The Frontier's Breath
The air at Vel'Thara's outer camp clung to the lungs like wet parchment, thick with the iron tang of old blood and Ki-static. What passed for defenses here were little more than skeletal glyph-towers and smoldering braziers dug into earth that twitched underfoot, as if the ground itself recoiled from the Spiral's lingering rot.
Kael leaned against a pillar fissured down the middle, its surface scarred by claw marks no human hands could've made. Nearby, Claire hurled her dagger into the dirt again, the blade's serpent-and-moon hilt glinting faintly with each strike.
"Bored?" Kael asked, already knowing the answer.
"Practicing," Claire lied, yanking the dagger free. "For when Kaelen trips onto my steel."
Lira stalked past, her glaive casting a jagged shadow. "Patrols spotted Spiral echoes southwest. Save the theatrics."
Tiv and Jace hunched over a makeshift glyph array, their bickering a familiar backdrop.
"If we reroute the tertiary nodes"
"The core overloads by sunset," Jace snapped. "This isn't the Dominion's damned codex."
Coren sat atop a rubble pile, scribbling in his journal. Ash dusted his glasses, and dried blood crusted his knuckles.
Claire flicked her dagger. It thudded inches from his boot.
"Writing your memoirs, scribe?"
Coren didn't flinch. "Documenting how you'll die if we don't move."
Kael smirked. "Then stretch those legs."
Coren stood, cracking his neck. "The Spiral's rebirthing in the southern valley. A ghost barrier—memory storms that trap you in dead echoes."
Silence fell.
The Ghost Barrier
Coren unrolled a map etched with pulsating glyph trails. His finger traced a jagged scar across the terrain. "It's not just a storm. It's a wound. And it's growing."
Jace paled. "Like Soren Village?"
"Worse." Coren tapped a cluster of inverted sigils. Serpent and moon symbols hidden in the margins. "These aren't Spiral. They're… corrections. Someone's trying to contain it."
Kael's gaze sharpened. "Who?"
"Does it matter?" Claire spun her dagger. "We kill it first."
Lira studied the map. "Sever the anchors before they solidify. Don't engage the echoes."
Kael nodded. "Move fast. Don't look back. Don't speak to anything you recognize."
Coren's smile was thin. "You'll see why."
Raka's Threshold
Far from the camp, Raka crested a ridge overlooking Vel'Thara's corpse. The Spiral Seed in his chest pulsed like a second heartbeat, its rhythm syncing with the fractured sky.
A flicker of movement—a child's shadow, darting just beyond reach.
"Papa!" The voice was high, urgent, laced with static. "Hurry!"
He froze. Papa? The word slithered into his ribs, sharp and foreign.
The shadow vanished.
Raka gripped the serpent-and-moon dagger, its hilt warm against his palm. Why does this blade feel like a key or a noose?
A memory flickered:
—A girl's hands pressing the dagger into his. "For when you forget."
—His own voice, hollow. "I won't."
—Her bitter laugh. "You will. You always do."
The vision shattered. Ahead, the air rippled. A nearly invisible wall of heat and whispers. The ghost barrier.
Raka stepped through.
Into the Storm
The team moved in grim silence.
The deeper they trekked, the more the world unraveled. Crumbling houses reassembled as they passed, phantom lamplight bleeding through shattered windows. A broken piano played a lullaby inside a roofless chapel, its notes warped and sour.
Claire halted.
A figure stood in the chapel doorway—her brother, unburned, whole, his smile knife-sharp.
"Claire?" he called. "You're late for drills."
Her dagger trembled. "He's… he's here."
Coren seized her arm. "He's dead. Move."
Jace choked as his old squad leader waved from a collapsed stairwell. Tiv muttered suppression charms, his scanner screeching.
Kael's flame burned low, a tether to reality. "Eyes forward!"
The Anchors
Three Spiral anchors loomed ahead twisted obelisks of black stone veined with gold. Glyphs slithered across their surfaces, writing and rewriting themselves in a language of hunger.
"They're alive," Tiv breathed. "Adapting."
"Then we un-adapt them," Claire said.
They split:
- Kael and Claire took the left anchor.
- Lira and Jace flanked right.
- Coren and Tiv charged the center.
Raka watched from the ridge, unseen.
Coren's Gambit
Coren sprinted toward the central anchor, dodging Spiral vines that lashed like serpents. A memory-shade lunged, Instructor Mara, who'd died shoving him from a Spiral fissure.
"You're not her," he hissed, carving a suppression glyph. The shade screamed, dissolving.
Tiv shouted: "Another anchor's forming!"
"I see it!" Coren lunged, slamming a Ki-node into the earth. The ground buckled.
Kael's Choice
Kael and Claire reached their anchor, its surface writhing with faces. Mira's laughter, Jorin's smirk, recruits he'd failed.
"Kael," Mira's voice whispered. "Why did you leave us?"
He drove his blade into the glyph cluster. "I didn't."
The anchor exploded.
Raka's Whisper
Raka stood at the valley's heart, drawn to a fourth anchor. Older and hidden. Its surface bore the serpent and moon symbol, cracked and weeping light.
The child's voice pierced his skull, clearer now: "Papa, she's coming!"
He pressed his palm to the glyph. The dagger flared, and for a heartbeat, he saw:
—A girl with his eyes, laughing in a sunlit field that didn't exist. A future not yet born.
—Her small hand reaching. "Papa, come on!"
The vision vanished. The anchor shattered.
The Unraveling
The ghost barrier convulsed. Houses melted. The piano's song became a scream.
"Go!" Coren roared.
They ran.
Echoes of Sereth
As the valley collapsed, Raka glimpsed a woman's face in the debris. Sereth. Her eyes his own, her hands carving glyphs into the Spiral's roots.
"Who…?"
Her voice echoed through the dagger: "Find me."
Back at camp, Coren slumped onto a rock. "Stretching? Done."
Claire flipped her dagger. "Still insufferable."
Kael studied the horizon. "It's not over."
Far south, the Spiral's scar pulsed. A womb for horrors yet unborn.
Raka walked the ash fields, the child's shadow gone. The dagger hummed, its edge now etched with fresh glyphs.
Sereth's glyphs.