Orren Veylar had spent his life moving between walls. Not literally — although he did often squeeze through alleyways and climb fences — but in the sense that walls defined everything. The cities were built like cages, high stone and iron, impervious and intimidating. They promised safety from the Shardlands beyond, where monsters roamed, where the land itself seemed to twist into impossible shapes. From the outside, the cities were beautiful, gleaming in the sunlight, proud towers reaching skyward, but Orren knew that beauty was a lie. They were cages, and everyone inside lived by rules that kept fear just as firmly contained as the monsters outside.
He had learned early that walls were not protection — they were statements. The stronger the wall, the more it said about who feared what, and who had power. Out here, beyond the cities, there was no such statement. There was only survival.
Orren's cart rattled along the broken iron tracks, carrying rations, tools, and metal scraps. The wheels groaned with every uneven link in the rails. He had learned to anticipate the bumps and cracks, to keep the animals calm, and to calculate when to push and when to slow. The Shardlands were a harsh teacher. Any mistake could mean death, and even small miscalculations left scars. The wind was dry and metallic, carrying dust and faint traces of sulfur from distant ruins. The sky above was the pale blue of midday, yet Orren felt it differently today. He could not explain it, but the light seemed… sharper, as though it pressed against his skin.
He glanced at the horizon. The walls of Iron City were distant but visible, towers catching the sunlight in brief flashes like the edges of a blade. Beyond that, the Shardlands stretched endlessly: jagged stone formations, collapsed bridges, remnants of old highways, and ruins from a time no one remembered. The land had a rhythm, a strange pulse if you moved carefully enough to notice it. Orren had learned to listen to it. It told him where the ground might fail, where monsters could hide, where storms could appear suddenly.
He felt a subtle vibration beneath his feet. Not strong, not yet — just enough to catch his attention. The animals inside the cart stiffened. Birds rose from the nearby cliffs in sudden flurries, screeching. Orren's stomach tightened. The Shardlands did not behave like this naturally. He slowed the cart slightly, ears straining.
And then he saw it.
A thin, wavering line had appeared on the horizon. At first, it was barely noticeable, almost a trick of the sunlight on the dust. But it grew quickly, stretching wider, splitting the air like a cut across the sky. Colors that should not exist bled into one another — violet shifting to green, green to gold, and then a black that seemed to swallow the light itself. The line wavered unnaturally, bending and curling like the sky itself had cracked.
Orren's heartbeat quickened. He could feel it in his bones — this was not a storm, not a natural phenomenon, not a trick of perspective. The air itself seemed to hum, a vibration that made his teeth chatter, as if the world were singing in a frequency humans were not meant to hear.
The ground beneath his boots quivered. Not strong, not yet, but enough to remind him that the Shardlands were alive in ways no one could understand. The air grew heavy, oppressive, carrying a faint metallic scent. Orren's instincts screamed at him: move, survive, get out of this place before it collapses entirely.
The first creatures emerged, not from the land but from the fracture in the sky itself. They were shifting, incomplete forms, flickering between solidity and nothing. Eyes glowed like molten glass, scanning the horizon with intelligence that made Orren freeze mid-step. These were not ordinary monsters. Their bodies were jagged, uneven, almost as if reality itself could not contain them. Some parts seemed transparent, others unnaturally thick, as though gravity and mass followed rules he could not comprehend.
Orren yanked the reins, urging the animals forward. Survival, always survival, came first. His eyes darted over the terrain. The Shardlands had no real paths, no safe trails. Broken rails jutted from the ground, half-collapsed bridges spanned pits that seemed to lead nowhere, and ruins of old settlements offered little cover. Yet he ran, weaving through the debris with a practiced agility that only years of navigating this wasteland could produce.
That's when she appeared.
Selith Damaris stepped out of a ruined archway with the calm certainty of someone who had walked through storms far worse than this. The mark of Veil glimmered faintly on her cloak, catching light from the fractured horizon. Her movements were precise, purposeful — even the chaos around her seemed to bend subtly to her presence.
"You don't have a choice," she said, her voice carrying over the humming wind. "Not anymore. Come with me if you want to survive."
Orren hesitated. Trust was not something he could afford. He had survived too long by doubting everyone, by reading intentions in subtle movements, by relying only on his instincts. But the fracture grew behind him, splitting the horizon further, and he realized that hesitation might mean death.
He grabbed her outstretched hand.
Selith led him through a path that did not follow the normal geometry of the land. Crumbled walls became stairways, collapsed streets folded into impossible angles, and shadows stretched unnaturally, contracting and stretching as if reality itself had become fluid. The ground vibrated beneath his feet, a low thrum that seemed to synchronize with his heartbeat. Time warped around them; seconds could stretch into minutes, minutes collapse into instants.
Monsters flickered at the edges of perception, drawn to the fracture. Orren felt something awaken deep inside him, an energy that he did not yet understand. It was subtle, a warmth behind his ribs, a tingling in his fingertips, a whisper at the back of his mind. It was a power he had never known — his Lock, stirring in response to the fracture and the threat surrounding him.
He had no time to comprehend it. He ran.
Hours later — or perhaps minutes, time had lost meaning — they reached the outer edge of the Iron City. The walls that had once promised safety were gone. They had crumbled, swallowed by the expanding fracture. Stone and steel hung in the air, suspended impossibly, then fell in slow motion. The streets were a mess of debris, creatures, and fractured light. The city he knew, the world he knew, had disappeared entirely.
Selith glanced back at him, her expression unreadable. "Almost there. Keep moving. Don't stop. Don't hesitate."
Orren nodded, panting, muscles screaming in protest, mind racing. He felt the Lock stir stronger, responding to the fracture and to him, as if it recognized its purpose.
For the first time, he realized: this was no longer about survival. The world was breaking, and he was at the center of it. He had to move, to act, to become something more than a mere runner, more than a survivor.
The horizon had fractured, the walls were gone, and the world was no longer his to navigate. Only one truth remained