The forest camp was utterly silent, the cold seeped into the ground, and only the faint, distant calls of the night's creatures broke the stillness.
Doren was fast asleep, his exhaustion finally giving way to a restless peace. Unknown to him, nestled deep in his tunic pocket, the Focal Stone began to shimmer with a soft, internal light. The faint glow could not be seen through the fabric, but it was powerfully active, pulsing gently in rhythm with his breathing.
As the stone glowed, Doren began to dream.
He was back in his family's warm, familiar cottage, the scent of sea air and woodsmoke from the hearth filling the air. His siblings, Damurah, Nergal, Jemsie, Daria, and Leasie, were all laughing and talking around the worn kitchen table. At the head of the table, his father, Sophron, was alive and smiling, recounting a lighthearted story from his days on the fleet. The tableau was perfect, comforting, and agonizingly real.
His mother, Jerter, stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes, filled with a deep sadness, fixed intently on him. The lively sound of the conversation faded, leaving only a low, pulsing hum.
Jerter leaned across the table. "Doren," she whispered, her voice urgent. "Don't stay long in Limka."
The warning hit Doren with a cold dread, but before he could move or speak, Sophron looked at him. The familiar smile vanished, replaced by an intense expression.
Sophron spoke, his voice not a whisper, but a clear, despairing declaration that cut through the silence. "They're going to find you and your friends. They know what they're looking for, and you're the focal point."
The words acted like a violent explosion. The warmth of the cottage disintegrated. The familiar walls cracked and buckled, and Doren's family members dissolved into swirling motes of light. He was left alone in the cold void, the desperate sincerity of his father's warning echoing in the darkness.
Doren lay trapped in the terrifying echo of his dream, the warmth of the cottage having given way to a palpable cold dread. The last, frantic words of his father, "They're going to find you and your friends. They know what they're looking for, and you're the focal point", repeated endlessly in the dark void of his subconscious.
He felt the presence of the Focal Stone as an icy, physical weight pressed against his chest.
The dream shifted. Doren was no longer in the cottage's ruins, but suddenly hovering high above the massive, sprawling city of Limka. The city, which had felt like their only hope for safety and answers, looked like a vulnerable target carved into the edge of the forest. He could see the intricate network of streets, the glowing windows, and the dark, forested edges.
Then, from the city's main gates, shadows began to stretch in long, unnatural tendrils of pure darkness. They weren't just shadows; they were some sort of presence, moving with impossible speed, stretching and twisting like searching fingers. They weren't looking randomly, they were violently moving directly toward the Stonecutter's Square, toward the Weeping Willow Fountain—their planned rally point.
The dream intensified as Doren realized the horror. The shadows weren't just tracking them, they were anticipating their movements, or perhaps they were already waiting for them. It had to be the Order of the Sunless. The Focal Stone was still pulsing faintly in his pocket, growing brighter with each second.
Doren's subconscious was screaming: The plan is compromised. The Weeping Willow Fountain is a trap!
Doren's nightmare intensified, forcing his consciousness directly into the heart of the impending disaster.
The void of the dream instantly fractured, and Doren found himself standing in a vision of their immediate future. He was in front of the Weeping Willow Fountain in Stonecutter's Square. But the square was no sanctuary. The massive, ancient willow tree was already casting a terrifying shadow over a brutal elemental skirmish. The Sunless Order had been waiting.
The air crackled with chaotic energy, and the figures of his friends were desperately fighting the elementals of the Order. The fight was quick, savage, and utterly overwhelming.
Meko had focused entirely on defense and stabilization. He stood at the center of the square, his arms outstretched, pouring his power into the ground. He had erected a thick, spiraling Earth barrier designed to deflect the relentless Fire attacks and contain the enemy.
However, the Sunless operative, a hulking Water Elemental who specialized in Ice, didn't attack Meko's wall. He attacked Meko's foundation. With a devastating, precise strike, the Ice Elementalist targeted the square's ancient Weeping Willow Fountain. He froze the entire water basin instantly, then commanded the resulting ice mass to expand with incredible, crushing pressure.
The earth beneath Meko's feet shattered violently. His connection to the ground was severed by the sudden, absolute cold. Before he could recover, a Dark Elementalist used a blur of shadows to flank him instantly. The Dark elementalist plunged a dagger deep into Meko's back, right between the ceramic plates of Meko's Earth armor.
Meko let out a guttural roar, his body falling forward as his earthen defenses collapsed around him, his life ebbing quickly into the unforgiving stone of the square.
Seeing Meko fall triggered Anya's worst fear and her most volatile impulse. Her control vanished in a furious surge of panic.
Anya abandoned all tactics, unleashing her Fire element in a devastating, wide-arc retaliation. She became a furious beacon of flame, blinding the nearby enemies with the light of her fire. However, one of the Sunless Fire Elementals met her fury with cold precision.
The elementalist used plasma. He didn't try to extinguish Anya's fire, but rather he gave it a path. He opened a massive, controlled vortex of pure Plasma directly behind Anya's position, drawing her frantic energy into it. The Order's operative, having superior training and control, overwhelmed Anya's emotional defense.
Her uncontrolled Fire was sucked into the enemy's Plasma construct, which then violently imploded. Anya was engulfed by her own spiraling flames, unable to control the intensity or direction. She collapsed near the still-smoking remains of Meko's barrier, her body instantly silenced by the sheer heat of her own desperate power.
Katarina was the last standing. She fought with the terrifying precision of a trained dancer, using her Air element to move with blurring speed, darting around the collapsing forms of her friends and the expanding chaos. She was a hurricane of evasive gusts, trying to find a clear shot.
She managed to disorient the Lightning Elemental momentarily, using a high-pressure gust to force him off-balance. But her evasion was doomed by a coordinated attack.
The Dark Elemental that killed Meko wrapped a tether of crushing shadow-force around Katarina's ankles, pinning her mid-leap and slamming her down hard against the frozen stone.
Before she could breathe, the Lightning Elemental, recovering instantly, struck with devastating speed. He channeled his core power into a sharp, focused bolt of raw electricity that pierced through the air directly into Katarina's chest. The shock was instant and absolute. The life faded from her eyes, and the final wind around the square died into a mournful silence.
Doren was left alone in the devastating dreamscape, the victors standing over the corpses of his friends. The devastation in Stonecutter's Square was complete. The brutal dream pinned Doren in place, unable to move, unable to use the chaotic power he desperately needed.
The figures of the victorious assassins turned as one to face him. Doren knew his fate, but the horror deepened as their hoods began to fall away.
The first figure, the relentless Fire Elemental that took Anya out, pulled back his cowl to reveal the face of Damurah. Doren's older brother looked back with a chilling mix of fury and resentment, a familiar look that Doren once knew.
The second figure, the crushing Ice Elemental who had shattered Meko, removed his hood to reveal a face Doren had never seen before. The eyes of the stranger held a cold, predatory intelligence.
The third figure, the terrifyingly fast Dark Elemental who killed Meko and Katarina, pulled back his shadow-shroud to reveal a face that ripped Doren's heart in two. It was Sophron. Doren's father looked at him, his expression one of agonizing, desperate intent.
The last figure, the chaotic Lightning Elemental, dropped her hood to reveal another unfamiliar face, a woman whose features were sharp, hard, and utterly ruthless.
Doren stood, completely incapacitated, as the four figures, two being two of the most important people in his life, began taking their toll.
Driven by resentment and a need for vengeance, Damurah took out his prized, cursed rune blade. With a swift, shocking strike that sliced through Doren's flesh, he lopped Doren's right arm off at the shoulder.
The unfamiliar male figure advanced, his hand cold as the abyss. He ruthlessly plucked Doren's left eye from its socket, leaving behind a cavern of crushing, icy darkness.
The unfamiliar female figure delivered a precise, crippling blow. She plunged a sharp blade deep into Doren's stomach, causing an agonizing surge of chaotic energy that left him instantly weak.
Sophron stepped forward last. He looked Doren directly in his remaining eye, a single tear tracking down his cheek. He plunged his fingers deep into Doren's chest, into the very core of the Powerhart. With a silent, terrifying intensity, Sophron began to drain Doren of all his power, stealing every shred of elemental energy, leaving behind only an empty, dying core.
Doren's vision blurred, the pain was absolute, and the cold void rushed in to claim him.
The dream shattered with the violence of a collapsing mountain. Doren woke with a desperate, gasping scream, bolting upright and clutching his chest.
He was shivering uncontrollably, his right arm instinctively wrapping around his left eye, his stomach lurching. He was back in the forest camp, sweat plastering his clothes to his skin, his mind still trapped in the agony of the betrayal. The panic-stricken noise immediately woke his companions.
"Doren! What is it?" Meko demanded, instantly awake and on guard, his hand already gripping the dagger at his waist.
Katarina was also alert, her eyes wide, a defensive gust of Air already swirling around her hands. Anya was huddled on the ground, shaking from the sudden noise.
Doren couldn't speak. He could only pant, his terrified gaze drifting to the pocket containing the Focal Stone, which now felt like a block of ice, a silent, malevolent thing waiting to lure them to their ruin. The nightmare felt less like a warning and more like a preview of his precise and brutal end.
The nightmare's cold terror had utterly stripped Doren of the capacity to sleep. While his companions slept fitfully, after assuring that he was okay, Doren sat motionless all night, the rising sun finding him exactly where the scream had left him. The Focal Stone was clutched tightly in his palm, its smooth surface a deceptive mask over the chilling presence he'd felt. He had spent the long hours staring intently at the cryptic rune etchings, trying to decipher the warning his mother and father's ghost had delivered.