I decided to run toward the fire, not away from it.
The Rat's Nest, Syl Night's territory, lay deeper in the slums, but the thugs and the Black Swords were closing the net. The safest place to hide was the place no one wanted to enter: Ebonscar. The green glow was a beacon of madness, but the Veilmarked were feared for drawing the void; perhaps running into the void's territory would be my best counter-exploit.
'A total idiot move, Kael. But it might just confuse the algorithm.'
I ran, my lungs burning, the Shadow Cloak a constant, irritating mental drain. It made my head feel thick and fuzzy, like trying to render 4K graphics with half the VRAM required.
The closer I got to the pulsing green glow, the worse the air became. It didn't just smell foul; it felt wrong. It was a cocktail of ozone, pulverized rock, and something intensely acrid that stung my sinuses.
The slums dissolved abruptly into a wasteland. The ground beneath my feet changed from slick cobblestone to fractured, cold earth littered with debris.
This was Ebonscar.
It was not a ruin in the traditional sense. It looked like a city had been instantly flash-frozen mid-collapse, then violently twisted. Massive, rusted girders—the structural bones of some forgotten, futuristic city—jutted out from the ground at impossible angles. Everything was coated in a fine, metallic dust. This was the wreckage of tech-demon ruins, a terrifying intersection of fantasy and science fiction.
The source of the light was terrifying. It pulsed from large, deep green rifts that split the ground like wounds, emitting a low, bass thrum that vibrated in my chest. These weren't fissures; they were tears in reality.
This isn't a dungeon. This is a system crash on a cosmic scale.
I moved through the ruins, boots crunching on what looked like pulverized glass and circuit boards the size of dinner plates. I kept the Shadow Cloak engaged, blurring my form against the fractured landscape.
The silence here was different from the silence of the prison. This was a patient, vast silence, the quiet of a vacuum waiting to suck the oxygen out of the room.
My eyes kept returning to a massive, twisted piece of metal—a structure that might have once been a tower—that lay cleaved in two, one half sinking into a glowing rift. It seemed to be leaking power.
As I approached, the familiar stinging sensation returned, harder than before. My mind recoiled. This place was hemorrhaging the same kind of energy I had stolen from the guard in the prison.
This is a live energy port. I saw the power flow from the guard into me. If I can tap the flow here, I can upgrade this F-Tier garbage and survive.
I pressed my hands against the side of the collapsed tower. The metal was cold, ancient, and humming with latent energy. The green glow from the rift below pulsed violently.
I'm forcing the connection. I'm exploiting the vulnerability.
I focused with every scrap of will I had, pushing the Codex to interact with the raw energy bleeding from the rift. The pain was immediate and excruciating. My consciousness felt like it was being stretched taut and pulled apart. My eyes burned, and for a terrifying second, the world warped: the tower structure became a flow diagram, the green rift a gaping port for void data.
[Veil Fracture Initiated. Energy Source: Ebonscar Rift (Level 2).]
[Warning: A Veil Fracture is the forceful manipulation of reality to extract essence. Repeated use carries high risk of psychological decay.]
The Codex didn't guide me; it analyzed and labeled my reckless action. The term Veil Fracture terrified me with its cold precision.
A wave of energy, cold and sickly, surged out of the rift and into my core. It felt like drinking liquid static electricity. My body shuddered violently, and I collapsed onto my knees, gasping for air.
[Fracture Complete. Veil Energy Extracted.] [Power Gained: 5 Points.]
The text flashed in my vision, clean and crisp. 5 Points. Narrative currency for the Codex. A terrifying, beautiful reward for risking my sanity.
As the physical agony subsided, the psychological dread returned. The Void wasn't done with me. The energy I had just stolen seemed to attract something far worse.
The air around me thickened, growing heavy and oppressive. The low thrumming of the rifts intensified, sounding like a thousand massive drums beating in the earth.
I forced myself up, wiping the sweat and grime from my forehead. I had the power, but now I had to survive the consequences. I began mapping the ruins, looking for an escape route or a defensive position. The logic of the place felt like a flawed but recognizable code—paths of rubble led to collapsed domes, and the strongest Veil leakage often occurred near the oldest structures.
I need to find the "Eye that sees the past." If this place can reveal Zayn's history, I can finally stop running blind.
A faint, chilling whisper bypassed my ears, resonating deep in the center of my skull, a single word of recognition.
"...Kael."
The sting was sharper this time, carrying a faint, nauseating scent of rotting metal and old, stale coffee. The Void knew my weaknesses. It was adapting its attack based on my memory—a psychological probe.
I froze, scanning the immediate area. The fear was a cold wave washing over my heart. I was a zero-day target, and the patch was getting closer.
It's tracking my fear. Don't react. Don't react.
I forced myself to breathe evenly, melting into the shadows of a broken archway. My gaze swept across the chaos of the ruins—the sharp lines, the terrifying geometry, the impossible shadows.
And then I noticed it.
High up, near the edge of a massive, cleaved pipe that ran across the ruins, a shadow shifted. It wasn't the natural movement of the fog or the shifting light of the rifts. It was a precise, controlled movement.
I saw only the shadow—long, elegant, and perfectly still—but the feeling of being observed was immediate and absolute. This wasn't the slow, blunt pursuit of the Black Swords. This was the silent, calculated watch of a professional.
The Inquisitor? No. The presence felt lighter, less military, and far more fluid. More like a predator watching prey enter its territory.
It was Syl Night. The Nightingale, observing the rat that had just scampered into her lair.
I dropped lower, pulling the Shadow Cloak tight, sinking entirely into the gloom beneath the archway. I was trapped between the void, the pursuing hunters, and the unseen rogue who was now charting my every move.
The truth of Zayn Vyrn was buried somewhere in the glowing wreckage of Ebonscar, and I was going to crack that code.
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Poll: Kael has successfully fractured a veil in the Ebonscar ruins, gaining 5 Points, but the Void's psychic tracking (whispering "Kael") and the presence of the unseen rogue, Syl Night, are closing in.
Should Kael risk immediate danger by seeking the core of the Ebonscar ruins to find information about Zayn Vyrn's past, or retreat to the slums to find the known safe zone (The Rat's Nest) and confront Syl Night?
A) Investigate Core (Risk deeper penetration into the ruins to uncover the "Eye" clue and find the truth about Zayn's past.)
B) Retreat to Rat's Nest (Focus on immediate survival, leveraging the intelligence of Syl Night for protection and information exchange.)