“He’s dead?” Aris Ascarian shouted, his voice a volatile mix of rage and confusion. “Curse this morning! How is that possible? Ring the bells—all of them! Notify the fools in the lower city that a threat is upon us. Inform the Guard Commander!”

“My lord, Lady Kazar—” a small voice tried to interject.

“Organize the Guild! Ensure the Specthroni are confined to their quarters. Direct the Lucidarchs to open alignments to the lower tiers post-haste. I want the Temporal Guard dressed and drilled on the lower courtyard before the hour turns!”

“My lord Ascarian—”

“I want every Aetherach recalled to the tower immediately! Tell no one of the Arcanarch’s death—do you hear me? Absolutely no one outside the senior leadership of the guild!”

“Perhaps—”

“Ring the damn bells! Why have the bells not been rung yet?” Aris spun, roaring into the face of a junior Lucidarch who looked ready to faint. “And where in Riven’s ass is the Mystarch? Where is Kazarian?”

“The Prime is at the Fulcrum, my lord—”

“Why is she at the Fulcrum?”

“To wake the Guard Commander—”

“No matter! Dispatch a message through the Warlocks. She is to return at once—we must convene! I must be proclaimed Arcanarch without delay. This city needs leadership, and it certainly won’t come from those arrogant, self-centered animals commanding the Tiers.” Aris punctuated the sentence with a sweeping gesture toward the sprawling metropolis beyond the glass.

Retrieving his gnarled staff, Aris stormed onto the spiraling balcony—one of many jutting from the outer face of the Temporal Tower—and cast his gaze toward the northern wilds.

He stopped dead as the bitter morning air struck his bare skin.

He stood frozen for a long, agonizing moment, tapping the butt of his relic against the stone. Then came the rain. A cold, steady drizzle slicked his shoulders, his chest, his legs. Every part of him. Overwhelmed by a sudden, dizzying wave of sheer disbelief, Aris Ascarian—Antecedent and sovereign-in-waiting of the Temporal Tower—belatedly registered that he was standing on the precipice of the city, utterly nude.

“Fetch my robes! And get some light in this room!” he barked, retreating hastily into the bedchamber. “Infuse the lamps—how is he dead? How did this happen? The Arcanarch is dead? You are sure? And the Battlemaster? You’re certain of them both?”

“It was the Sixth’s Warlock who relayed the message, my lord, but… there is a severe problem with communications at present,” the junior Lucidarch stammered, wringing her hands.

“Who was his second? Who commands the Sixth now?”

“A ‘Captain Lane’ authorized the missive, my lord.”

“Lane? Hm. What do you mean, a problem with communications?”

“There is tremendous interference rippling through the weave. Even the central obelisk is behaving erratically. The Arcanarch had great difficulty maintaining an alignment before—”

As the words left her mouth, Aris felt it. A hollow, phantom tug deep within his chest—the distinct, unsettling sensation of a severed connection. It was the magic equivalent of a phantom limb: knowing something vital ought to be there, yet reaching into a void.

“Can we send word to the Tiers? To anyone?”

“We have tried, my lord. The connection is sporadic at best, and it appears to be degrading rapidly.”

“Then go! Gather every available Mystarch and diagnose the weave. Now, girl!” Before the young Specthron could bolt from the room, he snapped, “And ensure those bells are struck until the brass cracks! From the tip to the ass. I want all of the Tower’s bells to be rung. Wake this devil-damned city up. Then fetch my ward!”

Left alone, Aris paced the floorboards, the heavy cadence of his staff echoing off the stone walls. He had been rousted from sleep by frantic pounding after spending half the night analyzing the unusual, fascinating ley-signatures humming through the local weave.

Before he could bark another order to the empty room, the grand bell atop the tower chimed. A heavy, rhythmic boom vibrated straight through the floorboards—a harmonic frequency intentionally forged to be soothing and cathartic to the populace below. In the grey chill of this chaotic morning, however, it felt like an iron weight slamming against Aris's temples.

“Specthron!” Aris bellowed toward the hallway. “Wake Estusian!”

A second junior Lucidarch, trembling slightly, peeked around the doorframe. “He is already awake, Antecedent. He is in the Vectori Arcanum with the Mystarchs as we speak.”

“Already?”

“I do not believe he ever left, sir. He remained there through the night after you retired with the… with the former Arcanarch. I do not believe he slept at all.”

“Follow me—” Aris raised his left arm, gripping his gnarled staff in his right to draw on the tower’s electromagnetic flow for a short-range translocation spell. The moment he channeled his intent, the air resisted. A harsh static discharge snapped back along the shaft, delivering a shock that stunned his fingers and sent a violent shiver up his arm.

“My lord—”

“What?” he snarled.

“Your robes.”

Aris forced himself to lower his arm and surrendered his staff as the assistant hurriedly rushed forward, draping him in his heavy formal vestments. He dismissed her with a sharp flick of his wrist, cinched the silk cords around his waist, and glanced back out toward the balcony ledge.

He had nearly stepped out into the corridors—and onto the public transport alignments—completely naked. Truly, what a grand entrance that would have been. The next Arcanarch’s first unveiling to his congregation: drenched, shivering, and exposed to the elements.

Stepping out of his chamber, Aris looked down the vaulted hallway toward the distant, glowing spire of the central obelisk. He cocked his head, a cold knot tightening in his stomach.

What in the hells is happening?

“Right. My staff,” Aris muttered dryly, reclaiming the wood. “I suppose we walk.”

The winding staircases of the Temporal Tower were notoriously endless—a physical hardship reserved almost exclusively for low-ranking Specthroni and penalizing duties. A common joke among the elite held that if you wanted to spot a junior initiate, you simply looked for the defined calf muscles.

By the time Aris reached the landing of the fourth staircase, he was already thoroughly out of breath. He had grown far too accustomed to the effortless alignments to reach differing levels of the tower, rarely ascending a flight of stairs for any reason, let alone four since he was an initiate.

“Has the Timekeeper been informed of the Arcanarch’s death?” he panted.

“Yes, Antecedent. Runners were dispatched to his quarters at the same moment we knocked on your door.”

Two heavily armored Vectori guards threw open the brass doors of the Arcanum as Aris approached. He turned to the junior attache at his heels. “Let no one else enter.”

Inside, bathed in the strange, pulsing violet hue of the disrupted obelisk, stood the ancient Timekeeper.

“What is happening here?” Aris tried to suppress the urge to scream at the frail old man.

“It’s beautiful, Aris,” the Timekeeper murmured, staring up at the chaotic strands of light writhing around the central pillar. “Enchanting, really. In all my decades within this holy chamber, I have never seen such magnificence woven into the ether.”

Aris scowled, his patience snapping. “Yes, yes! You said as much last night. The enemy—whoever they are—is actively sabotaging the obelisk!”

“Truly?” the Timekeeper blinked, turning slow, milky eyes toward him.

“Yes, truly! Unless you wish to heave your brittle bones up and down these damned stairs for the rest of your natural life, stop admiring the spellcraft and figure out how they are warping the obelisk!”

“Understood,” the old man sighed softly. “There is no need to be so brash, Antecedent.”

“The Arcanarch is dead, Timekeeper!” Aris stepped into his space, his voice echoing off the chamber walls. “Do you grasp the gravity of that, or has your mind finally left us?”

Estusian’s face fell, the awe vanishing into deeply etched lines of grief. “He was a dear friend, Aris. A friend of decades…”

“Out! All of you, out!” Aris roared, turning on the gathered acolytes and low-tier attendants. “Ensure our Timekeeper is escorted to his quarters for rest!”

“Yes, Master,” a young, quiet voice answered from the shadow of the doorway.

“Not you, fool,” Aris snapped,  tapping his staff softly, allowing his gaze to fall upon his young ward, Eirlys.

Once the heavy brass doors groaned shut and the remaining scholars scurried out, only the two of them remained in the humming, unstable light of the chamber.

“Eirlys, see to the Warlocks,” Aris commanded. “Dampen these ambient projections of the alignment pattern and display precisely where the bridges were established.”

Aris turned his gaze toward the pinnacle of the obelisk—the Ascari Tower, as it had been named in ages past. Closing his eyes, he reached out his mind to commune with the stone’s core, but was met instantly with a harsh wall of static and frequency drift. The feedback hummed behind his eyelids, scrambling the ethereal signal and rendering him utterly unable to discern anything meaningful.

Opening his eyes, Aris focused on the hovering visual projection of the continent. Distinct, shimmering lines of bearing stretched across the landmass toward the bridge, where the magnetic connection terminated abruptly.

Nearly fourteen miles north-northeast, he calculated.

He paced out onto the wide balcony encircling this tier of the tower and closed his eyes once more, extending his awareness to align the surrounding magnetic energies and form an ethereal vantage point. Immediately, a heavy, suffocating resistance slammed into his mind. He gritted his teeth against the mental strain. Improper alignment. He knew he needed to recalibrate, yet hesitation flickered through him—he had performed this exact ritual thousands of times before. But the result was identical: an immediate, violent rejection from the weave itself.

He looked back toward Eirlys, who met his gaze with a heavy frown. Though she was hardly gifted in the art of telemancy—and likely never would be—she was perceptive enough to grasp the severity of what was occurring.

Aris eyed her with a sudden spike of suspicion. A strange, oppressive presence seemed to hang in the air around them. Yet there was no one else in the Vectori Arcanum—only himself, Eirlys, and the two bound Warlocks in the alcoves. They were privately maintained, possessing no external connections to any other Warlocks in the city. Still, an unmistakable uneasiness lingered in the atmosphere.

He thrust his gnarled relic staff into Eirlys's hands to free his arms. The artifact was nearly as precious as all the gems and jewels in the Temporal Tower combined—surpassed only by the Arcanarch’s own staff of office. Once I secure my place, he mused bitterly, I will channel alignments with the supreme relic itself.

No matter. Aris raised his bare forearms, set his jaw, and began the delicate process of manual recalibration. He studied the intricate, magical ink etched deep into his skin. Aiming his right arm toward the central spire, the ink flared to life, radiating a faint, violet luminescence. He pressed his left thumb firmly against his flesh and dragged it along a secondary line of the intricate sigil.

With a sharp pulse of power, the ink brightened.

Yes. There. He was simply tired; this was trivial for the future Arcanarch. The new Arcanarch, Aris Ascarian, he reminded himself.

What an absolute fool the former Arcanarch had been, venturing out to investigate the disturbance personally with a mere handful of Sixth Tier warriors. All because he wanted to view the remnants of the bridge with his own eyes. It was intricately constructed—Aris admitted that much to himself—far exceeding anything he had ever woven. But now the man was dead, and the Commander of the Sixth had gone to Riven's shores alongside him.

What force assembled out there could mortally wound the most magically gifted man in the city?

He needed a glimpse. Just a single peek at the invading force. Perhaps they were merely raiding Azureden or threatening Kasure Isle further north. No—something far more sinister was transpiring.

Aris focused his mind and found a fleeting anchor in the weave. His tattoos blazed with the vivid blue glow of positive alignment. He didn't need to open a full pathway—just an aperture. A pinprick in space and time to see what was unfolding.

The weave fought back instantly, rebuffing him with violent force. The ink on his arms scorched white-hot. Aris gasped, slamming both palms onto the balustrade. Above and below, the bells continued their deafening roar, but penetrating the noise, a single conviction echoed in his mind: I will be the Arcanarch. Aris Ascarian, of the line of Ascari—the first of his blood to rule the Temporal Tower in more than three hundred years.

“Shut those damned bells up!” he shouted over his shoulder to Eirlys. “Summon the Mystarchs back! All of them!”

Patience exhausted, he flooded his body with energy. The fine hairs on his arms stood on end as every tattoo flared brilliant blue. Crossing his forearms, he aligned the glyphs, twisted his torso, and caught the flash of the weave snapping into place. The focus opened further east than intended, but close enough for an aerial view. He channeled every drop of power he possessed.

I am the Arcanarch. Who dares resist me?

He forced a positive, vertical polarization into the negatively charged threads, tearing a tiny needlehole aperture high above the northern reaches of Shrine. The view snapped into clarity—and Aris nearly lost his grip on the weave entirely from the horror presented before him.

Row upon row of Drengers and Ghyll filled the northern passes, moving in terrifyingly precise rank and file. Looming behind them were a dozen massive, multi-limbed, slug-like monstrosities—colossi of stone and flesh—dragging long, cylindrical siege engines shaped like arrows of impossible proportions. Hundreds of Drenger corpses littered the mud alongside the massive two-handed weapons of the fallen Sixth Tier warriors.

As Aris adjusted the aperture, his eyes widened.

Equidistant among the rear ranks stood six metallic Warlocks—the common constructs of Shrine. But why were they moving independently? They weren't telemancers; they couldn't access the weave, yet they radiated power as if they were drawing directly from it.

As if choreographed, the six constructs lifted their arms in unison and pointed directly at the microscopic tear Aris had created in the sky.

Before he could sever the connection, a violent surge of reversed magnetic energy surged back through the thread. The feedback threw Aris backward across the stone floor. He crashed onto the balcony tiles, clutching his arms as sweat matted his dark hair to his face.

Eirlys rushed to his side, gasping. "Master!"

Aris raised his head, taking in her terrified expression. He had nearly been thrown over the ledge—had he, it would have been a remarkably brief tenure for the new Arcanarch. Shaking, he beckoned for his staff and took it back from her trembling hands, using it to rise to his knees.

"Your illustrati—they're bleeding!" she cried.

Aris lifted his arms. The pain hit him all at once. The magical ink etched along his forearms had split wide open, weeping dark red blood onto his robes.

"How strange..." Aris whispered.