Dain let the mana go. A windsphere tore out of his palm with a shriek, and the barawolf pouncing at him swallowed it whole.

  Two things happened immediately.

  One, he flew back from the recoil. The sudden burst of wind knocked him into a shallow puddle of water.

  Two, the barawolf exploded.

  He flinched as bones rang off the ground like coins rattled in a tin. Ribs clattered against stone, while meat and flesh turned to pulp as they grated against rubble. It happened so quickly that when all was said and done, he didn’t even really register where the barawolf had gone.

  Then he blinked rain and blood and wind out of his eyes, and he glanced around slowly.

  Nothing was left of the barawolf but a sprawl of wet flesh scraps.

  … What the fuck.

  The barawolf may have been a mere cub, but apart from a few tufts of fur and a few sludges of fat, there was quite literally nothing left to harvest. His windsphere had eviscerated it from the inside-out, and—

  He folded, grimaced, and felt light-headed for a second.

  Mana exhaustion?

  That couldn’t be it. That couldn’t possibly be it. He’d barely poured any mana into relics the entire day, so that one shot couldn’t have bled him into danger territory.

  Tag.

  Check... the damned thing's Tag.

  While he continued hacking and coughing—his insides feeling like they were on fire—his left hand fumbled into his coat and came up with his Tag.

  He immediately slapped it onto his new prosthetic, and black letters bled onto the piece of paper.

  ***

  Name: Windscar Prosthetic Arm

  Type: Active Elementum-Class Cursed Relic, Common-2

  Attribute Addition: +2 Might

  Ability Description: When mana is channeled into the prosthetic, the holder can release a swirling windsphere. The cost of each activation is 1 mana, and the more mana channeled into the prosthetic, the stronger the windsphere.

  However, use of this prosthetic will also draw breaths from the holder's lungs, making them more and more light-headed and nauseous with extended use.

  ***

  “... Cursed?” he couldn’t help but say out loud.

  He’d never seen that word on a Tag before. Never. He’d also never heard of an active-type relic that had both an activation mana cost and an additional cost. What sort of dysfunctional relic was designed to hurt its holder?

  And it’s an Elementum-Class relic, but that Curator God sure as hell wasn’t Ninazu.

  Each of the Seven Curator Gods handed out only one specific class of relics, and those pale, bony hands did not belong to Ninazu, Master of the Elemental Gallery. How was it that his god managed to give him an Elementum-Class relic anyways?

  As more and more questions flooded his head, another coughing fit took over him, so—with a ragged breath—he ripped the Tag off his prosthetic and slapped it onto his left arm.

  ***

  Name: Dain Sorowyn

  Grade: Common-2

  Title: None

  Title Ability: None

  Acquired Skills: None

  Might: 14 (+2)

  Swiftness: 11

  Resilience: 12

  Clarity: 15

  Mana: 6/20 (+1/hr)

  Relics: Windscar Prosthetic Arm (Common-2)

  ***

  He only wanted to check his mana, so his suspicions were immediately confirmed: he wasn’t in the mana exhaustion state yet. He’d only poured three or four mana into the prosthetic. Him feeling out of breath was because his lungs were being siphoned from.

  ... Fuck it.

  It's all I've got.

  He drew in a slow, pained breath, and forced himself up. He couldn’t afford to sit here. Survivors he could help—that was what mattered.

  As he steadied himself, he glanced back at the ruins of his wagon. It really was worthless now, splintered to trash, but his Altar—cracked or not—had to come with him.

  No way I’m leaving it here to be found by someone.

  He staggered through the wreckage, picking through broken crates and chests until he was sure there weren’t any magic materials worth taking with him. They were all too scattered in size and value to be worth taking. The few chunks of barawolf flesh that were somewhat intact, though, he managed to scrape off the ground and toss into his satchel. Beast meat could always come in handy.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Then he slung the Altar over his shoulder after wrapping a leather strap around it, and... he looked around one more time. That was all he wanted to carry. Anything more would slow him too much.

  As long as I have my Altar, I can get magic materials on the road.

  Just as he was about to leave the wagon behind and head deeper into the sunken town, though, he found his eyes drawn to Serina.

  He couldn’t just leave her like this.

  Adjusting the weight of his satchel, he walked up to her and crouched by her head.

  … He could’ve said something, but he didn’t. Even orphans in Corvalenne knew words were for the living, not the dead, so after he closed her eyes gently, he stood and forced himself to turn away.

  Rain hammered his shoulders as he trudged across the bottom of the chasm. What'd been streets and alleys were now rivers of slate and roof tiles. He clambered over a collapsed awning, skidded down a slope of broken bricks, and hauled himself up a hill of rafters slick with moss and rain.

  Everywhere, there were people he knew. All of them had a hole in their chest where their mana cores were ripped out by the hands from the portal. Marna the baker, flour washed from her hair by the downpour; Rell the cobbler, hands still curled like he was catching a falling shoe; Loreal the tailor, pinned under her own loom. He’d sold them jokes and junk and the occasional miracle over the years, but now, he had nothing to sell them but closed eyes and a bow of the head, and even that felt like a shitty offering.

  It didn’t take him long to realize he was the only person who’d survived the fall, but he didn’t want to believe it—not until he finally cut across the sunken town, climbed one final hill of rubble, and came upon where Sorowyn Carpentry used to be.

  The workshop was gone. The long roof had folded, the beams had caved, and the great sliding door Old Hugo always liked to pull open with a slam had cracked in half.

  Still, he went down to the broken building itself and began to dig.

  He worked with his left hand and his black arm. He pried boards away, lifted entire beams, and found Thomas first, curled around a table leg as if a table would’ve shielded him from the fall. Then he found Caeli, braid clotted with blood. He found Lira and Layla tangled together, hands clasped, and he found Leo without his head.

  He didn’t stop clawing the rubble until he found Leo’s head.

  Once he’d cleared a small space outside the collapsed building and laid all fourteen orphans of Sorowyn Carpentry out in a line, he went back in for Hugo.

  It didn’t take him long to find the old man under a wall, his lower half completely crushed.

  “... Get up, you old bastard.”

  He got the wall off Hugo with sheer, brute force—gritting his teeth all the way—and then he hauled the old man out to the line as well, setting him at the heads of the children.

  His eyes watered as he counted their numbers.

  All accounted for.

  He’d like to say a few words—maybe a prayer or two—but he immediately snapped his head up as a flash of lightning illuminated the slanted belltower in the center of town.

  What a cursed joke it was, that the only building in the town that’d survived the plummet somewhat was the one those three one-eyed shadows had been perched upon.

  He didn’t know their faces. He didn’t know their ideals or prayers. The masked man wore an earring of the Curator Church, the boy had golden-white hair—a symbol of nobility in the Auraline Border Army—and the lady carried an ornate silver medallion only high-ranking soldiers in the Obric Border Army carried. Did that mean both Auraline and Obric plotted to sacrifice the town with the Curator Church backing them up? Which god were they even trying to sacrifice everyone’s mana cores to, and what for?

  There was only one thing he did know: if he were to just sit here and wait to be found—either by Auraline or Obric—he’d be the one blamed by the crowns for Corvalenne’s destruction.

  They wouldn’t need any proof. The fact that he had an Altar and an Elementum-Class relic he’d never declared was proof enough that his words could not be trusted.

  If not Auraline or Obric, the Curator Church would execute him without even hearing his side of the story.

  … Curses to all of you.

  I’ll take the heads of the real culprits myself.

  He turned away from the belltower, prayed for the dead, and glared up the steep, near-vertical walls of the chasm.

  Old Hugo was dead. Serina was dead. Leo was dead. Lira and Layla and Thomas and everyone else was dead, so while he alone survived, it felt… hollow.

  And those one-eyed would get to keep on living after trying to offer the entire town to a Curator God?

  He hated it.

  His entire life, he’d dreamed of leaving Corvalenne behind and going on expeditions across the world. He’d dreamed of being celebrated by his siblings as he left, cheered by jewelled ladies as he wandered from town to town, and gawked at by seekers and adventurers alike as he conquered dungeon after dungeon, searching for the most exotic, most powerful relics there ever was.

  He’d dreamed of being the first man to touch the stars, and then he'd dreamed of coming back home to boast to Old Hugo.

  Corvalenne had always told him that his childish dream was as comforting as it was silly—that he should just be content with settling down and inheriting the carpentry, and that being a seeker was too far from an orphan’s reach—but now Corvalenne wasn't here to tell him otherwise.

  This wasn't how he'd wanted to start his life as a seeker, but for the town that'd raised him, doubted him, laughed at him, and loved him all the same, he'd prove them all wrong.

  He’d just hunt down a few one-eyed bastards along his way to the top.

  Three one-eyed shadows stood at the edge of the chasm, looking over the sunken town with their heads lowered. Their cloaks may only be camouflaging types—relics with true invisibility were hard to come by these days—but the one-eyed man was sure nobody could spot them.

  If anyone did notice their existence, he’d just have to get rid of them.

  “... What happens now?” the woman on his left asked, tilting her head down at the lopsided belltower.

  “Now?” He nodded towards the far opposite end of the chasm, where a line of dull torchlight began coming into view. “Corvalenne may have a long and violent history as a fiercely-contested border town, but it has been firmly within Auraline’s borders for the past twelve years. Notice the torches? The garrisons at Fortress Montreign and Matrekir have already noticed the destruction, and in no time at all, they will be descending to search for survivors.”

  “And they’ll find none.”

  “Our Prophet foretold the deaths of every last man, woman, and child. Nobody could have possibly survived,” he agreed, “and when the Auraline Border Army’s report reaches the crowns, Auraline will blame Obric for the destruction. Obric, however, will send a report back to their own crowns, claiming Auraline destroyed their own town with earth-type relics so they could wage a justified war against Obric."

  The woman’s frown deepened. “So that means...”

  “We have completed our primary objective,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. The lacquered obsidian coffin his two subordinates had secured with chains sat heavy on the ground between them. “The three of us will scatter. Stormbrand, you will take the Black Coffin back to Auraline and hand it off to the Dockmaster’s contact. Do not ask him any questions, and do not ask him to remove his mask. Stonewraith—”

  The woman suddenly stiffened, standing at attention as he spoke her name. “Yes?”

  “... Continue east into Obric. You know the rest of your mission.”

  His subordinates dashed off into the forest without another word—going their separate ways, west and east—and for the first time in a century, he felt just a little bit impatient.

  It took them the better part of the day sneaking around the corners of the Corvalenne, setting up spikes and furrowing lines in the ground to turn the entire town into a giant Altar, but they’d done it now.

  Not only did they offer up the mana cores of every last person in town to their god, they’d also completed their secondary, less important objective as well.

  Feel free to start another world war and make yourselves busy while we work through a few more offerings.

  Orland the Everbright is distracted, and the Witch of Monura has been gone for years.

  Who else can possibly stop us now?