System, please just shut up

The second night of the Moonwake Festival began without music.

The previous night's joyous cacophony had been replaced by a deep, unnatural hush. There were no dancers in the square below, no laughter from lantern-lit balconies. It was as if the entire city had collectively held its breath, waiting for a blow that was sure to fall. The air itself felt thick with a palpable tension, a static charge of unease that made the hairs on Kael's arms stand on end.

Kael stood near the edge of an elevated watchpoint tower, the wind tugging at the edge of his light-gray cloak, a lonely figure in the silent night.

Below, District Six stretched out in a wash of moonlight—its elegant spires now looked more like sharpened teeth, its familiar streets were patrolled by tight-knit squads of guards and cadets, their armor a constant, grim glint in the pale light.

The easygoing, festive atmosphere had been replaced by a militant order, the quiet hum of the night punctuated only by the soft clank of weapons and the rhythmic march of boots on stone.

Lines of silver-blue glyphs had been drawn into the cobblestones and buildings like glowing veins. These were the city's wards, an ancient, flickering circuit of power that pulsed in sync with the three moons above. Somewhere beneath the surface, deep in the city's labyrinthine undercroft, those glyphs were being rewritten—ritualists and scribe-magi laboring in a frantic race against time, their magic an urgent, focused hum, desperate to renew Elordia's inner defenses before the convergence fully peaked.

Beside him, Garren Thorne leaned against the stone parapet with the relaxed grace of someone who never looked tense, even when he probably should have been. His posture was a study in casual defiance, a nonchalant counterpoint to the city's collective anxiety.

"You feel that?" Garren asked, tilting his head slightly, his eyes scanning the city with a detached intensity.

Kael didn't answer immediately. His eyes were scanning the rooftops, the shadowy alleys, the silent plazas where nothing was moving. The city looked like a painted backdrop, a beautiful but hollow facade.

But his instincts, sharpened by the Archive, told him otherwise. Something was moving. Something was shifting just beneath the surface, a presence he could almost taste in the air. He just couldn't see it yet.

"I don't know what I'm feeling," Kael finally said, his voice low. "But it's not good."

"Yeah." Garren popped a lollipop into his mouth—an obnoxiously bright one, glowing faintly with mana sugar. The sweet scent of it was a bizarre contrast to the sterile, electric air of the wards. "Wards are loud tonight.

Kael glanced sideways at him, a flicker of confusion. "Loud?"

"Not literally," Garren said, his words slightly muffled by the candy. "But… active. Like they're bracing for something, humming with a sort of frantic energy. The city hasn't felt like this since before I was born." He sucked on the lollipop with a loud pop, the sound echoing in the unnatural silence.

Kael was silent, his mind turning over the implications. The city was a living thing, and it was screaming in silent, magical fear.

Garren let the quiet linger for a moment longer. Then he nudged Kael's shoulder with his elbow. "You thinking too hard again?"

"I just…" Kael frowned, the words coming out slowly. "None of this feels real. It feels like I'm in a story, and everything here is a joke sometimes." He gestured vaguely at the city, a place of stunning magic and terrifying threats, where his life had become a game with deadly consequences.

"That's because it is, in a way." Garren twirled the stick of his lollipop in his mouth, his tone suddenly sharper, more serious than Kael had ever heard it. "It's magic and ghosts and ancient systems that no one alive, not even the Arch-Magi, fully understands. You think the ritualists down there actually know what'll happen if they miss a sigil alignment by half an inch? They don't. They're just following instructions written by people long dead."

Kael blinked.

"Exactly." Garren smirked, a flash of white teeth in the dim light. "We're all just guessing. Some of us are just better at pretending we're not."

The moons—pale, twin orbs rising slowly over the eastern horizon—cast a soft, silvery glow across the city. Their light hit the glowing runes along the rooftops, making them shimmer faintly, like brittle glass about to crack under immense pressure.

Kael shifted his weight, his gaze fixed on the pulsing glyphs. "What were the wards originally made for?"

Garren gave a low whistle, a sound that seemed to cut through the heavy air. "That's a long list. Defense, stability, sealing. Mostly… to keep the leyline from consuming the city from the inside."

Kael's eyes narrowed, his attention caught. "The leyline?"

"You know how mana flows underground in threads, right?" Garren gestured downward with the lollipop stick. "Elordia is sitting on a wellspring, a nexus of ancient, raw magic. It's big, raw stuff. Not the kind you toss into a spell circle. The city feeds off it, but if the flow's unbalanced, if the ritual fails, it surges."

"Which means…"

"Best case? Wild mana bursts. People hallucinate. Artifacts stop working. Nightmares leak into the waking world." He shrugged, his shoulders a perfect picture of detached nonchalance. "Worst case? The city folds in on itself like wet paper, or gets consumed by a reality-warping void. The wards are a cage. We're just hoping it holds."

Kael looked down at the flickering glyphs again, the sheer scale of the danger now feeling terrifyingly real. "And we're trusting a bunch of ritualists to keep it all balanced."

"That's what trust is," Garren said simply, the cynicism in his voice a shield. "Telling people they won't screw up while secretly preparing for when they do."

Kael exhaled through his nose, a dry, humorless sound. "You're a ray of sunshine."

Garren smiled without teeth. "I try."

Another long moment passed in silence, the weight of their conversation hanging between them. The city below felt more fragile than ever, a delicate illusion held together by magic and hope.

Then Kael said, quietly, "I've been changing."

Garren turned his head slightly, his eyes losing their detached quality.

Kael kept staring forward, into the pale distance. "Faster than I realized. I'm not sure if it's good or not."

"You know you worry about a lot of stuff that aren't really that important," Garren said, his voice losing its cynical edge. "None of us ever stays the same. We change in one way or the other, and determining whether that change is good or bad usually falls on the people around us and not ourselves. We're too close to it. So ask yourself, Kael, does your change benefit those around you?"

Kael fell into deep thought.

He was changing because of the Archive, because of its brutal, relentless demands. The very purpose of those demands, he now suspected, was to prepare him for a threat that could destroy the world. In a sense, yes. It was all for the benefit of others.

"I guess it does," he finally replied, the words feeling heavy and hollow.

"Then that's all that matters," Garren said easily, the conversation seemingly over. But this time, Garren didn't smile. The lollipop was gone, and his expression was serious, thoughtful.

"Listen," he said, his voice lower now, almost a whisper. "You think too much, and you carry it all like it's your job to fix everything alone. But you're not alone." He turned to face Kael fully, his posture oddly serious, his playful air completely gone. "You've got people. Some better than others. Some weird, some arrogant, some probably going to die trying to be heroes. But they're here. And so are you. So shut up and keep standing."

Kael blinked.

He didn't understand ninety percent of what he just heard, but he understood the sentiment behind it.

A slow pulse of blue light flickered across the ward lines below, sharper than before, more intense. It was a single beat, a spike in the city's magical rhythm.

Kael straightened instinctively, his attention snapping back to the city. "That wasn't normal."

"Yes, it was, you idiot," Garren said, stretching lazily, a bored look returning to his face. "Relax already. The ritual's just kicking into high gear." He popped another lollipop into his mouth, a new, different color, and the moment of tension was gone as quickly as it had arrived.

Kael looked at him, then back at the silent, expectant city, a knot of unease tightening in his gut.

He didn't believe Garren for a second.