In the Faculty Chambers, the atmosphere was tense, thick with the bitter scent of incense and the low hum of machinery. Lysara paced restlessly, her fingers twitching near her whip, which lay coiled on the floor like a dormant serpent. She hissed with frustration, dragging it through the air in a test of its length.
"Alaric's reckless. The boy's a spark waiting to detonate," she said, her voice cold and biting. She glared toward the map of the unmapped east, her eyes narrowing as if she could will the world into submission. "He's grooming Tatsu like some sort of weapon. This is madness. You can't control someone like that."
Vorian, who had been standing silently by the map, didn't respond immediately. His gaze lingered on the shifting patterns of stardust and fractured continents, his mind elsewhere, calculating the next move. He finally turned to her, his face unreadable, voice calm but carrying an edge. "Or he's the only one who might outlast the storm."
Lysara scoffed. "The storm won't care about him. Or us. You saw what happened to the last Anchor who thought they could stop the Cabal." Her whip flicked out once more, the snap echoing through the room. "Tatsu is playing a dangerous game. If he's even still alive."
Vorian's fingers traced the edge of the map, his voice a low rumble as he spoke again, this time with a trace of something like hope. "That's the point, Lysara. He's not like the others. We've got one shot, just one, to end this war before it consumes us all. Tatsu may be the key."
Lysara didn't reply, her teeth gritted in frustration. She wasn't sure whether to believe him or to curse him for his misplaced faith. But as Vorian studied the unmapped east with such intensity, she couldn't help but wonder if he knew something she didn't.
Lira drifted through the Bastion's memory vaults, her form a shadow among the endless rows of forgotten files. The Anchors had scrubbed Tatsu from their records, but even in erasure, fragments of him lingered, echoes trapped in the data.
In one archive, a holo flickered to life, showing a younger Tatsu laughing alongside Kio, their faces alight with joy. The image flickered, then sputtered into static, but the warmth of the moment remained, suspended in the silence. Further in, a report caught her eye, heavily redacted, but not enough to obscure the critical note: Subject 7-04 exhibits resonance with throne-shards beyond predictive thresholds.
Lira's fingers brushed the cold metal shelves, brushing away the dust of ages. She could feel it, the truth, buried beneath layers of secrecy.
Later, in one of the Bastion's forsaken chambers, she materialized before a Frozen One, its form locked in ice, mid-scream. The reflection in the ice mirrored her face, her determined gaze. The creature's anguish was clear in its frozen state, but it would not stop her.
"He's alive," Lira whispered, her voice sharp, like a blade cutting through the quiet of the room. "And you're going to help me prove it."
Alaric led Tatsu to the Bastion's farthest rampart. Beyond it, the Fractured Horizon rippled stars birthing and dying in seconds.
"Eclipsia grows faster than we can trace," Alaric said. "New lands rise. Old ones blink out. The Cabal and Anchors fight over a sandcastle while the tide swells."
Tatsu's star-mark pulsed. "Then why map it at all?"
Alaric grinned. "Because somewhere out there lies the First Star. Its death birthed the Splintering. Find it and you unwrite the war."
At dawn, after a long night of silent reflection beneath Alaric's starmap sky, Tatsu awoke to find the atrium eerily quiet. The globes of molten light had dimmed to a soft glow, and the constellations that had once danced above him were now little more than drifting particles, their forms unraveling and scattering into the air like dying embers.
His teacher was nowhere to be seen.
In place of Alaric, there was only a map, etched in starlight and anchored to the obsidian floor. The lines of it shimmered faintly, alive with a pulse that seemed to call him. It stretched out before him, pointing east into the unmapped wilds of Eclipsia.
Tatsu knelt, his fingers brushing the edges of the map, tracing the glowing path that led toward the unknown. The pulse in the lines seemed to synchronize with the beat of his own heart, urging him onward. Along the margin, a single phrase was scrawled in Alaric's handwriting, glowing faintly as if the ink itself was woven from the stars:
"Bring me a shard of the Everstorm or die trying."
Tatsu stood slowly, his mind already turning toward the task. His breath was steady, but the weight of the words pressed on him. His first lesson had left its mark, both physical and mental. He could still feel the pain, the suffocating pressure of death, the sting of failure, and the haunting voice of a world calling out to be remembered.
Before he could focus on the path ahead, he felt the familiar pull of weariness, the kind that comes after deep, introspective meditation. Alaric's teachings were not without their toll, and Tatsu had learned the hard way that clarity came only through quieting his mind, allowing the chaos of the world to settle.
He sat down on the cold, smooth floor of the atrium and closed his eyes, grounding himself. In the silence, the echoes of the stars seemed to hum just beneath the surface of his consciousness. With each breath, he sank deeper, reaching for something beyond the pain of his last lesson, a sense of purpose, a thread to follow through the fractured chaos of Eclipsia.
It wasn't long before he felt the subtle shift in the air around him, the soft hum of Alaric's presence returning. When he opened his eyes, Alaric stood nearby, holding a small tray. The old cartographer's expression was unreadable, but there was a faint warmth in his gaze as he handed the tray to Tatsu.
"Eat," Alaric said simply, "You'll need your strength."
Tatsu hesitated only for a moment before accepting the food. It wasn't much, some kind of hard bread and a dried fruit that pulsed faintly with starlight, but it would sustain him. As he ate, Alaric watched him silently, his own thoughts hidden behind the ancient lines of his face.
Once Tatsu had finished, he stood, feeling the weight of the Aegis settle against his shoulders once more. The armor, now laced with fresh glyphs that whispered with every movement, was a constant reminder of the power and the price of his journey.
The memory of his first lesson still burned in his chest, the fire of it searing into him. Alaric had given him the tools to survive, but survival alone was never enough. To truly master this place, to navigate the twisted path, he would have to go beyond his limits.
Alaric's voice broke through the stillness. "Meditation first, then we move forward. You must learn how to see the world clearly before you can chart its course."
Tatsu nodded, a silent acknowledgment that there was still much to learn, still much to endure. He turned to the map once more, his resolve hardening. The journey ahead would not be easy, but it was his to make.
Fallow Star's Lab, Western Wastes, The Fallow Star injected throne-shards into a Frozen One's spine. "The Cartographer moves. Accelerate Phase 2."
In the Bastion's sealed archives, Lira found a hidden chamber.
The mimic greeted her wearing Alaric's face.
"Hello, little ghost"