We had been given three days to recuperate.
Aurelith was holding strong.
The capital was packed with power. Guildmasters. Warcasters. Engineers who had designed half the Empire’s defensive infrastructure. Entire branches of the military had consolidated behind the walls. Asher, the Wild Wardens, and countless other powerful guilds were defending the city.
It gave us space to recover.
To eat real food. To sleep more than an hour at a time. To stop moving long enough for the shaking in my hands to fade.
The walls were holding well enough that shifts had been established instead of constant engagement. It was believed that, if nothing changed, Aurelith could hold indefinitely.
That was the problem.
The Asharkith kept changing creating new nidus creatures.
Allied kingdoms had begun sending food, medical supplies, and raw materials. Convoys arrived daily under heavy escort through internal keyed doors at the academy and other locations. Few, however, could spare troops or high-level combatants. They were still dealing with their own dungeon breaks and unstable rifts.
None of them were facing the Asharkith.
Not yet at least.
During the downtime, I finally had the chance to review my interface notifications in full. I had been operating on instinct and necessity for weeks, selecting options mid-fight or while barely conscious.
Now I could actually read in detail.
Child of the Deep
Path Level 7 achieved.
Current Traits 9 of 11 at current path level:
Tremor Sense
Regeneration+
Lithocurrent
Gravity
Raptor’s Leap
Detailed Map
Bond Interface
Party Interface
Quest Reward System
Available options based on shard integrations at current path level:
Poisonous Touch
Scaled Skin
Piercing Fang
Molten Blood
Immovable
Tremor Sense+
Regeneration++
Lithocurrent+
Gravity+
Available options based on bonded equipment at current path level:
Predator’s Vector
Raptor Leap+
Starbound Momentum
Available interface options at current path level:
Harvest
Detailed Map+
Party Interface+
I exhaled slowly.
Raptor’s Leap I had taken before the assault on the first Asharkith dungeon. That felt like a lifetime ago now.
During the retreat, exhausted and half out of my mind, I had chosen two upgrades almost on instinct. The Quest Reward System and the enhancement to my regeneration.
The regeneration choice had been simple. I needed to keep moving. I needed to keep everyone alive. If my body failed, everything failed.
The quest system had been a gamble.
I had hoped for something immediate. A quest that was quick and would gain me, a tool, a boost, or anything that would help us survive the retreat.
Instead, the quest I was given was entire purpose of our retreat.
It was to escort a certain percentage of civilians to Aurelith alive.
We had succeeded.
But it had not helped us in the moment.
Now, the completion notice hovered in my vision.
Quest Complete!
You have successfully led a large group of civilians to safety against unimaginable odds. Over seventy percent have survived.
Reward Options:
One piece of unique soul bound equipment
One shard with an affinity that counters foes fought during this quest
One unknown interface upgrade
I stared at the options longer than I meant to.
Unique soul-bound equipment was tempting. My bracers were the most important thing I owned. The thought of another piece like that made my fingers twitch.
The unknown interface upgrade bothered me. Too many variables. Too much risk at a time when I needed certainty.
What held my attention was the shard.
A shard with an affinity that countered the Asharkith.
I had thought about integrating another shard more than once. The interface clearly supported it. More integrations meant more options. More traits. More paths forward.
But the wyrm shard had nearly killed me.
I should not have survived that integration.
Even knowing the risks and preparation methods of other shards, I had never felt confident enough to try again.
Until now.
My regeneration was stronger than it had ever been. Tier two. It had carried me through weeks of constant combat and exhaustion that should have broken me. If anything could keep me alive through another integration, it was that.
And if there was a shard out there specifically aligned to counter the Asharkith, something designed to oppose what we were facing, then walking away from it felt like cowardice.
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This war was not going to be won by holding walls.
Before I could second-guess myself, before fear had time to take root, I made the selection.
Shard reward chosen.
The interface pulsed once in acknowledgment.
Then the aether around me began to move.
It began to pull toward me.
The air in front of me compressed as streams of aether were dragged toward a single point, spiraling faster and faster as the pressure built. My ears rang slightly. The light in the room dimmed as if aether was being sucked from the lamp.
There was a sharp pop.
A shard appeared in midair and dropped to the floor, striking stone with a hollow click before rolling several paces away.
I stared at it.
The shard was bone pale, its surface smooth and cold-looking, veined through with black streaks. The sight of it made my skin prickle in a way I did not like.
I hesitated.
Then I reached for it.
I do not know why I did it. I did not pause to think. I did not call anyone in. The moment my fingers closed around the shard, I made the choice.
I integrated it.
Pain detonated through me instantly.
I should have taken it to be examined. I should have learned what it was, what it may cost, what it might take from me.
I knew that.
And I ignored it.
The agony lasted so long that time itself felt meaningless. Every nerve screamed. Every heartbeat felt like a hammer against my skull. I could barely breathe, could barely remember who I was beneath the firestorm of pain. The world outside my own mind ceased to exist.
Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, it began to fade. The white-hot agony dimmed to a dull, pulsing ache. My muscles trembled. My fingers twitched. My hand felt frozen from where the shard had been. I lay there on the bed, broken and trembling, staring at the ceiling as though it could answer questions I did not dare ask.
After what could have been minutes — or hours — there was a new sound: a soft, insistent pulse. A blinking interface notification.
I drew in a shuddering breath and opened it.
You have integrated a new shard.
New Shard: Entropy
New Traits Automatically Gained:
Entropy Sense synergized with Tremor Sense and have combined into:
Tremor Sense+: Tremor Sense now detects structural instability, biomass flow, and weak points automatically. Every imperfection in the world shines to you.
Final Wounds: Damage you deal applies Scar, reducing regeneration and growth. Stack enough hits of Scar, and regeneration becomes damaging.
Entropy Anchor synergized with Gravity and have combined into:
Gravitational Entropy: This trait creates a passive entropy aura reinforced by gravity, slowing regeneration and degrading living organisms. It can be actively controlled for greater effect, at the cost of the ongoing passive area aura.
New Traits Available:
Fracture Wave: Sends a wave of disruptive energy through the ground, shattering surfaces and destabilizing enemy footing.
Scars of Ending: Applies permanent scars that reduce overall health and regeneration indefinitely.
Fractured Step: Leaves behind a trail of instability wherever you move; enemies passing through are slowed, misstep, or take small stacking damage.
I blinked.
The shard had transformed some of my traits. Tremor Sense+ had shifted. Though it was still the perfect sense of everything within a hundred feet, I could now feel instability, pressure points, and flows of energy around me in ways I had never imagined. My body was still trembling from the integration, but beneath it, something else stirred. A cold certainty, a clarity that the shard had given me as much as it had demanded.
I could feel the entropy aether inside me, a quiet, waiting force. It was unruly. Scheming. Dangerous. And it would make everything I faced from now on a little more manageable.
I exhaled and flexed my hands. I could feel the everything around me as though it were part of my body. The flow of aether, the weaknesses in flesh and bone, the pulse of regeneration — all of it sang to me.
The shift in my gravitational aura was immediate, just as the interface had described. There was a weight to it I hadn’t felt before, a finality that pressed down on everything around me.
Gravity had always been domineering, a force that constrained and grounded, but combined with Entropy, it felt suffocating. It wasn’t just pulling things toward the earth wearing them down now, it was draining them, unraveling their stability, their regeneration, their very essence.
Final Wounds sounded incredible. I couldn’t wait to test just how many stacks of Scar I could get with my throwing knives, how the effect would compound against one of the Asharkith’s regenerating forms. The other new trait options were tempting as well, each with the potential to make me nearly unstoppable.
And yet… the shard itself perplexed me. At first glance, I would never have guessed this would be the kind of counter suited to the Asharkith. From everything I had seen — the disappearances, murders, and the way the nidus and the other forms adapted — it seemed that the obvious counters would involve abilities that matched those who had been targeted.
This shard felt different. Strange. It didn’t pick a side between life and death. It straddled the line, manipulating the very essence of existence, accelerating deterioration while empowering my control. I suppose that’s all it promised: a shard that countered the foe, not necessarily in the way I expected or the best way possible.
It was too late to second-guess it now. I had one trait left to select after reaching Path Level 7 in Child of the Deep, and the options were overwhelming.
“What would be the best choice…” I muttered aloud, letting my mind turn over the possibilities.
After a long pause, I chose Scars of Ending. The other options were powerful, certainly, but after six weeks of relentless fighting, after watching Asher take down a behemoth on his own, I wanted something that carried that kind of inevitability, that finality.
The combination was intoxicating. Tremor Sense+ instantly highlighted weaknesses. Gravitational Entropy continually drained regeneration and disrupted their vitality. Final Wounds stacked Scar with every strike, compounding my damage. And now Scars of Ending would permanently suppress their health and regeneration.
It felt a bit like destiny. The scar-covered orphan boy would now use scars to destroy his enemies. Quite the poetic turn of events.
The synergy between all these traits was crushing, bordering on unfair. Add my tier two regeneration to the mix, and any Asharkith foolish enough to cross me was going to have a very bad day.
Dusk had leveled up as well, and I wanted her to make her own choices with the new options the shard had unlocked for her. She had taken it in stride, unaffected by the pain I had felt, which was a relief. But the shard had expanded her own capabilities, giving her new ways to dominate the battlefield.
My traits now looked like this.
Child of the Deep (11/11):
Tremor Sense+
Regeneration+
Lithocurrent
Gravitational Entropy
Raptor’s Leap
Detailed Map
Bond Interface
Party Interface
Quest Reward System
Final Wound
Scars of Ending
Dusk’s own trait list had grown too.
Tremor Sense
Regeneration+
Lithocurrent+
Molten Blood
Anti-Aetheric Breath
Rend+
Shockwave
Lithocurrent+ increased her speed through the earth and now allowed her to pull creatures she attacked into the ground a short distance, disrupting their movement and positioning or burying them alive. Tier two regeneration worked just as it did for me, keeping her in the fight far longer than any ordinary creature could sustain.
Rend+ amplified her bleeding effect, adding an aetheric drain that sapped magical energy from her targets. It even affected the Asharkith, preventing their bodies from generating the excess aether they would need to adapt or restructure themselves mid-battle.
Shockwave made her eruptions from the earth devastating. Rocks and debris flung forward became extensions of her attacks, increasing both reach and damage, scattering enemies before she returned to the safety of the earth.
Together, we were evolving into something far more lethal than we had been just weeks ago. Every move, every strike, every synergy between Dusk and me, the bond we shared, and the new powers at our disposal were going to help us bring an end to these Asharkith.
I clenched my fists, feeling the hum of Tremor Sense+ beneath my skin, the entropy field around me pressing, destabilizing, calculating. Dusk shifted beside me, her form coiled and waiting with anticipation for our next fight.
The next battle was coming. And we would be ready.
