[First Era – Year 4 of the Divinity War; The Faint, region undefined]

  Moraithe's boots hit the ground with a rhythmic thud as he sprinted across the unstable landscape, each step sending vibrations through the cracked earth beneath him. This world, known as The Faint for its dim burnt yellow sun, was alive and chaotic. It was a volatile storm of mountains rising and sinking, valleys collapsing into sinkholes as the mithsyrium caused the world to boil and churn. He couldn't have run at a third of this speed before reaching the rank of master.

  If he was ever going to stop the war he’d started, he needed more power.

  Shore and Break, arcshell golems he'd brought to this world and trained, ran alongside him. They’d grown thigh high now, leathery, scurrying creatures with barbed tails and flat shells upon their backs. Shore dove into the earth becoming one with it like the mithsyrium that ran in her blood. Break jumped into a vein of mithsyrium, and he began lapping it up, greedily.

  With a sharp intake of breath, Moraithe drew an arrow from his quiver, his fingers steady despite the pounding of his feet. The arrow tip shimmered in the dim light, its steel vibrating with potential. He sighted down the arrow as he prepared his mind for the entanglement.

  A mountain jutted into his path, but he had a runic key entangled with the mass of his own mountain. He loosed. It flew true, streaking across the turbulent air like a bolt of lightning. He focused on the arrow's tip, envisioning the force of a mountain's mass binding to it precisely as it struck, merging with the arrow's as if they were one. With a final, desperate mental lunge, he snapped the entanglement into place. The arrow shuddered, its weight becoming an immutable force—immense and terrifying—boring through the mountain.

  When the dust cleared, a tunnel gaped open straight through the rock.

  His hand began to shake, a cold sweat beading on his forehead as the mental strain grew from another entanglement. After so many miles of this, the entropy of each entanglement surged as his mind fought to contain the mounting chaos. He breathed, working through the running meditation to restore order to his mind. For only the will of a living soul could reverse entropy.

  Steady … just a little more …

  The ground trembled beneath him as the land groaned and shifted. The mithsyrium was relentless. It fed and pushed, rearranging the earth with terrifying speed, but now, at least, the path was clear. Shore emerged from the ground and ran forward, testing the tunnel alongside Break. Moraithe followed close behind.

  They moved quickly. Moraithe's breath labored as he raced forward, emerging to search for another obstacle. The world seemed to tremble and twist, as if in response to his actions, but he ignored it. There was no time to slow down. Every moment mattered.

  Suddenly the ground began to buckle beneath him. It was a sinkhole. He whistled. Break and Shore dove into the earth only to come up one under each foot as the earth collapsed. He leaped from the hard carapace of one back to the other, spanning the gap of collapsing earth. He rolled, and his pets emerged from the earth alongside him.

  “Thanks.” He patted them each in turn, then continued his run.

  He'd managed to clear some of the chaos in his mind by the time he reached the next obstacle—a towering cliff, cracked and veined with swirling veins of mithsyrium, its presence causing the air to feel thick and heavy.

  Without hesitation, he reached into his pouch and drew forth a rock. This would hold his salt entanglement. It was some time into his training on this world that he had finally discovered it. Salt resisted mithsyrium. It could push away the strange substance. And this rock was entangled with a runic key that he'd placed on an entire mound of salt he'd discovered. He hefted the rock in his palm, then with a practiced throw he flung the rock at the veins of mithsyrium.

  Moraithe's focus sharpened as he cast the entanglement. His mind flickered with the feedback from the earth—the pulsing mithsyrium trying to resist, as though the earth itself were alive, angry, and pushing back at his every effort.

  He struggled to maintain his focus, feeling his mind strain under the weight of the entanglement—the entropy. He had to be careful—he couldn't let the chaos overwhelm him. The salt entanglement wrung the mithsyrium from the cliff, making it sure and stable while the ground below shot up under the splash of the mithsyrium.

  Break clicked in pain as he stepped on the salt-entangled earth. “Careful” Moraithe called, and Shore dove aside to avoid it.

  Pillars of earth sprang up in the wake of the mithsyrium. He flung himself over the edge of the cliff, deftly leaping from one jutting spike of earth to another until he reached level ground.

  Methodically, he carved a safe path through the chaos both physically and mentally.

  His body shuddered as every strand of entropy pushed his limits, twisted his perception. And he knew he was growing stronger. But he held on, his eyes and senses scanning for the thing he was truly seeking—fragments of his lost memories.

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  The land before him boiled with an unsettling ferocity. This time he would freeze the path forward. He'd set the runic key for this entanglement in the cold depths of space. He loosed another arrow, and as it struck he entangled the earth, freezing it in place, forcing it to hold firm, and it held.

  Moraithe let out a shaky breath, relieved for a moment, despite the increased entropy. He had cleared the path. For now.

  Each entanglement took more from him, but it also pushed his limits, made him stronger.

  Elithir had told him that since he was merely regaining power he had lost, his training would help him cultivate much faster than normal. Already in one year, he'd cultivated nearly two hundred self-assurance, vastly exceeding his expectations. But still no fragments of his memories.

  Moraithe's senses flared as he moved across the cracked landscape. The tug in his chest—faint, but unmistakable—grew stronger with each step. It wasn't just the earth that called to him now. Something beneath it, buried in the chaos of mithsyrium, resonated with his blood. A fragment of his past teased across his senses. It would not hold still, the mithsyrium pushing and pulling with its relentless hunger, hiding what he sought beneath layers of ever-changing rock.

  He stopped and whistled to Break and Shore, standing at the edge of a chasm that opened up near his feet. The ground ahead was dark with the deep presence of mithsyrium—a thick, blackened mass, swirling and pulsing like the belly of some great beast. He could feel its power tugging at the ground around him, threatening to swallow him whole if he stepped too close.

  The pulse in his chest was growing stronger. He was close. He could feel it.

  With a sharp intake, Moraithe blew out a deep, steadying breath. He would have to push back the mithsyrium—hold it at bay long enough to reach whatever lay beneath. He could feel the pull of his memory, a faint whisper now, beneath all the chaos.

  He reached into his pouch and withdrew another stone he'd prepared for a salt entanglement. It glinted faintly in the dim light. He needed to stabilize this chunk of earth, so the memory wouldn't slip away. Hopefully, that would create an island within a circle of mithsyrium which would allow the piece holding his memory to move freely.

  Moraithe dropped the stone and whistled. Shore leaped on the stone, snatching it in her jaws and boring it down into the earth. He waited for her to emerge before he focused, sharpening his will to cast the entanglement. The entropy it brought pressed against him like a weight, but he fought to hold it back, keeping it from flooding his mind.

  Focus, focus …

  The land groaned beneath him as the salt began to resonate. He could feel it—like a low hum, a connection that reached deep into the earth itself. The mithsyrium resisted, but the salt pushed back, flexing against the pressure.

  Moraithe gritted his teeth, his mind fighting against the rising entropy. Chaos. It was all slipping through his thoughts as he held the entanglement together, anchoring the salt's power to the rock, wringing out the mithsyrium. Slowly, the land began to shift—he whistled for Shore and Break, pouring thoughts into their mind, asking them to dive under the rock and push it up through the ground.

  They dove in.

  Slowly, carefully, it began to rise. The earth trembled as though holding its breath.

  He clenched the entanglement, feeling the entropy in his mind tighten. The ground shuddered, and with an audible crack, a piece of land, heavy with rock and trapped earth, lifted slowly from the morass. It groaned in protest, its surface straining under the shifting pressure. Moraithe called Break and Shore out, then with a great surge he expanded the entanglement, pushing the mithsyrium far back into the earth.

  Relaxing, he let it go. Under the pressure the ground cracked open, revealing layers of ancient stone and debris—layers that had been long untouched.

  With a deep, labored breath, he knelt, wiping sweat from his brow. His mind was in chaos, but the land was stable.

  Moraithe drew a sword from his belt, then prepared one more entanglement. Holding the blade high overhead, he slammed it into the earth, entangling the weight of a mountain. Chips of stone and dust exploded as it cracked open.

  He wedged himself into the crack and found himself close, so close to a fragment of his past. He lifted the blade once more and plunged it into the exposed rock, chiseling away at the layers of stone. His hands worked quickly but carefully, the blade scraping against the hard surface. As he dug deeper, he felt it—the pulse again, more distinct now, thrumming through his fingertips as he scraped the earth away.

  Finally, his hand hit something solid, something different. He paused, heart racing, as he brushed away the last of the grit. There, nestled in the rocky layers, was a small fragment—shimmering faintly with an inner light. He felt the connection, the energy that tied it to him.

  His breath caught in his throat as he held it in his palm, his fingers trembling. It was a shard of memory, a fragment that had been lost deep beneath the surface. As he held it, a flood of sensations crashed into him—familiar sights, sounds, and a face he couldn't quite name—but the emotions tied to it were undeniable. A warmth, a sense of safety, a moment of peace in a life long forgotten.

  He held out the fragment to Shore and Break, letting them sniff it, resonate with its aura, then he entangled that memory into them, sealing it so they would always remember, so they would know what to look for. Then he sent them off to hunt through the earth for more of them. Hopefully, being able to plum the depths of this world, dive into it, they would be able to delve more thoroughly than he ever had.

  With a mystic grin, Moraithe held the memory fragment close and began to cultivate its essence. His heart ached as he felt a tear slip from his eye, his body shaking from the weight of the memories flooding back. He wasn't sure what he had found, but he knew it was a piece of the life he had once lived.

  He saw his mother, her warmth, living there upon a star, amid love so bright that it shone out to fill the universe with light. He had lived upon the First Star. It had once been his home. And he longed to reach it once more. That moment he vowed to himself he would work until he stood upon the First Star and inscribed a runic key upon it, to tie him to that place forevermore.

  Now, he looked within himself and saw nearly a thousand more self-assurance shining from his aura. His self-assurance now measured eight thousand five hundred and twenty-four. He was nearing the knight rank. Oh, how glorious that would be.

  A sobering thought came to him. Power alone would not be enough to stop this war. Elithir had more power than anyone, yet he couldn’t stop the war with all that strength. Power, yes, but he needed something else, too. He needed a better plan.