Varkai: Arc I — Ashes of the Shatterworld
The lake did not consume him.
It rejected him.
---
Vrakon's body hit the earth with a sickening, wet thud, flung like refuse from the whispering waters. He gasped, choking on a ragged breath as his eyes snapped open to a sky he didn't recognize—a hollow sky, fractured like a great glass dome shattered from within. Streaks of silver mist and eerie violet clouds floated like veins across it. No stars, only drifting shapes… and something watching beyond the dark veil.
He rolled onto his side, retching up black water. His bones screamed. His skin was raw. He felt… scorched from the inside.
And yet, beneath his sternum, a new pulse beat—not the wild flicker of a Mortal Spark… but something structured, stable, and deep.
"What... did that lake do to me?"
He pulled his tunic aside and placed his trembling hand over his chest. Faint green-blue light shimmered there, in a spiral pattern—his Genesis Core. Not forged by will or training… but extracted by pain, trial, and death's echo.
The Genesis Core was the soul's anchor—a condensation of inner truth shaped by the Pulse. Most Fracta-Wielders built theirs slowly, through training and resonance with nature or death.
Vrakon had been thrown into the maw of a soul-consuming lake… and survived.
His Core was imperfect. Raw. Unpolished. But it was his—shaped by shattered memories, silent hatred, and relentless instinct.
A whisper curled in the edges of his mind.
Spiral Instinct... refined.
His body no longer felt like borrowed flesh. Movements felt clearer, breath steadier. He wasn't powerful—not truly—but he was grounded now. Whole, in a way he hadn't been since the shrine.
Yet…
He was alone again.
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The place he'd landed was not a forest, though it bore trees. Not ruins, though broken pillars lay half-buried in cracked moss. The air tasted like ash and crushed iron. Strange flowers blinked when his boots brushed past them. Low hills rolled beneath a dark horizon, stitched by ruined stone arches and dormant Pulse wells—dead, cracked relics of Fracta-Wielders long devoured by Varkai.
He limped forward, barefoot and weaponless.
"Two days… no food. No clean water. My spear's broken. My only path is forward."
His voice was dry, hoarse, but even. He didn't mourn. Not for Shayra. Not for Mirra and Kaelen. There was no space for mourning. Not in Varkai.
He walked for what felt like hours beneath the cracked night. No sounds, save for the rustle of wind over broken bonegrass. His skin stung. Hunger gnawed at him, but the Core pulsed steadily in his chest, keeping his steps from faltering.
Eventually, he reached the crest of a ridge—and froze.
Below lay a half-sunken ruin, nestled beside a crooked stone monolith that bled green light into the air. The ground shimmered faintly, as if soaked in unseen Pulse.
A figure stood atop the ruin.
He spotted the glint of metal first. Then the silhouette.
A man—no, perhaps a youth, lean and draped in cracked armor stitched with bone-seam threads. He stood atop a ridge, half-silhouetted by the fractured sky. A weapon slung across his back: not a sword, not an axe—something closer to a jagged glaive made from Pulsebone.
His eyes glowed faintly green. Core-Born.
"Stay where you are," the stranger called out. "You walk like one of the drowned."
Vrakon didn't stop. "I don't have time for threats."
The stranger raised a brow. "Good. Then don't waste mine."
A beat of silence.
"Name?" the stranger asked, tone sharpened.
"Vrakon."
The man descended slowly, boots crunching the glass-gravel. He circled, not trusting.
"I'm Thren. Fractured Kin—Mourndusk camp. You smell like lake-death, but you don't carry its madness. That's rare."
Vrakon didn't reply.
Thren sighed. "Fine. Don't talk. But if you're Core-Born without a weapon or a tether, you'll die before morning. This zone has Verdant Pulse surges."
As if summoned by his words, a groan echoed from deeper within the ruins.
Something massive stirred.
A green glow lit up the lower chambers, crawling like vines up the walls.