Before the gulls stirred, before the dock bells tolled the waking hour, ProlixalParagon was already on his feet — or more accurately, stumbling bleary-eyed through the salt-choked streets toward The Turning Moment.
His limbs felt heavy, muscles stiff from yesterday’s frantic crafting and chaos management. The brief sleep he'd snatched in the wagon had dulled the worst of the exhaustion, but beneath it, a deeper ache remained — the rawness of someone who had peeled away a skin they hadn’t known they were wearing.
The shop door stood slightly ajar when he arrived, the early mist curling lazily around the threshold.
Inside, the workshop had changed.
Gone was the cluttered sprawl of yesterday’s frantic experiments. In its place, Haidrien had carved out a brutal efficiency: clear floor space marked with chalked containment circles, heavy insulated gear set near each workbench, and three looming pedestals — each supporting a violently unstable mana core that pulsed with throbbing, uneven light.
Prolix barely crossed the threshold before Haidrien’s voice cracked like a whip across the space.
"Late," he barked. "Half a breath slower and you'd already be dead in a real engagement."
ProlixalParagon grimaced but said nothing, striding toward the center circle where a battered set of stabilizer gloves and an auxiliary entropy harness awaited him.
Haidrien stalked around the room like a restless wolf, his coat fluttering in the ambient mana winds generated by the unstable cores.
"Yesterday was baby steps," he said. "Today?"
He gestured to the three cores.
"You’re working under double-entropy load. No coddling. No safe stabilizers. You craft your constructs in the field of active instability."
He stopped inches from Prolix, golden eyes burning.
"If you lose control," Haidrien said softly, "you don't get a second chance to correct it. You contain the failure. You adapt. Or you become part of the wreckage."
Prolix swallowed hard, heart pounding.
But he nodded once, sharp and sure.
"I’m ready."
Haidrien snorted, half amusement, half approval, and tossed him a cracked, rune-etched mana crystal.
"Build me a functional support device. Ten minutes. No full stabilizer cages. Core must survive activation."
He pointed to the floor as the three unstable cores pulsed around them like waiting beasts.
"And if you draw in too much ambient entropy?"
He bared his teeth.
"You anchor or you burn."
Prolix dropped into a crouch at once, mind snapping into sharp clarity.
The environment was hostile — the double-entropy cores distorted local mana fields violently, sending shivers through his constructs before they even formed. His Scrap-Drift Shade flickered uncertainly at the edge of the nearest containment line, sensing the instability.
His first steps were pure instinct: sketching anchor spirals, setting minor runic buffers with trembling, precise movements. The static crackle of entropy teased his fingertips, hungry to unmake anything imperfect.
He chose his components fast:
Fragmented ley prism for control modulation.
Woven soul-copper for core lattice anchoring.
A thrum-wire coil to act as a mana condenser.
He twisted the filament in place — only to feel the ambient mana spike, destabilizing the entire prototype in progress.
Focus: 18.
Perception: 14.
They saved him.
He saw the instability forming milliseconds before it detonated.
Without thinking, he overlaid a secondary anchor — a rough, rushed array burned directly into the stone with the heat of his mana instead of chalk — and rammed a stabilization spike into it.
The instability snapped inward, compressing against the spike instead of his prototype.
He rode the backlash, gritting his teeth, forcing the mana to conform.
And when the prototype hissed and clicked into shape — a shimmering adaptive field node, ready to throw out temporary mana shields on trigger — he knew he had passed a threshold.
>System Notification:
Minor Device Prototype: Adaptive Shield Node — 82% stability. Entropy Output: Low.
Progress toward next level: 19% gained.<
He slumped back on his heels, panting, sweat dripping from his brow into the cracked floorboards.
Across the workshop, Haidrien watched, arms folded, a faint smile curling at the edge of his mouth.
"Not bad," he said, voice almost warm.
"Not dead," Prolix muttered hoarsely.
"Better than most."
Haidrien crossed to him, crouched low enough that his golden eyes gleamed at the same level.
"You see now," he said quietly. "You don’t fight entropy with brute strength. You dance with it. You shape it. You make it forget it wanted to kill you."
He thumped a heavy hand against Prolix’s shoulder.
"And if you survive long enough?"
He stood, spreading his arms to encompass the crackling chaos of the workshop.
"You don’t just build constructs."
"You build self contained worlds."
ProlixalParagon stayed there for a long moment, crouched amid the wreckage of failure and the electric aftertaste of success, feeling something coil tighter inside him.
Resolve.
Ambition.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
And the faintest, hungriest echo of joy.
Tomorrow would be harder.
Tomorrow would demand even more.
But for now, he had bent entropy itself into his hands — and it had listened.
The days that followed blurred into a crucible of motion, heat, and adaptation.
Morning after morning, before even the tide bells rang, ProlixalParagon returned to The Turning Moment, the workshop reshaped anew each dawn by Haidrien’s demands: different entropy fields, shifting containment zones, randomized prototype parameters scrawled in chalk across the cracked stone floor.
There was no easing into the work.
Every hour was a gauntlet.
One morning, the challenge was rapid construction under collapsing leyline conditions.
Prolix moved like a man possessed, laying filament tracks faster than he could think, slamming together constructs with no more than instinct and half-sketched glyphs.
His fingers blistered. His focus screamed with the strain.
But he completed the construct — a Burst Lattice Shield that reflected incoming mana bursts with a ragged, perfect defiance.
>Level Up!<
Another day, Haidrien flooded the workshop with false gravitational pulses, forcing Prolix to build on inclined planes, vertical walls, even upside-down from rigged scaffolding.
The world spun, the blood rushed to his head, and the raw buzz of entropy fought to tear each construct from his fingers.
But he adapted.
He built a Phase Walker Array that stabilized its own gravitational bubble — the prototype humming and rotating like a coin spun eternally on its edge.
>Level Up!<
On the third morning, Haidrien introduced randomized material bins—forcing Prolix to build constructs with whatever he grabbed, no planning allowed.
He pulled warped filaments, cracked soulsteel fragments, brittle mana-warped wood—and still, somehow, cobbled together a working Phase Disruptor Totem that jammed ambient magic signals in a twenty-foot radius.
At the cost of his eyebrows briefly catching fire.
Haidrien only laughed, throwing him a bucket of seawater without missing a beat.
"You’ll heal," he'd said, smirking. "But the lesson will scar right."
>Level Up!<
Every night, ProlixalParagon staggered back to the Vermillion Troupe’s camp, half-dead on his feet, collapsing into the Conestoga wagon without even bothering to remove his toolbelt.
And every morning, he rose again — bruised, burnt, alive.
His mana lattice wove itself tighter with each ordeal, pathways smoothing, instincts sharpening.
His Focus rose.
His Perception widened.
Even his Agility climbed from the frantic footwork demanded by unstable training grounds.
By the end of the fifth day, the workshop itself seemed to recognize him, the myriad tiny clockwork devices drifting closer as if drawn to the resonance he now carried — a living storm of invention, held in delicate, stubborn hands.
Haidrien watched from the shadows most days now, offering fewer corrections, fewer warnings.
Not because the work was done.
But because Prolix had crossed the threshold into something else.
Not apprentice.
Not tinkerer.
Crafter of impossible things.
Late that evening, after surviving a triple-core collapse drill and anchoring a staggering seven constructs simultaneously across a fractured mana field, Prolix finally slumped against a battered crate, blinking at the system summary that unfolded across his vision.
>Current Level: 18<
- Static Holding Mastery (Rank D → C)
- Rapid Construction (Rank E → D)
- Entropy Stabilization (Unlocked: Rank E)>
>New Perk Unlocked<
>Passive Skill (Advanced)<
ProlixalParagon opened his sheet and allocated his points.
Player Name: ProlixalParagon Level: 18
Class:Umbral Synthete
Subclass:None
Profession: None Specialization: None
Currently Active Title: -
Most used Skill: -
Alignment: Chaotic Grey
Health: 192/192 Mana: 185/200 Stamina: 110/110
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 - 0
-Sern Ka’torr - 0
Character Attributes:
Strength:18 Constitution:18 Dexterity:31 Intelligence: 30
Wisdom: 29 Charisma: 14 Piety: 0 Luck: 16
Karma: 10
Combat Attributes:
Attack: 14 Accuracy: 12 Agility: 18 Speed: 10
Critical: 0.21 Endurance:14 Focus: 21 Defense:10
Magic Def: 10 Armor:10 Hygieian Meter: 12 Perception: 17
Affinities:
Earth: 0 Water: 0
Fire: 0 Air: 10
Blood: 0 Soul: 10
Celestial: 0 Abyssal: 36
Lightning: 0 Ice: 0
Metal:12 Wood: 0
Currently Equipped Gear:
Worn Leather armor (Durability: 5/45)
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:
BrainFog II - Tired I - Mana Burn I - Hungry I
Abilities:
Entropy Handling, Fracture Weaver
Titles
-
Passive Skills:
Improvised weaponry , Salvager’s Insight , Master Tinkerer’s Insight, Herbalism (Novice), Soul Sensitivity, Metal Sensitivity, Prototype Device Adaptation, Anchoring Reflex
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)
ProlixalParagon let his head fall back against the wall, a weak, satisfied laugh bubbling up from his chest.
He was exhausted.
Every nerve burned.
Every mana thread in his body throbbed like plucked harp strings.
But he was stronger.
Sharper.
He had grown.
And tomorrow... the real work would begin.
Because BaiGai waited.
And across the sea, somewhere beyond the burning horizon, ProlixalParagon knew the world was not ready for the storm he would become.
The workshop smelled of burnt copper, old leather, and something subtler — the sharp, almost sweet tang of mana that had been bled dry and rewritten a hundred times over.
ProlixalParagon sat near the still-flickering hearth, letting his tools rest in a loose sprawl at his side, the Scrap-Drift Shade nestled quietly near his boots like a loyal specter. His body ached down to the marrow, every movement a careful negotiation between pride and pain.
Across the room, Haidrien packed away the last of the entropy cores, each one locked into reinforced caskets lined with rune-silver and ironwood. He moved slower now — not with weariness, but with a certain finality. The sharp energy that had crackled between them during the week’s trials had softened, cooled like tempered steel.
When the last crate was sealed, Haidrien wiped his hands on a stained rag and turned to face him fully.
For once, there was no wicked grin, no sharp-edged jest perched on his tongue.
Just quiet, steady pride.
"You’ve gone further than I thought possible," Haidrien said, voice low and even. "Faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. More stubborn than half the fools who thought they could cheat entropy."
He crossed the floor with unhurried steps, stopping a pace away, gaze weighing ProlixalParagon not as a student, but as an equal.
"I’ve taught you everything I know," he said simply. "Every trick, every pitfall, every shortcut and every long, hard road."
He paused, his soot-gray ears twitching once.
"And the rest… you’ll have to learn on your own."
Prolix shifted forward, sitting a little straighter despite the groan of protest from his muscles.
He met Haidrien’s gaze squarely, feeling the weight of the words settle between them.
"I will," Prolix said, voice quiet but certain. "I’ll keep building."
A thin, genuine smile tugged at the corner of Haidrien’s mouth.
"Good," he said. "Because if you don’t — if you let the world tell you what you can’t make — you’ll be wasting the one thing that actually matters."
He reached out, clapping a firm hand against Prolix’s shoulder.
"Don’t be a stranger, eh?" he added, a faint roughness threading through his words. "The Turning Moment’s doors’ll stay open to you. Might even have another commission or two waiting when you swing back this way."
Prolix felt a lump rise in his throat — unexpected and sharp-edged, a tangle of exhaustion, gratitude, and something warmer he didn’t quite have the words for yet.
"I’ll come back," he promised. "When I can."
Haidrien squeezed his shoulder once, then stepped back, already turning toward a half-repaired ley compass on a nearby workbench.
"Good," he said gruffly, half-hidden by the clatter of tools. "Otherwise I’ll just have to track you down myself. And you won’t like how I charge for house calls."
Prolix laughed — a small, raw sound that cracked open something inside him and let in the light.
He rose, gathering his tools into his satchel, the motion smooth now, unconscious. He had changed so much in a single week that it was hard to imagine the kit who had first wandered into Haidrien’s shop, wide-eyed and uncertain, carried in by the tide of Sern Ka’Torr’s chaos.
Now he stood taller.
Grounded.
Alive with possibility.
At the doorway, he paused once more, glancing back over his shoulder.
Haidrien didn’t look up from his work, but he raised a hand in casual farewell, the motion precise and sure as clockwork.
ProlixalParagon smiled — a small, private thing — and stepped out into the city, the sea wind catching the edges of his cloak as if eager to carry him forward.
The sun was rising fast over Sern Ka’Torr, gilding the sails of the ships preparing to leave the harbor.