The lights of Outpost Delta flickered through the storm like dying embers. The massive iron gates groaned open, ushering them into the courtyard—a muddy, chaotic staging ground filled with the smell of woodsmoke, wet fur, and unwashed bodies.
Vanguards loitered by the braziers, eyeing the incoming team. They saw the blood, the limp form on the stretcher, and the heavy, pulsing satchel under Haxi's arm. They knew the story without asking. It was the oldest story in Elysium: something lived, something died, and someone got paid.
Haxi laid the satchel on the Guild Clerk's desk. The heavy wood thumped with the weight of the eggs. The Clerk, a scarred veteran with a mechanical eye, whistled low as he peeled back the leather flap. The purple glow of the Arktophonos eggs illuminated his greedy grin.
"Mother of Iron," the Clerk muttered. "A full clutch. C-Class Arktophonos. Do you have any idea what the Bio-Mancers in the Core pay for these? You've just retired a year early, boy."
He glanced at the body of Joren, currently being covered by a tarp in the corner of the room by the med-team. "And him? The thief who found them?"
"Dead," Haxi said, removing his gauntlets. "Exposure."
"Pity," the Clerk shrugged, already reaching for a ledger. "Standard freelance contract. No next of kin listed in the local registry. That means the claim is entirely yours. The Guild takes its tithe, of course, but the rest... split three ways, it's a fortune."
Kael was sitting on a crate, staring at his hands. Elara was outside, washing the mud from her face. Haxi stood alone before the desk. The credits for the eggs were enough to upgrade his gear to Blue Tier, to buy reagents for his Augmentation that he could only dream of. It was blood money, stripped from a dead man's frozen grip.
"Process it," Haxi said, his voice dull and flat against the wooden counter. "Divide it three ways."
The Clerk didn't blink. He swept the pulsing, violet Arktophonos eggs into a lead-lined lockbox with practiced indifference. The heavy thud of the lid sealing sounded like a gavel. "Smart lad. The dead don't spend coin, and they certainly don't pay for ale."
He pushed three heavy pouches across the scarred oak. Haxi took them. The weight was substantial—enough to buy a small farm in the tranquil meadows of Elpis, or enough to turn a novice Signifer into a walking arsenal. He handed a pouch to Kael, then one to Elara.
Kael took his with a greedy, trembling hand, the gold clinking softly. "He... he would have wanted us to have it, right? To survive?" He looked at Haxi, desperate for absolution. Haxi didn't give it.
Elara stared at the pouch in her lap for a long moment before sliding it into her belt. She didn't look at Haxi. The silence that settled between them was heavier than the granite slab Haxi had transmuted. It wasn't the silence of peace; it was the silence of a debt unpaid.
Two days later, Haxi stood in the armory of the Delver's Exchange. The credits from Joren's life had been spent well.
He flexed his left hand. The leather of his old gauntlet was gone, replaced by a masterwork piece reinforced with Mithragnite—the "Soul-Vein" metal of Tyr. It was lightweight, dark as a bruised sky, and hummed with a faint resonance against his skin. The Mithragnite lattice would act as a heat-sink for his Augmentation sigil, absorbing the excess mana stress that caused Soul Fraying. He could now push his muscles past the tearing point without crippling himself—at least, not immediately.
He found his team in The Final Draught, the tavern crowded with adventurers boasting of kills they hadn't made and dangers they hadn't faced. Kael was deep in his cups, laughing too loudly at a joke from a table of New Earth soldiers. Elara sat alone at the edge of the booth, nursing a mug of watered wine, her eyes fixed on the door.
Haxi slid into the booth. Kael's laughter died instantly.
"New gear?" Kael asked, eyeing the Mithragnite filigree. "Fancy. Blue Tier?"
"It keeps my arm attached," Haxi grunted.
Before the conversation could wither back into awkward silence, a shadow fell over their table. It wasn't a serving girl.
It was a tall, cloaked figure, their face hidden in the cowl. They placed a scroll case on the table—the wax seal stamped with the emblem of a shattered pagoda.
"I hear you're the squad that walked out of a C-Class hunt with a fortune and a body count," the figure whispered. The voice was melodic but edged with steel. "I have a contract that requires that specific... flexibility."
The figure lowered their hood just enough to reveal the patches of scaled skin on their neck—a Ningen, one of the Schism-marked outcasts.
"The Titanwood," the Ningen hissed. " specifically, the Kuzureta Tō—the Crumbled Pagoda. My people left something behind when the New Earth purists drove us out centuries ago. A cache of ancestral Spirit-Cores—ancient, stabilized mana vessels. We couldn't reach them then. But now, the Earthling military is moving in to burn the ruins. They want to erase the last sign we ever lived there."
"We don't do charity," Kael muttered, though his eyes flicked to the scroll case.
"It's not charity," the Ningen replied, sliding a heavy bag of uncut gems onto the table. "It's a race. The Earthling 'Purification Squads' are torching the forest as we speak. Get in, navigate the ruins, retrieve the Cores before the fires—or the soldiers—consume them."
Haxi looked at the map. The Crumbled Pagoda was a ghost-haunted ruin, choked with vines and memories. Entering it was dangerous enough; entering it while New Earth soldiers were actively burning it down was insanity. But the pay... the gems alone were worth double the Arktophonos eggs.
"There is a complication," the Ningen added softly. "A group of my kin... scavengers... they went in two days ago. They haven't returned. If the soldiers find them, they will be slaughtered."
Haxi looked at Elara. Her hand had tightened around her mug. She was looking at him, waiting. He knew what she was thinking. Joren.
"We find them first," Haxi said, his voice low but firm. "Then we get the Cores. If we're lucky, we get both. If not... we don't add more ghosts to the list."
Elara let out a breath she seemed to have been holding since the tavern, a small, fragile sound of relief. She nodded, her grip on her staff tightening. Kael spat on the cobblestones, shaking his head. "You're growing a conscience, Hax. Bad for business. But," he drew his serrated short-sword, the metal gleaming in the tavern light, "I suppose dead Ningen don't pay bounties either."
The Titanwood was screaming.
It wasn't just the sound of burning timber; it was the high-pitched, tea-kettle shriek of sap boiling inside trees the size of skyscrapers. The Kuzureta Tō—the Crumbled Pagoda—loomed ahead, a skeletal giant wreathed in orange and black. The New Earth "Purification Squads" were efficient. They weren't just burning the forest; they were systematically erasing it. Flamethrowers spewed streams of liquid alchemy that didn't just burn wood—it ate mana, turning the vibrant green glow of the forest into choking, grey ash.
The heat was physical, a heavy blanket that pressed against Haxi's armor. He could feel the Mithragnite in his new gauntlet humming, the metal drinking in the ambient thermal energy, keeping his arm cool while the rest of him sweated profusely.
"Tracks," Kael hissed, pointing to the mud. "Boot prints. Heavy tread. Standard military issue. And there..." he pointed to a smear of iridescent blue blood on a fern, "Ningen scale-blood."
They moved in. The pagoda's ground floor was a labyrinth of collapsing cedar beams and burning tapestries. The smoke was thick, tasting of pine tar and ozone.
They found the scavengers on the third level.
It wasn't a rescue; it was an execution in progress.
Three Ningen—tall, slender figures with patches of shimmering scales—were cornered against a crumbling balcony. Facing them were five soldiers in distinct, angular New Earth armor, their helmets faceless glass visors. One soldier, a heavy trooper, wielded a Magma-Lance—a weapon that projected a focused cone of superheated plasma. He was toying with them, burning the floorboards inch by inch, forcing the Ningen closer to the drop.
"Please!" one of the Ningen shrieked, clutching a wounded arm. "We have nothing! The Cores are above!"
"Filth," the Heavy Trooper distorted voice boomed. "The Cores are property of the Dominion. You are just kindling."
Haxi felt the Augmentation sigil flare in his chest. He didn't think. He acted.
He vaulted over the burning debris, his new gauntlet acting as a battering ram. He slammed into the rear guard soldier, the Mithragnite absorbing the impact. There was a crunch of ceramite armor, and the soldier went flying into the wall.
"Ambush!" The Heavy Trooper spun around, the Magma-Lance hissing as it swung toward Haxi.
"Kael, left flank! Elara, shield the Ningen!" Haxi roared.
The skirmish was brutal and short. Kael hamstrung a soldier with a dirty feint, while Elara's barrier deflected a hail of rifle fire. Haxi was a whirlwind of orange mana. He didn't use a weapon; he used the environment. A stomp of his boot and a pulse of Recomposere warped the floorboards, tripping the remaining riflemen. He finished them with efficient, bone-breaking strikes from his augmented gauntlet.
Only the Heavy Trooper remained. The man was massive, his armor hissing with steam. He leveled the Magma-Lance at Haxi.
"Vanguard scum," the trooper growled. " interfering with a military operation is treason."
"So is burning civilians," Haxi retorted, his mana flaring.
The trooper fired. Haxi didn't dodge. He raised his left hand. The Mithragnite gauntlet caught the plasma stream. The metal screamed, glowing white-hot, dispersing the heat instantly into the air as harmless steam. Haxi gritted his teeth, feeling the impact rattle his bones, then surged forward. He grabbed the barrel of the lance and squeezed. Augmentation flooded his grip. The weapon crumpled like tin. A follow-up punch to the trooper's helmet shattered the glass visor and dropped him like a sack of stones.
Silence returned, save for the roar of the fire.
"You... you came," the Ningen leader gasped, staring at Haxi with wide, slit-pupiled eyes.
"We have a contract," Haxi said, flexing his hand. The gauntlet was smoking, but intact. "Can you move?"
"My leg..." the Ningen gestured to a cauterized wound. "I can limp. But the Cores... the soldiers rigged the upper supports. The vibration... the whole spire is coming down."
As if on cue, the pagoda groaned. A massive burning beam from the ceiling crashed down between them and the stairwell leading up to the Cores. The path to the exit (the balcony) was clear for the Ningen, but the path to the Cores was now blocked by tons of burning debris.
Haxi looked at the blockage. He could sense the Cores behind it—dense pockets of mana calling to him. But the ceiling above the Ningen was sagging. The structural integrity was failing fast.
Haxi turned his back on the fortune. The Spirit-Cores hummed with a siren song of pure mana, begging to be taken, but the groan of the buckling cedar beams drowned them out.
"Move!" Haxi roared, the sound tearing at his smoke-raw throat.
He didn't run for the exit. He sprinted toward the center of the room, where the main support pillar was splintering like a crushed bone. He slammed his hands against the burning wood. The Recomposere sigil flared, not with the precise, surgical light of a craftsman, but with the desperate, blinding intensity of a dam holding back a flood. He didn't try to fix the pillar—it was too far gone. Instead, he fused the debris around it, transmuting the falling stone and burning timber into a crude, temporary archway.
The heat was a physical weight, crushing the air out of his lungs. His Mithragnite gauntlet hissed as it touched the superheated stone, the metal glowing a dull, angry cherry-red. He felt the weight of the entire pagoda pressing down on his shoulders, his knees buckling, his vision tunneling into a pinprick of grey.
"Go! Now!"
Elara and Kael half-carried, half-threw the wounded Ningen through the gap. The Ningen leader looked back, his slit eyes wide with disbelief, before disappearing into the smoke. Haxi held for one second longer—a second that felt like a lifetime—and then let go.
He dove through the archway just as the world behind him ceased to exist. The ceiling came down with the force of a meteor, pulverizing the Spirit-Cores and the floor they sat on. Haxi tumbled down the burning stairwell, hitting the ground floor in a tangle of limbs and ash, coughing up black phlegm.
They lay in the mud of the Titanwood, watching the Kuzureta Tō burn. It was a magnificent pyre. The structure collapsed inward, sending a pillar of sparks into the night sky that rivaled the stars.
The Ningen leader, whose name was Skar, sat huddled with his kin. They were alive. Burnt, bleeding, and terrified, but alive. Skar limped over to where Haxi lay staring at the smoke.
"You left them," Skar said, his voice a dry rasp. "The Cores. You could have reached them."
"And you would be ash," Haxi replied, closing his eyes. "I don't spend ghosts."
Skar was silent for a long time. Then, he reached into his tunic and pulled out a small, unassuming object. It wasn't a jewel or a weapon. It was a piece of scrimshaw—carved bone, intricate and ancient, depicting a great serpent circling a mountain.
"We have no gold," Skar said, placing the bone in Haxi's hand. "The Cores were our history, yes. But my people... we are the future. This is a Passage-Token. It is worthless to your Guild, but in the Undercity—the warrens beneath the capital where the light doesn't touch—it is a key. Show this to the Gatekeeper at the Sluice. Tell him Skar breathes because of you."
He looked at the burning ruin one last time. "The surface world hates us. But the roots go deep. You have friends in the dark now, Vanguard."
With that, the Ningen melted away into the forest, moving with a silent grace that belied their injuries.
The walk back to the capital was long and silent.
They were broke. The payout from the Ningen contact was gone—burned along with the Cores. They had returned with nothing but burns, bruised ribs, and a piece of bone that might be a key or might be a trinket.
Kael kicked a stone, sending it skittering into a ditch. "We're idiots. Heroes, maybe. But poor heroes. I need to repair my blade, Hax. That costs credits we don't have."
Elara walked closer to Haxi than before. "We did the right thing."
"Right doesn't buy rations," Haxi muttered, though he thumbed the bone token in his pocket. It felt warm.
They reached the crossroads outside the city gates. To the left lay the Guild Hall, a fortress of stone and bureaucracy where they could beg for a low-tier "Rat-Catcher" contract to scrape by. To the right lay the path to the Sluice Gates—the entrance to the Undercity, a lawless labyrinth of smugglers, outcasts, and black markets.
Haxi looked at his team. They were battered, gear damaging, and morale fragile. They needed a win. The Guild offered safety but poverty. The Undercity offered danger but potential riches—if the token wasn't a lie.
The Guild Hall was warm, but it was a sterile, suffocating heat compared to the raw fury of the burning forest. Haxi stood before the mission board, the "Rat-Catcher" contract crumpled in his fist.
"Sector 4 Sump," the Clerk droned, not bothering to look up from his ledger. "Infestation of Søppel-Rev—Garbage Foxes. They're chewing through the filtration pipes. Standard pest control. D-Rank pay. No loot rights."
Kael leaned against a pillar, polishing his chipped blade with a rag. He didn't say a word, but the set of his jaw screamed his frustration. They were Orange Tier Vanguards, capable of hunting Arktophonos, and here they were, reduced to glorified janitors because they couldn't afford the repair costs for a real fight.
"We take it," Haxi said, his voice devoid of emotion.
The Sector 4 Sump did not smell of pine or ozone; it smelled of ancient rot and chemical runoff. The water was a sluggish, iridescent sludge that came up to their knees.
"This is dignified," Elara muttered, her boots squelching as she held her glowing staff high. "Truly the stuff of legends."
The Søppel-Rev were waiting. They were nasty, mangy creatures—variants of the noble Fjellrev twisted by generations of feeding on alchemical waste. Their fur was patchy, revealing sores that wept neon-green fluid, and their eyes glowed with a feral, disease-ridden madness.
The fight was messy and unheroic. There was no grand strategy, no elemental clashes. Just Haxi wading through muck, punting snapping foxes into the walls with his heavy boots, while Kael stabbed at the ones trying to flank them. Elara used minor Infusus pulses to stun the pack, keeping them off Haxi's back.
It was over in twenty minutes. Twelve dead foxes floated in the sludge. Haxi wiped a smear of grime from his visor, feeling the Mithragnite gauntlet hum—not with power, but with a low, irritating vibration. Even the metal seemed bored.
"Nest cleared," Kael grunted, kicking a carcass. "Let's get our copper and get out of this latrine."
Haxi moved to the back of the chamber to verify the structural integrity of the pipes, as per the contract. He brushed aside a pile of refuse—bones, rusted cans, and rotting fabric that served as the alpha's bedding.
Beneath the filth, set into the damp brickwork of the sewer wall, was a heavy iron grate. It wasn't a standard utility hatch. It was old, the metal pitted and dark, and welded into the center was a small, circular plate bearing a relief carving: A serpent circling a mountain.
Haxi froze. He felt a sudden, sharp warmth against his hip.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the scrimshaw token Skar had given him. The bone was vibrating, resonating with the iron gate. The carving on the bone matched the carving on the hatch perfectly.
"Haxi?" Elara called out, splashing toward him. "What is it?"
Haxi stared at the grate. This wasn't just a sewer maintenance hatch. This was a back door—a forgotten or secret entrance to the Undercity, right here in the Guild's backyard. And Skar's token was the key.
The "Safe Bet" had led them right back to the edge of the cliff.
Kael peered over Haxi's shoulder, his eyes widening. "Is that... is that what I think it is? That Ningen's mark?"
He looked at the grate, then at Haxi. "If that leads where I think it leads... we could bypass the Sluice Gate entirely. No guards. No fees. We could pop into the Undercity market, sell that Arktophonos leather we've been hoarding, buy some real gear, and be back before the Clerk finishes his lunch."
"Or," Elara whispered, looking nervously at the dark tunnel behind the grate, "we report it. The Guild pays a bonus for discovering unmapped breaches. It's safe money. And it keeps us legal."
The token burned in Haxi's hand. The choice was no longer about geography; it was about intent.