The Orchid Forge, Fracture Belt
New Boston, North Atlantic Federation arc zone
Western Hemisphere,
United Earth Federation
2435 A.D.
Gemcrafters were not a profession—they were the inevitable outcome of Earth's long exposure to Gem radiation, the invisible resonance that had seeped into the biosphere since the first Gem deposits were unearthed in the late twenty century.
At first, the world had seen Gems as a geological miracle: crystalline anomalies pulsing with light, humming with quantum frequencies that defied known physics. They powered machines, healed diseases, and altered chemical properties at the molecular level. But over generations, their resonant field—what scientists called Gem radiation—began to rewrite humanity itself.
The resonance was not like ordinary radiation. It did not burn or decay—it sang. Its harmonic frequency threaded through DNA, whispering new blueprints into the double helix. Evolution responded, not through mutation, but through adaptation to energy.
By the dawn of the twenty-third century, the human species had diverged. Children were being born with strange, luminous growths beneath their sternums, wrists, and spines—biological nodes that responded to Gem resonance. These nodes matured into Sockets, organic energy organs capable of channeling and stabilizing Gem output.
From this divergence emerged a new branch of humanity: Homo Luminis—the Light-Born.
Unlike the humans of earlier centuries, Homo Luminis were not bound solely by biology. Their evolution was symbiotic, defined by their relationship to the Gems themselves. A Luminis child's sockets would remain dormant until they made their first imprint—a process known as Attunement—inserting a Gem into their socket and synchronizing with its resonance pattern.
Once synchronized, the Gem became part of them, not as an implant but as an extension of their nervous system. Through this bond, they could perform acts that defied physics—bending gravity, shaping plasma, warping electromagnetic fields, even altering the perception of time. Each ability was known as a Facet—a cut of power reflecting a fragment of the Gem's inner law.
The process of cutting—imprinting geometric pathways into a Gem to unlock new properties—became both art and science. Those who mastered it were known as Gemcrafters: humans capable of reshaping reality through crystallized Resonance Law.
Gemcrafting evolved into the backbone of civilization. Armies were trained in Facet warfare; economies rose and fell on Gem trade; corporations and nations merged into dynastic Houses that controlled Gem deposits with the same zeal ancient empires once reserved for gold and oil.
Among these Gemcrafters, the most powerful were not self-made but born. Over centuries, selective breeding within corporate Houses led to hereditary adaptation—bloodlines that naturally harmonized with Gem resonance. These families produced descendants whose sockets were pre-attuned to specific Gem frequencies.
They were called Bloodline Gemcrafters, scions of the great Houses—individuals born with Bloodline Gems, crystalline organs fused within their very bones. Such Gems were not inserted; they were inherited, passed down like living relics.
To the world, these families were nobility—houses like Aurion, Celestex, Mirage, Chronostone, and Vasselheim—their influence spanning continents and orbital colonies. Their heirs ruled the Gem Age as both industrial monarchs and living weapons, shaping the destiny of Homo Luminis with every cut they made.
And so, in a world sculpted by resonance, Gemcrafters became the artisans of evolution itself—heirs to the luminous legacy of Earth's awakening.
Elias Vasselheim was no ordinary Gemcrafter. He was a descendant of House Vasselheim, one of the old Dynastic Houses whose bloodlines had long since transcended human limits. Born with a Bloodline Gem embedded within his heart lattice, Elias was the product of generations of refinement—his very biology intertwined with Gem resonance from conception. To the world, men like him weren't merely gifted; they were engineered heirs of evolution's luminous endgame.
Kestrel Muir, by contrast, was a different kind of brilliance. A self-made Gemcrafter—brilliant, restless, and reckless in equal measure. She had no noble lineage or bloodline inheritance. What she possessed instead was intellect: degrees in crystallographic resonance, lattice dynamics, and facet theory. She could construct synthetic sockets out of scrap and refine raw gem dust into active conduits. But she was no warrior, and certainly no soldier of the GSA—the Gem Security Agency, the organization that enforced resonance law and policed Gem-related crimes.
So when she saw the insignia on Elias's shoulder, the weight of realization sank in fast. A GSA enforcer meant one thing: her trail had finally caught up with her.
"Those damn bastards…" she hissed, her voice tight with fury and panic.
She lunged for her weapon—a compact sidearm forged from black alloy, its barrel veined with luminous threads. A faint hum resonated through the air as the Gem core inside it came alive. Even now, archaic weapons like guns, swords, and bows still thrived, each one reborn through Gemtech augmentation. The old and the new had merged: gunpowder replaced by resonance ignition, blades sharpened by photonic alignment, arrows guided by lattice correction fields.
The weapon in her hand—a Gem-fusion pistol—was no crude relic. It channeled compressed Lumen discharge, powerful enough to scar reinforced lattice armor. Kest didn't hesitate. The instant her targeting sight flashed green, she fired. Twin bursts of white energy erupted from the barrel, cutting through the dim air like flares of condensed sunlight.
Elias moved at the same instant. He didn't step back or lunge aside; his motion was subtle, efficient. A twist of the waist, a controlled shift of balance—space itself seemed to slide around him. The first shot seared past his shoulder, carving a glowing line into the wall behind him. The second grazed the edge of his coat, dispersing harmlessly into static embers.
The air rippled with the aftershock of the Lumen discharge. Elias' expression didn't change—his eyes remained steady, gold veins glowing faintly beneath the skin. She'd just fired at a Vasselheim—and worse, a GSA officer. Kest's grip tightened on her weapon. She already knew she'd crossed a line she couldn't step back from.
"Kestrel Muir," Elias's voice cut through the haze like a blade, steady and commanding. "By the authority vested in me by the United Earth Federation, you are under arrest for violations of the Gemcraft Regulation Act, unauthorized weapon resonance, and the manufacture of restricted ordinance."
The words hung in the air, measured, absolute—echoing off the scorched metal walls of the Orchid Forge.
Kest didn't answer immediately. Her hand twitched toward the table beside her, where the half-assembled bombs sat—sleek metal spheres veined with faint blue light. Her expression shifted, calculation overtaking fear.
"What for?" she said at last, tone sharp, mocking.
Elias's gaze hardened. He didn't miss the faint motion of her wrist, the way her lattice glow flared along her forearm—a telltale sign she was channeling.
He lifted his hand slightly, fingers flicking in a tight, precise arc. A filament of crimson-gold plasma snapped through the air, a thread so thin it was almost invisible. It hissed past the dust and smoke, searing toward her hand with surgical precision—meant not to kill, but to disable.
The filament met resistance.
A sudden shimmer flared around Kest, and a blue hexagonal barrier blossomed outward, the plasma splashing against it with a sharp burst of light. The air cracked like lightning, showering sparks across the floor.
That was close, she thought, heart pounding as she ducked aside. The barrier flickered but held, humming with a soft harmonic whine. Her mind raced. This bastard's fast. A Bloodline Gemcrafter—of course.
Elias's kind were born for combat, their instincts sharpened through centuries of engineered evolution. Every movement was clean, efficient, lethal. He wasn't just channeling energy—he was conducting it.
Kest didn't waste the moment. She reached the far workbench, her fingers darting over the detonator nodes of a compact resonance bomb. Her barrier wouldn't hold forever. She didn't need it to.
The bomb chirped—a faint metallic ping.
She hurled it over her shoulder, the orb tumbling end over end through the air. The instant it crossed Elias's sightline, his radiant vein eyes registered the signature—Lattice Frequency 0.47-A, tuned to his own resonance.
"Damn it."
He moved before thought could form.
Elias's palm sliced downward, tracing an invisible sigil. A low thunderclap followed as propulsion jets ignited beneath his boots, flaring in crimson-gold light. The blast hurled him upward just as the bomb detonated.
The explosion wasn't fire—it was shards. Thousands of microcrystals erupted from the orb, each one spinning like a blade of glass, each one resonating with his exact lattice signature. The walls screamed as the shards tore through metal, embedding deep, the air glowing with refracted energy.
Elias landed on a beam above, armor sparking as a few shards grazed past. Below him, the forge burned blue.
Through the smoke, he caught sight of Kest darting toward a narrow corridor at the back of the workshop—a hidden exit, shielded by camouflage plating. Her form flickered against his radiant vision, leaving behind a trail of lattice residue.
His pulse steadied. His breath slowed.
"She's running," he murmured, the faint light in his eyes intensifying.
The world sharpened into geometry and light. Every heartbeat, every shimmer of resonance, every motion she made was a point in the equation forming in his mind. And Elias Vasselheim—Bloodline Gemcrafter of House Vasselheim—was already solving it.
"I don't have time to chase her," Elias muttered, voice low and precise, as if speaking to steady the current flowing through him.
He straightened from his crouch, the glow of the forge reflecting against the faint shimmer of his armor. The fractured lights from Kest's fleeing form flickered across his visor, then vanished into the maze of the back corridor. His expression didn't change—only the faint tightening of his jaw betrayed his decision.
He needed her alive.Kest Muir wasn't just a fugitive; she was a link—a potential key to the chain of bombings that had shaken the UEF's cities. Killing her would close that door forever. But fear—controlled, suffocating fear—could open it wide.
Elias exhaled slowly, letting instinct guide him.
He reached inward, down to the pulse beneath the bone and blood, where the eight Gems embedded across his body thrummed in unison. Each socket—spine, chest, wrists, thighs—flared to life in sequence, like constellations igniting beneath his skin. His lattice network expanded outward, resonating with the Gems' frequencies until their hums aligned into a single harmonic beat.
He slowed his breathing, every inhale pulling the surrounding heat into stillness, every exhale compressing it into power. His heartbeat steadied—three beats, then two, then one—until the rhythm of his blood matched the oscillation of his Gem resonance.
Tiny orange-gold sparks crept across the veins of his neck and forearms, forming luminous fractures beneath his skin. His main Gem, embedded deep in his sternum, blazed to life—a crystalline core glowing like molten sunlight.
The air around him warped.
A low tremor rippled through the floor as thermal pressure spiked.
Down the corridor, just as Kest reached the sealed hatch of her escape route, the world seemed to shift. The temperature climbed—not by degrees she could measure, but by instinct. The air thickened, shimmering with invisible weight. Her breath caught halfway in her throat.
Then the temperature rose precisely three degrees Celsius.
The sudden heat wasn't natural—it was deliberate, calculated. The resonance was saturating the air, displacing the balance of ions, pushing pressure against her body until her bones felt heavy and her lungs refused to expand. The walls groaned, the glass talismans along the forge perimeter cracking under the strain.
Kest froze. Her entire body trembled. Her mind screamed at her to move, to run, to do something—but the command never reached her limbs.
Her lattice network flickered wildly, trying to compensate, but it was no use. The gap between them was immeasurable. Kest was a Facet-tier Gemcrafter, a brilliant technician with surgical precision in her craft—but that meant nothing before someone like Elias.
He was an Evolved Gemcrafter—Crown-tier, top of the evolutionary spectrum. His very resonance eclipsed hers. The difference between them wasn't strength; it was existence itself.
To Kest, it felt like standing beneath the weight of a collapsing sun. The crimson light bled from the cracks in the floor, spreading outward in thin lattice lines that formed a vast, glowing sigil under Elias's feet. His voice followed—measured, cold, and echoing through the heavy air.
"Running isn't going to save you," he said. "You're already inside my field."
And with that, the pressure deepened. Not a sound came from the forge, not even the crackle of heat—only the whisper of power gathering, silent and absolute.
Solar Blade Array. The words formed in Elias's mind as the heat reached critical resonance.
Light fractured around him—then ignited. From the luminous sigil beneath his feet, blades of molten crystal erupted into existence, each one born from a fusion of plasma and Gem resonance. They shimmered like sculpted sunlight, edges vibrating at molecular frequency. The air itself screamed as the temperature spiked, every particle trembling under the weight of radiant energy.
The Solar Blades spread outward in perfect formation—an array of geometric arcs and intersecting vectors—each one moving with machine-like precision. The first blade carved through a support beam; the second cleaved a wall in half; the rest followed, cutting through steel, resin, and reinforced alloy as if through silk.
Every strike was silent at first—too fast for sound to catch up—then the delayed shockwave followed, a thunderous roar of disintegration. The Orchid Forge didn't just collapse; it came apart.
Walls peeled open like ribbons. The ceiling disintegrated into molten fragments that scattered across the alley outside, glowing like dying stars. Half the building vanished under the sheer cutting radius, its structure atomized into drifting ash.
Kest stumbled backward, shielding her face from the blinding light. Her carefully planned escape corridor was gone—obliterated by a single arc of plasma. The exit door, the barrier, even the floor beneath her trembled, fracturing into molten cracks.
The Solar Blade Array hung suspended around Elias like a halo of destruction—eight radiant swords orbiting him in a slow, silent revolution. Their glow reflected off his armor, painting his silhouette in gold and crimson.
There was no more hiding, no more escape. The Orchid Forge was no longer a workshop but a crucible, and Elias Vasselheim stood at its blazing center. ChatGPT said:
Elias raised one hand, and one of the Solar Blades drifted toward his palm like an obedient star. The molten edge coalesced into a refined arc of radiant energy, its surface pulsing in slow, liquid waves of crimson and gold.
He angled it downward until the glowing tip hovered inches from Kest's face. The heat shimmered against her skin, beads of sweat forming instantly, the air around her crackling with ionized tension. The scent of scorched metal filled the ruin, mingling with the acrid tang of ozone and burnt resin.
"There's no escape," Elias said quietly. His voice carried no anger, no urgency—just fact.
Kest froze, her lungs laboring under the residual weight of his field. The hum of the Solar Array still resonated through the wreckage, vibrating along the broken floor. She looked up at him, the molten halo of his power reflected in her wide, trembling eyes.
And she realized—he was right.
The distance between them wasn't just physical. It was evolutionary. He stood at the apex of a chain that had left her far behind. Everything she'd built—her skill, her intellect, her defiance—meant nothing before the raw certainty of a Crown-tier Evolved Gemcrafter.
Her voice came thin, trembling but curious, as though her mind couldn't help but chase understanding even at the edge of death.
"Plasma manipulation…" she murmured. Her ocular interface flickered to life, scanning the lattice signatures radiating from his arm. "How does it work? I see now… your Base Facet converts your own vitality into thermal energy, doesn't it?"
Elias's gaze flickered—mild surprise, then calm dismissal.
"What does it matter?" he said. "Knowing my Facet won't make it any easier to resist."
Kest gave a strained laugh, dry and brittle as the air between them.
"No. But I'm… impressed," she admitted. "The sheer refinement of your kind—the corporate bloodlines. People like me, we'll never stand a chance against you."
Her tone wasn't self-pitying—it was bitterly analytical, like a scientist marveling at the instrument of her own destruction.
Elias tilted his head slightly, the molten light painting his face in sharp relief.
"Is that why you became a bomb maker?" he asked. "Providing weapons to insurgents, destabilizing sectors? Because the corporations ruined your life?"
Kest's lips twitched—half a smirk, half a tremor.
"Hm. Something like that."
He didn't need her to explain. He already knew.
She had once been Dr. Kestrel Muir, senior materials technician for House Celestex, one of the most powerful corporate dynasties in the UEF. A brilliant engineer, her innovations in synthetic sockets and lattice stabilization had saved thousands. But brilliance didn't buy mercy.
Her son had been born with Gem Sickness—a degenerative disorder that warped a child's lattice before it matured. The cure existed, but it was proprietary to Celestex, locked behind an obscene price tag. She'd tried to save him herself, performing an unlicensed socket stabilization surgery using salvaged parts.
He hadn't survived the night.
Celestex had fired her immediately—no compensation, no appeal, just termination and blacklisting. When she protested, the GSA came for her. In response, Kest turned her brilliance inward, building the only thing she had left to give the world—a bomb.
She'd tested it first on a Celestex facility, reducing it to slag and silence. Then she vanished into the Fracture Belt, resurfacing only through the trail of explosions that followed her.
Now, as Elias stood before her—his Solar Blade glowing like judgment itself—she could only stare into the reflection of her own ruin in his golden eyes.
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"So… this is how the UEF deals with ghosts."
Elias didn't answer. The heat between them pulsed, quiet and merciless, as the molten blade hovered a breath away from her skin.
"I want to know who your client lists are," Elias said, his tone level but edged with authority. The molten blade hovered inches from Kest's chest, its glow casting molten reflections in his eyes. "Who you've sold to, where the shipments went, and every single detail about your designs. Don't make this harder than it has to be. Cooperate, and I can speak to the GSA—see that you're given some leniency."
The words were calm, professional—almost merciful—but the weight behind them was undeniable. His voice carried the quiet gravity of someone who'd spoken those same lines countless times before and had seen how rarely they ended with surrender.
Kest stared up at him through the wavering heat, her back pressed to the scorched wall. For a moment, she searched his face—the gold-veined glow of his eyes, the set of his jaw, the soldier's restraint in every movement—and she understood something that made her chest tighten.
He meant it.
There was no pity in his gaze, but there was truth—a flicker of reluctant compassion buried under the discipline. She saw it in the way his blade did not tremble, in how he didn't rush to finish her. This was the most mercy a man like him could offer.
Even though I'm his enemy, he still feels sorry for me, she thought bitterly. How hypocritical… That's the privilege of the dynasty-born—the power to decide when to feel human.
Her lips curled into a faint, tired smile. "Sure," she whispered, lowering her weapon. "I'll tell you something."
Elias remained silent, but his stance eased slightly.
"The only name I was ever given," she said, her voice shaking, "was tied to the Hall of Radiance job. My bomb… was bought and modified by a group calling themselves Chorumsman Nine."
Elias's eyes narrowed.
"Chorumsman Nine…" he repeated, testing the name like it left a bad taste. "Never heard of them. Give me something else—location, insignia, a contact—anything."
But before she could answer, the world flashed white.
A beam of light tore through the room—clean, soundless, instantaneous. It seared past Elias's shoulder, vaporizing the air in its path before slamming into Kest's chest. The impact was brutal yet surgical, punching a glowing hole straight through her sternum.
Kest's body jerked backward. The smell of ozone and burnt flesh filled the forge. Her coffee cup—knocked from the counter in the shockwave—shattered against the ground, scattering ceramic shards through a pool of blood.
Elias spun, his Solar Blade Array dissipating in an instant. He dismissed his Facet, the molten glow fading to embers as he dropped beside her.
Kest was still alive—barely. Blood bubbled from her lips, her eyes wide with disbelief. She tried to speak, but only a wet gurgle came out. The light in her pupils flickered, then dimmed entirely.
"Damn it," Elias whispered. He pressed his hand against the wound, but the lattice pattern beneath her skin had already unraveled—her resonance fading beyond repair.
For a moment, he simply knelt there, the only sound the faint crackle of dying plasma. Then his jaw tightened, and something primal rose within him.
A low growl escaped his throat. The air trembled around him as his lattice reignited, tracing faint gold lines across his skin.
He lifted his head, scanning the room. His radiant vein eyes flared, locking onto the faint streaks of residual energy hanging in the air—light residue, sharp and clean. Whoever fired that shot had used a precision based style of assassination, the kind that left almost no trail. Almost.
Elias followed the arc of the residual current with his eyes. The trail led outward, toward the shattered roof, dissipating into the night.
He rose slowly, every motion deliberate. Whoever had taken Kest from him wasn't just a killer—they were sending a message.
****
Far above, perched on a half-collapsed observation platform, a man adjusted his black jacket, brushing a speck of dust from his sleeve. The faint glow within his hand faded to nothing.
"That should do it," he murmured, voice cool and casual.
He pushed his hair back with one hand, the reflection of the ruined forge gleaming in his sunglasses. His dark-blue combat pants bore the faint sheen of Gem-thread weave, and a compact resonance emitter blinked faintly at his belt.
He smiled—sharp, self-satisfied. "All loose ends cut."
Then, just as he turned to leave, the air around him shuddered—an invisible ripple of force cutting through the silence. His smile faltered. The pressure was faint but unmistakable.
"...What the hell?" he muttered, eyes narrowing as the hum of power reached him.
Something—or someone—had already found him.
The energy residue that hung in the air led Elias upward, streaking like faint, golden embers through the fractured skyline. He followed the trail with sharp precision, launching himself across the broken district using bursts from his mobility facet—short, controlled detonations of plasma thrust that carried him between girders and shattered beams. Each leap sent arcs of light spiraling through the dust-choked air as the Fracture Belt loomed below, its storm-lit haze reflecting off his armor.
Then he saw him.
The trail ended atop a half-collapsed observation platform, its frame a rusted skeleton leaning over the abyss. The killer stood there—calm, composed, almost casual—as if the destruction below were nothing more than scenery. The faint wind stirred the hem of his black jacket, carrying the scent of scorched ozone and Gem dust.
Elias landed opposite him, his boots grinding against loose metal. The impact reverberated through the platform, scattering a few glowing shards of molten debris from the fight below.
And then he froze.
The air around this man was wrong. The volume of energy surrounding him was colossal—dense, refined, ancient. It wasn't just more than Elias's—it was older, deeper, as if each molecule of it had once carved scars into the world. For a heartbeat, Elias felt like he was standing before a black hole wrapped in human skin.
The stranger smiled. "Oh, you tracked me down that quickly? You must have some kind of sensory facet." His voice carried a smooth, mocking lilt, lazy and confident. "Interesting."
Elias's eyes narrowed, his stance adjusting, blade still sheathed but ready. "You…" His voice was low, controlled. "Are you part of Chorumsman Nine?"
The man tilted his head, amused. "Ah. So she did talk," he said with a faint laugh. "That old bitch never could keep her mouth shut. Xer's not going to be too happy about that."
Elias's expression didn't shift. His tone sharpened, each word measured. "I asked you a question."
The killer sighed, brushing a hand through his hair. "And I heard you, brat. God, kids these days are so damn impatient."
Elias caught the word brat—the way it rolled off his tongue with weary disdain. There was something in that voice: experience, irritation, age. Yet the man's body didn't match it. His posture, his face, the quickness of his movements—all suggested someone barely past his twenties.
Then Elias noticed it.
Whenever he focused on the man's face, his vision flickered—a distortion, like static running through the air. The image blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again. The light bent oddly around him, rippling with a faint chromatic shimmer.
Glamour tech.
Someone was hiding their real appearance. And not just visually—Elias realized with a cold certainty that he couldn't sense the man's resonance signature at all.
Normally, Gemcrafters could feel the world around them through their lattice—detect the hum of other resonant beings, the pulse of Gems, the distortion of energy fields. But here, there was nothing. The man's presence was a void, a clean erasure that consumed every trace of energy around him.
Elias's eyes narrowed, his instincts sharpening. "Are you a Luminia?" he asked.
The man chuckled softly, tilting his head with a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"A Luminia?" he said, the word dripping with amusement. "Oh, that's cute. You're a smart one. I suppose I can play with you for a while."
He reached for his belt and drew a compact emitter, no larger than a dagger's hilt. The device shimmered in his hand as its inner mechanisms shifted with a series of metallic clicks—plates folding, cores rotating, energy veins pulsing to life. Within seconds, it had reassembled itself into a wand-like conductor, a sleek rod of black alloy crowned by a yellow Gem that pulsed like a miniature sun. The air around it vibrated, faint static crawling across Elias's skin.
"Let's see what you've got."
The man raised the wand and traced a swift sequence of resonance gestures in the air. Symbols flared to life around his arm—golden mandalas of alien glyphs spinning outward in precise geometric order, their edges bending light like glass. Elias recognized none of them; they weren't human-origin runes. The lattice pattern itself was off, like something pulled from an entirely different resonance paradigm.
A second later, the mandala detonated. Lances of light burst forth, streaking across the air with the speed and precision of railgun fire. Each beam howled as it ripped through the atmosphere, leaving trails of photonic distortion in its wake. Their intensity was enough to pierce reinforced lattice barriers—each one fine-tuned to a frequency meant to break Gemcrafters, not wound them.
Elias reacted instantly.
He drew in a deep breath and slowed his heartbeat, aligning it to a rhythm of five pulses per breath. Every inhale condensed his lattice field, every exhale synchronized his sockets. Sparks of orange-gold flickered along the veins of his arms as he traced his own sigil, fingers moving in measured, deliberate arcs.
Corona Shield.
The words weren't shouted—they were anchored in his mind. The space around him ignited as a rotating disk of stabilized plasma formed at his side, expanding outward until it encircled him completely. The barrier spun faster and faster, glowing in gradients of gold and crimson until it became a heat-and-force dispersion field—a miniature sun burning around him.
The first beam hit.
The impact sent waves of light rippling across the shield's surface, but the plasma barrier absorbed it, bending the energy inward, diffusing the destructive core into harmless heat. The following blasts came in rapid succession, striking like hail against glass. Each one slammed into the whirling disk and scattered outward in cascades of molten light. The air roared with the sound of energy displacement, the heat whipping around Elias in concentric waves.
The man across from him only smiled, eyes glinting behind his glasses.
"Well done," he said softly, almost admiringly. "A full Corona Shield. That's high-level control… and the output's refined. You might actually survive a few more seconds."
He raised his wand again, and a faint pulse of resonance spread outward. Elias's lattice sensors immediately spiked—something had changed in the field.
The killer had embedded resonance markers—tiny fluctuations in the energy flow that acted as beacons, invisible to the naked eye but capable of bending trajectories. The next volley came not in a straight line, but in a storm.
Beams twisted mid-flight, colliding with the golden shields the man had conjured around them. Each impact caused them to ricochet, splitting into dozens of smaller rays that scattered in erratic, spiraling patterns. Every rebound amplified their power, feeding off the very energy of the Corona Shield itself.
The night above the Fracture Belt became chaos—a sphere of blinding gold and white light, beams spiraling, bending, and exploding in midair as two masters of Gemcraft clashed across a shattered skyline.
And through it all, Elias's shield burned bright—cracking, whirling, absorbing—and the killer only smiled wider, as if testing how long it would take to make it collapse.
Elias watched as the enemy wove a mirror lattice—a network of interlinked, condensed energy barriers that refracted his own blasts into looping trajectories. The beams ricocheted through the mirrored nodes, each pass amplifying their destructive output, feeding back into themselves until the air trembled with power.
The Corona Shield around Elias groaned under the strain. Its plasma arcs thinned, the rotation slowing as the mirrored beams carved cracks of molten light through its surface.
He grimaced. It's going to collapse.
With a sharp motion, Elias dismissed the shield before it detonated. He launched himself backward with his mobility art, propulsion bursting from his boots in a flash of crimson light. The platform where he had stood vanished beneath a roaring explosion of fused glass and plasma. From above the wreckage, the killer's voice echoed through the haze.
"Hmm. You've got some good moves," he said, casual, almost bored. "Let's see if you can handle this."
He lifted his wand and began to speak—not chanting, but intoning, syllables that resonated in harmony with the air itself. Each word carried a frequency that bent light and warped pressure. A radiant mandala of alien glyphs unfolded before him, rearranging itself with mathematical precision.
From its blazing core, a sphere of fire was born—a sun in miniature, roiling with molten gold and white flame. The temperature surged instantly, melting the debris beneath his feet, warping the very metal of the observation platform.
Elias narrowed his eyes. The heat stung, even through his armor. Then, above him, the faint hum of thrusters cut through the chaos.
From the clouds descended a winged courier drone—a sleek, obsidian orb fringed with articulated stabilizers. Its runic veins glowed faintly blue, marking it as Vasselheim tech. The drone dove at sonic speed, shattering the air in a single sharp boom before releasing its payload.
The object plummeted through the sky—a black silhouette wreathed in vapor. Elias reached up with his right hand, catching it mid-fall. The impact cracked the air, shockwaves rippling outward, but his arm didn't falter.
The killer blinked. He hadn't even sensed it.
The weapon's scabbard disintegrated into particles of dark light, revealing the blade within.
A saber, approximately 1.35 meters long, slightly curved along its cutting edge. Its body shimmered with photonic-forged plasma-steel, translucent along the edges where solar threads flowed within like molten glass. The guard was shaped like an open circular halo of dark gold metal, engraved with luminous sigils—the Oath Inscriptions of House Vasselheim.
The hilt was wrapped in crystalline leather harvested from a Resonant Beast, layered and heat-resistant. On its pommel rested a Gem, small yet impossibly dense—a multifaceted crystal that pulsed faintly with heartbeat-like rhythm.
As soon as Elias gripped it, the air changed. Pressure gathered, spiraling inward as if the world itself acknowledged the weapon's authority. The aura around him deepened, the golden glow of his lattice merging with the saber's light. The killer's smirk faltered, his stance tightening as instinct screamed danger.
"That weapon…" the man breathed, eyes narrowing. "That's a Relic Gem. How does a brat like you—"
A burst of static interrupted him. The Lumenpad on his collar buzzed, the distorted voice of someone on the other end crackling through.
"Hey! Hwy! Hey! Hello! Nine! Hey! Nine! Where the hell are you? Xer's looking for you. What's going on? Are you there? Are you listening-"
"Yeah, I freaking heard you," the man snapped, irritation cutting through his tone.
When he looked back, Elias was gone. A whisper of heat, a flicker of light—then Elias was there, right beside him. The saber flashed once, a streak of solar gold slicing through the air toward his throat.
The killer barely reacted in time, flaring his time-delayed barrier. A hexagonal shield snapped into being, shimmering with refracted light. The Relic Gem blade met it with a sound like glass breaking underwater—clean, soft, and absolute.
The shield fractured. Elias's strike sliced through, leaving a shallow cut along the man's neck. A bead of light—not blood, but raw energy—spilled down his collar before he leapt back to another platform, breathing hard, eyes wide with fury.
He touched the wound and glared at Elias, his composure gone. "You… nearly killed me."
He thrust his wand forward, unleashing the sunfire sphere he'd been building. The ball of flame roared across the air like a descending meteor, melting through the ruined steel structure, painting everything in blinding white.
Elias exhaled slowly. His stance shifted—feet angled, knees bent, blade drawn to his side. The Drawn stance. The world around him stilled. His breath aligned with his lattice. His heart slowed to match the rhythmic pulse of the saber's internal Gem. And then, as the inferno hurtled toward him, Elias whispered the words of his binding vow—a promise carved into soul and steel alike.
"By my conviction, my breath becomes the flame of purpose.By my oath, I sacrifice restraint for resolve.I bind my will to the blade—and in exchange for its power… I surrender everything else."
The Gem on the saber's pommel ignited, radiating light so intense it split the air.
The Saber of Conviction had awakened.