The captured officer hung shackled from the jagged outcropping of black stone, his uniform rent, blood-crusted. Swollen slits tracked Guram Beka's approach across the shale. The S-rank adjudicator halted, vambraces gleaming dull under the bruised, overcast sky. “You let him slip away,” Guram said, voice flat as slate. “The fugitive, Zohrab Varshan. A blight on the realm, a remnant of the pre-Judgment rot. You allowed his existence to persist.” The shackled man coughed red foam onto his tunic. “He… he was cunning. The beast… a diversion. We were spread thin…” Guram tilted his head. “Excuses are the currency of the weak. The Mandate was clear: capture or cleanse. You achieved neither.” Around them, a dozen sentries stood rigid, their eyes fixed on the stones. “This man,” Guram continued, raising his right hand, “allowed corruption to fester. He will serve as a lesson.” A spear of shimmering light, the hue of trapped dawn, condensed above his palm. The heat seared through the damp air. “Imperfection will not be tolerated. Order demands cleansing.” With a flick of his wrist, the lance discharged, a blinding beam skewering the prisoner's ribcage. A sound like wet parchment tearing preceded a sharp flash. Flesh and bone vaporized, leaving only drifting ash. The irons clattered empty against the rock. [Warden Faldur cleansed by Guram Beka. Recompense: 100 System Points.] Guram lowered his arm, the light guttering out. “Let this failure serve as notice. Zohrab Varshan will be found and purged.” He turned his gaze toward the western waste. *** Days later, deep within the winding, root-choked trenches of his hidden garden, Zohrab wiped sweat from his brow. His breath plumed in the chill air. Guram Beka. An S-rank adjudicator. Zohrab had known the type before the fall—methodical, merciless, and relentless. Against that scale of violence, an unranked fugitive was merely dry tinder. But Zohrab had cultivated more than just rare plants. He had cultivated cunning. He had tracked the migratory patterns of the carapace-crawlers for two cycles. The eyeless behemoths trundled through the blighted scrub, armored in slabs of mossy shale, predictable in both route and appetite. His nursery beds required dense viscera, and the crawler's vitals offered prime stock. He had dug deep, lining the pit floor with rotting trench-moss as bait. Above it rested a crosshatch of fire-hardened taproots steeped in garden toxin, masked by scree and dry scrub. A rhythmic pounding vibrated through the trench floor. Zohrab flattened his spine against the clay embankment. The six-legged crawler lumbered into view, bulbous skull tasting the air. It paused at the rim of the drop, snout twitching over the masked pit. The creature stepped forward. Woven branches snapped like dry bone beneath its bulk. It dropped with a hollow thud, impaling its soft belly across the venom-tipped stakes. It thrashed, claws gouging the trench sides, but root-bound clay held firm. Within minutes, the neurotoxin stiffened its limbs into dead weight. Once the lungs ceased rattling, Zohrab climbed down with an iron cleaver. He excised the fibrous dorsal plate, the bile sack, and the dense four-chambered heart. As his blade scored beneath the carapace, metal caught on scarred tissue: a triple-spiral brand branded directly into muscle fibers, older than the beast itself. He sliced the branded leather free and stowed it in his satchel. Back in his cultivation trench, he prepared a new bed of nutrient-rich loam, laced with ground-up mineral rock. He laid the Umbra-Husker’s heart onto the soil, then activated his skill. [Suture] target acquired: Umbra-Husker Heart. Substrate: Enriched Loam. Proceed? He laid his palm flat on the warm muscle. Threads of pale light bridged flesh to soil, weaving arterial tubes into the root network. A lattice of foreign vitality locked into the garden's bed. He worked until the last sliver of twilight faded, the Umbralands plunging into a deeper, more profound darkness. As he climbed from the ravine rim, a flare split the western horizon leagues away. A luminous lance pierced down through the cloud deck into a distant basalt peak. The ensuing concussion tore across the basin, rattling loose gravel against his boots. The signature was unmistakable: Guram Beka's lance, venting its yield into bedrock. Zohrab looked down at the branded hide in his palm, fingers clamping tight over the spiral etchings. The gulf between raw destructive output and his threadbare skill remained an unbridged chasm. *** Irine Khvar pulled her cloak tight against the grit blowing through Cinderpoint Keep. Acid-etched towers sagged along the ruined perimeter, framing a sky the color of dried brine. It looked less like an outpost than a cemetery. Inside the main administrative shed, the air was just as cold, but thankfully still. Dust motes danced in the anemic light filtering through a grimy window. Her work table sat unbalanced against the wall, stacked with requisition ledgers for dead patrols and casualty figures from the southern perimeter. She began sorting, her fingers stiff. Beneath a stack of brittle, curling parchment, her hand brushed against a loose floorboard. Curiosity, a habit that had already cost her dearly, pricked at her. She knelt, prying at the warped wood. It lifted easily, revealing a small, dry cavity. Inside lay a cloth-wrapped slab of unblemished alloy, devoid of Citadel inspector stamps. Its casing was seamless, dark as river glass, retaining a low, resonant warmth. Irine thumbed an indented bevel along its rim. The surface flared softly, projecting an interface uncoupled from any known administrative cipher: three radiating lines curled into a central helix, fixed upon the dark pane.

The Sunstone Lance