Veltharion's Sixth Ward | Ash Rain Season
They say the heart was still beating when they found it.
No body—just the heart. Still wet. Still warm. Still pulsing, steady as thunder.
And no blood. Not a drop.
The alley behind the Altharan Spice Syndicate was sealed off within hours, wrapped in cursed parchment and guard runes. But rumors spread faster than spells in Veltharion, and by dawn, even the coinless gutter children were whispering about it.
A heart without a body. A murder without a weapon. A crime with no victim.
Or maybe a victim with no name left.
That was when they sent for him.
Not because they trusted him. Not because they liked him.
But because even the High Magisters had to admit one thing:
The Mysterious Lord always found answers.
They said it with mockery in their mouths, like a title soaked in rot.
He was not a Lord. He held no aspect. He could not command flame, or freeze time, or summon gods.
He was a non-caster, born of nobility, but stripped of inheritance the moment his Aspect failed to awaken.
And yet, Charles II remained. Wealth kept him dressed, status kept him untouchable, and his mind... well, that made people uncomfortable.
He didn't walk to the crime scene. He arrived before they even realized he had been summoned.
The guards flinched when he stepped through the steam.
Tall. Thin. Pale eyes behind thin-rimmed glass. Dressed in matte black, without sigils or house crests. His coat looked too expensive for someone so unwanted.
"You?" the sergeant grunted, looking him up and down. "They sent you again?"
"No one else likes questions," Charles replied, already moving past him. "Or answers."
They parted for him like cracks in broken glass.
He ducked under the spell-tarp and into the alley's throat.
And there it was.
Not a smear of blood. Not a bone. Not a finger.
Just a single beating heart floating two inches off the ground.
It hung in the air as though cradled by invisible hands, spinning slowly. One side bore a fresh rune—etched directly into the flesh—still glowing faint red.
Charles knelt. He didn't touch it. He didn't dare.
Instead, he watched the rhythm. Noted the pulse. Counted the seconds between each beat.
There was a pattern.
Three beats. Two seconds. One stop.
Repeat.
A Code?
He reached into his coat and pulled out a notebook. Inside, dozens of old riddles, scribbled like broken hymns.
He turned to a blank page and wrote:
What beats without life,
Bleeds without blood,
And names the one that none remember?
Then, at the top of the page, he drew the rune carved into the heart.
He didn't recognize it.
But something deep in him did.
A gust of warm air disrupted the alley's silence.
Boots landed behind him with a sharp clap, followed by a voice soaked in confidence and a touch too much charm.
"Don't you ever wait for anyone, Mysterious Lord?"
Charles didn't look up. "I don't wait for noise."
Zara knelt beside him, her shadow falling over the heart.
She wore a red-trim combat uniform—blades strapped at each thigh, scars crisscrossing her gloves. Her pink eyes gleamed unnaturally in the mist, like they were reflecting a light that didn't exist.
"That rune's rare," she said. "Seen something like it once on the Northern battlefront. A death mark used by the Cult of the Last Seed."
Charles raised a brow. "You fight in wars now?"
"I read," she smirked. "And I want this case."
"You're not hired."
"I'm not asking. I'm volunteering. You need someone to watch your back."
"I'd prefer no one near my back at all."
She smiled at that. It wasn't flirtation—it was defiance.
Charles returned to the heartbeat. "The Cult of the Last Seed was eradicated seven years ago."
"Mostly," Zara said. "Rumor is, one of their last rites could sever the soul from memory."
"That's useful," said a third voice, cutting into the tension like butter.
A pair of muddy boots stomped into the alley, completely ignoring the glowing heart and crime sigils.
Rahul stood there—hood half-soaked, eating a dried plum from his pocket like he was in a marketplace.
"Gods, this place smells like ghost sweat," he muttered, waving a hand. "Anyone ask the heart who killed it yet? Or are we still pretending corpses don't talk?"
Charles sighed. "Why is he here?"
Zara tilted her head. "He followed me."
"I live in the wall beside your barracks. Following's a strong word."
Rahul grinned. His teeth were crooked but bright. He had no official role, no military clearance, no magical Aspect—but somehow he always managed to show up wherever Charles did. Whether it was luck or something more… Charles hadn't decided.
Rahul circled the heart, unbothered.
"You know, I saw a guy once who tried to fake his own death by carving a pig's heart with sigils. It exploded."
"This one didn't," Charles said. "It's humming."
Zara glanced at him. "You think it's alive?"
"I think," Charles replied, "this wasn't the first organ removed. Only the last."
He tapped the notebook with his gloved finger.
"There's no blood because this wasn't murder. It was subtraction."
Zara blinked. "Subtraction?"
"A spell designed to remove someone from existence. Memories. Records. Identity. Only the heart remained, bound by a rune not to forget."
He stood up slowly.
"This wasn't about killing. It was about unmaking."
Absolutely. Now we dive deeper into the mystery—with a hidden message inside the heart, Charles's deduction skills on full display, and just a hint of deeper emotional undercurrent between him and Zara. Rahul, of course, remains the uninvited comic chaos.
Zara crossed her arms, eyes narrowing. "Unmaking someone like that… you'd need high-level spellwork. Like forbidden-tier."
"And yet," Charles muttered, "the magic residue here is null. No trace. As if the spellcaster didn't exist either."
Rahul leaned forward. "So the killer and the victim are both ghosts now? This is getting fun."
Charles ignored him.
Instead, he stepped forward, lowering his notebook. "The rune on the heart isn't just a mark. It's a seal."
He reached into his coat, pulling out a scalpel—not magical, but surgical. Metal from the Old World. Illegal to carry, of course. He angled it against the air where the heart floated, then slowly traced the pattern of the rune without touching the flesh.
Each line he mimicked caused the heart to twitch.
Then—crack.
A split appeared in the air above the heart. A vertical slit, like the sky had blinked.
Zara's hand dropped to her dagger.
"Charles," she warned. "What did you just do?"
"I listened," he whispered.
A single thread of light unfurled from the slit—thin as a hair, delicate as a sigh—and dropped something at his feet. A folded paper. Burnt around the edges. Smelled like chalk and bone.
Charles crouched and opened it slowly.
Inside were four words, written in dried heartblood:
"I REMEMBER THE MACHINE."
He stared at the page, face unreadable.
Zara leaned in. "What machine?"
"No idea," he said. "Which is precisely what worries me."
Rahul snatched the paper. "Could be a metaphor. Like… the world is a machine, and we're just parts in it, right?"
"No," Charles said flatly. "This is literal. There's a Machine. Someone remembered it. And someone killed him for that."
He stood up, suddenly tense. His coat shifted around him like it had grown heavier.
"This is bigger than we thought."
Zara hesitated. "Then we need to take this to—"
"No one," Charles cut in. "Especially not the Arcanum Lords. If they're involved…"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.
Everyone knew how things worked in Veltharion.
If you were born with magic, the world opened its gates.
If you were born without it, the world closed its mouth—and swallowed you whole.
Non-casters like Charles weren't just rare. They were supposed to be erased.
But his money, his bloodline, and his unnervingly sharp mind made him too valuable to kill… and too dangerous to trust.
He was tolerated. Feared. Mocked. The Mysterious Lord, they called him.
Not out of respect.
But because no one knew what else to call the one man in Veltharion who shouldn't exist… but still does.
Zara touched the hilt of her sword. "Then what now?"
Charles stared into the alley, toward the heart still floating mid-air—now dimming, as if its last memory had been spent.
He said quietly, "Now? We find the Machine."
Excellent. Now we're stepping beyond the crime scene into the first thread of a larger conspiracy—a secret location hidden beneath Veltharion, a strange memory map, and the first hints that someone may be stalking Charles. Zara will begin to understand what kind of darkness Charles truly walks through. And Rahul? He opens a forbidden door.
Veltharion never truly slept. But some places inside it were forgotten awake.
Charles led them away from the Sixth Ward alley, not explaining where they were going. He walked like a shadow moving between echoes. Past rusted market stalls, under broken aqueducts, down stone steps slick with age and mold.
Rahul eventually asked, "Are we being followed?"
"No," Charles said. "We're being watched. There's a difference."
Zara instinctively reached for her blade. "Who?"
"Don't know," Charles said. "But they've watched me since yesterday's sunset. Same breath pattern every corner. Same twitch of a reflection, just too slow to vanish. Either they want me paranoid… or I've disappointed someone truly old."
Rahul blinked. "I don't like how calm you are about that."
"I don't like how loud you are about it."
Finally, they stopped in front of a collapsed cathedral—half-sunken into the underbelly of the city. Its twin spires had long since fallen. On the door was a single painted glyph: a line, broken in three places, like a spine snapped by design.
Charles raised his hand. "This place doesn't exist."
"Then why are we here?" Zara asked.
"Because it's the only place that remembers."
He pressed his palm against the glyph. It pulsed once—and the door opened inward with a sigh, as if exhaling a thousand years of dust.
Inside, everything was wrong.
There were no pews. No altar. No books.
Just a chamber shaped like a clock face, the ground etched in faint silver rings. In the center stood a pedestal—stone, cold, humming with a sound only the bones could hear.
Rahul stepped toward it. "This is new."
"Don't touch anything," Charles warned. "This place records memory. It was built before our current calendar. Before the gods had names."
Zara's eyes widened slightly. "And how do you know that?"
"I paid for the translation. Then burned it."
He approached the pedestal and opened his notebook to the page with the blood-written message:
I REMEMBER THE MACHINE.
He whispered the words aloud.
The pedestal responded.
With a low grinding click, the center of the chamber shifted, revealing a map—not of the city above, but a tangle of veins and wires running through it like a second, secret anatomy.
At the center: a mark. A gear. And a name scrawled around it in a language none of them spoke—except Charles, whose eyes didn't blink as he read it.
Zara stepped beside him. "You look pale."
"This map," he whispered, "shows where it's buried."
"Where what's buried?"
Charles answered without breathing.
"The Machine."
Rahul, of course, ignored every warning and pressed his palm against one of the map's glowing circles.
The room shuddered.
And from the far wall… something turned and looked back.
The circle Rahul touched flared like an opening eye.
He stumbled back, swearing. "Okay, that one was me. My bad."
From the wall, something peeled away from the stone.
Not a creature. Not a shadow. A thought, given shape. Limbs like spider legs made from clock hands. No face. No mouth. Only a rotating dial on its chest.
The tick-tick-tick filled the air.
Zara unsheathed her blade in a single fluid motion. "Charles—"
"Don't move," Charles said. "Not unless it moves first."
The entity stepped forward, not walking, but gliding through the gaps between seconds. With each step, the silver rings on the floor shifted—rearranging the map below their feet like pieces of memory realigning.
It stopped directly in front of Charles.
The dial on its chest spun.
Then clicked.
The world went black.
---
When Charles opened his eyes, he was no longer in the cathedral.
He stood in a corridor of copper and bone. The walls pulsed with red veins. Above him, a sky of gears turned endlessly, grinding stars into ash.
He was inside the Machine.
A voice echoed—female, soft, ancient.
"You are the one they forgot to erase."
Charles turned. There was no one there.
"You remember too much. But not enough. So we offer a fragment. Not a gift. A burden."
He reached for the air—
—and saw.
A man. Bound to a chair. Mouth sewn shut. Wires through his spine.
A mage. But his magic had been eaten.
By what?
By something beneath the Machine.
Then: fire. Screams. Names carved from people. And a city falling in reverse.
---
Charles gasped, collapsing as reality returned.
Zara caught him before his head hit the stone.
He coughed hard. His skin was pale, eyes wide. "That wasn't a vision. That was a memory. From the Machine. From someone who isn't supposed to exist anymore."
Zara looked shaken. "You're bleeding."
He touched his nose. Blood. Not much. But enough to mean a cost had been paid.
Rahul, unusually quiet now, sat on the far edge of the chamber, staring at the floor.
Zara helped Charles sit up.
"Now you need help," she said quietly. "You can't chase this alone. Whatever you just touched—it changed you."
"I don't want an assistant," Charles muttered.
Zara met his gaze. "Too bad. You have one."
Charles looked at her—not with annoyance, but calculation.
"You're stubborn."
"I'm alive," she replied.
He wiped the blood from his nose.
"Fine," he said. "You're in."
Zara didn't smile. But something in her expression shifted. She stepped back, letting him rise on his own.
Charles turned to Rahul. "You're not in."
Rahul blinked. "Wait, why not?"
"Because you touched the thing."
"That's fair."
Charles closed the notebook and glanced back at the still-glowing map on the floor. The silver lines had rearranged themselves again.
And at the center?
A new rune. One he recognized this time.
His family's crest.
He stared at it.
His voice was quiet. "My father lied."
Zara looked at him. "About what?"
Charles didn't answer. Not yet.
Instead, he looked at the wall where the entity had vanished.
It had left something behind.
A single brass gear, dripping ink instead of oil.
Carved into its center were four words:
"FIRST MEMORY: CLAIMED BY ERROR."
He picked it up carefully, feeling the weight of a secret that had just opened its eyes after a long sleep.
The heart that shouldn't beat.
The machine that shouldn't exist.
The murderer with no name.
And now… a memory that was never meant to survive.
Veltharion had secrets.
And he was one of them.