ATTENTION, ATTENTION…!

  “Ah, it’s been quite some time. The queen of all bitches, always wanting to be the center of attention.”

  Severus Malak Drakan muttered that insult against the glass of one of the second-floor windows of his workshop. He gazed up at the morning sky as he listened to the emergency sirens and the warning message echoing inside his head, transmitted from a masterpiece of technomancy from the Imperial Capital, Mortalis.

  He smiled as if he had just come up with the funniest joke in the world to tell the first person he encountered, without revealing the fire of hatred ingrained in every cell of his being. The legacy of the murdered elves at the hands of the architect of that veil of Discord that was beginning to corrupt the clouds and transform them into clusters of dark storms.

  “Three…two…one,” he counted until the moment the Evil Dream collided with the ethereal barrier of the Evil-Warding Pillar, the city’s ultimate defense.

  The impact unleashed a shockwave that had no physical effect, but a spiritual one. Severus felt the tremor in his rageful soul; the lament of the spirits of the thaumaturgists of yore who sacrificed themselves to erect the twenty-five pillars across the Empire.

  A desperate and virtuous act to keep the evil of the Shadow Queen and her most loyal servant, the Princess of Sin, Ithrendyl, at bay.

  “Well, nothing else to do but wait until the storm has passed.”

  The blood elf turned away from the window, no longer seeing the few inhabitants of the slums running for shelter, under the orders of the General of the Local Military Forces. With his back against the windowpane, he saw what was in front of him and remembered where he was. It was impossible not to sigh.

  “It’s always so difficult…”

  The lamp hanging from the ceiling was energized with magic, its crystal on the verge of losing all efficiency, but still bright enough to illuminate every corner of the room: burnt clothes, burnt chairs, burnt books, and trunks filled with burnt belongings of his only friends in the world. Friends who had been banished a decade ago and now had to contend with the Evil Dream on their own, within the boundaries of the Sea of Trees.

  “Jin…” Among the damaged belongings, Severus saw an old, dusty rifle, one end of which was used to hang a red dress with a plunging neckline that would turn heads -if it wasn’t about to turn into dust and ashes. “Tiara… Lucci. Mellion.”

  How could he not feel a pang in his heart as his gaze fell upon the stack of children’s storybooks beneath that dress? Severus remembered with deep regret reading those books to the family's firstborn son, who sat on his lap and laughed at the silly comments he made during the story, comments that infuriated his mother.

  Until he was kidnapped by his older sister. A witch of the Coven.

  “…”

  Holding his rage at bay, Severus lowered his head and closed his eyes for a moment. Gathering serenity where it was lacking, listening to the wind whistling against the window and the shouts of soldiers in the distance, taking up positions to march toward the southern gate.

  “By the Gods and their angels, let no harm befall them,” he prayed, to whoever would listen, fearful that his worst nightmare would come true. “Xiliarra, Kantrus…V-Vel’Moran. Please, watch over the Mercer-Archeos.”

  To pray to the Devourer of Worlds was blasphemy, punishable by the Heterodox Church. In a context as hostile as the Evil Dream, Severus didn't care.

  To see that family again, safe and sound in that house so far removed from society, he was capable of anything.

  “Come on, come on, they'll be fine! Jin would be furious with me, and Tiara would hit me if she saw me like this!” Severus slapped himself with both hands and forced one of his typical silly grins as he descended the stairs, as if an audience awaited him below, eager to witness one of his antics. “Nothing better than a little home alchemy to lift spirits during curfew, eh?!”

  Perhaps the books scattered haphazardly on his rickety shelf could be considered company, under very specific circumstances. This one, of course, was not one of them, and no one answered him as he sat alone in his precarious, dusty, and grimy workshop.

  “I must stop talking to myself.”

  Severus rolled up his sleeves, straightened his tie, and went straight to the workbench where a ceramic mortar, burners, test tubes, and ingredients in carelessly stacked jars awaited him.

  Despite the solitude, he continued to smile. Pulverizing blood orchids; soaking ghost lotuses; slicing liver into thin strips, purifying standard herbs. A repetitive process that culminated in the chemical smells of the materials and the smoke on his face as they were boiled in a distillation flask.

  “Ah, the dream job: brewing vitality and spirit potions to sell and not starve!” Severus tasted a drop of each batch he created and nodded with satisfaction. “And each one for the modest price of seven soul-jewels!”

  Many would think it was a scam, or a typical scheme of a certain greedy, disgraced gunslinger sleeping among the refugees. Severus didn't have many options other than to give it a quality and trustworthiness stamp with a piece of paper attached with wax, detailing a few specifications.

  He needed the money, and no one was going to hire him for magic and sorcery services. Who in their right mind would hire a thaumaturge expelled from the Academy and ostracized by his peers and superiors?

  Will you stop floating, Severus? If you faint, I won’t take you to the healing house!

  You’re so useless! Weren’t elves supposed to be prodigies of thaumaturgy!

  Your lack of talent explains why you’re one of the last of your kind: the virtuous perish, and the useless endure.

  So, you plan to kill the Shadow Queen? By throwing a lightning bolt at her or trying to make her laugh to her death? Let me bet on the second option. You’re terrible at our sacred art, but you make an excellent buffoon…

  Severus heard the voices of his classmates and teachers from the Academy in his eardrums, and his smile threatened to fade. He felt the ancestral fire coursing through his arms, his pride wounded, a humiliation that would never truly disappear… But in the end, it was all true. He had no right to be furious.

  His peers, his mentors, they were right: he was an untalented failure. That was why no one would hire a thaumaturge who could only perform limited elemental magic and was constantly on the verge of spiritual collapse.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  He was the worst thaumaturge in the city, condemned to never be able to make a living from his profession.

  “I need the money. I can’t let them down,” he whispered, trying to banish those ghosts of the past as he packed the vials into separate batches in boxes. “Otherwise, the Mercer-Archeos…”

  Thinking of that banished family, with their minuscule chances of acquiring the basics to survive, motivated him to work faster. More than half of his earnings were going toward buying clothes, seasonal grains, pickled foods, and gunpowder.

  Everything for them, and only for them. And if there was any income left, perhaps he could buy them some unnecessary luxuries, given the circumstances.

  “There are several books I’m sure Lucci would love. A good, old wine for Jin… And why not bring them the day’s catch?” the blood elf wondered, his blue eyes shining with excitement. “I bet Tiara must be tired of cooking and eating so much spinnarak meat.”

  He had a mental image of the four of them sitting in the dining room, helping themselves to large, generous portions of a black-scaled fish from the Ocean of Violent Waters. Laughing, reminiscing about not-so-dark times. Wishing that day would never end.

  It was a bittersweet sensation that he could already taste in his mouth, mingling with the natural aromas of the alchemical ingredients. The taste of the encounter, of good company, of farewells that were bound to come…

  And always that final bitter taste that lingered like a torment; the uncertainty that every Nekromian had to grapple with: wondering if that day would be their last, and how in an instant only silence and darkness could remain.

  “Ah, dammit all…” he whispered after letting a single tear roll. Heavy and loaded, it reached his jaw rapidly and fell inside the mixture he was about to put inside the distillation flask. That liquid manifestation of despair contaminated the compound, turning it useless. “There goes five lesser soul-jewels…”

  As he said that pointless commentary to no one, Severus had the intention to drop the content of that small bowl in the trash can…

  “…!”

  …and yet, he never reached it. He didn't even move from the table when the bowl slipped from his grasp and shattered at his feet, spilling all the ingredients into a slurred concoction.

  At first, Severus didn't understand what had happened, why the bowl had slipped from his grasp like that. Nor why his legs refused to bend and let him clean up the mess he'd made. Or why he felt the muscles in his chest and neck tense to the extreme.

  An attack?! A curse?! the elf thought at high speed, unable to move his mouth and blinking with confusion and growing panic. Horrific scenarios and apocalyptic hypotheses piled up in his mind, making him believe that something had gone wrong with the pillar and the influence of the Evil Dream had fallen upon him. No. No, no, my workshop should become a factory of corpses and Fallen is the pillar had failed. This...is...

  It wasn't magic. It wasn't a hex. It wasn't the Evil Dream penetrating the barrier of the Evil-Warding Pillar. Severus rationalized this as he managed to place a hand on his chest, feeling his heart race with each passing second and tremors rising from his feet to his head.

  It was fear in its purest form.

  Again, there was no magic involved. Severus was sure of it. He sensed the absence of any external influence seeking to harm him through thaumaturgy because he had experienced it firsthand through bullying and aggression outside of the academy.

  He thought of Urias Janus's proud smile and how frivolous it seemed compared to the terror that had taken him prisoner with invisible shackles.

  “W-what…is...this?” the elf tried to articulate, his breath mingling with words, hindering and disrupting the normal function of his vocal cords and tongue.

  The lights in the crystals quickly lost their intensity. Darkness rose from the corners of the workshop, solidifying a dominance that Severus could not reject.

  No rational thought crossed his mind that could pull him out of this abnormal situation. He had forgotten that he carried a magical catalyst in his pocket, something he could use to try and do anything to provoke a reaction. Worse still, he had forgotten everything he had learned about thaumaturgy.

  He had forgotten the suffering of his ancestors; that he was a fifty-nine-year-old young elf, and that his desire to stand face to face with the Shadow Queen, to etch her face into the depths of his mind and watch her scream as he ripped out that black, pestilent thing in her chest called a heart.

  Now he was nothing more than an infant. A newborn who saw a silhouette appear in the darkest corner of the workshop. A tall, humanoid presence that, when Severus laid his tear-filled eyes on it, caused the terror clinging to his soul to intensify in catastrophic proportions. Pushing him to the edge, facing the abyss.

  “W-who…?!”

  Severus couldn't even demand that this strange visitor identify himself. And when the dark man took a step forward that echoed throughout the workshop, and two yellow eyes gleamed from the shadows, the elf turned away and placed his hands on the table.

  “No.”

  He didn't want to see, didn't want to know anything more. He would go mad if he thought, if he went beyond the clear boundary his mind had established to save him from doom.

  “No…”

  Thud.

  “No!”

  Severus felt sweat trickle down his back. Cold as ice; frost from the harshest winter End-World had ever known.

  Thud.

  His fingers turned white from the pressure against the table. His nails dug into the wood, and soon blood began to seep from beneath. And yet, the pain was fleeting, a mere breeze compared to the tornado of terror surrounding him.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  After that final step, a silence reigned that seemed eternal. Severus knew that dark entity stood behind him. Hidden, but with a presence so evident, so marked, so heavy that it was impossible to ignore. It was worse than a curse; it was the subjugation of his very will, sucking away what little hope remained and leaving an empty shell that could only be filled with bleakness.

  Head bowed, eyes wide open and focused on his wounded fingers, the blood elf tried again:

  “W-who…are you?”

  The answer he received wasn't what he was looking for. What he got, perhaps, was much worse.

  A message. A warning, delivered in the voice of an older man; ordinary, almost kind, and carrying wisdom…but, at the same time, distorted with a malice that bordered on madness:

  The forlorn will die. An [inescapable future]. Forbidden knowledge, at the apex of the ethereal monument created by all your sins.

  A prophecy.

  Words spoken with the intention of damaging the blood elf's psyche and dragging him down into the depths of despair. Turning him cold, paranoid, and distrustful of everything. A torment from which he would never be free, not even after feeling the presence depart, having accomplished its purpose.

  “The forlorn… The Mercer-Archeos?! Why?!” he asked, shouting as if expecting an explanation from the dark entity. “Why them?! Who are you?!”

  Oh, but he knew who that visitor was. He knew it very well, only that accepting it could be the end of his sanity.

  Only the vibrating signal of a soul shard he carried in his pocket managed to inspire him to slowly turn around and confirm that, indeed, he was alone again in his workshop.

  The Evil Dream continued its course outside. He didn't know how long it would take to end, but Severus was already aware that time was against him. A countdown announced by the phantom of doom, threatening his loved ones for unknown reasons.

  The reasons didn't matter, at least not for the moment. The only important thing was to leave the city immediately and go to the Royal Hunters' House, where the Mercer-Archeos awaited.

  I’m glad you’re back, Viktor, but I have a new mission for you.

  Drawing the soul shard from his pocket, he headed straight for the black door protected by an invisible barrier. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t prepared.

  All Severus knew was fear, and fear was going to be his guide, for better or for worse.

  And this time you won’t go alone.

  release of Arc 2 will probably be delayed a bit longer. The truth is, I haven't been writing much because of the delicate political and economic situation where I live: there's a real chance I could lose my job soon. I'm doing my best to maintain my productivity, but the situation is depressing and draining my motivation.