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Timeframe: +100 Years Since the Collapse of Sector 60-Gamma
Location: Planet Berkal, Outer Reach Settlement "Thirn's Hollow"
Population: ~700 Souls
Surveillance Priority: None
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The world had not healed.It had simply learned to forget.
In the shadow of Ber'Herek's radiant skyline — a planetary capital of trillions, floating districts, interstellar commerce, and layered atmospheric railways had opened with their gigantic stocks of Aura energy — the Outer Reaches had been left behind.
Barren.Dry.Crumbling.
Not out of punishment, but indifference.
Thirn's Hollow was barely a village.Concrete slab houses, half-cracked.Magic-infused wind panels creaked lazily atop rooftops, spinning only when the mood struck the sky.
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A few lower bloods elven families farmed mana-root in it's cursed soil polluted by the Arch capitol.Beastkin tilled with half-mechanical limbs as they fought to earn little respect with strenght.Humans?Most begged.
Children didn't cry.They were too used to silence.
But on the third day of the Wind Festival Month—
Something changed.
A gust swept across the dry plains, rattling fences and knocking loose the prayer chimes of an old elven grandmother as she was giving tales to the orphans of the village.
She paused, eyes squinting toward the path from the canyon pass a hundred meters from the first house.
Someone was walking.Alone.
Barefoot.Cloaked in rags.Dragging a rusted cart filled with scrap behind him.
No aura.No presence.No ID chip, her implant only scanned a heart beat.
Just a face the wind refused to pass.
"Traveler?" she called out as she got up with a very old Runic ivory cane.
He didn't answer.Just kept walking.
His eyes were distant.Not vacant — just… tired.As if waking from a century-long fever dream.
At the village edge, an old beastkin farmer whispered,
"We haven't seen strangers in years… I hope that no bad oman strikes us with this arrival..."
His daughter replied,
"He doesn't feel like a stranger."
The newcomer stopped near a pile of broken farming drones.Without a word, he crouched… and began repairing one.Fingers moving slowly, as if relearning the shape of the world.
The drone buzzed to life.
A small elven child gasped.
"It works! It works! Maybe he's a wandering Enginneer ma !"
That night, the village gave him a mat to sleep on and a cracked bowl of warm broth.
He accepted both in silence.
When they asked his name…He didn't answer.
He looked at the stars.Then the dirt.
Then whispered softly, to no one in particular—
"Who am i, sheesh…"
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Location: Thirn's Hollow, Outer Reach Sector – Planet Berkal
Time Since King's Return: 6 Days
GORGON DETECTION SYSTEM Status: Undetected
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Life in the village was cruel, but simple.And routine made suffering bearable.
Every 30 days, like clockwork, a Gorgon Patrol Unit passed through the outter reachs villages.
Two high-altitude drop ships.Four surveillance drones.Eight operatives in full composite armor — armed with myth-tier suppressants and memory wipes.One civilian specialist to "ensure cooperation."
Their orders?
"Scan for immortal residue.Flag any anomaly.Report if the wind shifts wrong."
Because they knew of his return.
The Twelve Seats had long documented the penalty recoil — a 100-year exile.And this village was one of 879 planetary 'Echo Points' tagged as potential reentry vectors.
So they came.Every month.On time.
And they never found anything.
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Day 6 of the King's Return
It started small.
A broken fence fixed.A droughted crop that bloomed despite the dust.Three children who hadn't walked in years — now chasing birds.
The people noticed, but said nothing.
Because when you're starving, you don't question miracles.
You just pray they stay.
That morning, he carried water.
Two massive metal drums, one in each hand — the weight that used to require three beastkin laborers. He did it with such ease that the elders began to questions his origins as a half blood of a mythical specie...He moved without strain.Barefoot on cracked stone, sun blistering, yet unbothered.
When asked why he helped, he just said:
"Felt like you needed it."
He smiled.Quietly.
At sunset, he taught a young elf boy how to fix a solar plate using an old spoon and some melted twine."Most broken things just need patience," he whispered, and as he did so a small flashback slided in his brain like a broken electric circuit awoken by a natural static reaction.
He didn't remember who he was.Not fully.
But every time he touched the earth…
The wind lingered.
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Far above, a Gorgon patrol approached from their time pannel as they marked the village for the investigation.
Their dropships hissed through the cloudline like surgical knives.
[Drones deployed][Scanners warmed - code XIM0]
The officer in charge — a human woman with a pair of cybernetics silver-threaded eyes — gave the same order she always did to her mens:
"Full sweep. Keep it cold. If you see something walk past the investigation curfew that shouldn't, burn it."
As they landed on the outskirts of Thirn's Hollow, dust swirling around their boots, they found nothing unusual. The ship began emitting an alarm before sending in a vocal message to all citizens :
"Citizens under Ber'Herek's law X1 - IMMORTAL DECREE, stay in your quarters for the whole night and until 10am tomorow, do not capture any images of our intervention and answers the door if a soldiers asks for it and no harm will come to the souls living in this village ! BEGIN THE OP !"
The soldiers ran through the dry fields and locked housing with their scanners top tech designed with remnant of leon's skin how had the half destroyed fingertips of the immortal printed in his skull and was extracted to create this immortal dust scanner.
In a nearby garden, attenant to a closed gate, a man so thin in rags was cutting bad weeds with a small blue light.
They scanned him.No ID.No cultivation signature.No match.
"Another lower life," one said."Like the rest. scraps for our industries..." he laughed. "let's move on i want to go back to Ber'Herek and live this shit place".
But what they didn't realize—Was that their scanners had recorded a 0.000003 second blackout.
A flicker.
So fast the systems filed it as a data error.
But one operator — a quiet elf with a twitch in his eye — noticed.
The man didn't look back.
But the wind did.
A sudden gust swirled down the path, sharp and deliberate, like a breath held too long.
It struck the elf's chest — not violently, but with intention.
He staggered.Two steps back, off balance, boots scraping the dry stone.
The others didn't notice.But the elf did.
And for a single breath, he felt as if the air itself had whispered:
Don't look too long pawn of Ber'Herek...
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The patrol packed up by dusk.
Their drones logged nothing.Their boots left the same shallow prints they always did.The villagers watched them go in silence — as they always had.
But the elf operator lingered near the edge of the fields, eyes narrowing at the ragged man now helping lift a fallen roof beam beside two beastkin teens.
He reached for his com tab to log the data anomaly as the female Sergeant shouted them to do.Then hesitated.
Because in that one flicker of scanning failure—In that one breath of false wind—
He hadn't just felt off.
He'd felt small.
He exhaled, adjusting his collar, heart still unsteady.
And as the dropship engines roared back to life behind him, he muttered under his breath:
"Maybe it's just the fear…Of knowing this entity will be back soon.But for a millisecond out there…I felt like I was standing at the feet of a gargantuan aura spike, towering over my inner spirit."
He paused, then looked to the dust trailing across the dry fields.
"…Must have been the wind."
As he entered in his tab : KING PRESENCE NONE.