The village of Brighthollow should not have existed.
It lay too close to the old ley fracture, a scar left behind when the First Era collapsed in on itself. Most settlements avoided such places. Magic there was unpredictable, prone to distortion, and old things had a habit of remembering themselves.
Yet smoke rose peacefully from its chimneys as Aethric and Nyra crested the final hill.
Nyra slowed, brow furrowing. "Something's wrong."
Aethric did not answer.
He was already listening.
The air around the village trembled not violently, but unevenly, as though reality itself had been stretched and poorly stitched back together. Threads of ambient mana tangled where they should have flowed cleanly.
"A minor anomaly," Aethric said at last. "Recently."
Nyra's hand tightened around the strap of her satchel. "Minor doesn't feel like the right word."
"That," Aethric replied, "depends on who is standing nearby when it destabilises."
They descended the hill.
Villagers clustered near the central well, faces pale, eyes fixed on the far edge of the settlement. A low, distorted sound echoed from between the abandoned storehouses like metal dragged across stone, stretched through water.
A farmer noticed them and stumbled forward. "Mage! If you're here to help"
The ground shuddered.
From the shadows between the buildings, something pulled itself into existence.
It was not a creature in the traditional sense. Its form was unstable, half-constructed of condensed mana, half of warped physical matter. Limbs bent at wrong angles, unravelling and reforming as they moved. A distorted sigil pulsed at its core, bleeding faint violet light.
Nyra's breath caught. "That's… magic given shape."
"Incorrect," Aethric said calmly. "It is magic that has lost its instructions."
The anomaly shrieked.
Windows shattered outward as a shockwave rippled through the square. Villagers screamed, scattering. The thing lurched forward, reality folding around it with each step.
Nyra raised her hand instinctively.
Aethric gently pressed it down.
"Observe," he said.
He walked forward alone.
No incantation.
No grand gesture.
He simply stepped into the distortion.
The anomaly recoiled, its form stuttering as if struck by an unseen wall. The sigil at its core flared brighter, frantic.
Aethric lifted two fingers.
The surrounding mana still.
Not suppressed. Not overwhelmed.
Aligned.
The anomaly froze mid-motion, its unstable form locked in place as the twisted energies binding it began to unravel. Aethric traced a single line through the air, an old First Era stabilising mark, invisible to most eyes.
The anomaly collapsed inward, compressing into a sphere of flickering light no larger than a clenched fist.
Aethric closed his hand.
The light vanished.
Silence fell.
Dust drifted slowly back to the ground. The air eased, the pressure lifting as though a storm had passed unnoticed.
The villagers stared.
One dropped to their knees. Another whispered a prayer to a god whose name had not been spoken in generations.
Nyra looked at Aethric with wide eyes. "You didn't destroy it."
"No," he said. "I corrected it."
He turned toward the space where the anomaly had first manifested. Something remained etched into the stone, a faint, angular sigil burned deep into the ground.
Aethric crouched.
The mark was subtle. Deliberate.
A signature.
Nyra knelt beside him. "What is it?"
Aethric's gaze hardened. "A distortion anchor. Used to draw instability toward a fixed point."
Her pulse quickened. "So this wasn't random."
"No," he said. "It was placed."
He brushed ash from the sigil, revealing its full structure. The design was asymmetrical, deliberately incomplete, meant to invite collapse rather than control it.
Nyra's chest hummed.
The sigil pulsed once.
Then again.
Aethric looked sharply at her.
"Step back," he said.
Too late.
The sigil flared violently, lines igniting with the same violet-gold resonance Nyra had felt in the Conclave. The hum inside her chest roared, answering the mark like a struck chord.
The villagers cried out as the air thickened once more.
Aethric moved instantly, placing himself between Nyra and the sigil, one hand raised not to suppress it, but to contain the reaction.
His expression was no longer calm.
It was focused.
The sigil did not respond to him.
It responded to her.
Aethric understood then.
This was not merely Hollow Sovereign influence.
This was recognition.
A First Era sigil activates not to Aethric, but to Nyra. As the mark responds to her presence alone, Aethric realises the anomalies are no longer random events… They are signals, meant to find her.