The sun over the Ward was a cruel observer. It did not bring warmth; it brought a sweltering, humid weight that turned the air into a stagnant soup of industrial grease and sea salt. Under the shadow of Mama Ghoul’s porch, the atmosphere was as thick as the tobacco smoke curling from Juro’s pipe. He sat there like a relic of a forgotten war, his back against a weathered timber post that had seen more blood than most battlefields.
When the five figures ascended the stairs, the wood groaned under the collective weight of their destiny. At the front was Silarias, his presence a low-frequency hum that set the nearby glassware vibrating. Beside him was Nyx, her Royalty aura radiating a cold, lunar dignity that demanded space. Behind them stood Aurelius, Jane, and the Mysterious Stranger, whose cloak hissed with a restless, contained energy.
Silarias held out his adventurer pass. The red C stamped upon it glowed with a fresh, mocking intensity. “Registered,” Silarias said, his voice a low, gritty baritone that seemed to vibrate from his chest. “We are officially a team. The 5 Commandments.”
Juro didn’t open his eyes. He took a long, slow drag, the embers in his pipe glowing like the eyes of a dying beast. He exhaled a cloud of smoke that didn’t dissipate; instead, it curdled in the air, forming the shape of a skeletal hand that reached toward Silarias’s throat before vanishing into thin air.
“Registered,” Juro repeated, his voice raspy and thin. “Congratulations. You are now the most overqualified group of unemployed orphans in the city. You have got the name. You have got the steel. But do you have the bread?”
Nyx frowned, her silver eyes narrowing in the dim light. “What are you talking about, Juro? We have the passes. We are recognized by the Guild. The hard part is over.”
Juro finally cracked an eyelid. His gaze was ancient and unforgiving. “Nice name, Princess. The 5 Commandments. Sounds like something people whisper before they get their heads chopped off. But tell me… which mission did you pick up?”
The question hung in the air like a lead weight. Silarias and Nyx traded a look, a flicker of confusion that quickly curdled into realization. They had been so consumed by the hype of their team name and the confrontation with Valerius that they had forgotten the most basic tenet of the adventurer’s life: the contract is the only thing that puts food on the table.
“Mission?” Silarias asked, his voice flat. He felt a surge of irritation at himself. Dammit, he thought, we walked out of there like kings and forgot we are still starving.
Juro let out a dry, hacking laugh that sounded like stones grinding together. “Mission? Give me a break!” He sat up, the lazy atmosphere evaporating instantly. “Do you think the Guild is a nursery? Do you think they give you those stamps so you can frame them on your wall? You pick up a contract the second you sign your name, or you do not eat. You are Nobodies. In this world, if you are not working, you are dying.”
His face hardened into a mask of brutal discipline. He leaned forward, his eyes boring into Silarias’s. “You let that pen-pusher behind the desk play you for fools. He gave you the rank and let you walk out empty-handed, laughing at your arrogance the moment the door closed. Normally, a team like yours takes four contracts at once. You stack them, you fix your coin, and you build your legend. You do not walk around like peacocks with empty bellies.”
Suddenly, Juro’s presence exploded. The smoke around him surged, turning into a swarm of grey, translucent rats and snarling hounds that nipped at the group’s heels. “GO BACK NOW!” Juro roared, his voice echoing off the buildings like a thunderclap. “Go back and do your job! Unless you want to spend your first night as Commandments begging for scraps at Mama Ghoul’s back door!”
SHOOOOM!
The air cracked. In a blur of movement and a burst of static energy, the porch was empty. Only a small pile of dust and a few swirling leaves remained where the five had stood a second ago. Juro leaned back, blowing a single smoke ring in the shape of a laughing skull. “Cubs,” he muttered, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. “They have got the legs. Now let us see if they have got the stomach.”
The doors of the Adventurer Guild didn’t just open; they were nearly torn from their hinges. The hall was quieter now. The morning rush had faded, and the high-ranking knights like Galahad and Lady Yra had already vanished into the shadows of their own assignments.
The officer behind the counter didn’t look up. He was busy filing papers, a smirk still playing on his thin lips. “Back so soon? Forget your manners? Or did you realize that a Nobody with a title is still just a Nobody?”
Silarias didn’t speak. He stepped up to the counter and slammed his hand down. The wood groaned, a hairline fracture spider-webbing from his palm. The runes on Freya, his right gauntlet, began to pulse with a sickly, rhythmic black light. The temperature around the desk dropped ten degrees, frost blooming on the officer’s inkwell. I’m going to wipe that smirk off his face with a god-tier contract, Silarias thought, his blood beginning to boil.
“The missions. Now,” Silarias growled. “And we are taking more than one.”
The officer’s smirk faltered, replaced by a flash of genuine fear. He reached under the counter and pulled out a stack of weathered parchments. To spite them, to ensure they would never return to bother him, he pulled two black-bordered scrolls from the bottom of his drawer. S-Tier.
“If you want to die that badly, far be it from me to stop the law of nature,” the officer whispered, his voice trembling. “Two S-Tier contracts for the real men you claim to be, and three support missions to fill the gaps. If you survive even one of these, you’ll be the wealthiest drifters in the Ward. If not… well, the Guild keeps the deposit.”
Silarias snatched the scrolls. He didn’t even look at the gold rewards. He scanned the titles: The Curse of Oak-haven (S-Tier), an investigation into a village built atop a petrified giant. The Lost Forge (S-Tier), a dungeon dive into the Magma Veins. Plus three others: Escort: Origin Core Shipment, Extermination: Scrap-Stalker Nest, and Recovery: Lost Archivist Records.
“The Curse of Oak-haven,” Silarias muttered.
“A lovely place,” the officer sneered, recovering some of his gall. “Try not to smudge the contracts with your blood when you die. It makes the paperwork such a hassle.”
Silarias turned to his team. The Mysterious Stranger stood in the back, his cloak hissing with a sound like a thousand angry wasps. They were ready. “We start with Oak-haven,” Silarias declared. “The Prince is playing a game there. It is time we joined the board.”
The trek to Oak-haven took them far beyond the industrialized smog of Datal. But Oak-haven was not a village in the woods. It was a village of the woods. Specifically, a village built atop The Sleeping Colossus, a petrified giant from an age of gods. Its stone ribs formed the arches of the village houses; its massive upturned palm served as the town square.
As they ascended the winding, moss-covered paths, Jane walked with a strange, hesitant step. For the first time in years, the lethal Wraith looked vulnerable. She trailed her fingers along a stone pillar that was, in reality, a petrified knuckle.
“My father brought me here once,” Jane whispered. Her voice, usually as sharp as a razor, was cracked with sentiment. “Before the Federation burned our district. We sat on the edge of the Colossus’s pinky toe and just… fished in the clouds. He told me Oak-haven was the only place left where the wind didn’t taste like rust. It was the only time I ever saw him breathe without looking over his shoulder.”
Aurelius stepped beside her. He was nineteen now, the eldest, and his face carried the weight of a man who had seen civilizations fall. He didn’t offer empty words. He simply reached out and took her hand, his scarred fingers interlacing with hers. The bond between them had forged in the fire of the five-year training; they were the adults of this broken family, the quiet strength that kept Silarias and Nyx from drifting too far into their own darkness.
“We will bring that wind back, Jane,” Aurelius said, his voice a calm anchor. “But the air… it smells like a funeral pyre today.”
Silarias observed them from the front, his jaw set. Love is a luxury we can’t afford to lose, he thought, gripping Frey and Freya tighter. He had a burden to carry, and part of that burden was ensuring that the few pieces of beauty left in this world didn’t burn to ash.
When they finally breached the village gates, the scene was a nightmare of domesticity. The air was a stagnant soup of rotting lilies and burnt hair. The villagers were not screaming. They were not running. They were simply… existing. A woman stood in front of a cottage, sweeping the same patch of dirt over and over until the stone beneath was worn smooth. A man sat on a bench, staring into the abyss of the valley with milky white eyes. They moved with an eerie, mechanical synchronicity.
“They are marionettes,” Nyx whispered, her hand going to her hilt.
Silarias stepped closer to a villager. Deep in the nape of the man’s neck, a pulsating fleshy vein was visible: the Parasite Anting. It was not an elite gift; it was a leash. It vibrated in sync with a distant, weeping melody.
From the edge of the Colossus’s chin, they found the source. Bernard, a Monk of the Sunless Path. He was a hollowed-out shell of a human, his skin the color of wet ash. As he played his bone flute, the wind carried his confession. He had been the village protector. When the Prince’s plague arrived, he begged for a cure. The Prince gave him the Mother Parasite. To save his people from death, Bernard had to consume their souls. He turned them into mindless puppets to keep them from the grave. He was a jailer who loved his prisoners.
“The Prince gave me a choice,” Bernard whispered, the flute still trembling in his hand. “Death for all, or life as my shadows. I chose life… but I lost the world.”
Suddenly, the world exploded.
A massive pillar of golden light erupted from the village square, followed by a sonic boom that shattered the windows of the stone houses. The 5 Commandments rushed to the plaza and skidded to a halt at the edge of a massive crater.
In the center stood Sir Galahad and Lady Yra. They were locked in an Extreme Battle against five figures radiating a terrifying, obsidian dark power. These were the Cursed Elites, Federation knights who had accepted the Prince’s Cursed Antings. Unlike the villagers, these were monsters of pure power. Their armor had fused with their flesh, turning into jagged black plates.
Galahad’s golden plate was cracked, his radiant aura flickering. Lady Yra’s sword, The Resonance, was letting out a literal scream of agony, its vibrations failing to pierce the Anti-Anima shields held by the Elites.
“Galahad is… losing?” Nyx whispered, her face pale.
Galahad looked over his shoulder, blood matting his blonde hair. He saw Silarias and the group. “STAY BACK!” Galahad roared. “This is not a mission! It is a ritual! The Prince is using the Mother Parasite to channel Anima into the Colossus!”
As if on cue, Bernard the Monk stood up and blew a single, piercing note. The ground beneath Silarias began to groan. A crack miles long opened in the center of the village. The stone fingers of the giant began to twitch. The mountain was waking up.
“If the Colossus stands,” Galahad screamed, parrying a blow that sent sparks flying ten feet into the air, “Datal is gone! Stop the song! STOP THE SONG!”
The cliff-side began to crumble. Oak-haven tilted as the giant started to rise. Silarias felt Frey pulse with a heat that threatened to melt his skin. If the sky is going to fall, he thought, slamming his gauntlets together, then I’ll just have to punch a hole through it.
