Two days vanished like smoke on the wind. Dawn on the third found Isaiah standing outside Sector Seven's grim perimeter, the predawn chill biting deeper than any Scuttler's claw. Before him stood his 'escort': six Central Guard soldiers in polished, too-bright silver armor that seemed ludicrous against the mud and bloodstains of the Outlands border. Their expressions were carefully neutral, but their eyes held the familiar cocktail of disdain, morbid curiosity, and thinly veiled relief they weren't stationed here.
To an outsider, it might look like respect for Valkareth but Isaiah knew better. It was a prisoner detail. A guarantee he wouldn't vanish into the wilds before fulfilling his annual role in the Sovereign's charade.
Their mounts stamped impatiently, breath pluming in the cold air. Horses, yes, but not as they existed in the dim, pre-Plague histories Isaiah had glimpsed. Six hundred years of contact with the Darkness and the subsequent Aether-suffused world had reshaped all life. These beasts stood taller, their muscles knotted like corded steel beneath hides that shimmered with faint, iridescent scales in the weak light. Their eyes, large and intelligent, held a predatory gleam absent from old tapestries. Feathers, hard and sharp as knife blades, edged their powerful necks and fetlocks – remnants of some long-ago avian mingling forced by the Rot or sparked by ambient Aether. They were war-beasts now, descendants of survivors, as changed as the humans who rode them. All wildlife had changed, mutated and evolved just as humans did. Birds these days were rarely just birds; they were aerial hunters with crystalline talons or sonic shrieks. Predators ruled the wilds, monstrous echoes of their former selves.
The journey to the Central Dominion was a silent affair. Isaiah rode a standard military gelding, a solid, scarred creature leagues beneath the Guard's impressive mounts, but reliable. He preferred its unassuming presence. The Guards maintained a tight cordon around him, their conversation sparse and never including him. He didn't mind. Silence was preferable to their forced politeness or veiled insults.
The only thought in Isaiah mind was the dread of what today would bring. He knew he hadn't miraculously developed an affinity and he knew it too, that no matter what happened today, the outcome would be the same as it had been all these years.
The landscape shifted in an hour. The immediate blight and fortifications of the border gave way to contested territories – forests where twisted, bioluminescent fungi pulsed on gargantuan, corrupted trees, and plains where the grasses shimmered with unnatural metallic hues. Even here, far from the front, the legacy of the Great Darkness was etched into the world.
Six hundred years. The history of the world surfaced in Isaiah's mind as they passed a crumbling, vine-choked archway that might have once been part of a great road. Six centuries since the Darkness first brushed against their world, bringing not just monsters, but the true scourge: the Rotting Plague. It hadn't started with rending claws or crushing behemoths. It had begun with a whisper in the blood of animals, then humans. Cities didn't fall to siege; they collapsed inward, consumed by fever, blackened flesh, and despair. More lives were claimed by the Plague in those decades than by all the emerging horrors combined.
Decades of despair passed and only then, did hope emerge. Not from armies, but from survivors. Seven individuals scattered across the ravaged continents. The first Vitalis. They hadn't just survived the Plague; their bodies had mutated, fought back, and forged an immunity. More than immunity – a conduit. The sacred Aether flowed through them, and with it came the first Affinities as by products, the power to shape elements and energies. But their greatest gift wasn't destruction; it was cure. Only a Vitalis, channeling pure Aether, could purge the Rot from another. They became beacons, walking sanctuaries. They cured the curable, and slowly, agonizingly, the Plague receded, defeated by this radical, inherited evolution.
The cured could live, love, build anew. But they couldn't cure others. The gift, the burden, the power, resided solely in the Vitalis, who disappeared quickly after the plague reced. As the Plague vanished, the mutated genes persisted, passed down. Affinities manifested in descendants, weaker echoes of the progenitors' power, but power nonetheless. The seven continents became seven Domains, each anchored by the legacy of its First Vitalis.
And Isaiah, direct descendant of the Bringer of Light for the Valkareth Domain, rode towards its heart with hands that could channel nothing.
The Central Dominion rose on the horizon, not as a city of light, but as a fortress of gleaming white stone and impossibly tall, slender towers that pierced the sky like accusing fingers. The scale was immense, designed to awe and intimidate. The Vitalis Citadel, a smaller but even more opulent complex within the Dominion, dominated the highest point, its spires glowing faintly with captured sunlight or stored Aether. It was the seat of his family. The seat of his grandfather. The stage for his annual disgrace.
The polished silver gates of the outer wall loomed as they approached, manned by guards in even more ostentatious armor. Isaiah's escort straightened in their saddles, adopting an air of official importance. Isaiah simply stared at the gates, indifference masking his face, but anxiety crawling within him. The familiar weight of dread settled in his gut. Another performance. Another confirmation of his lack. But this time, he knew he wouldn't be sent back.
He nudged his gelding forward, flanked by his gleaming jailers, passing under the shadow of the gatehouse and into the gleaming, suffocating heart of the Dominion.
Isaiah shoved thoughts of the front lines deep down; dwelling on the inevitable wouldn't keep him breathing tomorrow. His focus narrowed to the worn leather beneath his palms as he methodically rechecked the saddle cinch, the weight of the miniature crossbow snug in its boot, and the cold, hard shapes of five concussion bombs clipped securely to his utility belt. Fingers traced the oiled wrappings of dried venison in the saddlebag, counted the vials of paralytic and necrotic poisons, then moved on: flint and tinder nested in waxed cloth, a collapsible tin cup for boiling questionable water, a small roll of spider-silk cord strong enough for snares or climbing, a whetstone for the skinning knife at his hip, and a thumb-sized lodestone compass. Finally, tucked against his ribs beneath his threadbare tunic, the small, sharp shard of star-metal – useless for channeling, but a final, desperate gambit. He sighed, the sound swallowed by the sounds of his gelding beneath him. Prepared. As prepared as bone and desperation could make him.
The gleaming spires of the Central Dominion felt less like home and more like the teeth of a trap snapping shut. Isaiah dismounted his scaled gelding, the Central Guards forming an impassive wall at his back. The wide plaza before the Grand Athenaeum buzzed with nervous energy. A line of children, none older than ten, fidgeted under the watchful eyes of proud parents and sterner tutors. Their eyes, wide with anticipation and fear for their own impending tests, flickered towards Isaiah with open curiosity.
He was an anomaly here. Taller, leaner and hardened like iron. His clothes, though cleaner than his battle gear, were simple, durable wool and leather, starkly out of place amidst Dominion silks and velvets. Scars peeked from his collar and cuffs. He moved with a predator's grace that made the polished marble floor seem like treacherous ground. They saw a young man, perhaps a late bloomer or a distant cousin from the provinces. They didn't see the ghost of the heir apparent. They didn't see the walking void.
He passed them without a glance, the Guards falling in step, their polished boots clicking a sharp counterpoint to his soft-soled tread. He didn't head for the Athenaeum. He turned down a side avenue, leaving the grandeur behind, descending into a quieter, older quarter. The Guards exchanged uneasy glances but followed. They knew his destination.
His manor stood behind tall, rusting iron gates, choked by weeds that cracked the once-pristine walkway. The building itself was a monument to neglect. Windows were grimy or boarded. Paint peeled like dead skin. A thick blanket of dust and grime covered everything. Empty beer bottles, likely tossed by bored youths daring each other to approach the "cursed house," littered the portico entrance. The air there smelled of decay and abandonment.
Isaiah pushed the creaking main door open. Dust motes danced in the slivers of light piercing the gloom. Cobwebs draped like funeral veils. The grand foyer echoed with emptiness. He didn't linger and moved with purpose, boots leaving prints in the thick dust. He headed straight for the west wing.
His parents' suite. The heavy oak door was still locked, the mechanism stiff from disuse. He drew a simple, worn key from a pouch at his belt – the only thing he'd taken with him when he was exiled to Sector Seven. The lock turned with a protesting groan.
Inside, time had stood still, preserved under dust. The large bed was neatly made, covered now in a grey shroud. A dressing table held crystal bottles, their contents long evaporated. A single picture frame sat on the mantle. Isaiah slowly crossed the room and picked it up, wiping the thick grime from the glass with his thumb.
His father, Eren Valkareth, stood tall and proud, a faint, confident smile touching his lips, a hand resting possessively on the shoulder of Isaiah's mother, Elara. Her smile was warmer, kinder, her eyes alight with love as she looked not at the artist, but down at the small boy held securely in her arms. Isaiah, aged four. Bright-eyed, healthy, radiating the vibrant Aether stolen from him months later.
He stared at the image. The cold mask he wore like armor threatened to fracture. The silence of the room wasn't empty; it was filled with the ghosts of laughter, of safety, of before. He traced the glass over his father's face. A hero. A wielder of multiple affinities. A legacy Isaiah felt he had drowned in his own inadequacy and the circumstances forced upon him.
Slowly, deliberately, Isaiah sank to the floor, his back against the wall beneath the mantle. He didn't weep. He didn't rage. He sat in the silence, the dust settling around him, the picture held loosely in his lap. An hour passed, marked only by the slow crawl of light across the filthy floor.
In that stillness, a vow crystallized, colder and harder than any steel. Not for himself. Not for the humiliation heaped upon him year after year. But for them, his parents who had wept over his stolen future. For the pain they endured watching their son wither. For the legacy of Eren Valkareth, extinguished not by monsters, but by betrayal from within. And for every moment of suffering, every drop of blood spilled on the front lines, every ounce of dignity stripped away in this very city – vengeance.
It didn't matter that he wasn't a mage. He would show them all, bring upon them the worst hell.
He stood up, the movement fluid despite the hour spent still. He opened the back of the picture frame, carefully extracting the small, painted portrait. He folded it with reverence and slid it into an inner pocket of his jerkin, directly over his heart. He didn't look back at the room. He simply locked the door again, the click echoing with finality. It was probably the last time, but he still didn't want it to be touched.
Isaiah ignored the trunk of childhood clothes in his dusty old room. Changing into noble finery felt like a lie. He kept his stained borderland gear and the folded portrait of his parents entered his inner pocket. He left looking like what he was: a soldier from the edge. Only his gold-rimmed onyx eyes betrayed the legacy burning within.
He walked back to the Athenaeum, the Guards falling in silently behind. The plaza was emptier now; the children had been ushered inside for their tests. As Isaiah climbed the wide steps, he felt the weight of eyes. Balconies overlooking the plaza held figures in Vitalis colors. Uncles, aunts, cousins he barely recognized, and many he did. They were here. All of them. Not for the hopeful children, but for him. For the spectacle of the powerless heir's final, official disgrace. A morbid curiosity, a chance to witness the last act.
And there, seated on a plush chair on a lower balcony, flanked by sycophants, was the man. The architect. Lord Jaren Sutton, Advisor to the Sovereign. The perpetrator. He was sipping wine, engaged in quiet conversation. He didn't glance Isaiah's way.
Isaiah entered the vast amphitheatre. The air hummed with murmured conversation that died instantly as he walked down the central aisle towards the dais. Hundreds of eyes tracked him – Vitalis kin, Dominion nobles, officials. The air was thick with anticipation, judgment, and schadenfreude.
A gong sounded. The Sovereign entered from a high archway, resplendent in robes of state, the heavy Vitalis crown upon his head, his permanent scowl deepening as his gaze swept the assembly and landed, inevitably, on Isaiah. The crowd knelt as one. Isaiah went down smoothly on one knee, head bowed.
The test was a grim pantomime. The same ancient boxes. The same dead sigils under his touch. The same profound, echoing silence when no light flared, no energy stirred. A collective intake of breath, then utter stillness. No surprise, only the confirmation everyone expected. The ritual was complete.
The Sovereign rose. His voice, amplified by the chamber's acoustics, was devoid of any emotion save icy finality. "Isaiah Valkareth, son of Eren, of the First Line. Six years of testing confirm the absence of Vitalis affinity. By the ancient laws of blood and the edicts of this Dominion, your claim to lineage within these protected walls is void." He paused, letting the pronouncement hang. "You are hereby exiled. Cast out beyond the Wall, into the Outlands. Your life, henceforth, is forfeit to the wilds. You are banished, stripped of name and place, never to return upon pain of death."
A shocked murmur rippled through the crowd. Exile. Not just a return to the front lines, but expulsion beyond humanity's last defenses. A death sentence, slow and certain.
On a balcony, a woman – Aunt Lysandra, his mother's sister – half-rose, her hand flying to her mouth, her eyes wide with protest. Before a sound could escape her lips, her husband, seated beside her, placed a gentle but firm hand on her arm. He leaned close, whispered something sharp. Lysandra paled, sank back into her seat, her eyes filled with tears she dared not shed.
Isaiah didn't look at her. Didn't look at Sutton. Didn't look at the Sovereign. He kept his gaze fixed on a point on the polished floor before the dais. His face was a mask of utter boredom, as if the pronouncement concerned someone else entirely.
He rose smoothly to his feet. He met the Sovereign's frigid gaze for a single, heartbeat moment. Then he bowed, just deep enough.
"Your will is done, Sovereign," he stated, his voice clear, flat, and carrying to every corner of the silent amphitheatre.