Shadowborn exile a litrp.., p.5
Shadowborn Exile: A LitRPG Progression Fantasy, page 5
He searched for only one face.
Dayanne.
She stood near Eve, slightly apart from the rest, watching with intent. When their eyes met, something unspoken passed between the two—acknowledgment, curiosity, something else he couldn’t quite place.
And then Dayanne stepped forward. Without a word, she reached for the gourd at his waist, her hands careful but certain as she unhooked it. “Come, Lone-Eyed Wolf,” she said as the crowd started to part. “The Seer is waiting.”
“We’re going to the Sanctum now?” he asked.
“Come,” was all she said as she started off.
The Sanctum lay beneath the main halls of the settlement, carved deep into the bedrock. The deeper they descended, the colder the air became, the scent of damp stone thickening around them.
Dayanne continued on, her movements sure. For once, she did not simply rush him through the corridors, the Spectralist taking her time.
They reached a chamber jutting off a long, spiraling stairwell.
The walls bore intricate carvings, ancient and deliberate. Twisting skeletal forms intertwined with dark symbols, a record of the dead, those whose bones hadn’t been destroyed by the light of the flashwraiths. Some were full remains, others just pieces, skulls set into alcoves, femurs woven into the architecture like supports, and ribs hung from silvered rope. The entire room had a faint glow, the essence of the past lingering.
Dayanne traced a hand along the carvings, glancing at Attica. “Recognize any names, Lone-Eyed Wolf?”
Attica touched his face at the sound of his new name. His shade curled back—not just hesitant, but resistant.
Dayanne brushed her fingers against his arm, gentler now. “I’m only teasing. It’s a fitting name.” A pause. “What happened?”
“The brighthowler. It had two heads. I didn’t calculate that part.”
“So it’s the one that took your eye?”
“It is.”
“And for it, you took its two heads?”
“I did.”
“Fitting.” Her eyes softened slightly, her pupils dilating as she reached up and, without hesitation, placed a hand against his cheek. “But you didn’t need to push yourself so hard.”
A lump formed in his throat. His body shuddered, not from pain, but from something else, something he wouldn’t understand for years. A strange ache that had nothing to do with his wounds.
She must have felt the tremor in him because she pulled back. “Did I say something?”
“No,” he exhaled quickly. “It’s been a long night.”
“You didn’t have to do it in one day.”
“I did it for you.” The words slipped out before Attica could stop them. His shade tensed. So did she.
Dayanne stilled. “Me?”
“And me,” he corrected, stumbling over his words. “No, I mean I did it for the settlement. That’s what I meant. Sorry. Long night, like I said.” He reached for a pocket and produced the pearl-like manastone he had found for her. The stone was chipped, but its swirling red bands still shimmered like fire trapped in pearl. “This is for you.”
Delight spread across her face. “For me?”
“Yes,” Attica said, ignoring the way his hand suddenly trembled. “You like jewelry.”
Dayanne took the stone from him and examined it. She glanced down at the bracelets on her arms and the rings on her fingers, all of which gleamed in the darkened space. “You know me so well,” she finally said as she put the stone away.
“Not really, but …” Attica cleared his throat. He gestured at the bones. “Not exactly the place for this conversation.”
“Certainly not. In that case, come.” She motioned for him to follow. “I can tell you some of their stories later. But for now, the Seer is waiting. And Attica?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for the stone. I think I’ll have it turned into a necklace.”
The corridor led to a chamber bathed in light. Not the flickering glow of lanterns, but something harsher, more absolute. Attica stepped forward, and his remaining vision blurred. His shade recoiled, shrinking back into him as the brightness overwhelmed his senses.
He squeezed his eye shut as a voice echoed through the chamber.
“You have done well, Attica.” The Seer’s voice was thin and aged, yet it seemed to sink into him, ensnaring his thoughts, a whisper that could not be ignored.
Attica kept his gaze averted, head slightly bowed. The light threaded around him—not warm, not cold, but something else entirely. Something unnatural.
“He is now the Lone-Eyed Wolf,” Dayanne said as she stepped forward to present a different flask, one made of carved bone that belonged to the Seer. The slightest brush of her hand against him sent a spark racing through his body, igniting every nerve at once. He exhaled, steadying himself.
The Seer examined the ritual flask with a quiet, knowing hum. “Had you drunk all of this,” she mused, “you would have been banished, Lone-Eyed Wolf.”
“They never told me that,” he managed to say.
“No,” the Seer admitted. “They did not. It is a test of character, a test you have passed. You have completed your task. You are now a full-fledged member of the Vanguard.”
The words struck deeper than he expected. A shiver coursed through him, exhaustion momentarily forgotten. “I …”
“Despite your wound, you have done it—what few men and women have been able to do.” Her voice turned ceremonial, her words falling into place as if they had been spoken a thousand times before. “For the settlement.”
“For the Painter,” Attica echoed automatically.
The light pulsed once more, and then dimmed.
When he opened his one good eye, Attica found the Seer seated before him, sagging into her chair, her frail body nearly swallowed by its mass. Her skin resembled wax that had melted and then hardened again. Deep-set eyes peered out from beneath heavy lids, ancient and knowing.
The chamber, once an unbearable void of light, now felt different. Smaller, more intimate.
“Do you know what these words mean, Attica?” The Seer watched him closely, her fingers tapping against the arm of her chair. “Hmmm?”
Attica hesitated. “I know what the settlement is. I know the Painter is …” He faltered. The words had been drilled into him since childhood, spoken without thought. But now, when asked directly, he found himself at a loss.
“The Spiralrealm was once ruled by the Baffled King, a creation of the Painter,” she said. “The Baffled King is responsible for the loss of the color in our world. Now, flashwraiths bring violent light. Shadowborn maintain the dark. Vanguard like yourself protect us. And thus, the balance. Without it, the spiral would collapse into itself.”
Attica listened, the weight of her words settling uneasily in his chest.
The Baffled King. He had never heard of such a thing. He glanced at Dayanne, searching for some confirmation, but she only lowered her gaze.
“It is time,” the Seer murmured. She produced a different flask, one made of intricately carved bone, and uncorked it. “Come forward,” she told him as she placed her finger over the opening. The Seer let a single drop of shimmering essence cling to her fingertip—thick, slow, reverent.
Attica stepped closer, lowering to one knee before her. A scent wafted toward him—not unpleasant, but old, like the dust of forgotten halls. His shade quivered at his back, seeping away from the Seer, reluctant.
“This part of the ritual may bring visions,” she warned, her finger still in the air. “Are you ready?”
“I am,” he told her as he swept his hair aside.
She pressed her finger into his forehead.
For a heartbeat, the world exploded with color.
The walls swelled, their carvings shifting in impossible ways, the very stone stirring like it remembered something lost. And then it all went gray again.
The vision struck him. The settlement, burning. Shrieks tore through the air. The Vanguard, vanquished. Flames raged where stone had once stood, the walls crumbling into ruin. The banners, the halls, the people—all were gone. Bodies scattered in the chaos, lost beneath the destruction.
And in the center of it all, a child of light.
Attica gasped, staggering back, his chest heaving. His knees hit the ground, his hand shooting to his forehead, as if trying to wipe away whatever she had placed there.
Dayanne was already at his side, steadying him. “Attica—”
But the Seer’s voice halted her. “Wait.”
Attica turned, breath unsteady. “Yes?”
The Seer lifted a frail hand. “Dayanne, you may leave.”
A pause. “Are you certain?” Dayanne glanced at Attica, uncertainty flickering in her eyes. But when the Seer did not respond, she turned and left.
Once she was gone, the chamber pulsed again, light rising from all corners. The Seer’s gaze did not waver. “What did you see, Lone-Eyed Wolf?”
Attica hesitated.
“Please, tell me.”
“I saw the destruction of the settlement,” he said, his voice catching in his throat.
“And?”
“A child made of light. I do not understand.”
“Whose child?”
“I do not know.”
She studied him, the dim glow shifting across the deep lines of her face. “Yours?”
Attica’s breath caught. “I …” He swallowed. “I do not know.”
The Seer exhaled, her body sinking deeper into her chair. The light around her swelled until Attica had to avert his gaze. The chamber felt different now. The ritual was over, but something had changed. Something that would not leave him.
Finally, her voice came, low and knowing. “That is all, for now.”
Attica stood slowly, unsteady. The moment lingered—unspoken, unfinished. A pressure he couldn’t name. A question without a shape.
It would be many years before he fully understood what he had seen.
Part Two
The Last Crazed Grin of Hadrian the UnsHaken
Chapter Ten
Seven years since the trial. Seven years since Attica carved his place into the Vanguard—since his mother gave him a name that would not be forgotten.
Attica the Lone-Eyed Wolf.
A fitting name for a warrior who never wavered, never faltered. A fitting name for a man who refused to break.
But the ominous mist never truly settled in the Spiralrealm. It hung in the air, a gnawing afterthought shifting with the unseen breath of the colorless world.
And things were changing.
Certain flashwraiths, once rare, had grown common, like the two-headed brighthowler. The Vanguard had adapted, just as they always had, but each year brought new challenges, new threats.
Attica had changed as well.
His hair had grown even longer, enough to partially obscure the scarred remains of his missing eye. His shoulders had broadened, his frame thickened through years of hard-earned survival. The brashness of youth had sharpened into something colder, more deliberate. The Spiralrealm didn’t forgive softness, and neither did his shade. While they still didn’t always get along, Attica had learned to live with it …
Attica crouched at the edge of a narrow ridge, his one good eye locked onto the hulking form that lumbered through the ravine below.
A flareback, easily ten feet tall at the shoulder, its cracked, stonelike plating shifting as it moved. The monster’s swollen mana nodules pulsed erratically, glowing like molten veins beneath its hide.
“Not yet,” he whispered to Tiago, an ashling, the youngest of the hunting party. Sixteen—restless and reckless. Still trying to prove himself.
Attica had complained about the boy to Hadrian once. “He moves like a fool. Takes too many risks.”
Hadrian had barely lifted his gaze. “Reminds me of someone.”
Attica scowled at the memory.
“Give him time,” Hadrian said on the tail end of a cough. “If death decides to take him early, it will be his own doing.”
Below, the flareback’s core, a massive star-shaped nodule, flared in uneven bursts. Attica knew what that meant. These large flashwraiths didn’t just die—they detonated. If that happened, the mana they carried would disperse too fast for the Vanguard to harvest. Wasted essence. Wasted effort.
He signaled to the hunting party with a sharp, silent motion, tightening his fingers into a fist.
They responded immediately.
Three ashlings and Eve, a seasoned huntress, shifted into formation. They moved like shadows, their shades suppressing their presence. All except one, Tiago. His shade flickered unevenly, edges fraying, restraining him.
Attica’s jaw tightened as he watched the boy struggle with his shade.
The plan had been simple.
The flareback was powerful, but not invulnerable. Its chest plating protected its core, but its underbelly was exposed in the right moment—just before it released its stored light. They would use their shades to push through the flaylights hovering in the air, confuse the hulking monster, strike before it could combust, and slay the beast.
This had been the technique they had found worked best on flarebacks that were especially vibrant, signaling they would soon explode.
Attica glanced at Tiago, hoping to communicate what he was thinking through the harshness of his gaze. Don’t move too quickly. Let Eve and I do the work. Watch and learn.
Tiago huffed, bristling as if he could feel the weight of Attica’s unspoken command. Then, before anyone could stop him, a stone dislodged beneath his boot. It clattered down the ravine, a sharp, grating scrape against the rock.
Attica’s breath caught. He motioned to the young man and his shade surged forward, snapping around Tiago like a living vise, yanking him back into the shadows before the sound could betray their position any further.
The flaylights reacted first.
The symbiotic parasites, once clustered in the air like drifting embers, exploded into motion. Their glow flared, an erratic spark of gold and white, casting eerie illumination through the mist.
The flareback lurched in their direction, the earth trembling before Attica even registered the movement.
The beast reared up, light surging through its body like molten veins.
Too fast. Too soon. The eruption was imminent.
Attica reacted on instinct: “Scatter!”
The Vanguard broke apart just as the flareback unleashed a searing wave of essence.
The blast ripped through the mist, turning the air into a storm of raw essence. It struck the ground where they had been moments before, reducing stone to splintered slag. The shock wave sent Tiago tumbling, his shade thrashing against the storm of flaylights attacking him.
The flareback locked onto Tiago and charged, the ground cracking beneath its weight, claws shearing into the stone as it barreled forward, an avalanche of living fire.
Attica moved to protect the youth.
His shade unfurled, wrapping around his legs, amplifying his speed as he surged forward to intercept the charge. His enormous shadowblade formed just in time to carve a deep gash along the flareback’s plated shoulder.
The beast reeled, snarling, yet its armor held.
Eve flanked left, vanishing into the terrain, striking when the flareback’s attention wavered.
Attica wove through the chaos, his movements fluid, tactical, instinct honed by years of survival. But the flareback’s sheer power unraveled the battle, each stomp a quake, each flare of light a disorienting blast of brilliance warping the terrain, casting phantom afterimages that made it impossible to tell where the real threat stood.
The heat warped his vision, bending the mist like molten glass.
Attica barely dodged a swipe from its burning claws. He countered, shadowblade slicing along its flank.
But its armor held.
Then, a misstep. One of the ashlings, a quiet young man named Vilken, stumbled into the open, overwhelmed by the flaylights. The flareback pivoted, light building at its core. A direct hit would kill the young man. The boy’s shade reacted instantly by slamming Vilken into an outcropping of jagged rock, the impact knocking him out cold.
“Get them clear!” Attica barked to Eve.
“On it!”
The flareback shifted. Its stance lowered. Attica’s shade pulsed, recognizing the moment before he did.
He exhaled, then lunged low, his shade gliding him beneath the beast’s guard, shadowblade angled for the exposed underbelly. At the same time—Tiago moved. Still reeling from his mistake, the young buck threw himself into the fray and drove his shadowblade deep into the flareback’s exposed core and used his shade to fling himself away.
The flareback shrieked, an ear-splitting, agony-filled wail as it staggered, mana pouring from its wounds in chaotic, luminous streaks of light. Its star-core nodule twitched violently, flaring as it prepared to release a final, violent surge.
Attica didn’t hesitate.
His shadowblade plunged deep, striking alongside Tiago’s opening attack, finishing the job the younger warrior couldn’t.
The flareback convulsed.
Its body shuddered, light unraveling, folding in on itself. There was no time to react as the air thickened, the very essence of the beast threatening to rupture.
It was too late. The flareback would tear itself apart, and it would take them all with it.
Chapter Eleven
The flareback’s light writhed—boiling, resisting, fighting its own death.
For a breath, Attica was certain this was it. The light swelled, a heartbeat from detonation—a final, blinding rupture that would consume them all.
He had pushed too hard, risked too much.
He wouldn’t make it back to the settlement. Wouldn’t see Dayanne again, not now, not on the eve of something so important, so life-changing.
But then the light cracked.
A final, shuddering death rattle escaped the beast’s chest as its massive form gave out. It crashed down in a heaving, thunderous collapse, the impact shaking the ground beneath their feet. Its star core pulsed once, flickered weakly, then went dark.
