Chương 1: LANCE KLINT

On the ground, battered by the storm, a tall, lean boy lay curled like a newborn.

"Klint... Klint!" A little girl's scream tore through the night, but the sound dissolved almost instantly into the roar of the downpour hammering the earth and ricocheting off the dark oak leaves. Strength was sapped away from him in faint spasms. The last protests of a body pushed past its limit by wind and sky and something far worse than either. With what little remained of his strength, he managed to lift his head and struggle to focus on two figures moving through the flickering light of the storm.

They shifted through the curtain of rain like shadows circling a bonfire, striking at each other with movements no human body should be able to make. One of them wore a long coat, while the other was enveloped in a white aura, as if it were mist. The thunder rolled away into the distance. With it went the last of the boy's strength to keep his head upright.

Then a lightning bolt split an isolated oak at the forest's edge, and the sound of the rain slowly merged with the hiss of burning wood and the howl of the wind. In that sudden flare of light, both figures were illuminated. As if given new sight, they resumed their struggle, less unnatural now in their movements, but unmistakably driven by the kind of exhaustion that only comes at the apex of something. The flames quickly died. In the final light, the white silhouette grazed the other's throat.

A moment later, the victim dropped to its knees, pressing a hand desperately against the wound, unable to stop the dark river spreading across its chest and spilling between its lips. Before the other figure could close the distance, a strange purple light erupted from the kneeling form. It bloomed outward, so massive and uniform it resembled a marble sphere of raw energy. The standing figure was hurled aside by the shockwave, and as swiftly as it had ignited, the light collapsed into nothing.

The white figure stretched out a desperate hand, then yanked it back toward its mouth. Another flash split the sky as it vomited blood, dark streams running from its eyes and staining its cheeks. It stared at its blood-soaked hand, lips moving in a faint whisper. Then it turned toward the boy, who had lost even the strength to keep his eyes open and was now kneeling beside him. A wet hand, warm despite everything, cupped his chin and guided his face gently upward.

A young face, haloed in pale white light, was the last thing his eyes registered before the world went dark. The sun pressed high behind the thick blanket of clouds and smoke that perpetually infested Sector 0 of the Archipelago. The deafening roar of engines and the grinding of iron gears filled Avenue III, layered beneath the constant murmur of workers and merchants going about their morning.

A thin blade of light cut through the dirty, fog-streaked glass of a second-floor apartment, brightening a blue-walled room and stirring its owner: a boy with wavy black hair and warm brown eyes, both of which matched the room's dark palette rather well. A small name tag hung from the door. It read: Lance Klint. The young man stretched, arms lifting toward the ceiling, and stared up at the window through half-open eyes.

He resigned himself to watching the usual chaos of the street below, but his thoughts drifted back almost immediately, back to the dream. The same vision he had carried for all he could remember. Lately, though, it had grown more vivid, leaving him shaken and hollow by morning. He pressed his palm against his temple and frowned. His head felt like stone, his thoughts scattering in every direction. He couldn't reconstruct the faces of the figures in the storm, nor the face haloed in white.

Lance retained only an impression that it had been a kind face, without a single feature he could name. The one thing that remained sharp and clear was the sound of his younger sister screaming.

"The same dream as always, huh?" He sighed, remembering the paper and the medicine they gave him.

"Amnesia, right? Those strange elixirs never worked..." They had since reframed his recurring dreams as the brain's desperate attempt to reconstruct missing and distorted pieces, they hypothesized, to shield him from the knowledge that his parents had abandoned him." She even took the trouble to bring me to a doctor... It was a waste in the end." He rolled to the side and threw off the flannel sheets he'd bought second-hand.

The room had no drafts and no cracks, fortunately, given that it also had no heating beyond a sullen, temperamental stove.

"I will have to buy a new one as soon as possible... Just hope I get another delivery to do after this one!" Lance lightly tapped the machine, waiting to see that red glare. Nothing came, and a light breeze shook his dense skin.

"Great, all we need is for me to get sick..." He rolled off the bed, stretching his muscles in all the ways he deemed fit. Lance's eyes wandered to a poster, roughly attached to the wall by some slightly crooked nails.

"Guess people are starting to know who I am. At least this is a nice upgrade from my self-made refuge!" After way too much work, he made a name throughout Sector 0 as one of the finest freelance couriers. He crossed to the wardrobe and pulled out his standard work attire: a fitted black shirt and matching wide-leg trousers. He dressed quickly, adding black socks, then paused. A small parcel sat on the corner desk, one he hadn't placed there himself.

The night before, he had spent hours poring over notebooks and hand-drawn maps of the surrounding area, searching for anything that might pry loose a memory from wherever his mind had sealed it. He must have fallen asleep at the desk again, which meant Sophie had done it. He opened the parcel. Inside sat a white lacquered wooden box trimmed with delicate indigo patterns, and beside it, a folded note. He recognized the handwriting immediately: the flowing, unhurried calligraphy of his landlady, Sophie Maglarck.

Lance unfolded it and read." Good morning, Mr Klint. By the time you read this, it's probably much later than I'd expected. You looked exhausted! Inside, you'll find homemade bread, bacon, and some coffee. You fell asleep at the desk again. I hope you don't mind me putting you to bed; you really are heavy! If there's ever anything I can do, really anything at all, regarding your search for your sister, please ask. You're family here."

Lance let out a quiet laugh as the purple ink trailed from the final word into a small, cheerful smiley face. His smile faded as a photograph slipped from between the pages of his notebook. The girl in the photo had the same thick black hair as him, but her eyes were nothing like his warm brown; they were pale yellow, almost golden. His younger sister, Jude Klint, who had vanished along with their parents and their older sister, Eva.

"One day," He said quietly, pressing the photograph flat against the desk, "I will find my answers." He barely remembered the night they had disappeared. The harder he pushed against those memories, the worse it got. He felt like trying to remember, watching all the dots and photos scattered on the desk. Only darkness awaited him beyond those memories." Like I would remember anything useful. Flames, blood and screams, that's the only clue I have..." Lance bit on his already short nail.

"At this rate, I'll be stunned even before I set foot outside the house..." His gaze dropped back to the note. A line had caught the edge of his vision the first time around, marked by a small hand-drawn exclamation point. The ink was darker here, and the tone had shifted.

"Lance, I read where you're making today's delivery. I've heard that people have gone missing in those woods. Please be careful."

"Another one? Isn't that the fourth person to go missing this month? Well, maybe the guard isn't doing a good job." He set the note down, then opened the lacquered box. The bread and coffee had gone cold, but the smell was rich enough to make up for it. When he finished, he washed his hands and face, then stood at the small mirror beside the door. Lance held his own gaze for a moment, then smiled and gave a short nod.

Satisfied, he pulled on his black windbreaker, a gift from a courier he'd once dragged out of trouble in the mountain passes, more instinct than heroism. It was slim but surprisingly warm, the right side trailing a good six centimeters below the left, with white geometric patterns running along the longer hem. The boy collected his bag and the delivery package. Before stepping out, Lance slipped on his narrow-rimmed glasses with tinted lenses, more habit now than necessity.

The moment his hand closed on the handle, a cold thread ran the length of his spine. Not a draft or nerves, but something else, the kind of cold that arrived without explanation. It pressed against his back as though something stood directly behind him. He turned sharply. Nothing. The room was exactly as he had left it: walls solid, air still, every object in its place. Lance shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. As a precaution, he retrieved his folding knife from the drawer and tucked it into his bag.

Standard equipment for any courier working on routes outside Sector 0.

"I forgot that today was Monday! That means I won't see Sophie." Lance headed downstairs and through the front hall. He stepped through the front door into the morning and joined the current of people flowing down Avenue III. The bite of the air and the noise of the street kept his thoughts from drifting somewhere useless.

"The city smells of life," he muttered, inhaling and immediately regretting it as his lungs filled with exhaust fumes.

"And smoke, as always." Lance made his way to the tram that would carry him out to the edge of Sector II, the broad outer territory bordering the capital and other cities, where intense postwar urbanization had thinned into country roads and scattered farms. The delivery was simple: spare gears for a sap-extraction machine used on Andimican Oaks, whose resin served as both a muscle remedy and a reliable fuel. As Lance calculated the route, the tram arrived early.

He sprinted, slipped inside just before the doors closed, showed his courier card, and returned the driver's nod. He watched Sector 0 shrink below as the tram climbed the steep gradient out of the city bowl. The park exhaled pastel-colored fumes; balloons drifted past factory smoke; swarms of workers rushed to secure their seats for the day." Cael has grown a lot over the last year... I didn't remember either the cinema or that many restaurants. I should go check them out if I get paid enough."

His mind returned to the evanescent little girl screaming in his dreams. The tram leveled abruptly at the crest of the hill, and Lance lurched forward, catching himself at the last moment on the overhead bar.

"Are you all right?" A quiet voice behind him. He turned, finding a woman in a fitted shirt and a long black jacket, who looked at him with an amused, entirely composed expression. A strand of blonde hair covered her right eye, brushing lightly against her lips. Lance went red immediately and thanked her in a way that barely counted as words. As he lowered his gaze, he caught a small golden badge partially hidden between her jacket lapels with a name, half-visible: "Moni—" The woman smiled.

She reached out and flicked his nose.

"I can't believe it!" Her eyes lit with recognition, warm but controlled.

"You're the courier who delivered those supplies to the Institute. Lance Klint, right?"

"Indirectly," Lance managed, "and it was just a private delivery." He suddenly felt his face growing hot right in front of the striking lady.

"How should I treat her? I usually don't spend much time with people outside of the clients..."" When was the last time I indulged in small talk? I didn't even take a shower..." Monica watched him attempt to form a coherent response and fail progressively. She pressed her lips together. A laugh escaped anyway. Lance spiraled.

"Sorry, sorry!" She dabbed at the corner of her eye.

"I heard rumors that Lance Klint was quite young for being a freelancer. I just didn't believe it." She poked his shoulder, nearly sending him into the seat behind him. He noticed, with mild relief, that she moved and spoke with the energy of someone approximately his age, despite whatever her professional title said." At least she is nice..."

"I didn't know I was talked about in the inner sectors," he said, more steadily.

"Or that they knew my name." She was about to answer when her badge slipped from her jacket entirely and dropped toward the tram floor. Lance's hand shot out before it reached the rail gap. He turned it over. The engraving read: Monica Net, Research Executive, Ruther U. L. Lance handed it back, with crooked lips.

"I apologize if I was rude, Miss Net. This is the first time I've spoken with someone of your rank." He retracted his hand with the particular care of someone who'd just realized they'd been speaking to a department head like a street acquaintance.

"Formalities aren't really my style." Monica tucked the badge away and puffed her cheeks.

"I'm only four years older than you."

"What brings you out to Sector II?" Lance asked, checking the stop counter.

"Citizens from the inner districts don't usually come this far out."

"Field study on an unknown mineral vein, probably impure Taumite. I prefer fieldwork over paperwork. I'd rather die than rot behind a desk." She waved a hand and stepped back from the door with a grin. When the tram stopped, Monica jumped down onto the platform and turned to wave. Her smile was warm and easy, the kind that didn't require anything in return. But something in her eyes gave him pause. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

There was a message there that had nothing to do with goodbye.

"If you really need to go in the woods... Keep your nerves in check."

"And why is that?" The cold thread ran up his neck again the moment Monica turned and disappeared down the forest path. Lance sank back into his seat and pressed his forehead into his hand.

"I'm just tired. Coffee can't replace sleep after all." Lance thanked the driver and stepped out. The air hit him immediately: moss, resin, damp earth. A smell that reminded him of childhood, though he couldn't have said why. The cold sensation clung to his back like a blade held flat against the skin.

"Maybe Jude would have loved this smell... Or maybe she already felt it." He checked the delivery slip: right at the fork, then a narrow lane leading to a clearing deeper in the forest. He walked into the green. Birds in the branches. Squirrels scratching on the bark. Leaves shifting. Dew dripping from one surface to another. A comfortable orchestration of small sounds.

"Spending time in nature is so relaxing, I should do it more!" Lance breathed in and kept walking through the vibrant green, gazing at the enormous trees that shadowed the path.

"Just about here and then —" The moment he reached the narrow lane, the orchestra of the living stopped. The birds fell silent, and the wind dropped. The only noise that could link him with reality was the soft press of his boots against the moss.

"This ain't right..." A sharp metallic smell filled his nostrils. A headache detonated behind his eyes, so sudden and severe that he had to catch himself against the trunk of a massive oak. His thoughts blurred. The dream surged up from wherever he kept it locked away. The same red, the same taste in his throat, the same fractured images. He knew what the smell was.

As the wind carried the stench to intensify, his brain began to quiver and cause violent migraines, his eyes painting unreal landscapes shrouded in blood before him. Lance watched his filthy red hands as he trudged, closing and opening his eyes again to make the nightmares he had engineered disappear. He closed his eyes, opened them, and breathed. He gave himself three seconds. Then he ran toward the source. Lance was praying, with whatever part of him still prayed, that it was an animal.

The clearing indicated in the note was beautiful; it soothed him as if the pain and panic of before were merely a nightmare: flowers of every color across a carpet of firm green grass, a line of pale rocks along one edge, and near it, a small country cottage with red roof tiles and dark wooden walls that had been old for a long time but cared for. Decorations hung on the porch, with a window box. Someone had lived here and had tended it. Lance approached, but no one came to greet him.

No curious face appeared at the window.

"This is the place, and the note tells me I'm on time. Am I wrong?" He climbed the first step of the porch, and the cold thread drove itself through the back of his neck so sharply that he flinched. It intensified with every step. His hand landed on the doorknob. He should have knocked. Lance knew he should have knocked, but he still opened the door.

"What in the holy name of the maiden..." The smell hit him before his eyes adjusted: thick and iron-sweet and wrong in every way. He fought not to vomit. A body had been dragged near the entrance and left there. Blood had soaked into the parquet and spread in dark arcs. A portion of the abdomen had been torn loose and wedged beneath an overturned table.

"A titan bear? No, they shouldn't have woken up yet by this time of the year." What held Lance, what truly held him, past the gore, was the nature of the wounds. These hadn't been made by an explosion. Not by any beast he could identify. The pattern of the damage was consistent and repeated, and he recognized the shape of it: bite marks. Human-sized, but not quite human. Lance staggered back, nausea winning over his control.

Then a hiss from somewhere above him, low, wet, rhythmic, and followed by a slow creak of floorboards." Are there any people here at all?" Step by step, the sound grew louder. He drew the blade from his multi-tool. The metal caught a thin sliver of morning light that had found its way through the dusty air. He reached the door at the top. He pressed it open a crack, then stopped. Lance felt a strange acidity in his mouth at the sight of whatever thing was crouched right in front of him.

The creature crouched in the corner of the room, gnawing on a bone, unhurried, as if savoring the last of something. Its skin was black and scaled like dark granite, and a purple light radiated from beneath the surface, casting the room in a sickly glow. The thing's face was a skull made wrong. The jaw and cheekbones had fused into clusters of geometric, mechanical pincers. Where eyes should have been, violet crystals burned in hollow sockets. Nothing about it was remotely human.

"What—" Memories crashed into him like a wave he hadn't seen coming, agitating every sense at once. The creature noticed him. Without pausing its meal, it turned its head. It hissed. Strands of flesh hung from between its pincers. It slowly trembled, like a cat gazing at its prey.

"The lady... What... Why is...." Lance broke free from paralysis and threw himself aside as it lunged. The thing's body slammed into the wall where he had been standing. Lance struck it across the jaw with the handle of his knife with all the strength he could muster. Something in the joint broke. The jaw swung to one side grotesquely. The creature didn't seem to register it as pain. He cut its throat in a single, quick motion. Purple blood sprayed the walls and hit him across the face and chest.

The monster dropped, gurgling.

"No... This can't be right." Lance turned toward the pale light filtering through the window until he felt a crippling and wet heat radiating onto his back. It had risen. Still bleeding from the neck wound, it drove its claws into him, two deep channels that drained warmth and balance out of him in the same moment. He stumbled, knees threatening to give. It lunged again. He grabbed a blood-soaked axe from the floor, probably belonging to whoever's bones were stacked by the far wall, and swung.

The flat of the iron head connected, and the thing went down, stunned." Is he still alive?!" He thought, lifting the axe with both hands. Lance drove it forward with his full body, rotating through the strike. The axe split the creature's skull in two. One half caught on the wall. The other dropped. Lance wiped his face with his sleeve and stood there, watching the body dissolve, not into blood or remains, but into small crystalline shards that faded and were gone.

A multitude of seething images erupted in his mind, yet his consciousness was as if extinguished. Lance's heart was pounding in his chest, and his breathing began to resemble the morning's breakfast. He stood there for a few moments staring at the dust and the massacre, without batting an eyelid. His legs moved him toward the door. The pain was returning, and adrenaline wasn't enough to do its job. His eyes weren't really seeing anymore. Accompanied by the thumps of the axe on the stairs, he headed downstairs.

"Those eyes... Those scales... Why are they familiar? That thing..." He cast his eyes on his legs, now shaking. Lance made it through the ground floor, past the overturned table, and into the doorway. His gaze drifted to the kitchen window, where a severed arm rested on the sill, frozen in the last position it had been reaching outward, toward the glass, toward the world. Toward help that hadn't come. Something broke in his chest. Neither fear nor horror.

He walked out into the clearing, but didn't remember ever choosing to. The axe was still in his hand, despite the constant refusal of his muscles to hold it. Lance set it down. His knees hit the ground. A sound came out of him that he couldn't classify, somewhere between a laugh and a cry, neither of them right, both of them real. He tried to scream, but not a single thread of sound came. His voice had been reduced to a faint shadow of the one he had used so happily the same morning.

"Fuck... Fuck..." He stood, glancing at the trembling hands. He vomited, then realized his cheeks were already wet and had been wet for a while. Thoughts surfaced in fragments:" What was it?"" Who was that hand reaching for?"" If I had arrived an hour earlier..." Then the sky changed. Black snow drifted down across the clearing. He looked up. Ash. The sky had gone pale grey, shot through with purple shadows that moved within the clouds like something living.

A pain detonated in his skull, not like the migraines, not like the headaches. This was new. Images burned behind his eyes: familiar skies, familiar creatures, familiar destruction. Familiar in a way that made no sense." How? When?" He started to curse his brain for being unable to answer what he saw. Then the pain stopped. He rose. Saliva and sweat dripped from his chin. From the tree line came a hiss. Then another and another. Purple light bloomed between the trunks. Lance counted around twenty bulbs of light.

Ten creatures stepped from the shadows, similar to the first but varied. Some had horns. Some had extra limbs. One dragged a mass of crystal fused to its leg. They lunged simultaneously. Lance dove left and grabbed the axe. One creature leapt, jaw wide. He swung in a circular cut and severed the jaw cleanly. It dropped, hissing. He brought the iron back of the axe down on its skull. The others slowed. He raised the axe. For one moment, he thought that he could hope. He counted eight creatures and became pallid.

A hiss behind him. Lance turned too slowly. The creature hit him shoulder-first, but he caught its skull with his free hand and drove it into the ground. He got to his feet, heard the next one coming, and blocked with the wooden handle. It snapped immediately, but it bought him the second he needed. He seized the axe-head and swung it like a hammer, crushing the creature's face. Joy, for half a second, and then his left side ceased to exist for his nervous system. He looked down.

Where his arm had been, blood poured freely. Lance had time to understand what he was seeing before the scream left him, and the clearing tilted, and his legs failed, and he slid down in his own blood. The creatures closed in. Teeth. Tongue on stone. One of them was leaning close to his face, filling his vision. He opened his eyes to find only darkness. He still felt the jaws. The smell of mud and blood was real. His heart was beating." I'm still here."

A figure approached through the dark: tall, wearing a long black coat, one hand glowing with a pale white light. Not strong enough to show the face engulfed in darkness. Lance reached toward him. The man pushed his hand gently aside, knelt, and pressed his palm against his chest, driving something into him with sudden and certain pressure. No pain, only heat, spreading outward from the sternum like the first swallow of something strong.

Something deep inside his skull trembled, like the first note of a frequency he'd never heard but somehow recognized." You are my last hope, Lance. Do what you must, but do not change what you..." The voice folded inward. The dark hall dissolved, and the smell of blood and wet earth returned. He opened his eyes. A creature stood over him, jaw open, inches from his face. Lance surged upward. He wasn't sure how. He didn't need to know.

Something had awakened inside him, vast and intoxicating, like a current he'd been standing in the entire time without knowing how to use, and now it was simply there, filling every muscle and nerve and bone. His wounds closed. His arm grew back, not slowly, not painlessly, but with the absolute efficiency of something that had been waiting to happen. Fragments of bones and tendons huddled together as the dense network of veins and muscles seemed to reassemble symmetrically.

He watched the creatures and then kept gazing at his arm, smiling and laughing. The horde stepped back a bit before one of them decided to lunge. Lance turned, catching the creature's skull with his new arm. He slammed it on the ground before crushing it. Each time it hissed, his knuckles came down like a barrage. The contents of the "cranium" spilled, sticking to his fist like mushed pus. He didn't stop until the crystal was dust between his bloody fingers. The remaining creatures froze.

They had come as predators. They left as prey. Lance lunged at them, roaring ferociously, and the woods soon filled with a myriad of echoes and laments. The nearby green was trampled on by the sudden rush of a woman. Monica Net ran hard through the undergrowth, jacket torn, thorns pulled through the fabric of her sleeve.

"Report: more Helspawn than the survey indicated." Her voice was controlled, clipped. She was barely able to catch her breath as she sped up.

"Contained the pack moving west of the clearing. One group broke East. Proceeding to the primary site. Edvard, initiate radio silence."

"Shit! Some fled to the inhabited area. Hope it isn't a Singularity this time." She reached the tree line at the clearing's edge. An enormous pressure settled over her like a change in the weather. Helspawn signatures, multiple. But they were slowly fading, one by one. She ran toward the sound of impact instead. What she found made her suddenly stop, raising a cloud of dust. A boy stood in the center of the clearing with his eyes closed. One arm was contracted at his side, crushing the torso of one creature.

The other hand held what remained of a Helspawn's skull. He was slamming the remnants methodically into the earth, over and over. His clothes were burned and shredded. Under the crystal's dust and blood was someone approximately seventeen or eighteen years old. She pressed her communicator.

"Field Agent Monica, reporting. Encounter with an unregistered Meta. Ten confirmed low-ranking Helspawn neutralized. Initiating identification protocol." She approached. He opened his eyes as she reached him. The yellow faded back to brown. The warm, ordinary, exhausted brown. He looked at her, registered her presence, and smiled like someone who had used the very last thing they had and was glad it had been enough. Then he collapsed. The creatures dissolved, and the sky corrected itself.

Monica stood over him for a moment, adrenaline still working through her, not quite sure what she was feeling. She pressed her device one last time.

"Monica, reporting in. I think I've found a recruit for N. O. I. R. This one will turn out to be real good!" She unclipped her damaged jacket and set it down beside him. Monica looked at the boy's face, covered in ash and purple ichor and a few of his own tears.

"You're full of surprises, Errand Boy."