The days—if they could be called that—moved differently in the Sanctum after the breach.
Tarsis grew quieter. His instructions were sharper, more urgent. Every motion in the Forge felt like preparation. Even the gears in the walls spun just a little faster, the low hum of the Sanctum's song pitched higher, more strained.
Haraza could feel it in his chest.
The Seed pulsed, not like a heartbeat, but like a ticking clock.
He stood on a high gantry above the Forge of Echoes, watching rings of training constructs revolve in spirals of light. Below, the illusions clashed and whirled—projections of monsters, ancient warriors, Rift-spawned entities with too many eyes and not enough limbs. Shadows of a war that hadn't yet begun.
Tarsis approached from the lift, arms crossed behind his back.
("You've done all that can be done here,") he said. ("You've absorbed the Sanctum's teachings faster than any Riftmarked I've trained. But the answers you seek won't come from within these walls anymore.")
Haraza turned. ("So you're kicking me out?")
("I'm releasing you,") Tarsis said. ("Before the Rift's enemies come here again.")
There was a pause.
("Because next time,") the machine-mage added grimly, ("they will come in numbers.")
Tarsis led him to the Hall of Departure—an immense corridor of twelve archways, each humming with a different energy signature. One buzzed like thunder trapped in stone. Another hissed like whispers from desert wind. All were stable gates, anchored to different regions of the outer world. Not just cities, Tarsis had explained—but shards of possibility, born when the Rift seeded fragments of itself into physicality.
("You're sending me to another realm?") Haraza asked.
("Not just a realm,") Tarsis replied. ("A front. There is a fracture opening in the Duskroot Vale, just beyond the ruins of Kell-Madra. Riftspawn have begun pouring through—warped by time and grief. If we do not respond quickly, that realm will collapse, and take others with it.")
Haraza gripped his glaive tightly. ("Why me?")
Tarsis turned to him fully, his golden eyes steady. ("Because you carry the Seed. And the Seed will grow stronger with conflict. You were not brought here to watch the Rift. You were born from it. You are the blade it forged.")
Haraza swallowed hard.
His voice was quieter now. ("I don't know what I'll find out there.")
Tarsis stepped forward and pressed something into his hand.
A pendant—shaped like a gear with a cracked center, hanging on a silver cord. Within the center floated a tiny, rotating prism of light.
("A beacon,") Tarsis said. ("It will guide you back here—once. Only once.")
Haraza looked down at the pendant.
And then stepped toward the chosen archway.
The one that shimmered like fading twilight, pulsing to the rhythm of something ancient.
Duskroot Vale.
Behind him, Tarsis spoke once more.
("Remember this, Haraza Genso: The Rift does not make mistakes. It makes choices. That you were chosen means you matter more than you yet understand.")
Haraza nodded.
Then he stepped through the gate.
The world changed again.
From brass and starlight, to earth and ash.
The smell of wet stone and burned bark filled his lungs as the Riftgate sealed behind him.
He stood atop a broken watchtower, half-collapsed and overgrown with twisted vines that pulsed faintly in the moonlight. Below, the valley stretched in layers of shadows, fog rolling between shattered hills and dying trees. In the far distance, lightning forked in a spiral above a blackened crater.
Duskroot.
And something moved down there—massive, serpentine, pulling light toward it as it slithered unseen.
Haraza's heart thudded. The Seed in his chest flared again.
This place knew him.
Welcomed him.
Feared him.
He stepped forward, glaive glowing in his hand.
("Alright,") he whispered into the dark.
("Let's see what kind of world you are.")