it went, fire devouring corruption like a starving wind. Half a body hit the ground and turned to greasy smoke.
A second vaulted, jaws reaching. The blade in Andy's hands cooled to a river's calm—blue light ran the steel, not a flame but a flow. He drew a crescent in the air, and water answered, invisible but undeniable. It sliced the beast clean at the girth and carried the pieces back, a tide pulling rot out of the ward's edge.
A third charged with its head low, shoulders bunching, a bull's stubbornness in a dog's massacre of a form. Wind curled around the Oathblade as if recognizing itself; the edge blurred, and the world made the sound of silk being ripped very gently. The beast fell into itself in four neat pieces without understanding they'd ever been separate.
Behind, the last two hesitated. Instinct had outlived their skulls. One skittered sideways as if to circle, and Aurelia moved like a line drawn through a map—one, two, three—her glaive flashed from nowhere, halberd length born of chain and trick, head biting into tendon with the sharp, cheerful sound of efficient violence. The beast collapsed mid-turn, leg severed. She finished it without rancor, expression almost fond. "You tried."
The fifth found its nerve and lunged for the silvered glow—the ward, the weak, the children. Nia didn't flinch. She lifted a palm and spread her fingers. Light pelted the air like rain. Every drop struck the beast's flesh and burned a sunlit hole. It stumbled, smoking, and she closed her hand. The holes blossomed into a single flower of pure radiance. The creature fell without a sound.
[System Notification]
[Dragon Senses → Local Threats: Neutralized]
[Corruption Density (Local): 58% → 52%]
[Combat Analysis]
— Natural Power Utilization: 34% Output
— Efficiency Rating: S
— Note: No Form Activation Detected | Elemental Shift Stable
The chime slid through Andy's bones like a breath after drowning. He watched as the smoke of the beasts' bodies folded into the ground, as if the land swallowed the evidence of its own sin. The ward dimmed to a sustainable glow. The air's pressure eased a whisper within its halo—but beyond, the dark still lay with patience.
Murmurs spread through the gathered people. Not terror now—talk like a campfire's first crackle after rain. The old sailor who had spoken on deck lifted a trembling hand to his brow. "By the old scales," he whispered. "By the fallen wings."
A little boy peered around his mother's skirt, brave in the way only the very young are. "Mama… did he cut the darkness?" he asked, eyes on Andy as if a storybook had walked onto shore. His mother nodded without looking away from the three figures standing before them. Some of the men straightened, shame flushing their cheeks not for their fear, but for having expected less.
Aurelia flipped her glaive head into the Shared Inventory with a bright flicker of light, as if she was tidying a counter after a meal. "You didn't even break a sweat," she said to Andy. "Unfair. I was hoping for at least a dramatic hair flip." She slid closer, leaned in enough that her perfume threaded through the smell of burnt corruption. "Or are you saving that for when I ask nicely?"
Nia's hand found Andy's forearm as if it belonged there, warm and sure. Her voice had a smile in it, even if her words were prim. "A dramatic hair flip will not be necessary. Nor will you be asking him for one."
Aurelia arched a brow. "Who said anything about hair?"
Nia's cheeks colored, but she did not back away. Instead she lifted her chin, all Everhart poise, and looked at Andy with eyes that softened for him alone. "You were careful," she said softly, quietly proud. "Your aura stayed inside your bones. You didn't let the land drink from you."
He nodded once. "I don't intend to feed it."
Something warm moved through the three of them then—something that wasn't a look or a touch, but a shared breath. The system felt it before he consciously did.
[Constellation Sync Detected]
[Orion — Tier I]
[Bond Progress Update]
→ Nia: 24% ⭐
→ Aurelia: 21% ⭐
[Combined: 45%]
The numbers slid over Andy's sight, brief and bright as sparks. He didn't show them on his face, but relief moved through his muscles, loosening a tightness he hadn't named. He could feel the truth of it—threads between them pulled a little tighter, the loom of three hearts catching another row.
"Camp here," he called to the crew. "Keep the ward between you and the treeline. No fires higher than your knee. No one out of the light without one of us."
Orders moved through the people like a tide. Stakes rose. Canvas snapped. The ward's edge pulsed and held. In the distance—he heard it again now that the immediate violence had quieted—a low sound like a choir humming with their mouths closed. Not music. Not speech. The land's throat clearing as it prepared to speak.
He stood with them as tents were pegged and cookpots hung, stayed until the small tasks had a rhythm and the worst of the shaking in the villagers' hands had faded to a workable tremor. When he turned to step away, two shadows fell in behind him.
"You're both coming?" he asked without turning.
"Of course," Nia said.
"Obviously," Aurelia said at the same time.
He almost smiled. He didn't fight it. "Good."
They walked the edge of the ward together, the three of them a compass. Nia brushed his sleeve not because she needed to, but because she wanted to. Aurelia didn't bother to hide that she stayed close enough to touch if she chose. The smoke curled around the ward light like cats furling at a hearth, patient and predatory.
"You looked… different," Nia said after a while, voice low. "Calmer. As if the fight happened inside you rather than outside."
"It did," Andy said. "A little." He watched his breath fog and vanish. "The Constellation didn't just give me a new technique. It… changed how I carry the old ones. The elements don't feel like tools anymore. They feel like… vertebrae."
"That's," Aurelia said, eyes gleaming, "the hottest thing I've ever heard."
Nia coughed into her hand as if that could hide a smile. "She means she is impressed."
"I mean both," Aurelia said cheerfully.
The chime came soft as a pulse—no warning this time, no advisory. Just affirmation sliding into the spaces they'd left for it.
[Shared Inventory: Combat Sync Stable]
[Draconic Oathblade Resonance: Fire/Water/Wind — Stable | Earth — Dormant Nearby Signature Detected]
[Note: Subsurface pulse persists. Investigation required.]
Andy's head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing toward the band of stone where the ward's light ended and the forest's shadows began. "There's something under us," he said.
"Alive?" Nia asked.
"Not the way we are," Andy said. "But it remembers how."
Aurelia's fingers brushed his knuckles, quick and unashamed—a jolt of warmth, a dare and a comfort both. "Then make it remember us instead," she murmured.
"We will," Nia said, and made a small adjustment to the ward that pushed the smoke back another foot. "But not tonight."
The light lowered with the day. The camp found quiet. Spoons clicked against tin. A fiddle came out from somewhere and managed two hopeful notes before someone hushed it with a look at the trees. Children yawned into their mothers' palms. The first watch took their posts, backs straight against fear.
"Rest while you can," Andy told the two women, even though he knew neither would sleep deeply. "I'll take the first circuit."
"You'll take it with me," Nia said, already falling in at his shoulder.
Aurelia twirled a dagger and let it vanish into the Shared Inventory with a pleased little hum. "And with me. Unless you're going to argue. In which case, we'll argue while walking with you."
"You two are terrible at orders," Andy said, and because he could, because this had become as natural as breath, he slipped an arm around each of their waists for three quiet steps. Nia's breath stuttered in surprise and then fell into his pace; Aurelia's grin went lazy, satisfied, proprietary. He didn't need the system to tell him what that did to a net of light between hearts—but it told him anyway.
[Constellation Sync Detected]
[Orion — Tier I]
[Bond Progress Update]
→ Nia: 25% ⭐
→ Aurelia: 22% ⭐
[Combined: 47%]
He let the numbers pass and kept his eyes on the dark, on the places where trees were too still, on the ground where the glass gleamed with a memory of heat. His body was tired in the way that meant it would rebuild as he slept. His mind was a map half-drawn, the edges left blank on purpose where dragons once laid down their children and now only whispers lived.
When they reached the far edge of the ward and stood looking into the absolute black, Nia leaned lightly into him, shoulder to shoulder, and said, "When this is done, we are going to find a place that smells like bread."
"And coffee," Aurelia said. "And salt—but the kind blown by a happy sea."
"And we'll sit," Nia finished, voice warm. "And Andy will not be allowed to be heroic for one whole morning."
"Two mornings," Aurelia said. "I require decadence."
"One morning," Andy said, deadpan. "I tire of decadence quickly."
"That's a lie," Aurelia said.
"Unprovable," Andy said.
"Unprovable," Nia agreed primly, which made Aurelia laugh out loud—the sound bright and impertinent against the bruise-colored sky. The laugh rolled out into the trees. Nothing answered it. Not yet.
They walked the last stretch in companionable silence. When they came back into the camp's circle of light, the ward breathed out to greet them, and the three of them let the night accept them without argument. Andy dismissed the Oathblade to the Shared Inventory with a thought; it went obedient and pure into the safe.
[Shared Inventory: Item Stored — Draconic Oathblade]
[Status: Aura Preservation Locked | Recall: Instant | Combat Response: On]
He lay down last, as he always did, after he had watched both women's faces soften, one in disciplined sleep, one in the feline sprawl of a hunter who trusted her den. The ceiling of canvas above him was dull, the kind of drab that makes a person long for color. He closed his eyes, and the map of the land laid itself behind his eyelids—threads of corruption, nodes of silence, three distant blots like starless patches on a night sky.
He didn't need the system to tell him what they were. It told him anyway, because that is what it was made to do.
[Background Scan Running…]
[Far Signatures: 3 | Corruption Weight: Rising]
[Classification Pending: "Dragon Corrupter" — Confirmed (Tier Unknown)]
[Advisory: Proceed | Bonds Will Be Tested]
"I know," he whispered into the shape of the dark.
He slept like a blade laid carefully on a table—still, sure, one breath from motion.
The land listened. The land prepared an answer. And somewhere beyond the horizon of their ward, something old and broken opened its eyes.