Adam lay almost lifeless on the shore of the Stone Fields.
The ocean breathed against him.
Cold, salty water crept up his boots, slid along his calves, soaked into torn fabric and skin alike. Each wave struck with a patient cruelty, as if the sea itself had been tasked with checking whether he was worth keeping alive.
Another wave hit his face.
Adam gasped.
His body jolted awake in a violent cough, lungs burning as he sucked in air thick with salt and iron. He rolled onto his side, retching seawater onto stone already stained darker by blood. His head rang, a deep hollow ache pulsing behind his eyes.
He lay there for several heartbeats, staring up at the sky.
The Wister sky was wrong.
Crimson clouds drifted like open wounds across an endless violet void, planets looming far too close, watching. The sky did not feel distant here. It felt near. Pressing. A ceiling instead of infinity.
Adam groaned and pushed himself up.
Stone crumbled beneath his palms as he rose from the crater he had landed in when the war began. The impact had been brutal—too brutal. He remembered falling. Remembered screaming through the wind.
Then nothing.
He had hit too hard.
Hard enough that his body had simply… turned off.
Unconsciousness had taken him before the war truly began.
"It's already the second day," he muttered hoarsely, though he didn't yet know that to be true.
He dusted himself off slowly, brushing grey debris from his clothes and raking his fingers through his brown hair. It was matted with blood—not all of it his own—and stiff with salt. His body felt heavy. Sluggish. As if something inside him was leaking.
Everything was silent.
No screams. No explosions. No ether tearing the sky apart.
Only the waves.
They crashed against the jagged shoreline with dull, endless rhythm, as though the ocean had decided to ignore the war entirely. Adam turned in place, scanning the landscape.
Bodies.
Dozens of them.
Some lay twisted and broken, clearly dead from the impact of their landing—necks snapped, limbs bent the wrong way, skulls split against stone. Others bore wounds far more deliberate: burned flesh, severed heads, holes punched clean through torsos by ether or steel.
The Stone Fields did not discriminate.
Death had arrived early here.
A soft chime sounded beside him.
Adam flinched, hand moving instinctively to a blade that was not there.
A hologram shimmered into existence.
The duck.
Bright, absurd, and entirely out of place, it hovered at eye level, its glossy surface reflecting the crimson sky.
"Player Cerimona, Adam," it said cheerfully. "Welcome back to consciousness. It is currently Day Two of the Wister War. Kill count: zero. Survival points: zero. Mana drive: unacquired."
Adam stared at it for a long second.
"…Shut up," he muttered, waving a hand through the hologram.
The duck flickered but did not disappear. Instead, it rotated slightly, as if offended.
Adam turned away and began walking inland, toward the maze-like stone formations where distant flashes of ether lit the horizon in brief, violent pulses. The silence near the shore was unsettling. Too clean. Too calm.
War was happening out there.
He could feel it in his bones.
As he walked, something brushed against his leg.
Adam froze, then looked down.
A low bush clung stubbornly to a crack in the stone, its leaves pale and veined with faintly glowing lines. Nestled among them were clusters of small, translucent grapes—ethrin fruit.
His stomach twisted painfully.
He crouched, plucked a handful, and shoved them into his mouth without ceremony. The fruit burst between his teeth, sweet and sharp, flooding his tongue with liquid ether.
Power surged through his core.
Not violently.
Not monstrously.
But enough.
Enough to take the edge off the exhaustion. Enough to steady his legs, sharpen his vision, remind his body that it was still alive and expected to keep being so.
Ether bled outward from his center in a soft pulse, dissipating quickly into the air.
Adam frowned.
"…That's it?"
He had felt Lucy's ether once—had felt it. Hers was a storm, a crushing presence that bent reality around her. His felt like a flickering candle by comparison.
The duck reappeared, hovering smugly.
Adam sighed. "Alright. You win. Give me a shortened, detailed explanation of the rules for survival."
The duck's eyes gleamed.
"To survive the Wister War," it began, "a player must acquire the following: one mana drive, sufficient mana disks for ether manipulation, and a kill ratio above the minimum threshold. Failure to meet any of these conditions will result in termination during the final cull."
Adam slowed his steps.
"…Final cull?"
"Correct," the duck chirped. "Lucky for you, the body you just stepped on has a mana drive."
Adam stopped.
He looked down.
Only then did he notice the corpse beneath his boot.
A woman lay sprawled across the stone, her golden moon garb torn and soaked black with blood. Black and gold fabric marked her as a game guardian. Her chest had been ripped open brutally, ribs splayed outward like broken gates.
A double-edged blade jutted through her body, pinning her to the stone—and skewering another mage beneath her in a grotesque tableau of death.
Adam swallowed.
His body felt… weak.
Drained.
As if something was siphoning strength from him with every breath.
"Why do I feel like shit?" he asked quietly.
The duck tilted its head. "Ether dissipation. You currently lack a mana drive."
Adam crouched beside the corpse.
He hesitated.
Then pushed his hands into her chest.
Warmth met his fingers. Slick. Wrong. His jaw clenched as he forced himself to keep going, ignoring the way his stomach lurched.
He felt it.
A small, solid object nestled deep within her ruined torso.
Adam pulled.
A metal orb emerged, coated in blood and viscera. As it cleared the body, it shifted—metal plates sliding and rotating, expanding in his grip until it was roughly the size of a human heart.
It was beautiful.
White and gold metal interlocked in intricate patterns, faint runes glowing along its surface. It pulsed softly, almost alive.
Adam stared at it, breath shallow.
"What now?" he asked.
"Reshrink the drive with your ether," the duck replied, "and swallow it."
"…Swallow it?"
"Yes."
Adam grimaced.
He focused, pushing ether into the device. The orb responded instantly, contracting until it was small enough to fit between two fingers. He took a breath, tilted his head back—
And swallowed.
The drive slid down his throat, cold and heavy, before vanishing into his chest with a sudden thump.
Adam gasped.
Pain flared—sharp, deep, intimate—then settled into a steady, powerful rhythm.
A second heartbeat.
Ether surged.
Not outward this time.
Inward.
The drain vanished. Strength flooded back into his limbs. His core felt… anchored.
"What is this thing?" Adam asked, voice trembling.
"A mana drive," the duck said. "A device designed to store ether within the human body. It acts as a secondary heart—pumping ether through your system, retaining excess energy that would otherwise dissipate."
Adam flexed his fingers, watching faint ether lines ripple across his skin.
"Mages cannot naturally store ether," the duck continued. "Without a drive, all excess power bleeds into the environment. Sorcery, as a discipline, requires precision. Mana disks store information—techniques, constructs, manipulation protocols."
"Flight," it added. "Destructive ether. Constructive ether. Fracture storage."
Adam's head began to ache.
"…That just leaves me with more questions," he said flatly.
The duck chuckled. "Aren't you a Cerimona? To think a mage from an Old Earth house knows so little."
Adam's expression darkened.
"Blame my idiot father," he snapped. "For the last twenty-two years, he barred everyone in the family from practicing sorcery. Sole exception being the house's God King."
The duck hummed. "Hmm. Rough."
Then it vanished.
Adam stood alone again.
He looked out across the Stone Fields, where distant explosions of ether lit the horizon like dying stars. Screams carried faintly on the wind now—closer than before.
The war was coming toward him.
Am I really ready for this? he wondered.
His thoughts drifted—unbidden—to stories his mother used to tell him in secret, whispered late at night when the walls could not hear.
Stories of Cerimona mages from the past.
None more powerful than Lord Cerimona the Grey.
They said he walked through wars untouched, his ether neither bright nor dark, but something in between—calm, inevitable, crushing. They said his presence alone could still battlefields, that enemies felt old and tired simply standing near him.
Grey was not weakness.
Grey was balance.
Grey was judgment.
Adam closed his eyes.
Somewhere deep in his chest, the mana drive pulsed in time with his heart.
The Stone Fields answered.
And the war, patient and cruel, finally took notice of him.