Aethel was a magnificent deception. Up high, the spires of the High Districts hung like impossible, silent silver bells, gleaming with clean Aether-tech.
Down here, in the Underdrift, light was an enemy. The air was heavy, tasting of stagnant oil and pulverized stone…the ruin built on Aethel's garbage. Lysa Vance navigated the Serpent's Coil alley, a trench of perpetual shadow. She was small, but built for survival, every muscle memory honed by the necessity of smuggling.
Her cargo was a heavy crate of Aether-capacitors—cylinders of unstable magic tech, worth enough to keep her forge-fire lit for a month. Lysa moved fast. In the Underdrift, speed was payment.
The silence came without warning.
Not silence from the grinding steam-works or the distant hiss of vents, but a sudden psychic nullification. The ordinary chaos of noise, the low, frantic hum of the city's endless dread—was simply gone. It left a pressure, immediate and cold, behind her eyes.
Lysa staggered. Her consciousness felt too bright, too exposed, like a fragile lantern suddenly lit in a vast, cold cavern. She pressed her hand to her temple. The sensation was not pain, but a disbelief that the world had finally, disastrously, gone quiet.
The crate slipped from her grasp. It struck the ground.
The sound was dull, muffled, as if Lysa were listening from a mile away. The valuable capacitors tumbled out, their residual blue light instantly fading as their unstable energy bled into the filth-soaked stones. Lysa didn't look at them.
The Gate… it opens for you.
The thought was pure intrusion. Cold. Vast. Alien. It wasn't logic, but a pulse of sheer, ancient hunger. This was the Whisper, the voice of the dimensional entity rumored to be rooted in the great tear in reality—the Aether-Rift. The pressure in Lysa's skull intensified, ice spreading from the point of contact.
The ground shuddered. It was a spatial tear, a sudden, violent displacement of atmosphere. A steel support strut near her head snapped like a dry twig. The artificial lights of the immediate block died, instantly plunging the alley into darkness.
The Void-Ghoul materialized in the darkness it loved.
It didn't walk. It occupied the space twenty paces away, instantly. A predator of dimensional chaos. Its form defied visual focus: impossibly thin, backward-jointed limbs of pale, chitinous skin. Where its face should have been, there was only a swirling vortex, a nightmare reflection of the Aether-Rift itself. It moved in unnerving, sudden spasms.
Lysa's breath hitched. A Tier-Two Predator. It hunted the light of the mind.
She stumbled backward. Her heel caught a piece of debris. She fell.
The Ghoul took its first step. An impossible stride that covered fifteen feet. Its massive claw—black obsidian—scraped the concrete, a high-frequency, terrifying sound.
Yield the path. The harvest begins.
The cold of the Rift poured off the creature, stripping warmth and logic from the air. It was on her.
In that final, impossible moment, Lysa did not think of escape. She focused on the end of the threat. She needed it gone. A raw, psychic impulse—a scream of dimensional rejection—erupted from her core. It was the power of the Gatekeeper, pure and untamed.
The air around the Ghoul violently distorted. It was a cold shimmer, a visual rip that made the space fold in on itself. The creature's silhouette stuttered, its chaotic form compressed. It simply vanished. Not with a sound, but with a silent, spatial snuff of existence.
Lysa collapsed against the wall. Hypoxia. Her mind was a blank slate, utterly clean of the Whisper. The effort of the Dimensional Shift left her muscles aching, every nerve screaming. She felt like a piece of shattered ice barely holding itself together.
She struggled to pull air back into her lungs. The metallic smell of ozone, the signature of dimensional violence, lingered. A fine dust—Rift-Residue—shimmered where the Ghoul had stood.
She needed to move. Now. The simple, concrete command cut through the lingering shock.
A shadow dropped from the industrial catwalk high above. Quiet. Proficient.
A tall, heavy figure landed without a sound. He wore dark, scarred leather armor, etched with faded, silver Rift-Runes. A Rift-Hunter.
His eyes, tarnished brass, found her instantly. He knelt, checking the residue. His movements were weary, but absolutely controlled.
"A clean Displacement," he stated, his voice low and gravelly. "Too clean for accidental magic."
He rose. He ignored her scavenged capacitors. He ignored her fear. He looked only at the faint, shimmering dust.
"That thing's essence is scattered, not destroyed," he continued. "Only precision magic can force a creature out of phase." He looked directly at Lysa. "You are not a Grisha. You are not from the High City. So, who are you, girl?"
Lysa pushed herself up, using the wall for support. "A scavenger. A scare. It ran."
The Rift-Hunter, Torvin, let out a soft, humorless sound. "Void-Ghouls don't run from steam. They are drawn to the chaos you carry." He took one deliberate, controlled step closer. "That Displacement you made? It left a signature. It told the entire city the Gatekeeper is awake."
The term hit her, chilling her more than the Ghoul. Gatekeeper. The one word the Whisper had used.
"I don't know that word," Lysa insisted, her voice tight.
Torvin didn't argue. He moved. His hand, heavy and rough, clamped down on her shoulder. "Lies cost time here, kid. That energetic resonance is a flare. The Sovereign's Shadow Wardens will be here inside the hour."
He released her, but pulled a small, cold iron sigil from his pouch. He pressed it into her wrist. It burned hot, then went instantly cold, leaving a small, circular Hunter's Mark.
"That alerts me if they're near. They think the Gatekeeper is the key to mastering the Rift—the source of their power. They will not arrest you," Torvin stated, his voice a harsh, chilling murmur. "They will harvest you, or use you to destroy the world."
He glanced down the alley entrance. The tell-tale flicker of high-grade Aether-tech was visible now, moving fast—the Wardens were here.
"Forget the tech. Forget this city," Torvin commanded, wrenching open a rusted drain grate that led to the sewers. "You come with me. You close that bloody Rift for good. I'm done hunting the endless consequences of this mess."
Lysa stared at the drain—the filth, the dark. It was the absolute opposite of the gleaming promise of Aethel. But Torvin's eyes held a grim, terrible truth she recognized.
"Where are we going?" she whispered.
"Into the dead lands. The Foldlands," Torvin replied, already dropping into the drain. "There's a hidden sanctuary, a place where the Rift cannot reach. You have to trust the only person who is morally detached enough to kill you cleanly if you fail."
He pulled her down into the darkness. The roar of urgency replaced the silence of her power. Lysa plunged into the unknown, two broken souls bound together by a cosmic scar and the race against eternal night.