Morning broke through the heavy Deadwood canopy. The sunlight fell in sickly, gray shafts.
Noctis crushed a dry, white bone under his bare foot. He did not slow down.
The freezing wind bit into his exposed chest. His skin felt numb, but his muscles thrummed with raw, volatile heat. The massive cosmic whale tattoo on his back burned with a steady rhythm.
He moved through the rotting timber with sharp, calculated steps. His silver right eye snapped rapidly between the dense tree trunks.
The physical forest was dying. The spiritual forest was screaming.
Ghostly, jagged veins of primordial energy throbbed inside the blackened wood. Noctis saw the echoes of ancient magic clinging to the dead bark. The trees were actively feeding on the residual mana of long-forgotten massacres.
He tore a low-hanging branch out of his path. The wood snapped with a dry crack.
A low, vibrating growl answered the noise.
The brush ten yards to his left violently parted. A Forest Lurker lunged into the small clearing. It was Rank 2. The beast resembled a hairless, emaciated wolf with two extra joints in its hind legs. Thick, black mud dripped from its oversized yellow fangs.
Noctis stopped. He did not take a defensive stance.
The Lurker dug its claws into the dirt and launched itself straight at his throat.
Noctis stepped tightly inside the beast's trajectory. His black tattoo flared. Pure void energy flooded his right arm, coating his skin in pitch-black ink.
He punched his fist violently into the Lurker's ribcage.
His knuckles bypassed bone and muscle entirely. The void energy phased his hand straight into the beast's spiritual core. Noctis gripped the freezing clump of energy tight.
He ripped his arm backward.
The Lurker hit the ground in a heap. Not a single drop of physical blood spilled, but the beast lay completely dead.
Noctis stared at his clenched fist. A weak, pale wisp of blue light struggled against his fingers. It lacked the heavy, suffocating density of the Shadow Stalker he had killed the night before.
He crushed his fist. The blue energy dissolved into his pores.
A tiny spark of warmth hit his chest, then instantly vanished. Lower-rank monsters held weaker souls. It was trash. He needed far bigger prey to build his reserves.
Noctis wiped the mud off his forearm and continued walking north.
Midday brought a suffocating humidity and the sharp smell of ozone.
The dead trees abruptly gave way to a massive crater of collapsed gray stone. A Primordial ruin. According to Aris Thorne's encyclopedic memories buried in his skull, it was a Type B structure. Partially collapsed, heavily unstable.
Massive granite pillars lay shattered across the moss. Deep trenches cut through the earth, revealing cracked stone staircases descending into absolute darkness.
Noctis walked down a jagged stone ramp. He approached a half-buried granite wall covered in complex, geometric carvings.
He reached out, tracing a finger over a deeply etched rune.
"Don't touch that."
Noctis pivoted. The black void ink coiled around his right hand instantly. He dropped his center of gravity, ready to strike.
A girl dropped lightly from a ruined pillar ten feet away. Her heavy leather boots hit the stone with a dull thud.
She wore a canvas jacket stained with old dirt and cargo pants heavily patched at the knees. Dozens of small tool pouches hung from her thick leather belt. Messy, dark braids spilled over her shoulders.
Noctis locked onto her face. Her right eye caught the gray daylight. It was pure silver, completely devoid of a pupil. A chaotic, swirling light churned beneath the surface of the iris.
"You press that rune, you trigger a localized flesh-eating curse," the girl warned. She hooked her thumbs into her belt. "And you're not supposed to be here. This is my patch."
"I didn't see your name carved on the rotting trees," Noctis shot back. He kept his fist clenched.
"I'm Tyuna." She tilted her head, blatantly inspecting his bare, blood-stained chest and the creeping black tattoos. "You look like absolute shit. And you're completely unarmed in the middle of the Deadwood. Are you suicidal or just stupid?"
"Neither." Noctis let the void energy fade from his knuckles. It retreated back to his spine. "You're a scavenger."
"Ruin explorer," Tyuna corrected sharply. She took a step closer. "And you were reading the script. Don't bullshit me and say you were just admiring the pretty lines. You recognized the structure."
Noctis stared at her. Aris's memories made the ancient language look like basic arithmetic. Every curve and jagged line held a distinct, phonetic weight in his mind.
"What if I can read it?" Noctis asked.
"Then we can make a deal," Tyuna said. Her boots crunched heavily on the loose gravel. "There's an artifact in the lower chamber. I tracked it for three weeks. But the access threshold is sealed with a shifting dialect block. You translate the block, I get the artifact."
"What do I get?"
"I don't leave you here to get eaten by a Vanguard patrol," Tyuna countered. She pulled a dirty brass compass from her pocket and spun it around her fingers. "I guide you out. Assuming you actually want to survive this hellhole."
"I'm going back to Valyria," Noctis stated.
"Perfect." Tyuna pointed toward a dark, narrow cavern opening behind the mural wall. "Valyria is exactly where I sell my hauls. We get the piece, we leave. Deal?"
Noctis analyzed her posture. She was physically weak. One clean hit would snap her jaw. But she hid a cursed eye and operated alone in a lethal environment. She possessed raw, pragmatic survival instincts.
She was useful.
"Lead the way," Noctis ordered.
They descended into the earth. The air immediately turned stale and freezing.
Tyuna unclipped a small, glowing mana crystal from her belt. The harsh yellow light cut through the pitch black. The narrow stone corridor sloped sharply downward, covered in centuries of dust and web.
"We're looking for a memory-storage sphere," Tyuna explained. Her voice echoed sharply off the damp walls. "Primordial tech. It's usually the size of a fist, made of highly condensed, runic glass."
"Why do you need it?" Noctis asked. He scanned the walls. The spiritual echoes here were sharp and jagged.
"Because the fat bastards on the Noble Council pay a fortune for ancient knowledge they can suppress," Tyuna spat. "Or the Inquisition buys it just to smash it."
Suddenly, Tyuna hissed in pain. She slapped a hand hard over her right eye and stumbled against the stone wall. Her breathing hitched.
Noctis stepped toward her. "What's wrong with your eye?"
"It fucking hates concentrated mana." Tyuna gritted her teeth. She pointed a shaky finger down the hall. "The sphere is close. The residual energy is spiking."
Noctis pushed past her. He closed his human left eye.
The silver iris of his right eye flared violently. The dark corridor transformed into a blinding grid of lethal energy.
Three invisible tripwires glowed fiery red across the stone floor. Above them, a dozen crude, jagged magic circles pulsed in the ceiling, fully loaded with acidic stone ready to drop.
"Traps," Noctis stated. "Left over from the original architects."
"Can you disarm them?" Tyuna asked. She wiped a thick line of sweat from her forehead.
"No. But I see the blind spots."
Noctis moved forward. He stepped carefully over the first red line, planting his bare heel on a cracked stone. He pressed his spine flat against the freezing wall, scraping his skin to avoid the trigger zone of the second wire.
"Step exactly where I step," Noctis ordered without looking back.
Tyuna followed. She mirrored his movements with practiced, terrifying agility. She slid her boots perfectly into his footprints. They bypassed the final tripwire and stepped through a heavy stone archway into a circular chamber.
A high stone pedestal stood in the dead center of the room. A translucent glass sphere rested on top of it. The object hummed with a faint, rhythmic white light.
"There," Tyuna whispered. She dropped her hand from her eye. "But the pedestal is warded."
Noctis approached the pedestal. Thick, black ink of primordial text wrapped entirely around the cylindrical stone. The dialect was dense, layered with secondary and tertiary meanings designed to confuse thieves.
Aris's mind parsed the information in a fraction of a second.
"It requires a blood offering from a recognized lineage," Noctis read aloud. His voice bounced off the circular walls. "If you try to lift it, the pedestal detonates the sphere and collapses the ceiling."
Tyuna cursed loudly. She kicked a loose rock across the room. "I don't have Primordial blood. We're totally blocked."
"I do."
Tyuna snapped her head toward him. She stared at him like he was a lunatic. "Are you insane? You're a noble bastard at best. The Inquisition wiped out every single ancient bloodline centuries ago. You bleed on that stone, we both die."
"Watch."
Noctis lifted his right hand. He bit down violently on his thumb. Copper flooded his tongue.
He pressed his bleeding thumb directly onto the central rune carved into the stone.
The pedestal hummed at a deafening pitch. The white light inside the glass sphere flashed blinding blue, then rapidly settled into a calm, steady glow. The black warding lines burned away into ash.
Noctis reached out and grabbed the sphere. It was ice cold. He tossed it casually to Tyuna.
She caught it, fumbling slightly against her chest under its heavy weight. She stared at the glass sphere, then looked up at Noctis. Genuine, unfiltered shock crossed her face.
"You're not just some noble brat," Tyuna said. She shoved the heavy sphere into a lead-lined pouch on her belt and secured the buckle. "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm the guy who's going to translate the rest of your ruins," Noctis answered flatly. He wiped the blood from his thumb onto his pants. "If you get me into Valyria unseen."
Tyuna grinned. It was a sharp, highly calculating expression.
"Deal. I know the smuggler routes operating through the outer warrens. The Inquisition never patrols the deepest sewer drains."
"Then let's move," Noctis said. He turned his back on the pedestal and walked toward the archway. "I have a family to break."