I. The Surface of Porcelain
One hundred miles south of the capital, the city of Voluptas gleamed like a pearl in a pigsty. It was the "Jewel of the South," a resort city built entirely of imported white marble and gold leaf.
Magistrate Hylus walked down the Avenue of Silks. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine and heavy, cloying perfume, pumped from copper vents to mask the underlying smell of the swamp the city was built upon.
To the eye, it was paradise. Fountains flowed with wine. The buildings were draped in sheer silks that billowed in the warm breeze. But the beauty was a skin stretched over a carcass.
Hylus passed the Gilded Bathhouse. Through the open arches, he saw the Union's elite—Merchant Princes and Envoys—lounging in pools of heated rosewater. They were attended by slaves whose skin had been scrubbed raw and oiled until they looked like plastic dolls.
The depravity here was not the violence of the mines; it was a languid, suffocating excess. Hylus watched a young slave girl drop a tray of grapes. The merchant she served didn't strike her; he simply signaled a mute guard. The guard took the girl by the hair and dragged her toward the "Quiet Rooms." The merchant went back to his wine, bored.
In Voluptas, people were not beings; they were amenities. If an amenity broke, you replaced it.
II. The Pens (The Root of Rot)
Beneath the white marble streets lay the foundation of the city: The Pens.
These were not cells; they were storage lockers for biological assets. The air was cold, damp, and smelled of ammonia and suppressed terror.
Lysa sat on a mat of damp straw, her arms wrapped tight around her ten-year-old son, Tohm. They had been sold to the Gilded Rose three months ago to pay her husband's tax debt.
"Mama," Tohm whispered, his voice thin. "The shadows are moving."
Lysa shushed him, stroking his hair. "It's just the torchlight, Tohm. Sleep."
But Tohm was right. The shadows in the corners of the pen were not behaving like shadows. They were pooling. They had a viscosity. They clung to the rough stone like oil.
The spiritual pressure in Voluptas had reached a critical mass. The sheer volume of unchecked vice, the transactional rape of dignity, and the profound misery of ten thousand slaves had thinned the Veil to the consistency of wet paper.
Lysa looked at the grate in the ceiling. She could hear the laughter of the masters above. She hated them with a purity that burned, but she was helpless.
"Don't look at the corners," she told her son. "Look at me."
III. The Blooming of the Malum
Upstairs, Magistrate Hylus entered his private suite in The Gilded Rose. He was angry. The wine was sour. The slave they had sent him was weeping, ruining the mood.
"Silence!" Hylus shouted, raising a hand.
The candle on the bedside table didn't flicker. It turned black. The flame inverted, burning with a cold, sucking void-light.
Hylus froze. The air pressure in the room dropped. The perfume smell vanished, replaced instantly by the stench of ozone and rancid meat.
From the center of the room, the silk carpet began to dissolve. It turned into a grey, bubbling sludge.
Hylus backed away. "Guards!"
But the guards were gone. In the hallway, the shadows had detached themselves from the walls. They were not flat; they were three-dimensional. They wrapped around the sentries like wet blankets. The guards didn't scream; they were muffled, their bodies dissolving into the darkness as the Malum consumed their biomass to build its first forms.
IV. The Mother's Nightmare
Down in The Pens, the horror was absolute.
The oil-shadows in the corner surged forward. They didn't target Lysa. They targeted the young life.
"Tohm!" Lysa screamed, grabbing her son's arm.
A tendril of black ichor whipped out from the darkness. It didn't cut; it infected. It wrapped around Tohm's ankle.
Where it touched, Tohm's skin turned grey. The veins in his leg bulged, turning black.
"Mama!" Tohm shrieked, thrashing. "It burns! It's cold!"
Lysa pulled with all her strength, her nails digging into his arm. "Let him go! Let him go!"
But the Malum was strong. It pulled Tohm across the straw. The corruption spread visibly, racing up his leg to his torso.
Lysa watched, her mind shattering, as her son's face began to change. His eyes rolled back, turning milky white. His jaw unhinged, stretching unnaturally wide.
"Run, Mama," Tohm gasped, his voice warping into a wet, guttural growl. "Hungry..."
The corruption reached his heart. Tohm stopped fighting. His body convulsed, bones snapping and reshaping. His skin split, revealing raw, grey muscle underneath.
He looked at Lysa. He didn't see his mother anymore. He saw biomass.
The thing that had been Tohm lunged.
Lysa didn't run. She couldn't. She stared into the face of her child as he transformed into a Velox (Tier I).
The last thing she saw was his mouth opening, filled with needle-teeth, before the darkness swallowed her scream.
V. The City of Flies
The outbreak cascaded. The corruption didn't just kill; it converted.
In the Bathhouses, the water turned to acid. The wealthy merchants, soaking in their luxury, tried to flee, but the tiles became sticky, grasping at their feet. The Malum bubbled up from the drains.
It wasn't an invasion; it was a blooming. The city was the flower, and the Malum was the rot.
Thousands of Velox—humanoid nightmares birthed from the slaves and the masters alike—poured into the streets. They moved with blinding speed, scaling the marble walls, tearing through the silk awnings.
Magistrate Hylus made it to the balcony. He looked down at the street. It was a sea of black and grey movement.
A creature—wearing the tattered remains of a silk dress, its face a blank slate of grey flesh—climbed over the railing. It hissed.
Hylus realized then that his gold couldn't buy this off. He jumped. He didn't hit the ground; the swarm caught him before he landed.
VI. The View from the Web
Two hundred miles away, on the high wall of Observa Divisio, Prefect Vora woke from a doze.
Her ears swiveled South-West. Her tail bristled so hard it hurt.
Prytanis Veridian Vex was walking the wall. He saw the Vulpine freeze.
"Prefect?"
Vora gagged. She leaned over the battlement and retched.
"The wind," Vora gasped, wiping her mouth. "It tastes like... flies. Like a billion flies buzzing in a wound."
Veridian looked South-West. The sky there was a strange, bruised color.
"Voluptas," Veridian said grimly.
"It's gone," Vora whispered, her amber eyes wide with a predator's fear. "I can feel the silence. Fifteen thousand hearts... just stopped."
Veridian gripped the stone. He felt the vibration of the Void Stone beneath his feet.
"Send the Raven to Corvin," Veridian commanded. "Tell him the Union has fallen. The rot has bloomed."
He looked at his Legionnaires on the wall.
"And double the watch. Whatever ate that city... is going to be hungry again."