They turned to run.

  Shapes emerged from the treeline — silent at first, then all at once. Wolves, most bigger than the last pair. Eyes glowing with that same red-yellow hue. Their bodies shimmered slightly, like heat-haze, their forms struggling to hold themselves together.

  Kael ’s breath tightened. “There are too many. We won’t hold here.”

  Doran grinned like an idiot and shifted his grip on his axe. “Then we make a hole.”

  “North,” Kael said. “Toward the tower, break the line, and then we funnel them.”

  Wade raised his hands towards the wolves.

  Kael cast Dusting Veil, the newest spell in his arsenal, a rapid haze of powdered mana and decayed light that blurred the space between them and the wolves. It slowed their approach — not enough to stop, but enough to distort their instincts.

  Wade swept his hands in a wide arc. “ Gale Lurch! ”

  A wave of compressed air cracked the ground, blasting two wolves back and sending leaves and dirt flying into the others ’ faces.

  Doran didn ’t wait.

  A heavy swing cracked one skull wide open — but the others closed fast. Claws raked his shoulder as he pivoted, blood spattering the moss at his feet.

  Kael hurled Polymark at the jaws of another wolf just as it lunged for Wade. Its tongue and part of its face getting sliced, as it hit the ground, choking on its own mouth.

  But they were still surrounded.

  Wade cast Stormlash — a line of electrified air snapped through two beasts, but one got up again, slower, healing in real time.

  “We need the tower,” Kael hissed. “Now!”

  Doran swung his axe in a full circle, roaring, driving the closest wolves back. “Then stop talking and run!”

  They broke through, staggering toward the base of the ruined tower. Loose stone and vines gave underfoot. Kael slipped once, and Wade grabbed his coat and yanked him forward.

  Behind them, the wolves hesitated — for the first time.

  They didn ’t cross the tower’s outer circle immediately. The front line slowed. One growled low, teeth bared. They could feel it now, too.

  The tower ’s mana, but seconds later, the beasts surged forward anyway.

  Wade, already bleeding from the forearm, shouted “ Wind Javelin! ” and launched a spike of air straight through the eye socket of the wolf leading the charge.

  Doran took a claw across the ribs but drove his axe into the chest of the largest, screaming like it was the best day of his life.

  One by one, the wolves dropped- Kael dropped to one knee.

  Sweat poured down his neck. Wade sat on a cracked step and tore a strip of cloth to bind his arm. Doran kicked the nearest corpse and wiped blood off his axe with his hand.

  “Well,” he said, grinning. “That was fun.”

  Kael looked up toward the ruined tower entrance.

  The wolves were dead, and Kael sat on the cracked stone floor, his head bowed, breath steadying. Mana still trembled in his veins like burnt wire. His Spiral still had a decent portion of mana left, but he just wasn ’t used to casting this much consecutively.

  Wade leaned against a crumbling pillar, cloth wrapped tight around his arm, watching the blood seep into the fabric with tired detachment. Doran was already working — dragging the mangled corpses into a rough pile just outside the doorway, slicing open torsos with practiced, casual grunts.

  They weren ’t taking trophies, they were taking cores.

  “First one’s still glowing,” Doran muttered, carving into a ribcage. “You want me to bag these or…”

  “Wrap them in something,” Kael said, voice low. “Bare skin contact’s a bad idea.”

  Wade sniffed. “You say that like you didn’t already touch one.”

  Kael didn ’t reply.

  Half an hour later, with seven foul-smelling cloth-wrapped cores packed into one of Doran ’s oilskin sacks, the party turned their attention to the interior of the tower.

  “I hate this,” Wade muttered. “This isn’t natural mana flow. It’s ;ike… rotted air that keeps being breathed again.”

  Doran blinked. “That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever heard. I can’t sense shit but I agree it feels weird in here. ”

  They explored carefully. First floor — empty, long-abandoned. Second and third floor— ruined, collapsed, nothing useful. But the basement …

  Kael stopped dead.

  He held up a hand. “Here.”

  The room was cracked open by time, stone half-fallen away, roots crawling through the ceiling. But at the center, set into what remained of the floor, was a well — iron-ringed, pulsing faintly with shifting blue-green light.

  Inside, down the shaft, they could see two things:

  A mana core, embedded deep in the stone, impossibly dense, humming with raw power. And beside it — half sunken into the wall — some kind of artifact, that looked as if it were made from manipulated bone.

  Both Kael and Wade reeled from the aura.

  “Ugh,” Wade muttered, pulling back. “It’s like someone distilled disease into spellform.”

  Kael didn ’t speak for a while. He just stood there, feeling the Spiral inside him react — not violently, not defensively.

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  Eventually, he spoke.

  “I’m going to try something.”

  Wade narrowed his eyes. “You think you can break it?”

  Kael reached into his coat, pulled out a sliver of chalk, and crouched near the edge of the well. “Maybe. Or just loosen it, If we can get that core out of here, we are going to be rolling in gold.”

  He began to trace the circuit — not a simple acolyte spell like the ones he had cast in the fight against the wolves, but the delicate lattice of an Adept-tier construct. His fingers moved with slow, steady precision. The pattern took form: rings, interwoven glyphs, decay-channel lines layered over unraveling anchors.

  Then, with a breath, he cast:

  Spiral Fade.

  His mana poured into the runes like blood down an old drain.

  The construct didn ’t break, and his mana pool drained so fast he nearly went into dangerous territory.

  But something budged.

  The room shuddered, and a single breath ’s worth of stillness broke.

  Kael swayed on his feet, pale, sweat pooling on his neck. “That… did something.”

  “You alright?” Wade asked.

  “Drained. I’ll need time to build it back.”

  Doran shrugged. “We’ll clean up. Strip what’s worth salvaging. Maybe one of these wolves has boots that fit.”

  Wade snorted and slumped to the floor. “Wake me when the evil well collapses.”

  It took nearly an hour.

  Kael sat, breathing slow, drawing mana inward again, again. The Spiral pulsed, stable now. He redrew the casting diagram — cleaner, more focused.

  “Try again?” Wade said, already rising.

  Kael nodded. “Let’s kill it.”

  The second time went much like the first; he could feel a weakness in the structure, but it wasn ’t enough.

  Kael looked at Wade, “Let’s me try again, but give me one of those mana potions. I think I just need more time to keep the spell formation active.”

  Wade didn ’t say anything, but his skeptical look forced Kael to budge, “Don’t worry, I’ll buy another with my personal funds if this doesn’t work.”

  The third time around about an hour later, he cast slower. He fed the well with a sharpened trickle, Spiral Fade burrowing under the structure. When his mana pool nearly emptied he quickly poored the mana potion down his throat and felt a warmth of enegery fill his body.

  Nearly a minute later something cracked.

  Not in sound — in presence.

  The pulse stopped, and the mana … quieted. The air cleared, ever so slightly.

  Wade stepped closer. “I’ll be.”

  Kael stared down into the well, the light was gone. All that remained were the scorch-marks of rune etching, a massive slightly cracked core, and the artifact — now dormant, no longer pulsing.

  “What the hell is that?” Doran asked, peering down.

  Kael shook his head. “No idea. But we’re taking it.”

  The chamber was silent except for the drip of water and the low, constant hum of concentrated mana.

  A wide circular floor carved from black-stone and ringed in floating pillars, each etched with slow-moving glyphs. In the center knelt a figure — arms stretched forward, palms flat against the sigil-carved tile, as if in reverence or penance.

  His body steamed with mana pressure. Veins bulged faintly beneath his skin — not from strain, but from imbalance. Magic poured from him in visible threads, feeding a lattice of runes carved into the floor beneath him.

  He did not move, he simply fed the array.

  And then — across the room — something shifted.

  A taller figure, cloaked in shade-cloth and gilded with chainlight threads, turned his head sharply. He stood at a stone dais, holding a glass phial filled with shimmering dust. The moment passed through him like a dagger — unseen, but felt.

  He paused.

  Stiffened.

  “…Master?” the kneeling man said, voice hoarse but reverent.

  The cloaked figure didn ’t speak immediately.

  He turned fully now, gazing out across the chamber — though his eyes didn ’t focus on the room. They looked past it. Through it.

  “Something just went dark,” the master murmured. His voice was soft. Too soft for someone who could snap stone with a word.

  The kneeling man blinked. “An artifact?”

  “No.”

  The master moved down from the dais. His feet made no sound as he walked. “A well. A minor mana well.”

  “Where?”

  “…Virelia. East. Near the old line.” A pause.

  The kneeling man stiffened. “How, Master?”

  “I don ’t know , ” the master snapped, voice still quiet, but suddenly too heavy for the room.

  Silence fell.

  After a moment, the master exhaled. “It was subtle. Very subtle. Whoever triggered it — they didn’t blast it apart. They unwound it. ”

  “But… who could be capable of that in such a remote area?”

  He turned now, and the mana in the room grew colder.

  The kneeling man trembled. “You think an Archmage was involved? ”

  “Most likely,” the master said.

  The cloaked man looked to the western wall — a scryplate slowly lighting with soft flickering runes.

  The man on the floor dared another question.

  “Should we act?”

  The master ’s eyes narrowed.

  “No. Not yet. Continue with your work.”

  ? He turned, cloak billowing slightly.