System, please just shut up

The last night of the Moonwake Festival dawned with a sky of profound, unsettling beauty.

The three moons—the familiar, silvery orb, its slightly smaller twin, and the shimmering, translucent ghost moon—climbed slowly over the eastern horizon in perfect, synchronized harmony.

Their light, a wash of ethereal silver-blue, bathed the entire city, making its wards and spires glow with a preternatural radiance.

The city was a masterpiece of light and shadow, but it was a masterpiece built on a foundation of bone-deep fear.

Below, the festival was a shell.

No dancers moved in the squares.

No vendors called out their wares. The streets were filled not with joyous crowds, but with a silent, vigilant army of guards and faction students.

Every alley, every rooftop, every open plaza had a squad, a team, a single watchman.

The air was thick with tension, a palpable hum of a city that was holding its breath, waiting for a blow that had been promised but had yet to fall.

Kael stood near the edge of a high watchpoint tower, the wind tugging at the edge of his cloak.

He was with Theo and Jarik, but he felt a thousand miles away.

Theo, ever the observer, glanced at Kael. "You okay, Kael?" he asked, his voice soft. "You seem a little… off."

Kael didn't look at them.

He was staring at the moons, their light a physical weight pressing down on him. He felt their power, an immense, raw energy that made his skin prickle.

"Yeah, just lost in thought." he said, his voice flat, a perfect lie.

Jarik scoffed but didn't say anything.

The hours wore on, each one an eternity of waiting. The ritualists began their final chants, their voices a low, harmonious chorus that vibrated through the very stones of the city.

Below, the glowing runes on the ground pulsed in sync with the chanting, a heartbeat of magic and power.

Kael felt it all, his every sense heightened, every nerve-ending a receiver for the immense power being channeled

This was the city's heart, its very soul, laid bare for the heavens.

The moons reached their zenith. Their light, a brilliant, almost blinding silver-blue, converged, not in a single point, but in a vast, silent torrent of pure magical energy.

It was a moment of profound, breathtaking power. The chant of the ritualists rose to a triumphant crescendo.

The city's wards, from the central spire to the smallest glyph on a hidden alley wall, flared with a brilliant, unifying light.

A wave of pure, stabilizing mana, a force of order and protection, flowed outward from the city's core. It felt like a deep, cleansing breath.

The city finally breathed.

The light from the central spire, which had been a brilliant silver-blue, faltered. A single, almost imperceptible flicker.

*******

The final ritual of the Moonwake Alignment was complete.

A single, unifying wave of pure mana surged outward from the central Warding Spire, a pulse of clean, powerful light that washed over the city.

The silver-blue runes that had been drawn into the cobblestones and buildings blazed for a single, glorious second before fading back to a quiet, steady hum.

A collective sigh of relief, audible even from Kael's high perch in the residential district, swept through the city.

The stree of the first night, the agonizing stillness of the second—it was all over.

The ancient wards were renewed, the city was safe, and the Moonwake Festival, despite its brutal beginning, had concluded.

For a few fleeting seconds, Elordia felt whole again.

The air was clean, the light was steady, and the oppressive weight of impending doom seemed to lift.

Citizens in the streets, who had been holding their breath for over a day, began to release it in long, shuddering exhales.

A few brave souls even ventured a tentative, nervous cheer.

And then out of nowhere, the air began to boil.

It wasn't a sound. It was a sensation.

A deep, unsettling wrongness that began to seep into the city's atmosphere. The light from the warding glyphs, which had been so steady, flickered and dimmed unnaturally, a sickening pulse of weakening power.

The gentle, cool breeze that had been carrying the scent of magic and stone suddenly turned heavy, thick with a foul, metallic tang.

Kael, who had been sitting on his bed and staring into the middle distance, felt it first in his bones, a shivering premonition of dread that was utterly alien.

The silence that had followed the ritual's completion was violently broken.

The tentative cheers turned into gasps, then shouts, then a scramble of panicked, disoriented motion. The citizens of Elordia, having just been released from one terror, were now being thrust headfirst into another.

This wasn't a localized magical disruption; this was an event.

All around the city, the response was immediate and synchronized. The magical communication channels, usually reserved for emergencies, screamed to life.

A single, unified alarm, a high-pitched magical tone, echoed from every watchpoint, every guard tower, every student dorm.

It was the "Code Black," a signal reserved for a direct, existential threat to the city itself.

From his room, Kael felt his body move on instinct.

The introspection, the fear, the exhaustion from his nightmare—it was all shoved aside by a cold, professional detachment.

He grabbed his sword, his training taking over where his conscious thought failed. He didn't think about his armor or his knapsack. He just moved.

The hallways were a torrent of controlled chaos.

Students and junior guards, their faces a mix of terror and grim determination, were pouring out of their rooms, their weapons drawn.

Kael saw Theo and Jarik just ahead.

.They didn't need to speak. They just moved as a unit, a single, focused torrent in the river of panicked motion.

"They're calling for all available combatants to converge on the Grand Plaza," Theo shouted over the din, his voice a calm center in the storm.

"Something… something is tearing apart reality itself."

They ran, a single purpose driving them forward.

The Grand Plaza was a place of immense symbolic importance—the heart of the city's ceremonial life, and the very location where the Warding Ritual had taken place.

It was a place meant for celebration, for unity, for hope. That was where the Choir had chosen to strike.

As they neared the plaza, the boiling atmosphere intensified. The air was thick and heavy, and a deep, guttural hum, a sound of unspeakable wrongness, began to pulse from the center of the square.

The plaza, which had been full of citizens a few minutes ago, was now almost empty, a sprawling space of marble and statues, all of them casting long, distorted shadows under the sickly, dying light of the moons.

The source of the dread was impossible to miss.

It wasn't a magical portal, a burst of energy, or a chaotic eruption.

It was a Drift.

A wound in the fabric of existence itself. It hung in the air above the central ritual site, a swirling vortex of absolute blackness, a hole in the universe.

It was not a color, but an absence of all light. It was not a shape, but a distortion of all form. It was a swirling, silent tear in the very reality of Elordia.

The air around it twisted and warped, pulling in the light from the surrounding lanterns and bending the sight of the nearby statues into grotesque, funhouse mirror images.

The ground beneath it, where the final ritual had just taken place, was cracked and scarred, as if it had been struck by an impossible, invisible force.

"What in the hell is that?" Jarik breathed, his voice raw with disbelief.

Theo just shook his head, his face pale. "It's… it's not a portal. It's a wound. Someone is using the residual mana from the ritual to tear apart the Veil itself."

Kael, however, didn't need a description.

He felt it. The dread, the wrongness, the sense of absolute, utter corruption—it was a physical thing.

He felt the cold, unyielding presence of the Archive inside him stir, not with a command, not with a new stat, but with a warning.

They joined the ranks of the other guards and students, forming a vast, encircling phalanx around the Drift.

The city's elite, its best and brightest, were all here. The Arch-Lecturers, their faces grim, stood at the front, their hands already glowing with the raw power of their magic.

A tense silence fell over the plaza, the only sound the low, nauseating hum of the Drift itself.

For what felt like an eternity, nothing happened.

The Drift just hung there, a silent, swirling tear in reality.

Then, a movement.

A twitching. A shudder from deep within the blackness.

The air around the drift turned colder, and a new, more vile odor, the smell of rot and decay and something indefinably wrong, began to seep out.

The silence was broken by a wet, scraping sound, a sound of bone on stone, of a thousand tiny, chitinous legs moving in unison.

And then, the first creature stepped out.

It was a monstrosity. A disgusting, horrifying jumble of what looked like fused bone and exposed muscle, covered in a slick, black ichor that pulsed with a faint, corrupted violet light.

It had six legs that bent at impossible angles, each one ending in a hooked, razor-sharp claw. Its head was a featureless orb of bone, save for a single, gaping maw that was ringed with jagged, constantly shifting teeth.

It moved with a jerky, twitching motion, like a marionette on broken strings, its entire body a testament to a complete and utter disregard for the natural order.

It was a thing of nightmares, a physical manifestation of a universe gone wrong.

It raised its featureless head, its maw hissing a vile, wet sound.

And then, a single, dreadful, crimson eye opened in the center of its bone-white face, and it turned its gaze on the assembled ranks.

But it was not alone.

From the swirling darkness of the Drift, more creatures began to pour out, a tide of twitching, scraping horror. More and more emerged, each one a different, more repulsive jumble of flesh and bone.

The dread, the cold, creeping wrongness, was no longer a sensation. It was an army.

The phalanx of guards and students immediately went into a full defensive stance, their shields raised, their weapons at the ready.

The air filled with the sounds of mana being channeled, spells being charged, and the low, terrified murmurs of a city bracing for a fight it was not equipped to win.

The creatures, a growing horde of them now, paused for a moment, their many eyes glowing with a mindless, sickening bloodlust.