The wind howled like a wild beast around the house, slamming against the metal walls and rattling the poorly secured panels. Inside, the room was dimly lit, illuminated only by the stove's fire and a few hanging lamps powered by an old, patched-up battery. Water leaks had multiplied—small trickles seeped through badly sealed joints, forming puddles on the metal floor.
Jonas and Arthur had stayed awake out of caution. In a storm like this, sleeping was risky. A sudden shift in pressure, a poorly angled gust, and the entire house could tumble into one of Scrapra's endless ravines of scrap.
Sitting across from each other at the small table, each cradling a cup of hot tea, they spoke in low voices to be heard over the wind's roar.
- "You're turning seventeen in a few minutes, huh?" Jonas said with a nostalgic smile, glancing at the rickety mechanical clock hanging from a pipe.
Arthur shrugged.
- "Yeah. Another year."
Jonas chuckled softly.
- "You know, you were born at midnight on the dot. I'll never forget that night. The weather was almost as bad as tonight."
Arthur raised an eyebrow, intrigued.
-« Really?"
-« Yeah, and believe me, the winds that night were worse. I had to shore up the house in a hurry, your mother was screaming, and all I had were my hands and a flickering lamp to help bring you into the world."
He paused for a moment, his gaze turning distant.
-« You cried so loudly when you were born that I thought you were terrified. But then you opened your eyes—so calm, so quiet. They weren't a baby's eyes… they were full of stillness."
Arthur sat up slightly, unsettled by the unexpected memory.
-« You don't talk about that night… or about mom, very often."
Jonas let out a long sigh.
-« Because it hurts, Arthur. And because… I never thought some things would come back."
The roof groaned loudly as a twisted metal panel came loose with a sharp, grating screech. Both men flinched. Jonas quickly grabbed a reinforcing bar and climbed onto a crate to push the panel back into place, securing it with a strip of metal.
Arthur, flashlight in hand, helped hold the plank steady as Jonas fastened it over the gap. Cold, nervous raindrops dripped onto their faces.
-« This world doesn't cut us any slack, does it?" Arthur said, offering a half-smile.
Jonas climbed down, exhaling heavily.
-« No, but it gave me you. For that, I'll always be grateful."
Arthur was about to reply when a strange sensation washed over him.
Suddenly.
A heat intense, unbearable. A searing fire that felt as though it ignited deep within his chest.
He dropped the flashlight with a dull clatter. His mug slipped from his hands, shattering on the floor. Jonas turned sharply toward him.
-« Arthur?"
Arthur staggered, his knees giving way, collapsing to the ground with a ragged gasp.
-« I'm so hot… I can't… I can't breathe…"
Sweat sprang to his forehead instantly, his whole body trembling violently. A dull, rhythmic pounding resonated in his head, like the distant thrum of giant drums.
-« Arthur!" Jonas rushed to his side, grabbing him by the shoulders. "What's happening? What's wrong?"
But Arthur couldn't hear him anymore. Sounds around him grew muffled, as though he were submerged underwater. The crackle of the fire, his father's voice, the howling wind outside all merged into a muted, distorted echo.
And then… the world disappeared.
He was no longer there. He didn't know where he was.
Pictures. Fragments. Visions.
He saw himself in the same room, but it was different. Broken. The fire was out. Debris everywhere. A burnt, acrid smell. And… his father's voice, somewhere, calling his name.
A scream. Shattering.
And then other voices. Cold. Metallic. Distorted.
Mechanical voices, filtered through masks. He couldn't understand the words, but he grasped their meaning: hunt, capture… destroy.
A red light swept across the room, illuminating the walls. He saw himself running, falling… and then, nothing.
Arthur awoke with a jolt, his mouth open wide, gasping for air.
The floor was cold against his back, his shirt soaked with sweat. Jonas was leaning over him, his face frozen in shock, his hands trembling.
-« By the Élan…" his father murmured. "This can't be happening…"
Arthur tried to speak, but his lips were dry, his throat constricted.
-« I saw… something…" he managed.
Jonas stepped back, clutching his head, his eyes distant and panicked.
-« No. No, it's… it's impossible. I thought it was gone. That it had vanished with your mother."
He turned abruptly, pacing the room like a man trapped in a nightmare.
-« You're awake," he whispered. "The Élan… it's awakened in you."
Still lying on the floor, Arthur slowly lifted his gaze toward him.
-« The Élan?"
Jonas froze, his expression shaken.
-« I'll explain everything. But not now. Not here. We have to wait out the storm. We need… we need to get ready and leave as soon as we can."
Arthur pushed himself up slowly, leaning on his elbows. The strange heat still lingered within him, but it was subdued now, smoldering beneath his skin like dying embers. He felt as though something vast had opened inside him. A door he had never noticed, yet had always been there.
Somewhere in the Outer Rim…
Silence ruled the dark heights of Zaractis, the fortress-world of the Dissonants. A planet of metal and toxic dust, where every breath was filtered through masks and every corner watched by automata. The sky, perpetually black, was only broken by the crimson flashes of an unending storm that had long since claimed the atmosphere as its own.
In one of the highest bastions of the planet, a vast circular chamber lay as quiet as a tomb, bathed in a faint red glow. Machines hummed faintly in the background, like the mechanical sighs of sleeping giants. At the center of the room stood a solitary figure cloaked in a long, dark cape. Its body was unnaturally still, hands clasped behind its back, face entirely hidden behind a sculpted onyx mask devoid of any expression.
Without warning, a massive lightning bolt carved across the sky above the bastion, the deep rumble that followed making the walls shudder.
The figure lifted its head slowly, as if gazing beyond the metallic ceiling, through the storm clouds, across the stars.
A mechanical whisper escaped from the mask, amplified by a cold, inhuman voice modulator:
-« Something has awakened."
At that moment, the enormous doors behind it slid open abruptly, a gust of wind charged with electricity sweeping into the room. Three figures in dark cloaks knelt in perfect unison, heads bowed low. Their capes, adorned with the sigil of the Dissonants a broken circle bisected by a single vertical line dragged across the polished floor.
These beings were the Abjured, an elite caste among the Dissonants. Though their ability to channel the Élan was crude and incomplete far from the refined mastery of the ancient Harmonists—it was more than enough to sow terror across entire systems.
The first Abjured, kneeling in the center, spoke with a voice modulated but trembling with emotion:
-« Lord… the Élan shuddered. We all felt the rift. Something… or someone has surfaced."
The central figure, still with its back to them, didn't reply immediately. It seemed to peer into the unseen, as if the sky itself was whispering the truth. Finally, it turned its head slightly toward them. Its mask, featureless and expressionless, stared at them like a faceless entity.
-« Yes… it seems we all sensed it. In the Tyrran system, a peripheral world. Sparse. Inhospitable. The perfect place to evade the Empire."
A long silence followed.
Then, the figure turned fully away from the kneeling trio, walking slowly toward the massive observation bay at the edge of the chamber. Outside, the turbulent sky flashed with red lightning—the same sky, and the same storms, that raged above Scrapra.
Its metallic, grave voice spoke again:
-« Dispatch our ships to the Tyrran system."
The three Abjured nodded, still kneeling.
-« Establish a blockade. Search every planet, every moon, every outpost. Nothing gets in or out."
-« Yes, my Lord…" they murmured in unison.
-« And you three…" the figure added, pausing.
The kneeling Abjured held their breath, heads bowed low.
-« Find the source," the figure ordered, raising its hand toward the storm-churned sky.
-« And bring it to me!"
Without another word, the three Abjured departed hastily, their cloaks trailing behind them. As their footsteps faded, the masked figure remained still, its voice cutting through the silence once more.
-« It seems… a council meeting will be required."