The concussive wave ripped through Varis, not as a blow, but as a chilling embrace. He felt the residual heat of the vaporized star-fragment, a phantom warmth against his monstrous, chitin-plated arm. Below, the academy's colossal iron walls were scarred, their highest battlements melted into grotesque rivulets, but the city itself was spared. A sudden, violent updraft caught him, buffeting his transformed form. The black ichor wept freely from his eyes, tracing hot, slick paths down his jaw, and the whispers, now a cacophony of guttural murmurs and ancient pronouncements, clawed at the edges of his sanity. He descended, a shadow against the dawn, landing amidst the pulverized concrete of the outermost parapets with a sickening crunch.
Ash rained down, thick and grey, coating his dark plating like a fresh snowfall. The air reeked of ozone and scorched rock. Around him, the remnants of the garrison's elite defense cadres—Solaris lancers with their gleaming polearms, and Iron-Guard heavy troopers in their reinforced exo-skeletons—staggered back, weapons lowering not in reverence, but in abject terror. Their faces, visible through shattered visors, were twisted masks of disbelief and revulsion. They had seen the monstrous silhouette against the sky. They had seen the impossible destruction. And they did not see a savior.
“W-what in the Blighted Depths is that thing?” a lancer stammered, his voice cracking.
Another, older, with the insignia of a Legion Commander emblazoned on his shoulder, found his voice, though it trembled with barely suppressed panic. “It… it’s a corrupted! A fiend from the Wastes! How did it breach the Caldera?” His gaze finally fixed on Varis’s burning pupils. “No… no, that form… it’s the discarded noble! The repair scrub!”
The recognition sparked a new wave of terror, quickly hardening into righteous fury. This wasn't the heroic return Varis, in his fragile, hidden pride, might have subconsciously craved. This was the raw, unvarnished fear of those who clung to their carefully constructed order, now shattered by something utterly outside their understanding.
“By the First Flame!” the commander shrieked, his tone regaining its authority, though edged with hysteria. “That *thing* saved us only to unleash its abominations upon us! It is an apostate! A sacrilege! Arrest it! Execute it on sight! Before the corruption spreads!”
The command, sharp and final, echoed across the devastated stonework. A dozen Solaris guards, their polearms humming to life, formed a trembling arc. Pure panic shook their hands, but ingrained obedience to the System and their officer held sway. The glowing tips of their weapons rose, aimed squarely at Varis’s chest.
Varis stood there, unmoving, the black ichor still weeping from his eyes, the cacophony of the Old God’s whispers swelling to a roar in his mind. *Blasphemer. Sacrilege. Corruption.* The words, once stinging, now resonated with a dark, perverse truth. He had saved them. He had averted their annihilation. And their response was not gratitude, but condemnation, fear of the unknown. The sheer, grotesque absurdity of it all struck him with the force of a physical blow. The decades of his life, defined by their scorn, their dismissal, their arrogant judgment, culminated in this moment.
A laugh, thin and reedy at first, escaped his throat. It quickly deepened, growing into a guttural, booming sound that scraped against the ruined landscape, echoing off the iron walls. It wasn't a laugh of triumph, but of profound, bitter release. His chest heaved with it, the sound raw and unhinged. The defensive shell, the fragile ego he had protected so fiercely, finally, spectacularly shattered. There was no more Mender Varis Korveng. Only the pariah, the outcast, the thing of the Wastes they feared he was. And it felt… free.
[Lore Fragment Acquired: ‘The Heretic’s Ascent’]
[Vessel at 96%. The Old God revels.]
“Silence, abomination!” the commander roared, his face purpling. “Fire! End this blight!”
Before the lancers could discharge their weapons, a new figure stepped onto the terrace, his robes billowing in the ash-laden wind. Grand-Artificer Morzan. He moved with a calm authority, his eyes, however, gleaming with a predatory satisfaction. Behind him, a fresh cadre of heavily armored peacekeepers, their faces hidden by featureless black helms, marched into position, their plasma-rifles at the ready.
“Hold your fire, Commander Veridian,” Morzan’s voice, usually so warm, was now cold and sharp, cutting through the chaos. “This creature… it is merely a broken instrument. Its use is concluded. I, Morzan, Grand-Artificer of the First Flame, will personally cleanse this abomination.”
Morzan approached, his gaze locked onto Varis, a chilling smile playing on his lips. “You were a convenient tool, boy. A surprisingly resilient one. But the First Flame does not tolerate such… *deviations*. The Vessel is nearly ready. And now, I shall harvest the divinity you so foolishly absorbed.” He raised a hand, a gauntlet of polished iron glinting in the pale light. “Troopers. Secure the subject. Prepare for extraction.”
The soldiers advanced, their heavy boots thudding on the broken concrete. Varis snarled, his shadowy tendrils writhing, ready to unleash the raw power that still pulsed within him. He was a weapon, yes, but he wouldn’t be Morzan’s puppet any longer.
Then, a blinding flash erupted from the direction of the Bastion’s main power conduits, followed by a deafening, tearing roar. The ground shuddered violently, throwing the Enforcers off balance. A colossal geyser of superheated steam and molten metal blasted skyward, tearing a ragged hole in the lower walls. Black smoke, laced with shimmering emerald flecks, billowed outwards, engulfing the entire walkway in an instant, reducing visibility to zero.
“What in the Blighted Depths was that?!” Veridian screamed, his voice muffled by the sudden inferno.
Through the swirling, acrid smoke, Varis heard the agonized cries of the Solaris infantry and troopers. He felt the rapid-fire discharge of plasma-rifles, wildly spraying into the choking darkness. Kaelia. It had to be Kaelia. She had done it. She had detonated the reserve conduits, crippling their defenses and providing him an escape.
“The Mender! He’s escaping! Stop him!” Morzan’s furious roar cut through the din, but his voice was already distant, swallowed by the expanding chaos. The ground beneath Varis's feet groaned, a deep, resonant rumble. The Bastion was built into the maw of a dormant volcano. The depths beckoned.
Varis turned, his vision a blur of black ichor and emerald smoke. He launched himself over the crumbling parapet, not down into the city, but *into* the yawning, smoking chasm that had just opened in the wall, a direct path into the molten heart of Mount Cindora. As he plummeted, the Old God’s whispers became a furious shriek, demanding he turn back, demanding he complete the assimilation.
His body spasmed. He coughed, a violent, wracking sound, and a small, perfectly formed black gear, intricate and cold, clattered onto his chitin-plated palm, slick with his own ichor. It was a piece of the System, spat out. He crushed it under his thumb, a tiny, satisfying *snap*.
“I’m not fixing armor anymore; I’m breaking the System.”