The refinery was gone.
Not in the way that buildings collapse or fires consume. The structure still stood, there was no wreckage, no bodies to recover. Its skeletal remains shuddered, the ruins glowing faintly with aetheric power, pieces of it folding into themselves like dying embers. It was visible across the entirety of Ebonhelm, staining rooftops and alleys alike, casting unnatural shadows that refused to fade even as dawn crept closer. There was just absence: a place that had once been and now was not. And Kristos had walked away from it.
He didnât know how.
He should have died there.
Kristos and Azariah had left the refinery behind, but it clung to them: on their clothes, in the reek of burnt magic and sweat, in the weight of the air itself. The ground beneath them was uneven and restless, rippling with deep tremors that spoke to something far worse than explosions or sabotage. Each step vibrated through cobblestone and bone alike, hinting at a structural and magical instability rooted deep within the city's foundations.
Even now, in the alleys and rooftops near the blast zone, cloaked figures moved with silent urgency. Graduates of the University of Magic worked swiftly and precisely, hands tracing glowing sigils into the air, erecting arcane barriers to redirect unstable aether into controlled discharge points scattered throughout the district. Reality had fractured, and the Universityâs finest were quietly, methodically working to stitch it back together before dawn, preserving the fragile balance between magic and society.
The air shifted abruptly: pressure dropping suddenly, the temperature fluctuating unpredictably between biting cold and feverish warmth, and an electric static that prickled the skin, unmistakably signaling that reality had been compromised, twisted by raw and profoundly unstable magic.
Kristosâ body lagged behind reality, struggling to catch up. His ribs ached, not with pain but with something deeper, something pressing like a second pulse where there shouldnât be one. Something that should have failed, but didnât. His breath came uneven, his skin still too hot where it should have been burned, the phantom sting of something raw and unsettled threading through his bones. He had survived. He just didnât know how.
Instead, he staggered through the ruined streets of Ebonhelmâs lower districts, Azariah leading, offering no words of explanation or reassurance. The air was thick with the aftermath: smoke, aether-stained wind, the whispers of a city that knew something had gone wrong. It tasted wrong: ash and magic clinging to the back of his throat, thick with something burnt and metallic. The wind still carried the refineryâs death with it, curling through the streets like the city itself was trying to exhale something it couldnât stomach.
The Hollows werenât empty. Not really.
Figures lurked in the alleys, watching, not with the sharp hunger of scavengers, but with the dull-eyed confusion of those searching for something theyâd lost but couldnât name. Flickering lights briefly illuminated impossible silhouettes at the edges of vision, distortions that appeared and vanished too quickly, leaving only dread behind. Some hovered at the perimeter of the refinery grounds, staring at the ground as if waiting for the world to settle back into place. Others whispered to themselves, tracing shapes in the air, flinching from nothing. A man sat slumped against a broken cart, fingers pressed against his temples, breathing too slow, too measured, like he was trying to remember something just out of reach.
A woman staggered past them, her face streaked with blackened tears. Aether poisoning. She didnât seem to notice.
Not all figures lurking near the refinery were confused or official. Others moved differently, sharp-eyed, predatory: Syndicos operatives scrambling to erase any evidence linking them to the disaster. Their haste left traces: shattered doors, muffled cries silenced abruptly in alleyways, hurried salvage efforts unintentionally triggering further tremors or flickers of unstable magic, escalating rather than suppressing the disaster.
The city moved in the way a wounded animal does: slow, cautious, flinching from its own pain. Ebonhelm had swallowed disasters before, but this one still lingered, raw and unfinished. The sky above the Hollows flickered with something not meant to be seen, and the streets carried the hush of a battlefield after the last body had fallen.
The light still bled unevenly from the refineryâs husk, rippling across the streets in fractured glimmers: too erratic to be dawn, too steady to be fire. It turned broken windows into jagged mirrors, warped reflections caught in pools of standing water. Some people avoided looking up altogether.
By morning, the refinery grounds had become an invisible scar upon the city. From a distance, Kristos could glimpse shadowy patrols ringing its perimeter, harsh orders carrying faintly through the morning fog. It was a restricted zone enforced with swift brutality, invisible to public knowledge but unmistakably lethal.
Kristos didnât speak. He followed Azariah through narrow alleys, his leather hood drawn low, longcoat streaked with grime, the enchanted scope of his custom rifle catching pale light as it swung at his side. Past the hollow-eyed stares of those who had seen the sky warp but hadnât yet found words for it. His boots dragged, but he kept moving, kept pace. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant facing the echoes still rattling in his skull.
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They moved through shadowed alleys, past homes where curtains twitched, where people knew better than to ask questions. Kristos walked like a man half-stitched together, every step sending pain lancing through his ribs. The world felt off-kilter, the edges of things not quite settling back into place. His breath tasted of smoke and blood, the metallic tang mixing with the stink of burnt leather and scorched metal. His greatsword remained sheathed awkwardly across his back, its blackened steel chipped, the hilt slick with ash-stained sweat. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Maelâs face dissolving into something else.
And he could still hear him scream.
No echo; something worse. The scream looped endlessly, not carried by wind or memory, but still there, embedded in the marrow of the refinery, warped and distant, distorted by unstable magic, carried faintly through the streets like a twisted whisper. Reality refused to let Maelâs voice fade completely; a death that refused to finish dying. Kristos swallowed hard, his pulse a half-second too slow. He did not turn back.
Kristos clenched his teeth. He focused on the street ahead, on Azariahâs steady, unbothered pace. He had bigger problems than ghosts.
Because at the end of this road, there were people waiting for him.
Kristos exhaled slowly, the cold air cutting against his lungs.
He should feel something. Relief. Frustration. Regret. Something.
But all he felt was tired.
The refinery had been one problem. Now, there was the team.
He still didnât know what they wanted with him, why Azariah had been looking for him in the first place, or whether stepping into this safehouse meant stepping into something worse than what he left behind.
He had options.
Leave. Run. Go back to drinking himself into obscurity, waiting for the next mercenary job to put him in the ground.
But his ribs still ached from where Mael had tried to gut him, and his hand still throbbed from gripping a blade that hadnât saved him, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he could still hear the sound of a gunshot ripping the refinery apart.
Kristos flexed his fingers.
The truth was simple.
He didnât have a choice.
By the time they reached the hostel, the only lodging Twyla and Xiomara had found willing to admit a Feral Souther, the sun had begun clawing at the horizon. A new dawn. It should have felt like an end to the nightmare.
The sky itself felt fractured now, subtly distorted, like glass under pressure. The building was chosen not from convenience but necessity, one of the few places that tolerated Xiomaraâs presence. Its rundown walls and warped shutters whispered of reluctant shelter, a place that welcomed no one, merely endured some.
Somewhere deeper in Ebonhelm, bells tolled: University mages already at work stabilizing unstable aether currents, evacuating residents under the guise of industrial mishaps or rebel sabotage. The authorities moved swiftly, silently: containment above truth, secrecy above transparency.
Outside the hostel, Arlo stood rigid in shadow, arms folded across his chest, eyes tracking every flicker of motion. His jaw clenched at the distant echo of Azariahâs rifle: sharp, sudden, unmistakable. Something had gone wrong. Arloâs nerves thrummed with irritation and dread. Heâd sent Azariah into uncertainty, and uncertainty had a way of dragging them all into trouble.
Heâd expected a brawl, perhaps a rough extraction leaving a few Syndicos bodies behind, but what stepped from the shadows made his pulse quicken sharply. Azariah wore the expression of a man who had glimpsed something darker than war, and beside him staggered an unknown, bloodied figure who looked more corpse than man.
Arloâs mind raced instantly, contingency plans rearranging themselves, damage assessments recalculating. They needed immediate extraction routes. But first, clarity.
As the two came within speaking distance, Arlo barely moved when he spoke, his voice controlled, each syllable sharpened to efficiency. His eyes remained steady, unflinching, even as internal calculations raced beneath his rigid exterior.
âAzariah. Start talking,â Arlo demanded flatly, stepping aside as the two entered.
Azariah didnât meet Arloâs gaze, just gestured dismissively toward Kristos. âAsk him.â
Arlo paused, jaw tightening as frustration deepened into worry. This wasnât supposed to turn into a bloodbath. And then there was the sky, still slightly off-color at the edges, subtly warped where dawn should have broken clean. The air around them buzzed faintly, as if saturated with too much magic. Arloâs instincts screamed. Something had gone horribly wrong.
He looked Kristos over, bloodied, unsteady, smoke still clinging to him like a second skin. The stranger barely looked alive.
âYou must be Kristos,â Arlo said, voice low.
Kristos didnât answer.
Arloâs jaw flexed. He studied him for a long moment, measuring the silence, the posture, the exhaustion. Then, with a short nod, he stepped aside, granting entry without another word.
âThe others will want to meet you.â