The day began as most did now—surreal, heavy with the weight of whatever had happened, though still so new to Eryx that it didn’t quite feel real. After the horrors of the breach, rupture, whatever it was, and the gnawing knowledge that something about him had fundamentally changed, he still couldn’t quite grasp the implications of what had happened to him. His abilities, the System, the Shadow Archive—he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a different person now. And what terrified him most was not knowing if that was for the better or for the worse.

  Today was no different. The city felt too familiar yet off. The streets of Varnstead, once bustling with life, now had an eerie, subdued quality to them. The fog from the Unknown Zone hovered just on the horizon, an ever-present reminder of the strange, fractured world just beyond the borders.

  He had decided to return to the Attunement Plaze. He was a Resonant now, of that he was sure, so, according to the technician, he shouldn't have to deal with the excruciating pain that came with the last two tests. "A slight tingle." He had said, IF he resonated, which he did not. Now he needed to know if his new powers were stable enough to be trusted in combat.

  When he arrived at the facility, the air inside felt sterile. The humming of machinery echoed in the empty halls. It wasn’t the same as before, not with the buzzing, calculated focus of each test, each evaluation. There was a discomfort in being here now—something he couldn’t quite place. The technicians moved with their usual precision, adjusting panels and wires with unfeeling hands, their faces obscured by hoods and masks. It was a place that dealt in tests, results, and numbers. People weren’t people here; they were just data.

  Eryx stood by the machine, his fingers twitching at his sides. The technician from before came over, clipboard in hand. The man didnt look at him before speaking. "You’re ready for the resonance check Mr...Cael? Haven't I tested you before? Twice?" The man actually looked up at him this time.

  Eryx was unsure of what to say. Apparently that hadn't changed. "Yes, but I am very certain that I have awakened my Resonance."

  "Riiiight. Can you tell me what your attunement mark looks like? Or where it is?"

  "Uuuh...no?" Eryx hadn't even thought to look with everything that had happened, busy trying not to die and all. Even failing a couple times.

  "Uh huh...alright then, remove your clothes and we will begin the evaluation." That was new, but he assumed the technician just wanted to locate his attunement mark. Probably.

  Eryx stood and went to remove his clothing, but instead a pop up window showing himself and everything he was wearing appeared. Apparently removing items had to be done in a menu now.

  He clicked on a button under his character, "remove all."

  "Jeez man, you didn't have to remove your underbits. It's exceedingly rare to have a mark there and you don't look like a bard type." Eryx flushed and quickly re equipped his underwear.

  The technician looked at the center of his chest, then up at Eryx, then back at his chest again. "Is...everything ok?" Eryx asked looking down at his own chest.

  In the center was a bird, wings out stretched with a long feathered tail that swirled down his stomach and around his navel. It appeared to be a pheonix, but rather than the traditional brown of an attunement mark, it was a bright, glowing, flowing blue, like you saw along mana channels on buildings used for power.

  "That's...certainly a statement piece you've got there. Didn't really take you for a tattoo guy. Alright, turn around, I don't see a mark here.

  Eryx complied but couldn't help himself. "I've never gotten a tattoo before. I've never seen that before in my life."

  "Turn..turn...tur- I don't see an attunement mark anywhere on you boy. Are you SURE you to do this test again?"

  "Uh..could this be it?" Eryx pointed to the bird on his chest.

  The technician snorted, the closest thing he had ever gotten to a laugh by Eryx approximation.

  "Attunement marks are normally brown and appear like raised scar tissue, like a brand. While it is possible for some marks to be different in color, red, yellow, black. Blue and "flowing" is not one of them. Alright then, step into the machine. This should be quick."

  "Quick is good," Eryx muttered, though his voice didn’t feel very confident. He couldn’t help but remember the last time he’d been here, when he had been deemed “non-resonant.” It felt as if the System had rejected him. And now, here he was. Again.

  The technician adjusted the dials on the resonance machine, an enormous contraption that hummed to life as he hooked Eryx into it. The machine was designed to measure the energy potential of an individual, determining whether they could access the powers that the System granted to Resonants. It had once been a humiliating process for Eryx, filled with failure. But today, his connection to the System was different. Today, he wasn’t the same person.

  The technician pressed a few buttons, and the machine’s hum grew louder, more insistent. Eryx’s heart skipped a beat. His chest tightened, and for the briefest of moments, his mind flickered back to the Shadow Archive and to the shadowy version of himself that had haunted him.

  The machine stirred to life, its lights flashing indications only the various techs in the room could understand. It began to revolve around him, slowly at first, then gaining speed.

  "All right," the technician said. "We’ll begin the scan. Now, if you don't resonate, you'll feel a slight pressure. And if you do, we'll...You're going to know it."

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Eryx nodded his understand, but then comprehension caught up to him. "Wait, wha-?!" Every nerve in his body screamed as if they lit ablaze. He felt as if his skin was peeling back, his eyes melting, his heart pounded hard in his chest, threatening to explode.

  Something was wrong. He felt it in the air, in the static charge that seemed to pulse from the ground up. He didn’t know what was happening, but he could feel it—the power inside him was too much for the machine. The resonance energy built and built, spilling out in unpredictable waves, wrapping around him like a storm breaking free.

  Before anyone could react, the machine gave a terrible groan. The technicians scrambled back, sparks flew from the central conduit, and the room was suddenly filled with the sound of grinding metal. The lights overhead blinked out, and the machine’s display screen shattered in a burst of electrical noise.

  "Shut it down! Now!" the main technician shouted, but it was clear the machine was beyond control.

  Eryx barely registered the panic in the room as his vision blurred with the intensity of the energy swirling around him. His body felt like it was being pulled apart and reassembled, the sensation almost overwhelming him. It wasn’t just the power that scared him—it was the way it felt so uncontrollable, so wild, like a storm ready to destroy everything in its path.

  Then, with a loud, final screech, the machine broke, sparking and crackling as it overloaded. The room fell into an oppressive silence, broken only by the distant hum of the backup generators kicking in.

  Eryx stood there, frozen in place. The technicians looked at him, their faces a mix of disbelief and awe. The resonance readings had gone off the charts—literally. The machine had short-circuited from the sheer magnitude of the power he possessed.

  The technician who had been overseeing the test wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, glancing at Eryx with wide eyes. "This is… this isn’t possible," he muttered.

  "Uh, guys?" A voice from the back of the room cut through the tension. Eryx turned to see one of the other technicians holding up a different monitor. "We’re reading multiple fluctuations in the resonance. And I’m seeing… echoes?"

  The words felt like a weight settling into Eryx’s chest. Echoes. What did that even mean? What could it mean?

  The technician was still staring at the screen in disbelief. "This… this could be dangerous. We need to report this."

  Eryx didn’t speak. He could barely think. He felt hollow inside, like something had cracked open, and all the broken pieces of himself were slipping through his fingers.

  And then, just as quickly as the chaos had started, it was over. The machine was a wreck, its parts smoldering on the floor, its power drained. The room was eerily quiet, the technicians too stunned to do anything but stare at the aftermath.

  "Guess I broke it," Eryx said, his voice too hollow to sound like his own.

  One of the technicians looked up from the broken screen, his eyes wide with shock. "You didn’t just break it," he said quietly. "You broke everything. This kind of power... it’s never been seen before."

  Eryx felt the weight of those words settle heavily on him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever power the System had unlocked inside him, it had only just begun. And whatever came next, he wasn’t sure he was ready for it.

  ———

  Eryx stepped out onto the street, black smoke trailing behind him out the door and into the air. The hurried footsteps of people behind him scrambling to put out small fires and salvage whatever they could from the wreckage. He whistled innocently as he left.

  He needed a change of pace, to get out of the city for a little while. He figured he would sign on to a temporary attachment of Resonants the city independently contacted for various reasons.

  The Office of Independent Resonant Contracts stood like a stubborn wart on the edge of Varnstead’s more polished administrative quarter—wedged between a repurposed grain silo and a low-slung communications tower that buzzed intermittently with arcane static. It didn’t inspire confidence. The sign over the door hung askew, and the threshold bore scratch marks from who knows what.

  Eryx hesitated before stepping inside.

  The interior smelled of dust, paper. A bored clerk manned the front desk, tapping idly on a crystal interface with fingers that moved like they'd been doing this since before the Split. Behind her, rows of filing cabinets stood like monuments to a bureaucracy that refused to die—even in a world fraying at the edges.

  "Name?" she asked without looking up.

  "Eryx Kael."

  She blinked at the crystal, then squinted at him, as if seeing something that didn’t quite align. “Oh. You’re the… unusual case.” She said it the way someone might say “unstable element” or “live grenade.”

  "What? How did yo-"

  "Word travels fast." She replied dully

  "I literally just left!" Eryx said, irritation in his voice

  Ignoring the outburst, the clerk slid a thin obsidian token across the desk. “You’ve been provisionally cleared for contract-based fieldwork. Non-affiliated Resonants go through orientation at third bell. Squad assignments get posted immediately after. You get what you get.”

  Eryx took the token. It hummed slightly in his palm—tuned to his resonance signature now, his official proof that he belonged in this new world. Whether he wanted to or not.

  Orientation was a blur. A dry, one-eyed man in a uniform that didn’t fit lectured a roomful of Resonants about territory boundaries, signal flares, and the importance of not provoking entities classified as “Echo-Adjacent,” known by thier characteristic distortion of menues and general glitchyness. Eryx caught fragments—don’t die unnecessarily, the pay isn’t worth heroics, watch for distortion.

  By the time the assignment board lit up, a crowd had gathered, elbows and gear bags jostling for space. Names and designations flickered across the projection crystal like lottery numbers.

  Squad 7C-Null. Temporary Recon & Cleanup. Assigned Sector: South Crescent—Unmapped.

  Operatives:

  Eryx Kael

  Calen Ven

  Jast Marrin

  Kiva Stroud

  Eryx exhaled. South Crescent. Unmapped. Which meant they had no idea what they were walling into, other than it was to the south and the territory was a Crescent shaped valley between two mountain ridgelines that met at both ends. He imagined it looked like the profile of a maw, waiting to eat its prey.

  He found the squad staging area tucked behind the office’s east annex, little more than a concrete lot littered with sparring dummies and mana-dampened training rings. Three figures waited near the gate, one of whom caught Eryx’s eye immediately.

  The man was leaning on a cane, but not with the posture of someone injured. It was more of a practiced slouch—like the cane was a prop in a long-running performance only he was privy to. Silver hair fell in loose strands across a face that was too expressive to be entirely sane. His armor was a patchwork of mismatched plating and dungeon-hide scraps, parts of it stitched with old resistance charms that looked barely functional.

  The man noticed him and brightened. "Ah! The new meat. Or is it fresh blood? I forget the terminology."

  Eryx blinked. "You are..?"

  "Name’s Calen Ven. Technically retirement age. Emotionally 60, chronologically 23. Don’t ask me about taxes.” He winked, then twirled the cane once and pointed it at Eryx’s chest. “And you must be the System anomaly. Don’t worry, we’re all weird here. Some of us just wear it louder.”

  "How-"

  "Word travels fast kid!"

  "So ive heard...You're… not what I expected."

  "I get that a lot. Usually from people who survive long enough to regret it. You know, I once got engaged to a slime girl.”

  Eryx side-eyed him. “I. Uhm...”

  Calen nodded solemnly.

  “Didn’t last. Cultural differences. I wanted a house. She wanted to live in a barrel of pickles. Said it was ‘the only thing that kept her hydrated and emotionally stable.’”

  He sighed wistfully.

  “Still think about her sometimes when I walk past brine.”

  The other two squadmates—Jast, a grim-faced brawler with spiked gauntlets, and Kiva, a silent spellweaver wrapped in layers of fabric that shimmered like static—barely acknowledged them. It was clear Calen was the kind of presence you either tuned out or were dragged into like a conversational sinkhole.

  Calen leaned closer. “Word of advice? Don’t talk about your kill count unless it's funny, don’t drink anything Jast offers you, and if you hear singing in Sector South Crescent, run. Unless it's me. I have a lovely tenor.”

  Despite himself, Eryx snorted. The weight in his chest—the tension that had been building since the Archive, since the testing room, since the shadows—eased just a little. Calen’s chaos was disarming, like a spell cast to ward off despair.

  The gates rumbled open.

  "Time to earn our keep,” Calen said, straightening. “And if we don’t come back, at least let the record show we looked fantastic on the way out." He punctuated his sentence with a sharp tap of his cane on the concrete.

  Eryx followed them through a gate, into the stretch of broken horizon that marked the edge of the Unknown.

  Whatever lay ahead, at least he wouldn’t be facing it alone.

  And maybe—just maybe—he needed a bit of Calen’s madness to survive what was coming next.