One of his aides barreled into the office. “Excuse me, sir!” the Arcanite announced with an energy far too frantic for an 8:00am meeting. “There’s an urgent issue regard—”
The Governor cleared his throat sharply, fixing the aide with a stare before flicking his eyes toward the listening canine ears seated in front of him, then back again. The aide bowed in apology and retreated from the office.
“Yes, we are all worried about Caleb’s status,” the Governor reiterated as the phone behind him began to ring.
“We’ll dispatch now, then,” Kai said, rising from his seat and offering a courteous bow.
The Governor’s eyes filled again, shimmer pooling beneath the garnet sheen. “If there is anything I can provide in assistance…” he trailed off as the phone continued to ring.
“Thank you,” Kai replied, already reaching for the door handle. “It seems you’re busy this morning, so we won’t burden you.”
The Governor lifted the phone, then set it back onto its cradle. “Ah yes. This is our utmost concern, after all! Please let my aide know I’m ready for him now, if you see him outside.”
As they exited, Nico made eye contact with the aide standing right outside the door and said nothing.
***
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [ ? Lycanthropy ]
The fox bounded across fractured isles hanging above the bog. Each stone slab, slick with mud and moss, shifted beneath his weight, spilling water into the mist below. The droplets vanished long before they reached the bottom, like everything else that had fallen before.
His claws dug in while his tail adjusted with each turn to keep balance. Ahead, the slabs shrank as the gaps between them widened, ensuring any mistake would send the fox plunging into the fog.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [ ? Gale Step | “wind jump” ]
A surge of wind burst from his hind legs, propelling him high enough to clear a blast of fire that seared the stone beneath him. Within the heat, a specter materialized, composed only of tattered robes twisting around a core of flame. With a shimmer, it blinked back out of existence.
Another shape shimmered into view ahead, slush dripping from its sleeves as it hurled a barrage of ice spears through the air. Each projectile sliced through the mist, scattering trails of snowflakes across the path.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [ ? Zephyr Veil | “wind shield & sword” ]
Nico twisted midair, coiling wind around his body in a tight spiral. The current deflected several ice spears as he slipped through a narrow gap in a smooth glide. One shard still grazed his shoulder. Its chill tore through his fur, burning cold along his back.
Not about to lose focus, he steadied his breath and on an inhale, snapped his tail to release the gathered wind in a single burst. The gale caught a specter the moment it blinked back into existence, shredding through its form until it unraveled into ribbons of black mana.
Even after the specters vanished, their scents lingered bitter on his senses. It was enough for him to track where they’d appear next.
Gold energy pulsed through his paws as he followed three acrid trails through the air, readying his counter at the end of their trajectory.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [ ??? Arc Lash | stuns on contact | “electric whip” ]
Lightning unfurled, gaining momentum as veiled figures materialized right into its sweep, cores burning with distinct elements: fire, water, lightning.
On a lateral platform, another specter with an earthen core sparkled into existence. A wave of sludge launched across the path at its command.
The wolf vaulted upward, his form also allowing him to platform with ease.
Kai’s inscriptions flared the instant his paws met the sludge. The first sigil froze it into a brittle landing; the second triggered as he pushed off, vaporizing the moisture within it. The thick rush of stream blurred the line of sight of the specters ahead.
He exhaled a charge of azure mana into the steam. Its vapor condensed into jagged crystals, hung in brief suspension, before his tail swept through, shooting them forward. The shards pierced through a cluster of riftborn, each strike shattering their cores in sharp bursts of light. Their dying wails stuttered out into static as the bodies disintegrated into a storm of black sparks.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
It finally gave them a moment to catch their breath. The specters were a rough welcome after they’d unraveled Imae’s target rift overnight, made the morning update, and then been redirected south when Caleb failed to report.
He wasn’t sure when confidence had crept in. That this could be handled so deftly, considering who maintained this rift and how long Tellur had been living with the consequences. With everyone organizing around him—routes, timing, inventory, portioning mana to expend—maybe he had assumed they’d thought to make it manageable for him. That they understood this wasn’t his job.
But now, with his lungs straining and sleep deprivation blurring his vision, maybe he was just here to be—
Both Lycans’ ears perked.
The rift howled, dragging mist, reeds, and raw mana into a spiraling vortex. In its center, shapes flickered between smoke and fabric around condensed elemental cores, forming new specters.
Gold light crackled from his paws as he raced to the next platform, fracturing in erratic flashes. He dug his claws into the surface and forced a sharp exhale, pulling the current back under control. Above, Kai vaulted onto higher isles, propelled by bursts of fires through the fog.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [ ??? Thunderburst | “electric aoe” ]
Thunderous sparks exploded outward in all directions with a rolling concussion of thunder. Each riftborn struck by the pulse seized and convulsed in place. Their outlines burned white against the dark, illuminating the mist in rhythmic flashes.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [ ? Gale Step | “wind jump” ]
Wind surged beneath Nico’s paws, but the lift came uneven. He landed hard, claws skidding against the slick surface as static flared along his fur.
Above, Kai’s breath was ragged, but he steadied an inhale. Blue light pulsed weakly through his chest, flickering once before he forced it steady. His exhale ignited into a torrent of azure flame that tore across the sky and poured down through the mist. The fire consumed the stunned specters, melting their cores down to patterings of ash and ember. When the blaze faded, Kai’s shoulders dropped, his chest still lit with the faint pulse of spent mana
The rift refused to yield. It dragged at the air, tightening its pull and spinning the vortex darker and faster. Hundreds of eyes snapped open inside the fog.
“They’re not slowing,” Nico said in short breaths as he crouched and triggered another gale step. The burst carried him aside just before a bolt split the ground where he’d stood. Sparks leapt through the water, the swamp hissing under the charge.
“Then we don’t either.” Kai’s voice was rough. He gathered mana beneath his paws, sending it through the mud before detonating it into a surge of steam. Specters flailed through the rising stream, blind to their movement.
His mana swept through, freezing pockets of vapor into jagged steps that locked in place. The rift, indifferent to gravity, accepted the design and let the platforms hang suspended above the churn. The Lycans broke into a sprint. Their claws struck frost in a heavy rhythm, shattering some of the steps on impact, but leaving enough intact to carry them forward.
They bounded off the last of the ice and landed hard on floating patches of mud that surged up to meet their fur. Nico hated that. The unstable footing forced them to slow, but the specters vanished entirely as they reached a section of stone roadway torn loose from the ground, suspended above the bog.
The Lycans slowed, catching their breath as they walked farther along the causeway. The stone held their weight—a low bar, but a relief for ground to behave like ground.
Nico tried to scent for specters through broken, shallow breaths, but his focus was dulling. “Maybe Caleb actually did just die in here,” he mused.
“Don’t get my hopes up,” Kai replied, his exhale stretching into a weird yawn.
Nico matched it with a yawn of roughly the same level of theatrics.
Each rift’s time was uniquely skewed from real-world time, which made Caleb’s whole proposition dumb, but not something they were going to argue when he’d said it so earnestly. Nico did the time math anyway. If he started counting from the last time he’d been in a bed, adjusted for rift time, added a margin for emotional labor, then adjusted for rift time again—
According to his calculations, they’d been awake for about a thousand years at this point.
Nico shook the static out of fur, then let out another big yawn, pawing at his eyes. As he did, he caught Kai circling a patch of dirt—like he was judging whether or not it was okay to lie down on.
The fox found himself circling as well, inspired to also find a comfortable looking patch of dirt, to sniff around the perimeter for any sign of the rift core. He was a little delirious and honestly hoped it would just be there, instead of requiring him to dissect layers of scent to identify which was the most ozone-y of them all.
He sniffed anyway: ozone, ozone, smoke, static, ozone, mud, reeds, ozone, mahogany, ozone.
“…”
He trotted over to the wolf napping on the ground and gave him a good, thorough smell. The wolf headbutted him.
“…” Kai waited for an explanation as he raised onto his feet.
“You aren’t the source.”
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [ ? Gale Step | “wind jump” ]
Nico drove wind straight into Kai’s side, shoving them both off position as two earthen slabs erupted where the wolf had been and smashed together. The impact pulverized the stone instantly. Fine grit burst outward and rode the gale step through the space, spreading into a dense haze that filled the air with particulate matter.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [ ? Air Veil | Duration: 15 min | "air filter” ]
Wind wrapped tight around Nico as he pushed a veil toward Kai, shaping narrow pockets they could breathe through. The wind split the haze for a brief second—enough to catch sight of Kai moving into the air veil. The dust quickly folded back in and swallowed everything beyond their barriers.
More silt lifted as the surface degraded under repeated earth manipulation, an almost indiscernable mana pulsing through it. The stone broke down into grit, then finer still, each shift feeding the haze. Any adjustment Nico made with wind only churned it higher. There was no water on this stretch of causeway, and the dust stripped what little moisture clung to the air. A veil wide enough to see through would drain what remained of his mana. He didn’t know the silt’s composition; fire or lightning risked combustion.
The stone beneath them rumbled. By his feet, a panel of earth slid open, revealing a device embedded in the causeway. It beeped.
Piercing, shrill screeches tore through the haze. Nico’s ears flattened reflexively as he dropped lower, muscles locking as the sound drove straight through him.
He smashed the device beside him, but the shrieks kept coming, bleeding in from every direction at once.