Deep in the woods, a Nilfgaardian scout shifted in his saddle. Through his telescope, the village of Downwarren didn't look like the charred ruin it should have been. It pulsed with a steady, amethyst rhythm that defied the natural laws of Velen. He saw peasants walking with the posture of knights and a shimmering barrier that tasted of ozone.
"The hags are gone," he whispered, his horse nervously stomping as it felt the distant pressure of Iblis's power. "And something far worse has moved in." He turned his mount, spurring it back toward the Army Group 'Center' Camp to alert his commander.
In the center of the village, Thomas ignored the eyes in the forest. He was focused on the High Definition reality of crafting.
He laid out a Lich Trophy (a jagged, soul-bound relic of a skeleton) and a Ritual Knife on an altar of obsidian. To the observers, it was just bone and steel. To Thomas, it was a template for catastrophe.
He invoked the Leviathan and Reaper essences simultaneously. The air screamed as he fused them, hammering the physical matter with waves of raw, pure energy.
When the light faded, two artifacts remained:
The Trophy of Death: A skeletal relic that didn't just radiate power—it felt like a vacuum, pulling at the very life-force of everything around it.
The Forbidden Ritual Knife: A blade that didn't cut flesh so much as it cut the "connections" between a soul and its body.
The Leviathan sorcerers of the Cult of Dusk felt the resonance immediately. They swarmed the square, their eyes glowing with violet hunger. These were people who had lived their whole lives in the "mud" of magic, and now they saw the "Apex."
"I will give all the gold my family hid from the tax collectors!" shouted one man, his Leviathan wings flickering with excitement.
"Three hundred crowns! And my service for life!" another cried, stepping forward.
The square descended into a frantic auction. These former peasants, now drunk on the "Source," realized that with these artifacts, they wouldn't just be mages—they would be architects of reality.
Thomas watched the bidding with a faint, demonic smile. He didn't care about the gold; he cared about the Devotion. As the bids rose, the collective psychic energy of the cult began to pool around him, fueling the foundation of the cathedral he was about to raise.
The air in the village square didn't just carry the scent of the swamp anymore; it carried the sharp, electric tang of ozone. Thomas sat upon his obsidian throne, watching as the crowd of acolytes pressed forward, their eyes wide with a hunger that had nothing to do with food.
On the altar before him lay his latest creations. The Trophy of Death—a skeletal relic that seemed to drink the very light around it—and the Forbidden Ritual Knife, its blade flickering with a jagged, violet edge that hummed at a frequency humans weren't meant to hear.
"I have no need for your gold," Thomas said, his voice a calm ripple that silenced the shouting bidders. "Gold is the currency of the world you left behind. In the Cult of Dusk, we trade in a different coin: Mastery."
He stood, his shadow stretching long and monstrous across the dirt.
"We will hold a trial. A competition of the Source. The top forty among you who can command their gifts with the most precision will be granted these tools of the higher realms. Show me that you are not just peasants with borrowed power. Show me you are sovereigns."
The square erupted, not in violence, but in a frantic, disciplined energy. Under the shimmering dome of Lucifer's barrier, the first magical sports of the new era began.
It was a spectacle of "High Definition" power. Leviathan sorcerers stood in circles, competing to see who could weave the most intricate lattice of violet frost without shattering the air. Beelzebub warriors clashed in hand-to-hand duels, their strikes moving so fast they created sonic booms that rattled the windows of the nearby hovels. They weren't just fighting; they were playing with the laws of physics, treating the "diluted" reality of the Continent like a sandbox.
High above on a half-finished parapet, a shadow shifted.
Caius, a veteran of the Nilfgaardian special forces, pressed his back against the cold stone. He had infiltrated the "Fort" under the cover of the tournament's noise, expecting to find a disorganized mob of cultists. Instead, he saw a grandmother casually conjuring a sphere of pure infernal fire to light a forge, her movements as precise as a master clockmaker.
"By the Great Sun," he whispered, his hand trembling as he adjusted his spyglass.
He watched a young boy—barely sixteen—channel the Leviathan pact to lift a three-ton block of granite with a flick of his wrist. Caius had seen the mages of the Empire work; he had seen the scorched earth of Cintra. But this was different. This was clean. This was efficient. It wasn't the chaotic, wild magic of the North—it was the industrial application of a superior force.
He reached for a small, enchanted messenger stone in his pouch, his fingers fumbling. "Commander," he hissed into the stone, "abandon the plans for the Velen occupation. This isn't a village. It's a nursery for gods. If we march on this place, we won't be fighting men. We'll be fighting a localized apocalypse."
Below him, Thomas paused. He didn't look up, but Caius felt a sudden, freezing weight settle on his heart. The "Guardian" at the center of the square tilted his head slightly, a faint, knowing smile playing on his human lips.
Thomas knew. He could feel the "diluted" magical trace of the messenger stone like a loud scream in a quiet room. But he didn't move to stop the spy. Instead, he turned back to the arena, where a young woman had just successfully manifested the first Leviathan frost-nova of the tournament.
"Excellent," Thomas murmured, his voice carrying to the spy's ears as clearly as if he were standing right beside him. "Let them tell their Emperor. Let them describe the light before it reaches them."
"Excellent," Thomas murmured, his voice carrying to the spy's ears as clearly as if he were standing right beside him. "Let them tell their Emperor. Let them describe the light before it reaches them."