System Report:
A Shop in Ruins
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Yenna was only vaguely aware of her surroundings, in the same way one is sometimes only vaguely aware of dreaming—enough to know that your limbs shouldn’t feel this weightless, that social etiquette shouldn’t be this experimental, and that the crackling flames rising around you really shouldn’t appear so judgmental. Except she was awake. She had to be. If dreams came with this much pain, people would stop having them.
It wasn’t the sort of pain that you simply endure; no, this pain was more akin to a finely-tuned instrument—if that instrument were forged in the fires of a dragon’s bile and then played by a goblin with a bad attitude.
It felt like molten iron was weaving its way through her veins, and every breath she drew was like swallowing the sun—warm, sharp, and absolutely devastating to anything sensible that dared to be alive inside her throat.
Her chest, meanwhile, was home to what could only be described as a very sleepy beast, a dormant engine of power. Something that could, in theory, take on a herd of rampaging wildebeests if it were in the mood. At the moment, though, it just lay there, hibernating.
There was nothing left to feed it. Nothing left to consume. No reason for it to wake up and burn things again. Because everything worth burning had already been burnt. Including, it seemed, the last of Yenna’s will to stand.
Her knees gave way, fingers curling against the floorboards and breaths heavy.
Voices drifted through the smoke and confusion, not so much carried by the air as dragged along by it.
Alana, predictably screaming something along the lines of, “GET OUT OF MY WAY! I’M TELLING YOU, THAT BITCH WAS TRYING TO KILL ME!”
Desmond, bless his heart, was adding to the symphony of terror with his whimpering, “My fingers, please, I’m begging you, my fingers…”
And then, like some sort of unfortunate orchestra conductor, Mari was desperately trying to wrestle the scene into a form of order, but really, it was more of a frenzied struggle than anything resembling control.
And underneath it all, the background music of catastrophe: the moaning and wailing of the dying, the crackle of flames chewing on a shop that had, a few minutes ago, been so very proud of its shelves.
Somewhere, in the middle of it all, there was a hand. Old, wrinkled, and unsettlingly strong for its age, it landed briefly on Yenna’s shoulder. A voice followed, slightly wheezing, as though the very act of speaking were a battle it had no intention of winning. “Deep breaths, girl,” it whispered, “you did well. Focus on—cough cough—deep breaths…”
***
Even before she returned to consciousness, Yenna could feel the vibrations in her bones, each one like a tiny clerk carefully chiseling notes into the core of her being.
It should have been terrifying—regaining awareness to a dying fire in her chest, a body she didn’t entirely recognize, and the small matter of chaos unrolling itself loudly all around her. But the System notification was there to anchor her, hanging politely in her sight, visible even with her eyes closed:
Synergy detected between old class (Novice Spellslinger), profession (Artificer’s Apprentice), and recent bodily modifications.
New Class acquired (rare): Arcane Machination
Species updated: Human, Construct (Arcane)
Stats rebalanced. Mana capacity increased.
New skill acquired (racial): Soul Drain.
New skill acquired (racial): Emotional Regulation.
New skill acquired (racial): Soul Sight.
New status effect (racial): Soul Corruption (sinking).
Yenna observed that last gauge gradually decrease, every fresh scratch etched through her bones seeming to push it a little lower.
She hadn’t yet found the courage—or the minutes—to examine what had been done to her. But between the occasional fizz of solder, far too close to skin she wasn’t entirely sure was hers anymore, the stiff mechanical weight in her side, and the System’s rather smug reminder, Yenna had a sinking suspicion she already knew.
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Still, suspicion wasn’t certainty, and so the words slipped out of her mouth almost without her permission, soft and strangely hollow:
“What did you do to me?”
She had expected anger, or at least a cracked edge of panic in her voice—accusation, screaming, something that told her she was still alive—but what she got instead was a kind of blank recitation, as though she were reading the question off a card.
The soldering and etching faltered, replaced by a fit of hacking coughs.
For a moment, she wondered if that would be the end of it—the old man done in by his own lungs, leaving her as some half-finished experiment. But no. After a pause, there came the clatter of tools being put down, followed by the rasp of words.
“Finally done with pretending to be asleep?” asked Edrik Kain.
Yenna blinked her eyes open. The world was wrong—infused with drifting motes of mana, a slow-motion snowfall gathering about the elderly figure and the instruments he had abandoned. All of it, fading the more aware of it she became.
Her silence answered for her, leaving him to chortle, shaking his head.
“It’s a gift,” Kain said. “One that has made you a step closer to being worthy of calling yourself my apprentice. A small step, yes, but a step, nevertheless. Your body can’t yet handle what I’ve given you. But in time, girl, in time—you’ll learn what my legacy entails.”
Edrik Kain’s Legacy: Survive Ashenmoor, grow stronger, and learn the secrets of what your master has left for you.
Yenna was still absorbing the notification as the elderly artificer folded up in a violent coughing fit.
She was moving before she thought—reflex, not reason—sliding down from the charred and bloodied table that had served as her bed, catching his elbow before the man could crumple into something less “mysterious mentor” and more “pathetic heap.”
“Help me downstairs,” he rasped, his words dragged over broken glass. Blood clung stubbornly to his chin, as though unwilling to admit it was leaving him. “There are… things. Things you need to know if… If you’re going to make it out of Ashenmoor. Alive.”
***
“So, let’s go over this again,” Lionel said, with the kind of bone-deep weariness of a man trying to assemble flat-pack furniture alongside the needlessly confident. He brushed back his hair and read the clause for what had to be the hundredth time:
“Cookies and nap times will be awarded according to availability and the contractee’s performance, determined through mutual, fair evaluation. If said cookies or nap times cannot be awarded due to sufficiently severe circumstances, they will instead be saved until the nearest, appropriately available time.”
He lowered the contract just far enough to see her nodding solemnly, like a sage who had just witnessed the birth of a new cosmic law.
“You do realize,” he continued, “that with this phrasing—and with the governing clause you keep insisting on—‘should either party, under any circumstances, feel dissatisfied with the agreement, they may dissolve the contract without reason, without explanation, without so much as a sorry about that…’ this could backfire on you. If you performed so well that I owed you, say, a hundred thousand cookies, I could just void the whole thing. Pay you nothing. Walk away.”
The sagely nodding ceased. One suspicious eye cracked open, squinting at him as though he’d just suggested outlawing chocolate.
“…Would you do that?” she asked.
“With this contract, I could,” Lionel said, tapping the paper with his knuckles. “Not to mention how—”
“Well, that’s fine then,” she cut in, firm as stone. “The governing clause is staying.”
For a long moment, Lionel met her gaze. It was the kind of look that said you could bring in a thousand lawyers, three judges, and a small army, and I would still win this argument purely through being too obstinate to lose.
Then he conceded with a weary headshake.
If anything, having the ability to void the contract on a whim suited him perfectly. This was only ever meant to be a temporary alliance—a way out of this cursed place. And if he was honest, he just wanted to be finished with all these endless, bloody revisions already.
He scrawled his name down with brisk finality, turned the paper toward her, and pushed it across the dusty floor that had served as their negotiating table.
“Fine by me,” he said. “Just sign your name and we can be on our way.”
But even as the contract sat there, practically glowing with readiness, she hesitated.
“What,” Lionel began, exhaustion dripping from every syllable, “is there now? Another clause you don’t like?”
“It’s just…” She chewed at her lip, staring at the paper as if it might suddenly reveal the grand mysteries of existence. Or possibly where the biscuits were hidden. “This is a really important document, alright? I don’t want to rush it.”
Lionel’s eyes drifted up toward the title she’d so carefully drafted in large, blocky, uneven letters:
“FrIEndSHIP trIAl AgreeMENt.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Sure,” he muttered, leaning back against the wall with the kind of sigh that belonged in the archives under World-Weary Noises, Volume III. “Just take aaaall the time you need…”
