Eight years prior, during a chill Veridian winter, young Fenwick Corvan first felt the surge.
His mother, out foraging in the Lower Undercroft, had left him to mind their modest loft. A craving for warmth, a fleeting thought about the dormant hearth-stone, and then a profound vibration emanated from the ancient obsidian slab. Not flames, but a deep, resonant hum, an internal pulse that mirrored his own.
Fen quickly learned to coax the inert into motion. A discarded data-slate would hover, shimmering with faint blue light. Dust motes, stirred by his will, danced in intricate patterns. He could sense the latent energies within the city’s ancient strata, a whispered language only he seemed to hear.
“Mother, look! The glyphs, they’re responding!”
That evening, Fen eagerly demonstrated his connection to the dormant energies. His mother, returning with a meager haul of fungal spores and salvage, watched the floating obsidian fragment. Her face was etched not with wonder, but with a profound weariness.
“Fenwick, promise me. Promise you will never use this. Not carelessly. Never in front of others.”
“Why?”
Fen, usually compliant, couldn’t fathom suppressing such a captivating power. A strange ache settled in his chest.
His mother brewed a thin nutrient broth. For the first time, she spoke of the world beyond their forgotten loft, the glittering spires far above.
“High above us, there are the Archons.”
Archons, she explained, were the progeny of the Ascended, ancient beings who had once guided humanity through the Great Collapse. They inherited potent abilities, ruling Veridia as both protectors and absolute sovereigns.
Their half-blooded offspring were known as Sentinels. Sentinels also possessed powers, though diminished, and served as the Archons’ dedicated enforcers. Fen’s mother believed his dormant abilities were akin to those of a Sentinel, inherited from a lineage she refused to name.
“If you ever venture too high,” she warned, her voice tight, “the Archons will find you. They will take you. Force you into their service.”
“Archons are like the masters of the data-spires. Sentinels are like the automated drones they command. Sometimes, they might upgrade them, keep them functional. But they can also reprogram them, or simply decommission them, without a second thought.”
Archons, for all their power, endlessly jockeyed for more. And Sentinels were often the expendable pawns in their silent wars.
It was like a master sending a drone to breach a corrupted firewall, while staying safe in their secure network. A chilling thought, even for a child.
As she spoke, a desolation Fen had never witnessed settled upon her features.
“Fenwick, don’t you want to stay with Mother? For a long, long time?”
“Yes.”
“Then hide this power. Or they will come. And you’ll never see me again.”
“Okay, I promise! I won’t use it where anyone can see!”
Eight years had passed since Fenwick made that vow. Even after his mother succumbed to the Rot-cough, Fenwick remained in the Scribe’s Loft, meticulously cataloging salvaged fragments of forgotten knowledge. He avoided the glittering spires, refused to become an Archon’s drone.
---
“Incompetents.”
Fenwick closed the heavy blast-door to his loft. Just after dawn, before the morning mist fully cleared the Lower Undercroft, a group of scavengers had come. They accused him of Old Man Garrow’s disappearance a few days prior.
Signs of a shard-lurk attack were clear enough for anyone observant. But they insisted Fenwick, with his odd ways and reclusive habits, had somehow lured Garrow to the creature. Baseless, crude accusations.
Fenwick, unwilling to escalate to physical confrontation, merely nudged the static within their minds, a barely perceptible chill that caused their teeth to chatter, their hands to tremble. They fled, muttering, their anger curdled by sudden, inexplicable unease.
Next time he descended to the market level, they would likely try to shortchange him on salvaged data-slates or rare crystals. Then, Fen would simply apply a stronger, more unsettling vibration to their perception. A familiar, irritating cycle.
Lost in thought, a sharp rap echoed against the blast-door. *Bang bang*.
Fenwick sighed, a long, quiet exhalation. He pulled the door open, a subtle warning tightening his posture.
“Who is it now? Do you seek… disorientation?”
Had their short-term memory already failed them? The scavengers were usually more persistent.
Yet, the figure beyond the door was not one of the grime-stained youths. A man, perhaps in his late forties, stood cloaked in travel-stained synth-fabric. A weary, almost apologetic smile creased his face.
“Ah… my apologies, young scholar. I’m a traveler. I hoped to impose for a brief respite. It seems I’ve chosen an inopportune moment.”
A traveler? In his eighteen years, Fenwick had encountered few people who willingly sought out the forgotten spaces. For a moment, his careful control wavered.
To think someone held such leisure, such disregard for the dangers of the Lower Undercroft.
Fenwick, momentarily stiff, stepped aside. His hand rested lightly on the doorframe, sensing its ancient structure.
“No, not at all. Please, enter. Some… unpleasant individuals had just departed.”
His voice, using the formal address his mother had taught him for elders, felt strangely unaccustomed. When was the last time he’d spoken without a trace of detachment, or veiled threat?
It must have been before he realized most inhabitants of the Undercroft, Old Man Garrow included, were nothing more than opportunistic shadows.
“If you would be so kind.”
Truthfully, to maintain his isolation, Fenwick should have dispatched the stranger with a decisive psychic nudge. But a strange longing for a simple, peaceful exchange flickered within him.
And besides, should the man prove hostile, Fenwick felt utterly confident in his ability to subdue him.
“Have you taken sustenance?”
“Not yet.”
“Nor have I. Perhaps you would join me?”
Fenwick gestured the traveler to a salvaged workbench that served as a table. He set out a bowl of rehydrated fungal paste, a preserved nutrient bar, and a few crystalline mineral salts. Scarcity was a constant companion in the forgotten levels.
One should always extend hospitality, his mother had taught him. A well-treated guest was less likely to harbor ill intent.
“This place offers little. My apologies.”
“What nonsense! This is a feast! My gratitude for the meal.”
The man’s words seemed genuine. He ate with an earnest hunger, as if days had passed since his last proper meal. Even while eating, his movements were precise, respectful—a stark contrast to the coarse manners of the scavengers.
He did not speak with a full mouth. He turned his head slightly when drinking from the clay cup. Perhaps the traveler sensed a similar meticulousness in Fenwick, for after a sip of water, he offered a kind observation.
“You possess good manners. Your parents must have instilled them well.”
“My mother did.”
Sensing Fenwick’s omission of a father, the traveler paused briefly. A faint hum of sympathy, almost like a low-frequency vibration, seemed to emanate from him.
“And… is your mother nearby? Your dwelling seems to accommodate only one.”
He must have noticed the single sleeping platform, the solitary existence.
Fenwick nodded. His voice remained level.
“She passed from illness a few cycles ago.”
The traveler’s expression momentarily darkened. He bowed his head, making a subtle gesture Fenwick had never witnessed—a gentle touching of thumb to forehead, then heart. An ancient sign of respect, perhaps.
“My condolences. To have raised such a thoughtful young man, she must surely reside now among the blessed, beyond the veil.”
“I hope so.”
When his mother first left, the mere thought of her had stolen his appetite, left him with an aching void. To speak of it now, with a quiet acceptance, was it a sign of maturity? Or merely the slow erosion of time, dulling the sharp edges of loss?
A sudden melancholy settled upon him. Fenwick, ever practical, changed the subject.
“More importantly, sir, what brings you to such a remote section of Veridia?”
“I passed through a habitation node nearby. Heard an elder lamenting a shard-lurk appearance, seeking a specialized resolver. Hearing his plight, I decided to investigate. I’m quite proficient in… conflict resolution.”
“Alone?”
A middle-aged man, past his prime, looking more suited to a scholar’s library than a hazardous encounter, claiming to face a creature of corrupted energy without visible weaponry? Fenwick’s brow furrowed.
His astonishment drew an awkward smile from the traveler.
“I am a Sentinel. I served House Lumina for sixty cycles. I can manage most such anomalies.”
At the word ‘Sentinel,’ Fenwick’s eyes widened. A sudden, cold prickle ran down his spine. The being his mother had warned him about, the servant of Archons…
But the tension quickly dissipated. Fenwick detected no malice in the man’s gaze, only a quiet fortitude. His rigid posture slowly eased.
“Is something amiss?” Kaelen asked, sensing the shift.
“It is merely… my first encounter with a Sentinel. And you do not appear to have served for sixty cycles.”
“Sentinels age at a slower rate, live longer than baseline humans. I am seventy-five cycles this year. For a Sentinel, I’ve aged gracefully. Archons, I hear, can easily persist for two or three centuries.”
Hearing this for the first time, Fenwick meticulously observed the man, a being of the same latent power as himself. Outwardly, Kaelen was indistinguishable from an ordinary human, aside from a certain underlying resilience in his movements, a healthy, robust complexion.
No overt display, no tell-tale shimmer. This was crucial.
It meant Fenwick could stand amidst the bustling marketplace of the Mid-Spires, and as long as he refrained from overt displays, no one would discern his true nature.
The realization was like a tight band around his chest suddenly loosening. A quiet exhalation of relief.
“To possess such longevity… it is truly remarkable.”
“Remarkable? Not at all! I find individuals like yourself far more so. To subsist in such a precarious location, where aberrations manifest, without relying on enhanced abilities? I could scarcely conceive of it.”
Contrary to Kaelen’s assumption, this was the first significant shard-lurk threat Fenwick had known since his birth. If such creatures were common, his mother, a baseline human, would never have sustained their existence in the Scribe’s Loft.
Indeed, it was his mother, who raised him here with no inherent powers, who truly deserved such praise.
“Now that I think on it, I failed to introduce myself. My name is Kaelen. Kaelen of Lumina—or rather, I should no longer refer to myself thus. Just Kaelen the Wanderer. And you are?”
“I am Fenwick. Fenwick Corvan. Scribe of the Forgotten Loft.”
“A resonant name.”
“You mentioned earlier that you ‘served’ a house. Does that imply you no longer do?”
“My vassal contract officially concluded a cycle ago. The house offered to retain me until my final breath, but… I wished to spend my later years in unrestricted travel. I’ve been tethered to a single house since my induction at fifteen cycles.”