The Shattered Lands lived up to their name. Geography here was a suggestion. They walked through a forest where trees grew upside-down from a ceiling of solidified cloud, across a river of shimmering mercury that flowed uphill, and past cliffs that echoed with yesterday's conversations.
Reality was fractured. Mana behaved erratically—flares of uncontrolled energy burst from the ground, spatial folds snagged at clothing, and time occasionally skipped or stuttered. It was the perfect place to hide from organizations that relied on order and predictable magic.
It was also lethally dangerous.
Three days into their journey, they were ambushed by a pack of Fracture-Hounds, beasts born from unstable spatial rifts. They had crystalline bodies that flickered in and out of phase. Brom's hammer blows often passed through them. Lyra's illusions were useless against their alien perceptions. It was Damien's Twilight Rend daggers, which could cut spatial connections, and Kiran's void, which could erode their phase-shifting, that finally slew them. But not before a hound's crystallized claw caught Lyra across the back, leaving four deep, slowly-glazing wounds that seemed to resist healing magic.
They made camp in a relatively stable bubble—a hollow under a giant, glowing mushroom. Lyra lay on her stomach, teeth gritted as Damien carefully used his frost to cauterize the strange crystalline infection in her wounds. Kiran kept watch, his new senses stretched thin in the chaotic mana field. Brom sat meditating, his Earth affinity straining to find a stable rhythm in the discordant land.
"The safe house is another five days' trek," Damien said, his storm-eyes seeing the treacherous, shifting paths ahead. "The land itself is the enemy here."
"We need to adapt our techniques," Kiran said, examining his void-dagger. A chip had appeared on the edge after striking a Fracture-Hound's core. Even legendary weapons could be damaged here. "My void is destabilized by the random spatial fluctuations. It's like trying to drink from a river during an earthquake."
Damien nodded. "My spatial phasing is similarly risky. One wrong calculation and I could phase into solid rock." He'd already had a close call, his hand momentarily merging with a tree trunk before he jerked it free, skin scraped raw.
Their progress was slow, cautious. They couldn't afford major injuries with no safe haven. The Headmaster's healing pills were gone, used on the vault injuries.
On the fifth day, they found the first sign of other people—or what was left of them. A smashed campsite. A rusted sword. And a spiritual residue that made Damien's new storm-eyes water. A deep, hungry, purple-black stain on reality.
"Abyssal Taint," the Vault-Spirit's knowledge whispered in his mind. "The touch of the consumption Singularity. It leaves a scar that slowly expands, devouring all energy and life."
They gave the site a wide berth. But the sight of it—the absolute, mindless hunger etched into the land—struck a chord deep within Damien. His Glacial Devourer resonated with it, not in harmony, but in recognition. It was a hungrier, less disciplined version of his own power.
That night, as they rested in the shell of a gigantic, petrified creature, Lyra spoke softly. "My tails… they've been tingling since we saw that place. Not just fear. It's like they sense… a counterpart. My magic is about creation, illusion, possibility. That taint is the opposite. Unmaking without purpose."
"The first Singularity manifestation," Damien said. "The data-crystal indicates a stronger zone of taint ahead, near the safe house. That's our first hunt."
"We're in no condition to hunt a cosmic force," Kiran grumbled, flexing his still-tender arm.
"We will be," Damien said. "The safe house. We rest, recover, learn to fight in this chaotic environment. Then we take a small piece of it."
The concept was clear: to conquer the Singularities, they must first learn to survive in the lands they had corrupted.
Two days later, they found the safe house. It wasn't a house. It was a Reality Anchor—a ancient, towering monolith of silver-blue metal covered in stabilizing runes, hammered into the heart of a zone of relative calm. Around it, for about a mile, geography obeyed normal rules. Grass grew. A stream flowed downhill. The air was still.
The Anchor's door recognized the key in Arcturus's data-crystal and slid open. Inside was Spartan but functional: healing arrays, a clean water source, cultivation chambers, and a library of surviving texts about the Shattered Lands.
For the first time in weeks, they could breathe without fear of a spatial tear opening under their feet.
They spent a month at the Anchor. They healed completely. They trained, adapting their vault-learned techniques to the chaotic mana flows outside their safe zone. Damien practiced his Frozen Eclipse Dagger Art until he could land a phased strike while compensating for three different spatial warps. Kiran learned to use the land's own instability to fuel his voids, creating Unstable Void-Mines that detonated with chaotic spatial shrapnel. Lyra practiced making her Mirage Realms resistant to the land's reality-bending, creating pockets of temporary, reliable normality. Brom worked on his World-Drummer's Cadence, learning to strike the land itself to create controlled seismic pulses that could collapse unstable terrain or reinforce their ground.
Their cultivation inched forward agonizingly slowly. The 4th Order demanded not just energy, but profound insight. Damien reached 4th Order, 2nd Rank only after a week-long meditation on the nature of "stillness within chaos," triggered by watching a spatial storm rage harmlessly against the Anchor's field. The others remained at the peak of 1st Rank, needing their own breakthroughs.
They also explored. Silas, via a fragile, crackling communication array in the Anchor, reported that the Tower and Order had placed a massive bounty on them, attracting all manner of bounty hunters and rogue cultivators to the Shattered Lands' fringes. They were not just hiding from authorities; they were hiding from the underworld.
One afternoon, Damien's storm-eyes caught a particularly violent "storm pattern" on the horizon—a concentrated zone of Abyssal Taint, about twenty miles east. A Feeding Ground, where the taint was actively consuming something.
"Time for our first hunt," he announced.
They geared up. This was not a trial or a tournament. This was a tactical operation against an environmental hazard with a mindless will. They packed extra healing supplies, spatial anchors to prevent getting lost, and the Reality Anchor's key as an emergency recall.
As they left the safe zone, the chaotic pressure of the Shattered Lands descended once more. But now they moved with purpose, a unit scanning for threats, their new weapons ready.
The hunt for their first taste of a Singularity had begun.