ProlixalParagon tore across them, his boots slipping on fractured cobblestones slick with mana runoff, the taste of ozone sharp on his tongue. Every breath scraped his lungs raw, the air crackling with the unstable currents of the anomaly — wild, feral, unpredictable.
The system map flickered erratically at the edge of his vision, anchor points blinking like desperate distress beacons across a canvas of madness.
The second anchor wasn’t far — barely a quarter league through the lower market district.
But distance meant little in a city that had turned against itself.
Already, the world bucked and warped beneath his feet.
Stone melted into slick, mirror-bright surfaces that reflected not the sky, but twisted shadows that moved on their own. Gravity shifted in lurching pulses — one moment light as a feather, the next crushingly heavy. Buildings leaned together like conspirators, their broken windows gaping like black mouths, leaking mists that whispered in dead languages.
And worse still — the creatures.
They hunted by the flicker of mana now, drawn to motion, to life.
Ahead, a bridge arched across a fractured canal, the surface shimmering with unstable ley energy.
Crawling across it were a half-dozen new horrors — these less crude, more refined by the deepening instability.
Amalgams of brass and bone, their joints steaming where sinew met rust.
Things stitched from nets of iron chain and scraps of velvet merchant banners, twitching with spasmodic hunger.
A towering brute with a hull of splintered driftwood for ribs and a face stitched together from broken helm-masks, dragging a rusted anchor behind it that gouged trenches into the stone.
Prolix didn’t hesitate.
Speed was survival.
He pulled a cracked prism shard from his belt, primed it with a surge of mana, and hurled it low across the ground ahead of him.
The shard detonated in a burst of inverted light, folding a localized bubble of gravity around itself.
The lighter creatures were yanked off their feet instantly — writhing, hissing, crushed into the swirling core. The brute wavered but planted its anchor into the bridge with a thunderous clang, resisting the pull.
Prolix charged.
The bridge shook under his boots, splinters and fragments of stolen flesh scattering around him.
The brute roared — a sound like crashing waves — and heaved the anchor skyward, hurling it in a lazy, brutal arc.
>Incoming Threat Detected!<
Prolix threw himself sideways at the last instant, the anchor smashing into the stone behind him with enough force to collapse a section of the bridge into the canal below.
A tidal wave of tainted mana sprayed upward — stinging his skin, burning across his armor.
He gritted his teeth and forced himself upright.
The brute lunged again, slower now, one leg shattered by the shifting gravity.
Prolix drew a second device from his satchel — a freshly jury-rigged Phase Skitter Node — and slammed it into the ground.
The node flared to life, scattering multiple mirrored afterimages of himself across the bridge, each one flickering and twitching erratically.
The brute roared, confused, swinging wildly at the illusions.
Prolix took the opportunity to sprint low and fast, sliding under the creature’s swinging arm, his adaptive shield absorbing the worst of a glancing blow that would have otherwise crushed his ribs.
The far side of the bridge yawned open ahead — a fractured plaza, the second anchor point flickering weakly atop the shattered remains of what had once been Sern Ka’Torr’s merchant hall.
He didn’t look back.
Didn’t slow.
Just ran.
The plaza was worse than he could have imagined.
The anchor was barely holding, its stabilizing runes pulsing weakly against the press of reality’s collapse. Around it, the broken ground seethed — long cracks venting raw mana mist into the air. Shards of floating debris hovered in slow, chaotic orbits: pieces of wall, splintered wagons, chunks of dock pilings swirling like moons around the dying core.
ProlixalParagon skidded to a halt at the edge, chest heaving.
Another notification pulsed:
And as if answering the call, shapes began slithering from the mist.
These were not beasts.
They were wraiths — semi-formed humanoid figures stitched from the city’s own memories, their bodies glitching and twitching like broken puppets, their hands ending in wicked, grasping claws of raw mana.
And at their center, floating above the dying anchor like a king above a corpse, was a new horror:
A Warden of Fractures — a guardian-spawn of the anomaly, crafted purely to defend the heart of instability.
It had no face.
Only a cracked silver mask, from which wept endless streams of inverted light.
Its body twisted and folded through impossible shapes, a cloak of broken merchant flags and twisted rigging trailing behind it like the wake of a sinking ship.
The Warden raised its clawed hand.
The wraiths surged forward with a sound like tearing silk.
ProlixalParagon drew a deep, steadying breath.
No more running.
No more hesitation.
He shifted his stance, feeling the chaotic mana pulse through him, ready to burn every scrap of ingenuity he had left.
This wasn’t about winning anymore.
It was about enduring.
One anchor at a time.
One impossible step closer to saving Sern Ka’Torr.
One defiant breath against the storm.
The Warden of Fractures drifted closer to the dying anchor, its cloak of shredded banners billowing without wind, its silver mask leaking ribbons of inverted mana that stained the cracked stones beneath it.
The wraiths — jagged echoes of merchant guards, fisherfolk, and porters twisted into half-existence — surged toward ProlixalParagon in a tide of hissing, glitching forms.
No time to hesitate.
Mana roared through Prolix's lattice, the abyssal and soul affinities within him resonating dangerously, the metal affinity lacing his very blood with steely focus.
He moved.
The first two wraiths lunged — one from the left, one from the right, claws extended.
Prolix flicked a Phase Skitter Node to the ground mid-step.
The node burst outward, projecting afterimages — five, ten, a dozen Prolixes scattering in impossible directions.
The wraiths struck empty air, howling as their claws sliced through nothing.
Prolix twisted low, slipping under a third wraith’s grasp, and hurled a Mana-Spliced Entropy Spike — a chaotic prototype he'd built only days ago — directly at the creature’s core.
The spike detonated midair with a screech, spinning a localized zone of unstable mana that unraveled the wraith from the inside out, its form flickering into scattered motes.
One down.
Too many to go.
The Warden moved with impossible grace — folding space around itself, appearing across the plaza in pulses of inverted light.
Each step it took fractured the ground beneath it further, creating gaping rents that spewed erratic ley surges into the sky.
>Warning: Environmental Hazard - High-Impact Mana Rifts Detected!<
Prolix snarled under his breath.
He needed to focus on the anchor — stabilize it before the Warden could collapse the plaza entirely — but the wraiths closed in faster than he could clear them.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
His hand dipped into his satchel, fingers closing around one of his most dangerous tools.
A Bound Herald Sigil Fragment.
Still unstable.
Still volatile.
Exactly what he needed.
He slapped the fragment onto the broken cobblestones near the base of the anchor and dumped half his remaining mana reserves into it.
The sigil flared black and violet, seizing the surrounding mana like a drowning man grasping air, and triggered a Soullash Pulse — a shockwave that lashed outward with raw soul affinity.
The wraiths nearest the anchor screamed, their half-existence torn apart, flung backward as ragged bursts of memory and light.
The backlash staggered Prolix, the pain spiking through his lattice like molten wire — but he held the surge steady this time, riding the wave rather than breaking under it.
The Warden struck.
A whip of broken ley energy lashed toward him.
Prolix barely raised his adaptive shield in time — the impact sent him skidding backward across the plaza, boots carving twin gouges through the fractured stone.
Focus: 21. Perception: 17.
His mind cut through the chaos, finding patterns.
The Warden could not be killed here. Not yet.
It was tied to the instability — a guardian of the heart.
But he could disrupt it.
Delay it.
He yanked free his Ash-Crimson Ley Shard — the shard pulsing angrily in his hand — and plunged it into the ground between himself and the Warden.
The ley shard bloomed a temporary disruption field, sending out a wave of distortion that scrambled teleportation and short-range mana folding.
The Warden flickered — its teleportation attempts stuttering, misfiring — trapping it for a precious few seconds in one location.
Seconds were all he needed.
Prolix spun back toward the anchor.
With quick, practiced movements, he scrawled a Stabilization Array across the cracked base, tying runic sigils directly into the exposed leylines.
His hands moved with automatic, desperate precision, pulling spare soul-copper wiring and broken mana fuses from his satchel, binding the runes together in a rough but functional circuit.
The anchor pulsed —
faltered —
then caught.
Mana flared upward, weaving a fragile lattice across the broken sky, the cracks knitting slightly, the air stabilizing in fits and jerks.
>Anchor Stabilization: 35%... 60%... 85%...<
A roar split the plaza — the Warden wrenching free of the disruption field, its mask burning with seething, silent fury.
Prolix gritted his teeth, slammed his last filament charge into the anchor array, and forced the final surge of mana through.
The plaza shuddered.
The ley fractures snapped taut like pulled string.
And the anchor ignited — a solid pillar of soft silver-white light cutting through the mists of instability.
>Area Instability: Moderately Reduced.<
The wraiths around him flickered, hesitated — then dissolved into harmless light, the collapse of their corrupted genesis unraveling them at the root.
The Warden hissed, folding back into the deeper mist, withdrawing for now — not defeated, but delayed.
Prolix dropped to one knee again, panting, his body wracked with exhaustion and lingering pain.
His vision blurred.
The broken world around him settled — briefly — into trembling stillness.
He had stabilized the second anchor.
But the dungeon was not done with him.
The third anchor pulsed faintly on the system map — farther inland, past a tangle of buildings that seemed to shift and reweave themselves like living things.
And worse, that ominous presence — Dedisco’s Eye — had not blinked.
It watched still.
Judging.
Waiting.
Breathing.
ProlixalParagon wiped blood and grime from his brow, tightened the straps of his battered armor, and staggered upright.
No time for rest.
No room for regret.
The city lived or died by his hands.
And he was not finished yet.
The second anchor’s light still shimmered behind him, casting a thin, fragile lattice of stability across the broken plaza. But the air remained thick with tension — the kind of brittle stillness that never lasted.
ProlixalParagon wiped a torn scrap of cloth across his brow, cleaning the worst of the mana soot and blood from his face. His dagger rested lightly in his left hand now, and the battered weight of his satchel pulled against his shoulders — heavier somehow, as if laden not just with tools but with the burden of what he still had to do.
The map flickered at the edge of his vision again.
The third anchor pulsed faintly.
Eastward. Inland.
Past the market terraces and up into the merchant noble quarter, where once gold and influence had sprawled unchecked under Sern Ka’Torr’s sun. Now those streets were shadows of themselves — crumbling, empty, haunted.
He set off at a careful, steady pace, boots striking broken cobblestones that flickered and twitched occasionally underfoot.
The route was not easy.
Collapsed buildings blocked whole avenues, their ruins dangling precariously into the voids opening between city blocks. Some structures floated free of gravity altogether — slabs of stone and splintered beams spinning lazily in the air like fragments caught in a slow, malevolent whirlpool.
Prolix skirted around them carefully, weaving through the narrow gaps between drifting debris, mindful of the faint magnetic pulls that could drag the careless into untethered death.
He used the Scrap-Drift Shade sparingly now, sending it ahead to scout, its distorted form flickering as it weaved between ruined porticoes and shattered balconies. It returned often — twitching when danger loomed — allowing him to alter his path before he walked into another pack of anomaly creatures.
Twice he spotted movement: half-formed things slinking through the alleys, creatures stitched from shattered merchant carts, torn sailcloths, and the rusted blades of abandoned port defenses.
But he avoided them where he could.
Every encounter would bleed strength he needed for the anchors ahead.
Every second mattered.
At a narrow intersection between crumbled villas, the ground trembled faintly — a shudder running through the stones like a heartbeat skipped.
Prolix dropped low behind a toppled fountain, waiting.
A new threat slithered into view.
A Writhing Envoy — a creature shaped from discarded ceremonial banners and splintered trade-coins, forming a serpentine body that wove in and out of physical existence. Its "mouth" gaped open, stitched from ledger pages soaked in inverted mana, whispering broken numbers and forgotten debts into the ruined air.
It floated lazily through the broken square ahead, dragging a haze of minor instability behind it.
If it spotted him, it would summon more instability creatures.
Prolix reached into his satchel carefully.
Subtlety, not firepower.
He drew out a rough prototype — a Harmonic Echo Grenade, designed to mimic a ley signature briefly, enough to act as a lure.
He primed it, whispered a prayer to whatever broken gods still watched over fools and tinkerers, and lobbed it high into the debris-strewn street to the envoy’s left.
The grenade detonated with a soft, musical chime — almost beautiful — sending a pulse of false mana into the air.
The envoy twitched.
Sniffed.
And slithered after the lure, its vast, ragged body coiling hungrily through the mist toward the false signal.
Prolix exhaled slowly and darted across the street, moving low and fast, keeping his form tight and quiet.
The merchant quarter sprawled before him now, broken but less wild than the docks. Here the collapse had spread more slowly — the buildings cracked but standing, the roads buckled but passable.
And at the center of it all — rising atop a circular plaza choked with shattered statuary and torn market canopies — the third anchor burned.
This one was different.
It pulsed with a harsher light — unstable, flickering, a beat out of sync with the others. Thin strands of mana, visible even to the naked eye, spiraled out from it like fraying silk threads, connecting to the half-ruined mansions and crumbling terraces nearby.
If the first two anchors had been wounded, this one was bleeding out.
>Warning: Environmental Instability Approaching Lethal Thresholds.<
ProlixalParagon grimaced.
Of course it’s worse.
He moved to the edge of the plaza, crouching in the deep shadows of a fallen arch.
The area around the anchor was eerily empty — no immediate monsters, no slithering beasts.
Which was worse.
It meant the real threat was nearby, waiting.
Lurking.
Or worse — the environment itself might already be primed to resist stabilization.
The cracked flagstones shimmered faintly underfoot, warping in time with the anchor's ragged pulse. Pieces of memory bled into the air — ghostly figures flickering into existence, half-recognizable: merchants hawking invisible wares, guards shouting noiseless orders, a child chasing a phantom kite through a twisted sky.
The city itself was fighting him.
Prolix tightened his grip on his dagger, checked the last of his supplies, and plotted his approach.
This time, it wouldn’t be a battle against a tide of creatures.
It would be a battle against the city itself.
And he had no intention of losing.
Not now.
Not with everything — the Troupe, Sern Ka’Torr, and his own future — balanced on the edge of a blade.
The plaza breathed around ProlixalParagon, each pulse of the fractured anchor distorting the world in jagged lurches.
The ghostly figures flickered more violently now — shadow-merchants, broken-guard shapes, wisps of the city's old life repeating their last motions over and over, like a frayed memory replaying itself into oblivion.
And at the heart of it, the third anchor — a cracked obelisk of mana-infused stone — throbbed with a guttering, wild light.
It wouldn't hold much longer.
Prolix crept forward, moving with the careful, deliberate grace of a sapper dismantling a live explosive.
His hand brushed against the hilt of his dagger, reassuring himself it was still there, but he didn’t draw it yet.
This wasn’t a battle of blades.
This was a battle of will. Of precision. Of understanding.
He pulled free a fresh set of stabilization tools — crude arrays burned into scrap-metal plates, filament coils scavenged from fallen constructs, and his last intact soul-copper wire. Each piece hummed faintly with restrained potential, vibrating in time with the raw, unstable mana swirling through the plaza.
>Mana Interference: High.<
>Precision Threshold for Success: 92% or higher.<
>Caution: Mistakes Will Cascade Instability.<
Prolix's mouth went dry.
No mistakes.
Not here.
Not now.
He mapped the ground carefully with his eyes, noting the fault lines spiderwebbing outward from the anchor’s base.
Five main fractures.
Each one feeding instability back into the core.
If he didn’t sever them properly—
if he triggered a mana surge too soon—
the plaza could collapse inward, swallowing him, the anchor, and half the surrounding district.
First Move: The Primary Seal Array.
He knelt at the first fracture, palms steady despite the adrenaline screaming through his veins.
Using a sharpened fragment of mana-etched copper, he carved a stabilization glyph directly into the stone — shallow, quick strokes, tracing the simplified sigils Haidrien had drilled into his bones.
Cut. Bind. Breathe.
Mana snarled under his hands, resisting, like trying to mend a living wound that wanted to stay open.
Prolix growled low in his throat and shoved his will into it, threading the soul-copper filament through the first array, forcing the mana to knot and weave together into reluctant, trembling compliance.
>Fracture 1 Sealed.<
The ghost figures nearest the fracture stuttered, flickering faster, then faded entirely.
Good.
Next Fracture.
He moved with ruthless efficiency now — sealing, weaving, binding — each movement precise, careful, fighting against the thrumming pulse of instability that tried to break his rhythm.
>Fracture two Sealed<
>Fracture three….. Sealed<
Each success tightened the feedback into the anchor, making the core throb harder, resisting the forced stability.
The air grew hotter, heavy with ionized mana.
Tiny arcs of energy danced between his fingers and the ground with each glyph.
By the time he reached the final fracture, sweat poured down his back, his breath shallow and ragged.
He drove the last filament into place, anchoring the leyline splice with a jolt of mana from his lattice—
>Fracture 5 Sealed.<
—And the world held its breath.
For a heartbeat.
For two.
Then the anchor flared—
—searing white light cutting through the mist—
—and stabilized.
A rush of clean mana surged outward, sweeping across the plaza like a tide, scrubbing away the worst of the visual ghosts, stitching broken ground into trembling stillness.
Prolix collapsed onto one knee, gasping, the stabilization tools slipping from his numb fingers.
He let himself breathe—
—once, twice—
—before the next danger made itself known.
The clean mana had been a beacon.
And it had drawn the anomaly's attention again.
A fresh wave of foes.
He heard them before he saw them — the grinding of twisted metal on stone, the high whimper of broken air, the guttural roar of something too large, too hungry, finding its prey.
Figures emerged from the shattered arches of the plaza:
Wraiths reborn in sharper, hungrier forms, their bodies re-stitched with broken armor plates and glass.
Hulking constructs of collapsed siege engines, dragging half-formed arms fused from mangled catapults and rusted chain.
Newborn horrors stitched from the wreckage of merchant stalls, moving in jerking, spasmodic fits, their mouths gaping with torn parchment teeth.
And at their center—
—a heavy, hound-like beast, its body composed entirely of torn ballast chains and shattered harbor pilings, a ship’s bell clanging hollowly where its heart should be.
Its gaze — burning with seething instability — locked on him.
And it charged.
ProlixalParagon rose, rolling his shoulder painfully.
No time to patch his wounds.
No time for careful planning.
He shifted his stance, calling to the pulse of soul, metal, and abyss thrumming at the core of his being.
He was a Synthete.
Built to improvise.
Born to endure.
The hound struck first, the ground shuddering under its impact.
Prolix ducked to the side, throwing a Phase Skitter Node down mid-dodge — it activated instantly, sending a false projection of himself veering left while he spun right.
The hound’s massive jaws snapped shut on empty air, roaring in frustration.
Prolix seized the opening, launching a trio of unstable Arc-Grasp Tethers at the smaller wraith-constructs. Mana whips lashed out, binding two of them in place with sizzling arcs of unstable energy, their bodies spasming violently under the feedback.
One construct broke free, screeching as it hurled a jagged piece of debris toward him.
He caught it on his adaptive shield, the impact numbing his arm but leaving him standing.
The larger siege-beast lumbered forward next, dragging its chain-fused limbs in clattering bursts of speed.
Prolix grit his teeth, fumbling for one of his last experimental devices — a Soul-Echo Disruptor — and hurled it like a thrown stone.
The device burst midair, releasing a surge of disruptive resonance tuned to his soul affinity.
The nearest horrors froze — seized — their mana threads unraveling violently.
The plaza lit with stuttering bursts of dissipation as half the enemy force detonated into formless light.
But the hound.
The hound still stood.
It circled him now, low and menacing, the ship's bell in its chest tolling with every labored breath.
Its presence crushed the air, its instability threatening to fracture the already fragile plaza.
Prolix tightened his grip on his dagger, feeling the weight of survival thrumming through his limbs.
One more fight.
One more anchor to defend.
One more chance to prove — to himself, to the Troupe, to the broken world around him — that he would not be undone.
Not here.
Not now.