|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [? Gale Step (A)]
Nico pushed off a burst of wind in a sideways leap. A large swooshing sound filled the dark, followed by a boulder slamming down where he had been, shattering the marble. The wisp hovering near him wasn’t fast enough and was snuffed out in the cloud of dust.
“You seem very sure—” Nico conjured another foxfire in his palm as he imitated the Sage, “That I’m the one who’s supposed to impress you.”
Chains rattled and another crash reverberated through the dome. The foxfire that was following Zhou extinguished under falling rubble.
“Oh, good one.” Zhou spoke from some dark corner.
“Thanks.” Nico sent his wisps into orbit, scattering light around the guardian. Not that the rock had eyes. It most likely responded to vibration or mana.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [? Lycanthropy]
Nico dashed away from the foxfires, his movements honed by heightened reflex. The sentinel swung a boulder through the cluster, scattering the flames in a burst of light. A second blow crashed down where Nico had surged mana to trigger his transformation, striking empty stone nowhere near where he had actually landed. It wasn’t tracking him at all. It was responding to mana.
“I already impressed you earlier,” Zhou said mildly from somewhere in the dark.
“That’s true.” Nico admitted.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [火 Foxfire wisps | 7/7 | "up to 7 lil guy" ]
The foxfires darted out in a cluster, luring the sentinel. Its arm wound back, chains groaning as it heaved forward—
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [? 火 Thermal Jet (A) | "superheated shot"]
The blast of superheated air detonated at the sentinel’s joint. The connection split with a grinding snap, spraying chain links as the arm tumbled away.
Nico dashed around the room and pulled the same maneuver again. He inhaled deep, mana spiraling heat through his body, and once again exhaled a jet of superheated air into the golem’s other arm joint. The heat warped the chains enough for the compressed blast to fracture them. The second arm shattered clean off.
The sentinel wasn’t phased. It lunged forward, slamming itself into the building’s walls. Cracks fissured upward, fracturing the dome overhead, causing rubble to rain down. It was aiming to bring the ceiling down and bury itself with the alchemists.
Nico scattered foxfires to light the chamber and assist in dodging debris. At the edge of the glow he caught Zhou, standing in concentration as cracks opened above him. Nico made his way over to the Sage.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [? Zephyr Veil (A) | "wind shield & sword"]
Wind coiled tight around Nico. With quick flicks of his tail, he sent focused gusts to knock debris off course before it could reach Zhou. Most of the rubble spun aside, but a metal beam clipped Nico’s left shoulder. Pain lanced straight to his bone, knocking him half a step sideways. He ground his teeth and kept moving.
The golem rebounded and slammed into the opposite wall. Rubble sheared loose from the dome, exposing the black void of the rift’s false sky. Nico dashed through the raining debris, repositioning himself to get a clear shot at the guardian’s exposed crystal before the dome collapsed.
A final glyph snapped into alignment beneath its weight, the inscription flaring violet as it locked into place. The stone gave way in a sudden collapse, swallowing the golem from the waist down into a sinkhole. Fractured segments of stone flooring streamed upward, pulled overhead into the dome’s fractures, filling them. Violet mana followed, stirching the material into the stone seams.
It was a strong display of Zhou’s structural inscription-work, derived from his earth affinity. The golem sank deeper as the inscription continued to redistribute mass from the earthen floor into the walls and dome; the law of energy conservation used to their advantage.
Nico exhaled in relief. Earlier he noticed Zhou inscribing and realized the sage had predicted the golem would batter the walls. The rubble needed to fall, he just had to make sure it wasn’t onto Zhou. Now the guardian shifted helplessly, unable to overcome its own weight in the sinkhole. Its crystal lens was left bare. Nico launched upward on another Gale Step, golden mana sparking at his paws. He braced against the air, pain sharpening his focus.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [?? Lightning Strike (B) | "smites"]
Lightning scorched the air and lanced into the crystalline core. The crystal fractured, light bursting in multiple cracks through its mass, shattering it from the inside out. Threads of lightning continued to race across the sentinel’s body, splitting through it until the electricity found the ground.
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The mana threads within the golem flashed vividly as the gathered stones, crystals, and metal lost their sentience. They fell piece by piece from the metal cylinder. Mana dissipated from the stone in brilliant shimmers, releasing constellations from the cracked earth. For a moment the chamber burned with stars.
A low, earthshaking groan rolled through the observatory from the guardian's collapse. Rubble fell in dull thuds throughout the observatory. Once the dust settled, all that was left was the rift’s core, left bright atop the ruin.
|| Skill: ? Lycanthropy || [Deactivate? Y/N]
Nico let out a slow breath, flexing his fingers against his throbbing arm.
“You injured yourself.” Zhou’s tone carried immediate criticism.
Nico startled at the sudden invasion of personal space. Zhou already had one hand tugging the collar of Nico’s jacket back, exposing the bruised skin beneath. The swelling had darkened into a deep maroon-purple, flesh hot from the impact.
“I’m pretty sure the golem injured me,” Nico said, mildly surprised by how bad the bruise looked.
“Focus on yourself more. Healing uses up a lot of mana,” Zhou said with a resigned sigh.
Nico leaned back against the wall, keeping his tone light. “I couldn’t help myself. You looked so vulnerable.” He slipped out of his jacket without mentioning how Zhou had grabbed him. Zhou lowered his hand over the worst of the bruising. Lavender mana spilled from his palm, smooth as water, and wrapped over the skin.
“I get it. The state of your arm makes me feel bad for you.”
“Let’s call it even then.”
That earned him an abbreviated laugh. Zhou had mentioned it so casually, but those who could heal usually specialized exclusively in it. It wasn’t commonly encountered out on the field. Zhou’s mana circulated in rhythm with Nico’s heartbeat, filling torn vessels and weaving tissue together from the inside out, dissolving the bruise. Nico watched with growing fascination. It wasn’t a technique he recognized from mana therapy clinics. The purple mana was threading alongside his veins, glowing under his skin like light leaking through cracks of stone.
“…This looks like how the guardian was threaded together with mana,” he murmured, surprised to hear the thought slip aloud. He didn’t mention the other grudge-adjacent thing this also reminded him of. It felt like he’d curse himself if he did.
“So it does,” Zhou said vaguely, probably having already long considered that.
He continued to concentrate mana into the area until the bruise faded, then dismissed Nico’s arm with a gentle push and strode towards the core. Nico flexed his hand. A muted ache lingered, but the arm was functional. The warmth of mana hummed faintly beneath his skin. He’d never seen this kind of technique before. It was both precise and intimate in the way it integrated into the body.
His gaze drifted to Zhou. The sage had climbed partway up the debris and now stood before the rift’s core, lingering there with his eyes lifted toward the gaps left by fallen rubble. Mana drifted through the openings, restoring stars to the sky. The way Zhou watched it carried the same curiosity he had shown throughout the observatory, as though he were searching for something he had never expected to find.
Noticing eyes on him, Zhou gave a quick wink before turning attention back to the core. Nico let out a short breath of a laugh and settled in, watching the last threads unravel. The core released upward in long strands of mana, each one pulling the rift’s hold on reality apart as it rose.
The heavy stone dome blurred and softened. Its false solidity peeled away to reveal what it had been before: an open observatory roof, worn down by time, iron framing exposed where panels had collapsed or rusted through. Glyphs carved in sweeping lines ran across the remaining panels, creating waves of inscriptions that echoed one another.
The core continued to unravel in colored threads of pale light. They gathered above the observatory, unfurling into long, faint ribbons that rippled outward across the sky, no longer scattering like constellations as they had at the start. As the threads found one another, they fused into wider bands, and a faint aurora drew itself over the broken dome, curling in slow waves of color.
Nico stepped closer, lifting his gaze to follow the aurora’s rise and fall—then back down to Zhou, who had begun circling the dome. He paused here and there to look up before moving on, repeating the motion until he finally found his stopping point. Nico crossed the rubble to join him and sat on a collapsed stone at his side, tilting his head back to see what Zhou saw.
From this angle, the glyphs traced long waves across the remaining panels as the aurora drifted through the gaps above. The carvings curved upward in stone while the light swept downward through open air, and for a brief moment the two aligned. Waves nested within waves, light threading through inscription, earth meeting sky in a brief convergence.
Nico found his eyes wandering to Zhou as much as they followed the aurora. His stillness carried a quiet gravity that drew attention. The soft green and blue streaks of light caught on the silver of his hair, complimenting the amethyst glow of his eyes and horns. The way the aurora moved in fluent oscillations reminded him faintly of Zhou’s aether elemental.
“Hey, your aether—”
Zhou interrupted, “You dropped this.”
Startled out of the thought, Nico reflexively caught what Zhou tossed: smooth glass, cool to the touch—a phone-sized shard of telescope lens salvaged from the rubble.
“Have you seen auroras before?” Zhou asked.
“No,” Nico said, turning the fragment in his hand. “Its been a bucket list item. I didn’t expect to cross it off here.”
“The ones here are faint,” Zhou said. “You can see the colors better if you look through that. It increases the exposure.”
Zhou leaned in beside him, shoulder brushing his. The faint scent of jasmine drifted from him. His hair felt soft as it grazed Nico’s temple to look through the glass together at the wide sweep of colors.
“Ah,” Nico murmured. “It is a lot more vibrant.” That was true, but it wasn’t the reason why he held the glass up longer than his natural inclination. “You’ve seen the bright ones before, then?”
When Zhou finally drew back, Nico lowered the glass. They both kept eyes on the unfiltered bands of light.
“I’ve had a lot of time to do it,” Zhou said quietly.
The aurora gradually grew paler. As the bands faded, the real sky looked emptier than before, much like how the rift’s sky had felt empty without its stars. Nico realized he hadn’t truly looked for stars in the city for years, where light pollution engulfed them whole. He had only started searching again after so many nights in Tellur. In that sense, he found himself sympathizing with the rift, with how it fed its stars into the earth in an attempt to keep reality intact, not realizing that when one swallowed the other, both were left dimmer.
The last of the aurora dissipated into ambient mana as Nico mused on rift logic. Zhou turned from the view and walked away with the same measured steadiness he had carried when they entered. Used to non-goodbyes, Nico stayed behind, watching Zhou move toward the exit. He carried himself the same way he had throughout the rift: like his attention was being pulled by something just out of reach.
Except now, the fading glow of the aurora rested along the edges of his hair and horns. Nico’s gaze followed the light up toward the stars they belonged to, bright against the dark. It was across this space that they could admire each other’s glow.