ProlixalParagon stood alone in a narrow yard near the edge of the Vermillion Troupe’s wagons — a pocket of space wedged between a weather-stained cargo house and a collapsed fountain overgrown with dry moss. It was a forgotten corner of Sern Ka’Torr, and it suited him perfectly.
Here, the city’s noise thinned into a background hum: the gulls’ distant cries, the lazy slap of brine against hulls, the low, rhythmic creak of cargo pulleys overhead. Here, he could feel the stretch of possibility in the open air — and in the freshly rewoven lattice of his soul.
He flexed his fingers experimentally.
The mana inside him no longer flowed in neat, predictable channels. It curled and eddied in strange little vortices — clusters of instinct that shifted based on his intent. And it was eager. It wanted to be shaped. To become something.
Prolix knelt and began laying out his tools with reverent care: coil-fused wire spools, chalk for marking field boundaries, a hand-sized mana stabilizer, and several scraps of resonant alloy he’d pilfered from Haidrien’s workshop with full permission.
Then he drew a simple array on the cracked stone — a tripartite spiral, the most basic summoning anchor for Umbral Synthete prototypes.
>Prototype Menu Active.<
>Available Constructs: [Phase Echo Blade], [Scrap-Drift Shade], [Inversion Drone Shell]
Entropy Pool: 16%<
“Alright,” he muttered, crouching low. “Let’s see if you’re real.”
He chose the Scrap-Drift Shade first. A utility construct, light on mana but reactive to movement.
Prolix set the stabilizer core into the center of the spiral and tapped it three times with a copper stylus.
The air twitched.
Reality seemed to stutter, just for an instant, like a skipped frame in a clockwork engine.
Then something assembled itself from the shadows — a shifting, low-profile device about the size of a hound, its shell made of woven scrap metal, its edges blurry as if submerged in deep water.
The Scrap-Drift Shade hummed at him, its outline adapting to match the cracked fountain behind him. It twitched once, then split into two ghost-images, both shifting subtly depending on where he moved.
“Clever,” Prolix whispered, circling it. “You’re already mapping local light distortions. You’ll make a fine distraction.”
He raised his hand to dismiss it — and hesitated.
No. He let the construct hover, adjusting itself, responding to the subtle pressure of his mana flow.
Because beyond simply testing, he had a goal.
His eyes flicked to the old blueprint case slung at his hip: The Lost Workbenches of the Master Tinkerer.
He had three blueprints already. Three pieces of a legacy that demanded more from him than simple craftsmanship:
The adaptive armor, built for survival.
The mana-synced weapon, designed to evolve through combat.
The third schematic, still unreadable — pulsing with locked potential.
But all three shared one requirement glaring from their system notes:
ProlixalParagon was only Level 10 after the upheaval that rewrote his path.
He needed to advance — and fast.
Not through simple battles. Not grinding wild creatures or ferrying goods for scraps of experience.
He needed to build.
Create anomalies.
Master instability.
The system had rewarded him so far not because he’d followed expected routes, but because he had broken free of them.
He began sketching plans in the air with the tip of his stylus: a new form of mobile ward anchor. A flux-disruptor drone. Maybe even an entropy coil trap to destabilize leyline knots.
The Entropy Pool fluctuated gently at the edge of his perception — hungry but malleable.
He smiled, all sharp teeth and quiet wonder.
"I can do this," he said aloud. "I can build my way to it."
A soft, deliberate clapping broke the hush.
Prolix turned sharply to find Haidrien standing at the edge of the broken yard, arms crossed, an unreadable expression on his soot-gray face.
The older Fennician leaned casually against a twisted lamp post, one boot crossed over the other.
"Not bad," Haidrien said, nodding toward the Scrap-Drift Shade, which had flowed halfway up a crumbling wall and clung there like a shadow made of rivets and oil.
"How long have you been watching?" Prolix asked, cheeks heating beneath his fur.
"Long enough to see the world ripple around you," Haidrien said lightly. "And to realize you’re going to cause this city no end of trouble if you keep growing like that."
He pushed off the post and sauntered closer, his long coat catching the breeze.
"But..." Haidrien added, voice dropping to something lower, something closer to reverence, "It’s good trouble. The kind this world doesn't know it needs until it has no choice but to catch up."
Prolix straightened, feeling the weight of the compliment settle alongside the impossible day ahead.
"I’m planning," he said. "If I’m going to craft the Master Tinkerer’s relics, I need to level up. Quickly. Thought maybe... if I push the system harder — build unstable devices, create new prototypes — I can trigger adaptive growth."
Haidrien’s grin widened, feral and proud.
"Now you're thinking like a Synthete."
He clapped Prolix on the shoulder, hard enough to jostle the floating shield still orbiting his wrist.
"Come on," he said. "I’ve got something that might help. And you're going to need it if you're planning to outbuild the gods themselves."
The morning city pulsed awake as they moved, weaving through the narrow veins of Sern Ka’Torr’s lower trade tiers. ProlixalParagon kept pace at Haidrien’s side, the Scrap-Drift Shade flickering after him like a half-glimpsed second shadow. The city smelled of salt and old brass, the streets slick where ocean spray had worn grooves into the stone.
Vendors hawked dried kelp and woven nets. Children darted between cargo crates like darting minnows. Dockhands shouted at skycranes lifting palleted spice kegs toward waiting airships. Yet somehow, despite the rush of life, their small path felt outside of all of it—an invisible corridor cutting through the noise.
By the time they reached The Turning Moment, the bell above the door gave a muted clink, and the workshop swallowed them once more into its dusky warmth and the quiet pulse of ticking gears.
Haidrien latched the door behind them and turned, his sharp gaze measuring ProlixalParagon as if weighing a material for its tensile strength.
"You’re raw," Haidrien said, not unkindly. "Bright. Dangerous. Perfect."
Prolix tilted his head, uncertain if he was being praised or warned.
The older Fennician swept across the cluttered main floor with purpose, brushing aside draped tarps and ironwood storage crates until he reached the back wall—a surface that, at first glance, appeared simply to be another shelving array crowded with dusty books, cracked mana inverters, and a hanging compass whose needle spun lazily even indoors.
With a low growl of exertion, Haidrien pressed his palm against a barely visible depression between two planks.
The shelving clicked.
A seam widened.
With a slow grind of concealed mechanisms, the entire wall split apart and swung inward, revealing a hidden recess.
Inside was a cache unlike anything ProlixalParagon had seen.
Boxes of strange alloys: metal shot through with veins of living crystal, spools of iridescent filament woven from mana-hardened silk, vials of liquefied starmatter vibrating faintly even in containment. A rack of modular toolframes gleamed in the gloom, each lined with runic engravings so fine they seemed to shimmer out of sight if stared at too long.
At the center of it all sat a small, reinforced workbench — curved and layered like a shrine — and mounted above it, a shard of something impossibly dark, suspended within a tri-ringed gyroscopic mount.
It thrummed in the air, alive.
Haidrien leaned casually against the doorframe.
"I’ve been stockpiling salvage and relic cores for years," he said, voice low and proud. "Some... legally. Some from the collapse zones where legality becomes a polite suggestion. All of it waiting for the right hands."
He crossed his arms.
"And I’m offering it to you."
Prolix stared, jaw slack, heart hammering against his ribs.
"Why?" he managed.
Haidrien’s smile was a slow, razor-edged thing, full of weight.
"Because I see what you’re becoming," he said. "Because you’re about to change more than your path—you’re about to bend the rules themselves. And because there’s work I can’t finish alone."
He pushed off the frame and walked into the cache, gesturing to a clear area next to the strange workbench.
"I’ve been sitting on an experimental commission for months. Too volatile. Too much backlash. It was supposed to be a joint project with another artificer, but she disappeared into the Shattered Fens before we could start."
He looked back at Prolix, golden eyes gleaming.
"But if you can get yourself stronger—level up, hone those unstable affinities—you and I can finish it together."
ProlixalParagon took a hesitant step into the hidden room, the mana buzzing against his skin, the possibilities crowding his thoughts until they crackled at the edges.
"What’s the commission?" he asked.
Haidrien’s smirk deepened.
"An Adaptive Resonance Core," he said. "A living device that evolves based on the desires and fears of its wielder. A true Synthete artifact. Something the world isn’t ready for."
He reached out and placed a hand on Prolix’s shoulder.
"You level. You learn. You survive. Then we build something that will outlive both of us."
Prolix felt the weight of it, not as a burden—but as a forge waiting for a hammerstrike.
"I’ll do it," he said, voice steady.
"Good," Haidrien said, releasing him. "Then choose what you need from the cache. The real training starts now."
And as the city moved unknowingly around them — its tides, its markets, its soldiers and spies — a new conspiracy of creation was born, stitched together in the half-lit heart of forgotten places.
The hidden cache glowed dimly in the filtered morning light that spilled through the slats of The Turning Moment. ProlixalParagon stood motionless for a breath, letting the weight of possibility settle over him. Around him: shelves lined with uncut potential, dormant and waiting. Within him: a forge of ideas sparking to life.
Haidrien circled the cache like a hawk over a warren, hands behind his back, sharp eyes flicking from crate to crate, material to material.
"You’re not here to window-shop," Haidrien said, voice cutting through the charged stillness. "Pick. Build. Break. Learn."
Prolix nodded once, sharp and sure, and set to work.
His fingers skimmed over bins and racks with growing speed, senses prickling whenever he brushed something resonant. He trusted the new instincts his class evolution had given him — the subtle hum beneath his skin that recognized which components were pliable and which ones would resist being turned into anomalies.
He seized:
Two coils of living filament wire, each strand pulsing faintly with stored ley tension. Perfect for unstable energy transfer arrays.
A spool of soul-infused copper, slightly tarnished but buzzing with the whine of half-dormant enchantments.
A set of fragmentary prism lenses, splintered through with natural mana fractures. Dangerous, but ideal for distortion fields.
Three cores of semi-stabilized abyssal resin, viscous and dark, capable of feeding off ambient entropy to self-repair—or self-destruct.
One containment frame fashioned from coldwrought steel, etched with chaotic binding runes.
A scrap-basket of ruin and hope.
"Good," Haidrien barked. "Now—build something with it. But not a toy. Not a trap. Something that can think. React. Adapt."
ProlixalParagon dropped into a crouch, unfurling a worn leather workspace roll onto the floor and scattering his chosen components across it. His claws twitched, pulling wire, setting cores, threading filament through hastily chalked runic anchors.
The moment he started fitting the first filament coil to the coldwrought frame, Haidrien’s voice cracked out again.
"And while you work," Haidrien said, pacing, "burn this into your mind: advanced Tinkerer classes don't just lean on the core attributes anymore."
Prolix kept assembling, jaw clenched, listening.
"You have your basics," Haidrien continued, ticking them off on gloved fingers:
Strength. Constitution. Dexterity. Intelligence. Wisdom. Charisma. Piety. Luck.
"But those won’t save you when it matters. Not out there."
He stepped closer, voice dropping to a low, driving cadence.
"You’re a Synthete now. Everything you build, everything you are, depends on these:"
He struck a hand out, ticking each off like hammerblows.
Accuracy — Precision of device placement and targeting.
Agility — Your reaction speed when recalibrating constructs mid-conflict.
Focus — Your ability to channel without your mana lattice fracturing.
Perception — Your instinct to spot fault lines, opportunities, and enemy weaknesses in the chaos.
"Without them, you're just a slower, louder corpse."
Prolix tightened a filament knot, twisting it around the soul-copper core and threading it into the lens fragment like a surgeon stitching torn flesh.
System Notification:
Minor Device Prototype: Distortion Pulse Core — 64% stability. Entropy Output: Low.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Adaptive Signature: Active.
Progress toward next level: 7% gained.
A crackle of energy danced along the lens array — the prototype flickered, a bloom of warped light distorting the shape of the broken fountain behind him.
Prolix grinned fiercely. Good enough for a first try.
Then Haidrien’s boot nudged the edge of the work mat sharply.
"Not fast enough," he snapped. "Again."
Prolix started to protest — until he saw the glint in Haidrien’s eye. No anger. No cruelty.
Pressure.
Simulation.
The city wouldn’t wait for perfection. Battlefields wouldn’t grant patience.
So he moved faster.
He reached for a second filament coil, a new mana-fractured lens. His mind raced ahead, planning a second construct — a Phase Skitter Node that could teleport short distances between anchor points.
Haidrien’s voice remained a steady, cutting drumbeat.
"Accuracy. Agility. Focus. Perception."
Another prototype flared to life — this time faster, sloppier — but alive. It shuddered into being beside the first, twitching as it anchored to the broken ley echoes around them.
System Notification:
Minor Device Prototype: Phase Skitter Node — 49% stability. Entropy Output: Moderate.
Adaptive Signature: Dormant.
Progress toward next level: 9% gained.
Sparks scattered across the floor, chasing the morning light like nervous birds.
ProlixalParagon wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and grinned up at Haidrien, heart hammering, a wild joy sparking through his veins.
"You’re insane," Prolix gasped. "And I think I might actually love this."
Haidrien’s grin was sharp as broken glass.
"Good."
He kicked a new crate toward Prolix’s work area — this one rattling ominously with volatile parts — and tossed a handful of unprogrammed mana fuses after it.
"Because we’re just getting started."
The hours blurred into a symphony of friction and fury.
ProlixalParagon barely noticed when morning deepened into midday, or when the filtered light slanting through the high windows turned from gold to brittle white. His hands worked instinctively now, driven by Haidrien’s relentless barked demands and the giddy momentum of creation.
Device after device sprang to life under his claws — each one a tenuous miracle of unstable engineering:
A Pulse Disruptor Node, throwing out shivering waves that flickered light into inverted hues.
A Ley Spindle Spider, weaving ambient mana strands into low-gravity fields.
A Scrapburst Drone, cobbled from half-melted conduit coils and unstable soul filaments, which barely held together under its own thudding heartbeat.
Each prototype he built added a pulse of experience, climbing his level steadily:
Level Up!
Level 11 → 12 → 13...
The system prompts came in a rush now, blinking past his periphery almost too fast to track.
He refined his movements, learned the art of trimming instability without quenching innovation. He even started to feel the subtle dance of entropy within each object—the places it could be guided rather than fought.
Haidrien watched, arms crossed, occasionally throwing a blunt word of advice or a small crate of parts into the chaos like a battlefield quartermaster.
And Prolix adapted.
Faster.
Sharper.
Until ambition pulled him one step too far.
The prototype he reached for next was more complicated: a Flicker-Tether Mine, designed to collapse and rebound ambient mana fields to create a localized phase inversion. In theory, it could cause a hostile spell effect to misfire back at its caster—or collapse small projectiles in midair.
In practice?
It was a monster barely held in check by filament wire and desperate will.
Prolix assembled it on pure instinct, fingers blurring as he socketed in two resonance cores and a triple-etched scrap prism.
The last step—the focus calibration—required threading his mana into the construct delicately, balancing three volatile streams at once.
His mind, already stretched thin from hours of unrelenting creation, faltered.
His Focus check triggered automatically:
Skill Check: Focus [Critical Difficulty]... Failed.
The moment the last filament locked into place, the device screamed.
Mana twisted inward, clawing at the stabilizer fields. The ground beneath his feet lurched, the resonance cores overloading in a heartbeat.
The Flicker-Tether Mine shattered apart—not in an explosion, but in a collapse.
Reality folded at the center of the room, drawing in light, sound, and debris like a yawning breath.
In its place bloomed a localized minor anomaly — a swirling gyre of broken laws, two meters wide, crackling with flickers of reversed gravity and stuttering flashes of inverted color. Small objects lifted, twisted, and spun like leaves in a silent storm around it.
Prolix staggered back, shielding his face with his arms. A wrench floated by, shimmering like a ghost of itself.
Warning: Localized Anomaly Detected!
Type: Minor Spatial Distortion (Inversion Class)
Duration: Unknown
Instability Rating: Moderate → Rising
Haidrien let out a low whistle, eyebrows arching almost in admiration.
"Well," he said casually, reaching into his coat for a thick, rune-inscribed anchoring baton, "guess it’s time for your first real lesson."
Prolix coughed, staring at the anomaly that spun slowly before him, distorting the rafters of the workshop and bending the light into impossible angles.
"What lesson?" he shouted over the growing hum of warped air.
Haidrien grinned, tossing him a duplicate anchoring baton — a slim rod of heavy iron inlaid with soul-stabilizing runes.
"Lesson One," Haidrien called, "when you build chaos, you anchor your exits first."
The anomaly began to pulse, thickening, its gravitational pull starting to tug at the larger constructs stacked along the walls.
"Lesson Two," Haidrien continued, adjusting his stance, "if you don’t shut it down before it chains to a second instability?"
The older Fennician’s grin widened into something gleefully wicked.
"You get to meet the city guard’s mana nullifiers. And you don’t want that."
Prolix tightened his grip on the baton, adrenaline slicing through exhaustion like a live wire.
The anomaly shuddered again, spitting crackling ribbons of anti-light across the floor.
"Right," Prolix muttered, teeth bared. "No pressure."
He darted forward, shield flickering into defensive phase at his side, anchoring baton held high, and plunged into the whirling heart of the broken space he'd accidentally created.
ProlixalParagon surged into the distorted zone, the world around him warping and stretching like heated glass. His heart hammered against his ribs, the anchoring baton gripped so tightly in his hand his knuckles ached.
The anomaly fought him from the first step.
Each stride felt a heartbeat too long, each movement leaving ghost trails of himself hanging in the warped air. Constructs peeled upward from the floorboards, caught in lazy spirals. Gravity twisted in nauseating surges — one moment pulling him sideways, the next pressing him down as if the very stones resented his weight.
Focus. Agility. Perception.
Haidrien’s words rang through the chaos.
He gritted his teeth, forcing his mind into stillness even as the room twisted around him.
The anchoring baton in his hand flared when he crossed the anomaly’s outer threshold, a trio of stabilizing runes lighting up sequentially as it fought to counter the wild pull of corrupted mana.
[Inversion Array Protocol: Activated.]
ProlixalParagon thrust the baton into the cracked floor at the heart of the distortion, releasing a blast of counter-mana that sizzled outward in jagged arcs. The anomaly shrieked — not with sound, but with a sickening wrench of wrongness that made his fur stand on end.
But the pull didn’t stop.
The baton trembled violently, stabilizing two-thirds of the collapse field, but failing to reach the heart-knot at its center.
Sweat ran in rivulets down his spine.
He needed another anchor.
Fast.
His mind flicked to the half-completed Phase Skitter Node still half-dormant on the workmat.
Without hesitation, he snatched the node and hurled it into the fray, overclocking its energy output with a brutal surge of mana.
The Scrap-Drift Shade, sensing the instability, twisted its program lines mid-flight and latched onto the node, forcing it into a stabilizing position at the anomaly's eastern edge.
The air snapped like a taut wire.
The distortion shuddered—sickening, unstable, desperate to survive.
ProlixalParagon didn't hesitate. He reached deep into his Entropy Pool, willing it to surge.
He focused his mana into the anchor network, forcing stability down the collapsed ley lines.
Reality resisted.
He pushed harder.
Mana screamed through his arms.
The anomaly flickered — bloomed one final pulse of inverted color — then collapsed inward with a dull, hollow boom, sucking in all the warped light and twisted sound in a rush of compressed silence.
When it cleared, only the scorched outline of the stabilizing baton remained, still humming faintly.
And silence.
Glorious, ordinary silence.
Prolix staggered back a few steps and dropped to one knee, panting hard. His hands trembled from the backlash of channeled instability.
Haidrien approached slowly, clapping once, dry and sardonic.
"Not dead," he said, voice rich with approval. "Good start."
Prolix gave him a weary grin. "I'd like to not test the system’s respawn feature today, thanks."
He flopped down onto a half-toppled crate, letting the mana residue bleed off his frame while the workshop’s normal ticking rhythms cautiously reasserted themselves.
At the edge of his vision, the system pinged insistently, notifications collated and neatly stacked in the aftermath of his frantic leveling and the anomaly suppression.
He blinked them open with a flick of his wrist.
>Level Up Summary:<
- Focus increased to 18
- Perception increased to 14>
- Minor Anomaly Stabilization feat unlocked (+5% anomaly resistance)
- Entropy Handling rating improved (+1 stability when crafting unstable constructs)
- Prototype Device Adaptation bonus unlocked (+3% chance for beneficial mutation in experimental devices)>
Prolix exhaled slowly, letting the summary settle into him, then opened his character sheet and allocated his points.
Player Name: ProlixalParagon Level: 15
Class:Umbral Synthete
Subclass:None
Profession: None Specialization: None
Currently Active Title: -
Most used Skill: -
Alignment: Chaotic Grey
Health: 185/185 Mana: 160/160 Stamina: 100/100
Points Earned: 20
Reputation:
-OakHaven - 10
-Vermillion Troupe - 115
-Pella - 0
-Marx - 50
-Lyra - 100
-Kaelthari - 10
-Arelis - 5
-Lord Elmsworth - (-100)
-DustReach - (-100)
-Draggor - (-100)
-Yendrals Hollow - 50
-Soohan - 50
-Haidrien -
-Sern Ka’torr - 0
Character Attributes:
Strength:15 Constitution:16 Dexterity:28 Intelligence: 28
Wisdom: 26 Charisma: 12 Piety: 0 Luck: 12
Karma: 10
Combat Attributes:
Attack: 14 Accuracy: 12 Agility: 15 Speed: 10
Critical: 0.21 Endurance:14 Focus: 18 Defense:10
Magic Def: 10 Armor:10 Hygieian Meter: 12 Perception: 14
Affinities:
Earth: 0 Water: 0
Fire: 0 Air: 8
Blood: 0 Soul: 8
Celestial: 0 Abyssal: 30
Lightning: 0 Ice: 0
Metal: 8 Wood: 0
Currently Equipped Gear:
Worn Leather armor (Durability: 7/45)
Tinkerers beginners tool set (Durability: 22/45)
Low grade iron dagger (Durability: 8/25)
Makeshift trash Caltrops (Qty: 31 Pcs)
Marx’s Woven Cuff (Durability: 45/45) (Accessory — +1 Dexterity, +5% Mana Efficiency)
Active Status Effects:
Hungry I - Tired I - BrainFog I
Abilities:
Entropy Handling
Titles
-
Passive Skills:
Improvised weaponry , Salvager’s Insight , Master Tinkerer’s Insight, Herbalism (Novice), Soul Sensitivity, Metal Sensitivity, Prototype Device Adaptation
Feats:
Inversion Array, Paradox Bloom, Anomaly Stabilization (Minor),
Character Background:
Fennician, Scholars Apprentice, Cursed Bloodline
Character Traits:
Lunar Reflexes , Unrooted Identity , Magical Burnout, Knowledge Retention, Dark Affinity, Fractal Instinct
Currently active Quest:
The Lost Workbenches of the Master Tinkerer (3/7)
He dismissed his character sheet with a slow sigh.
Level 15.
It wasn’t 40, not yet — but it was a solid foundation.
More importantly, it was proof.
Proof that he could build his way forward. Proof that he could push the boundaries without shattering himself.
And this—this wild, dangerous, alive way of growing—felt right.
At his side, the Scrap-Drift Shade shimmered once, adjusting its outline to blend into the battered crates, almost as if proud of their survival.
Haidrien tossed him a battered waterskin and leaned back against the still-smoking wall, surveying the lingering scorch marks with a wry smile.
"Welcome to the real work, Prolix," he said, voice low and satisfied. "You’re not building things anymore."
Prolix took a long, grateful drink, then wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist.
"I know," he said, grinning fiercely. "I’m building the future."
The lingering tension in the workshop slowly bled away, carried off by the lazy drift of morning sun and the faint, persistent ticking of Haidrien’s many quiet machines. The scorched floor, the anchoring baton still faintly humming in the corner — all of it felt strangely distant now, like the last thrum of a fading storm.
ProlixalParagon sat cross-legged on the floor, a battered tin plate balanced on his knees. The food was simple — dense flatbread stuffed with roasted root vegetables, a wedge of smoked cheese, a scattering of salted nuts. Not extravagant, but after the chaos of the morning, it tasted glorious.
Haidrien perched nearby atop an overturned crate, tearing his own flatbread in half with sharp teeth. His soot-gray fur caught the light, making the faint striping along his arms seem almost etched into the air.
For a while, they ate in companionable silence, only the crunch of toasted bread and the occasional distant gull breaking the stillness.
Then Haidrien, still chewing, jerked his chin toward the battered anchoring baton half-buried in the scorched wood.
"First rule of real-world Tinkering," he said, voice muffled, "isn’t 'build fast.' It’s 'build anchored.'"
Prolix nodded between bites, filing the advice away automatically. His mind, even in rest, buzzed with the high whine of ideas — schematics half-formed, possibilities twisting like smoke.
"You did good," Haidrien added, more seriously. "Better than most first-time anomaly handlers. But you leaned too much on instinct. That’ll get you killed once you start playing with layered fields."
He swallowed a mouthful of bread, then reached into a side pouch at his belt, withdrawing a small flat disk no wider than a coin. He tossed it across the floor — it skittered once, then lay still at Prolix’s feet.
The younger Fennician picked it up carefully. The disk was engraved with six interlocking rings, each etched in dizzying, minute detail.
"What’s this?"
"Field anchor schematic," Haidrien said. "Primitive. Elegant. Reliable. When you’re building constructs that might destabilize, your first step — every time — should be lacing your groundwork with these."
He leaned forward, tapping a claw lightly against the floorboards.
"One under each node. One at your own feet. One layered into your primary construct matrix. Think of them like… pinning reality to itself. Otherwise, when entropy blooms, it won’t just be your device that unravels."
Prolix turned the disk over and over in his fingers, feeling the faint tingle of residual mana humming through the etched rings.
"And if the anchors fail?" he asked.
Haidrien grinned without humor.
"Then you better hope whatever's nearby isn’t carrying volatile ley signatures. Or you’ll be pulling new teeth out of your tail for a month."
Prolix winced and tucked the disk carefully into his satchel.
"Got it," he said. "Anchor first. Build second."
"Good." Haidrien leaned back, looking pleased. "Next lesson?"
He pointed at ProlixalParagon’s chest — or rather, the faint latticework of mana-thread that had become visible to those who knew what to look for after his class evolution.
"Mana pathways," Haidrien said. "Yours are… messy. New. They’ll stabilize over time, but if you don't learn to guide them properly, your constructs will always have a little 'spin' — instability you didn't intend."
He paused, tearing a bit of cheese and popping it into his mouth before continuing.
"You need to practice static holding."
"Static what?"
"Static holding," Haidrien repeated. "Holding an incomplete mana construct in your lattice without letting it activate or collapse."
He picked up a spare mana crystal from the crate beside him and flicked it casually at Prolix, who caught it instinctively.
"Build the mana pattern — keep it spinning. Don't trigger it. Don't discharge it. Don’t let it eat you. Five minutes minimum."
Prolix grimaced, tossing the crystal between his hands thoughtfully.
"Sounds like meditation," he muttered.
Haidrien barked a sharp laugh. "Meditation wishes it were this useful."
He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, tone dropping to something quieter, almost conspiratorial.
"Every second you hold unstable mana without slipping? You sharpen your Focus. You refine your Perception. You strengthen the bridge between will and world."
He jabbed a claw against his temple.
"Here. Not here." He tapped Prolix’s hand.
"And that's what makes a real Synthete dangerous."
ProlixalParagon absorbed the words in silence, the weight of them settling over him heavier than any blueprint.
It wasn’t enough to build fast.
It wasn’t enough to build clever.
He had to build true.
Anchor himself first — in body, in mana, in mind.
He flexed his fingers experimentally, already thinking of how he could adapt his training over the next seven days, how he could use every moment before they shipped out for BaiGai.
Above them, the battered old workshop clock tolled the late afternoon.
Haidrien stood and stretched, bones popping audibly.
"You've earned a breather," he said. "But not for long. Tomorrow? We start working with double-entropy cores."
ProlixalParagon smiled grimly.
"Good," he said, rising to his feet, the Scrap-Drift Shade flickering obediently into formation beside him.
"Because I’m not here to just survive."
He felt the heavy beat of it, in his chest, in his soul.
"I’m here to build a future the world isn’t ready for."
Haidrien’s answering smile was all sharp teeth and quiet pride.
"Now you're speaking my language."
The last of the filtered afternoon light stretched long across the cluttered floor of The Turning Moment, casting burnished shadows that clung to the edges of workbenches and hanging gear-cages. The low ticking of the countless minor automatons softened into a background murmur, like the slow breath of a machine city drifting to sleep.
Haidrien cracked his neck to one side with an audible pop and clapped the dust from his gloves.
"That's it for today," he said, the firmness in his voice brooking no argument. "You push any further, you'll snap your lattice clean in two."
ProlixalParagon, sitting cross-legged amidst a sprawl of tangled wire and chalked mana sigils, didn’t argue. His brain felt like it had been wrung out and hung over a hot line to dry. His limbs ached in ways he hadn't realized were possible — not the heavy fatigue of battle, but the strange deep weariness that came from too much thinking, too much channeling, too much becoming.
He uncurled stiffly to his feet, the Scrap-Drift Shade hovering loyally behind him like a battered dog. The once-pristine work mat was scorched at the edges, littered with half-assembled components and crystalline slivers.
Haidrien wiped his hands on a rag and turned back toward the main floor, already moving with the precision of habit. "I’ve got commissions that need attention," he said over his shoulder. "Clients to appease, deadlines to ignore until the last moment."
He tossed a sidelong glance at Prolix. "We'll pick back up tomorrow morning. Early."
"How early?" Prolix rasped, voice hoarse from strain.
Haidrien grinned, all wicked amusement. "Before the city wakes. Before the sun's had a chance to regret rising."
Prolix groaned under his breath but offered a weary salute nonetheless.
"Understood."
"Good," Haidrien said, already disappearing into the cluttered depths of the shop. "Rest up. You’ll need every scrap of sense you have left."
ProlixalParagon stepped out into the cooling air of Sern Ka’Torr, the day bleeding into the bruised purples and deep molten reds of twilight. The docks below were a hum of low activity—longshoremen securing loads, sky-cranes groaning under weight, the faint pulse of ship lanterns bobbing like distant fireflies across the bay.
He tightened his travel cloak against the salt breeze and made his way back toward the staging yards where the Vermillion Troupe had made their temporary camp.
Every step seemed heavier, each breath deeper, like he was carrying more of himself than before.
By the time he reached the line of vardos, dusk had fully taken hold. Soft lantern-glow spilled from a few open wagon doors, voices low and muted as the Troupe settled into another careful night of waiting. The children’s laughter, once a near-constant backdrop, was hushed — not gone, but quieter, cautious.
He slipped through the wagons unnoticed, grateful for the hush.
A battered Conestoga wagon near the edge of the camp called to him — the one usually reserved for storage overflow or resting scouts. The canvas was worn soft from years of desert winds, patched and re-patched with care. It smelled faintly of dried sage and warm wood.
Prolix climbed into the back and collapsed onto a pile of woven blankets with a breathless grunt. The wooden frame of the wagon creaked in sympathy.
His body sank into the thick nesting of cloth and hay-stuffed pads, the tension bleeding out of him like sand slipping through open fingers.
The exhaustion wasn’t just physical.
It was mental—the deep, satisfying ache of having stretched something vital and unseen, pushed past comfort into the trembling space where growth lived.
The notifications he had reviewed earlier swam faintly behind his closed eyes: Level 15.
Achievement, yes. But also a promise.
Work to be built on. Mistakes to be made. Triumphs to be hammered into form.
Tomorrow, Haidrien would push him harder.
Tomorrow, he would anchor his own constructs in chaos and maybe—just maybe—learn to survive what he was shaping.
But tonight, he allowed himself the rare luxury of rest.
The steady murmur of the camp beyond the canvas walls — the low thrum of wheels, the crackle of a distant fire, the muted laughter of tired souls — cradled him like a second skin.
And ProlixalParagon, the first Umbral Synthete of Ludere Online, slept.