When Truthseeker broke the sphere, time shattered.
Arthur's eyes burst into twelve visions simultaneously—he was the Primordial bearing witness to its own dismemberment, the Zenith ancestors shrieking in outrage, the parasite floating through centuries of starvation. Most horribly, he was himself as a wailing babe, his father's marred hands shoving something dark and squirming into his minute chest.
"For my son,"
Magnus Zenith breathed in remembrance, his voice trembling. "A weapon they cannot take."
The visions disappeared as Nyra's shriek ripped through the room. Arthur blinked back to reality just as the darkness from the sphere crept up Truthseeker's blade like liquid darkness. The star-metal seethed where it contacted, the dagger melting into his flesh. Worse, the corruption was spreading—black veins throbbed under his skin, creeping past his wrist towards his elbow. Each centimeter advance sent stabs of jagged icepick pain racing along his nervous system. "Arthur!" Nyra clamped onto his shoulder, her nails breaking the skin. "Let go!"
He couldn't. His fingers were stuck to the hilt, tendons interwoven with black metal. Warnings on the chamber walls shuddered into life as ancient Zenith words blazed red—no longer writing, but screaming faces projected in light.
Then the noise iced Arthur's blood: stone crashing beyond the tunnels. Kael's laughter crashed through the prison, closer with each resounding footstep.
The sphere responded.
Thump.
A heartbeat.
Thump.
Stronger.
Thump.
The prison's rhythm synchronized with Arthur's own faltering pulse.
Memory Fragment: The First Theft
The vision struck without warning:
Magnus Zenith, two decades his junior, was here in this same chamber. Not as victor—as plunderer. His fingers shook as he pushed against the globe, hissing through gritted teeth as a tendril of shadow stripped free and wrapped around his wrist.
"For my son," he told the silent chamber. "A weapon they cannot take."
The setting changed—a moonlit nursery. Baby Arthur howled in his cradle as Magnus leaned over him, that stolen darkness now twisting between his fingers.
"It will hurt," Magnus whispered, tears scoring pathways through the soot on his face. "But you will live. You have to live."
His scarred hands held the wisp against the infant's chest.
The darkness slid inside.
Baby Arthur's howls became guttural, inhuman. His small fingers dug into his own flesh as the corruption spread—
The now was slamming back like a tsunami. Nyra was screaming, her fire flailing helplessly against the sphere's increasing brilliance. Truthseeker's hilt had almost completely dissolved, the metal blending with Arthur's tainted hand.
"Kael's here," Nyra growled, unsheathing her dagger. "We have to—"
The chamber door burst inward.
Kael Dawnwrath stood surrounded by dust and crackling power, but barely recognizable as human. The wardens had marked him—one eye socket lay empty, streaming black fluid; his left arm was petrified completely into splintered crystal. The rest of his flesh puffed with unnatural muscle, his Storm Guild armor seared onto his body like a second skin.
His other eye fastened on the sphere.
"Magnus's whelp," Kael croaked, his words coated in the same fenborn growl Arthur had heard back in the fen. "You've invited me to the feast."
Arthur attempted to lift Truthseeker, but the sword was almost absorbed, its remains distorting through his body. The parasite's voice was panicked: "He wants to devour the heart. If he links with even a piece—"
Kael shifted.
He was in the doorway one instant. Next, his fist crystal exploded into Arthur's side. The force knocked him up off the ground, bones crunching as he crashed into the opposite wall. Dust came falling from the ceiling.
Nyra launched herself, her dagger swinging for the blind spot. The Archon slapped her aside with a backhanded blow, the impact sending her sliding across the ground in a burst of blood.
"You inherited nothing but failure," said Kael, stepping over Arthur's fallen body towards the sphere. "The Zeniths were weak. The Dawnwraths? We *take* what we deserve."
His tainted hand extended towards the shadows.
Arthur's vision narrowed. The corruption had spread up to his shoulder now, black veins throbbing in sync with the sphere's awful beat. Far down in the pain-mist, the parasite screamed threats—but underneath it, another voice spoke softly:
"Let me in," the sphere whispered, its voice aching with softness. "Not as thief. Not as master. As kin."
Kael's hand wrapped around the primal darkness.
Arthur ceased resisting.
The Becoming
The corruption surged like a tidal wave.
Black veins swallowed Arthur's neck, his jaw, his—
Cosmos unfolded.
He was the Primordial in its prime, twelve arms cradling a young world.
He was the first Zenith weeping over its shattered form.
He was the parasite, cast adrift in a bleeding world.
He was Arthur Zenith, shattered in a prison older than cities, with a monster's grip on his god's heart.
And he was seething.
The corruption finished its task—not as invasion, but homecoming. Truthseeker disintegrated whole, its very substance blending with Arthur's flesh as Kael ripped a fistful of darkness from the sphere.
The Archon did not see the strike approaching.
Arthur moved with the inevitability of a guillotine. His tainted hand—now more empty than flesh—slid into Kael's chest. Not to corrupt. Not to steal.
To reclaim.
Kael tensed. His stolen piece squirmed, then *reversed course*, flowing back into Arthur along with something worse—the Archon's own life force. His skin paled, his one remaining eye fading as the energy ebbed from him.
"You. don't understand." Kael struggled to speak, blood frothing at his lips. "The guilds never. ruled."
His body dissipated to ash.
Quiet.
Nyra moaned, pushing onto her elbows. Her eyes went wide at seeing Arthur—his right arm now sheer void, his scars burning violet-black over all of his body.
"Arthur?" Her voice almost trembled.
He spun around. The sphere was vanished, consumed. Prison walls creaked as they started falling in on themselves, their work done.
Something new awakened somewhere in the tunnels.
Arthur clenched his void-hand. The energy coursing through him was frightening, thrilling—having a lightning bolt in mid-descent.
Nyra hobbled up to his side, her hands wrapping around his uncorrupted ones. "What next?"
It came not from Arthur, nor from the parasite, but from the thousand whispers of newly woken sanctums calling out in the distance:
"War."
The collapse of the prison drove them into the fen's acid waters. Nyra gasped as the black fluid burned her wounds, but Arthur's new void-hand cut through currents like a blade, forming a sheltered route. Behind them, the cube descended into the depths with a hiss of crumbling stone.
On the beach, Nyra fell, her breathing harsh. The moonlight showed her the depth of her wounds—a cut across the forehead, three smashed fingers, and a rib that cracked ominously with every intake of breath.
Arthur sat down beside her, his void-hand wavering uncertainly. The parasite's knowledge murmured of healing methodologies, but the sphere's voice reminded: "First test is control.
He took a breath and pressed two plain fingers to Nyra's worst injury. Violet-black power flared in response—not flame, not frost, but something profound. Nyra twisted with a gagged scream as the flesh rewove itself together.
"Fuck!" She scrambled back, her hands on her now-blemish-free skin. "What the hell was that?"
Arthur gazed at his hand. "I think. I gave you some of the life-energy Kael stole."
Nyra glanced over at his void-arm. "Can you reverse. that?"
The sphere spoke through him: "This is no corruption. This is rebirth."
The fen trembled. Far away, Veridia lights flared as a second sanctum throbbed over the city—bigger than the first, its underbelly covered in thorn-tipped spires.
Nyra gulped. "They're waking up because you stole the heart, aren't they?"
Arthur curled his void-hand. The power hummed in his veins, singing of eleven more cages, eleven more hearts. Eleven more opportunities to be whole.
"Yes," he confessed. "And they won't ever stop."
Nyra gazed at his altered arm, then his eyes—now brighter void-light than human. When she spoke, she was calm:
"Then we'd better become stronger."
Somewhere in the darkness, a third sanctum's fall commenced.
They discovered her and Arthur in a derelict hunter's hut on the edge of the fen. Nyra lay convalescing restlessly by the fire, her body still adjusting to the pilfered life-energy. Arthur kept vigil at the window, his empty-hand tensing as he pushed its boundaries.
The sphere's whisper echoed in his head: "You recovered a shard, but the others wake. The Storm Council already dispatches seekers to the next prison."
A vision flashed—a mountain fortress half-buried in ice, its Zenith markings still visible beneath centuries of snow. A dark pulse echoed from its depths.
The second heart.
Nyra stirred behind him. "You're humming."
Arthur blinked. He hadn't realized the low vibration in his chest—a harmonic resonance with the distant sanctums.
"Sorry."
Nyra sat up, groaning at her still-healing ribs. "Don't be." She looked at his changed arm in the morning light. The void-flesh wasn't a deep black as he'd imagined—small motes of light drifted within its depths, like stars on a midnight sky. "Does it ache?"
"Not anymore." Arthur rotated the limb. "It feels. right. Like it was meant to be there all along."
Nyra's fingers grazed the edge where flesh touched void. A spark arced between them, and for one moment, Arthur glimpsed the world through her eyes—the fear when Kael slapped her, the wonder observing him dismantle the Archon, the absolute conviction that she'd follow this new form of him to any level of hell.
She snatched her hand away, breathing faster. "What was that?"
"Connection." The voice of the parasite blended with Arthur's. "The heart remembers kinship."
Nyra stroked her fingers, pensive. "Can you do it again?"
Arthur couldn't respond before the door of the lodge burst open.
Three figures stood in the light of dawn—not enforcers from the guild, but strangers clad in torn robes. Their leader, a woman with hair streaked silver and eyes as empty-touched as Arthur's, bowed low.
"Arthur Zenith," she chanted. "The Forgotten Temple has waited for your awakening."
Her sleeve dropped back, and an identical void-marked arm was revealed.
[Word count: 2,600 - Approaching climax with the introduction of new factions]
The silver-haired woman introduced herself as Elyra of the Forgotten Temple—a sect of parasite hosts who'd resisted guild control for centuries. Her two companions bore similar void-touched mutations: one had crystalline growths replacing his left eye, the other's shadow moved independently of her body.
"We've been observing since the initial sanctum fell," Elyra stated, her star-studded eyes examining Arthur's arm. "But we didn't anticipate. this. You've not only bonded a shard. You've activated it."
Nyra stepped between them, her blackfire flaring. "How do we know you're not affiliated with the guilds?"
Elyra smiled bitterly and rolled up her sleeve. The void-marks on her arm were like Arthur's, but dimmer—embers to his wildfire. "The guilds pursue us as zealously as they pursue you. More, perhaps. We recall what they've attempted to suppress."
She pulled out a scroll from her robes—an old map that highlighted twelve sites along the continent. Eleven throbbed with black light. One (the prison of the fen) now darkened.
"The original binding locations," Elyra breathed. "The Storm Council has already dispatched excavators to the Frostfang Vault." She directed her finger to a mountain range in the north. "They intend to weaponize the next heart before you can lay claim to it."
Arthur's parasite spiked in recognition. The vision of the ice fortress came back—but now he saw armored men digging through ice, their drills biting into something deep-hidden.
Nyra clamped his shoulder. "We can't let them have it."
Elyra bowed once more. "Then join us. The Temple has waited centuries for a proper Harmonizer to emerge."
Arthur looked at his void-hand. The power resonated in accord.
"Show us the way."
As they left, the second sanctum above Veridia glowed like a star that had burned itself out.
The Forgotten Temple wasn't a structure—it was a living sanctum in plain sight.
Elyra took them to a ruined shrine in the center of the fen, its rocks covered in light-emitting moss. The altar moved to one side at her touch, showing them a stair that went down into the darkness. It became hotter as they descended, smelling like the prison cube and the rocks.
Then the tunnel gave onto marvel.
A cave lay before them, its ceiling disappearing into darkness. Twelve black stone pillars circled a pool of liquid starlight in the center. Dozens of robed individuals circulated through the area—some with slight mutations such as Elyra's, others so altered they were barely human.
"Welcome," said Elyra, "to the final haven of the Harmonized."
Arthur's void-hand throbbed in awareness. The pool beckoned, its surface undulating as he reached out to it.
"The first gift," the voice of the sphere whispered through him.
Nyra followed at his side, her fingers touching his. "What is this place?"
"A memory." Elyra knelt beside the pool. "When the Primordials were intact, they gave magic to humanity through the likes of this. The guilds corrupted that gift into the affinities they wield today."
She plunged her void-marked hand into the pool. The liquid light stuck to her skin, creating a gauntlet of light. "But our path remains. Will you learn, Arthur Zenith?"
The surface of the pool shimmered with not his face, but the twelve shards of the Primordial waiting around the world. The second heart within Frostfang beat in urgency—the guilds were near.
Arthur knelt.
His void-hand brushed against the light.
The cavern sang.