The fragile hope ignited by the vehicle project was brutally extinguished just days later. Ferran and Boltar arrived at the Morphai hub for their scheduled work session, anticipating another day of intense collaboration with Grok. Instead, they were met with an eerie, unnatural silence. The usual hum of salvaged equipment was absent. The basement workspace was dark, lit only by the emergency power Boltar had helped rig.
"Grok?"
Boltar called out, his voice echoing strangely in the stillness.
"We're here! Ready to wrestle with those energy regulators!"
No response. An uneasy feeling settled over them. Ferran drew his lips into a thin line, his senses already scanning the metallic environment for anything amiss. He felt... coldness. Stillness where there should have been the faint resonance of active machinery.
They moved deeper into the basement, towards the main workspace where the vehicle chassis was taking shape. The sight that greeted them stopped them cold.
Grok lay sprawled near the main console, his work coveralls torn, his face frozen in an expression of surprise and pain. His death was clearly violent, though the exact cause wasn't immediately apparent. But the devastation wasn't limited to the Morphai technician.
The vehicle prototype, their nascent symbol of hope, was savagely attacked. The carefully shaped trimantium alloy plates Ferran had forged were warped and buckled, as if struck by immense force. The intricate power converter Boltar and Grok had painstakingly assembled was smashed, its delicate components shattered beyond repair. Wiring harnesses were ripped out, connectors crushed. It wasn't random vandalism; the damage was targeted, precise, aimed squarely at the vehicle's core systems. Their escape plan was crippled, perhaps irreparably.
"No..."
Boltar breathed, staring at the wreckage, the crackling energy around him dimming into stunned disbelief.
Ferran knelt beside the chassis, running his hand over a massive dent in the thick alloy plating. He felt the residual stress in the metal, the signature of the impact.
He murmured in Sorcerai, his voice tight with cold fury.
He looked up at Boltar, his eyes hard as the metal he commanded.
The silence of the basement pressed in, heavy with the scent of death and shattered hope.
...
High above the fractured cityscape, Fujina soared on silent currents of wind. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows, making the ruins below seem even more desolate. Her Wind Sorcerai senses were attuned to the subtle shifts in air pressure, the whispers of movement, but the city felt deceptively quiet today.
She banked gently, circling a collapsed sector near the old Citadel trade route exit, her silver-grey eyes scanning intently.
Suddenly, a searing heat blossomed behind her. Instinct screamed. She twisted violently in mid-air as a roaring ball of intense orange flame erupted where she had been a split second before. The shockwave buffeted her, disrupting her controlled flight. She cried out, losing altitude rapidly, desperately trying to regain control of the wind currents supporting her.
She managed to slow her descent, crashing heavily but not fatally onto the ground below. Pain flared in her shoulder and ribs from the impact. Scrambling backwards, ignoring the pain, she looked up towards the source of the attack.
Descending swiftly, cloaked and hooded, was a figure silhouetted against the setting sun. Even from this distance, Fujina saw them, the eyes burning beneath the hood, glowing with the unmistakable jagged, flickering intensity of a Fire Sorcerai.
Terror, cold and sharp, pierced through Fujina's pain. She pushed herself upright, ignoring the screaming protest from her injured shoulder. She had to escape. Summoning her remaining strength, she tried to gather the wind, to lift herself away.
But the attacker was impossibly fast. Before Fujina could fully form the updraft needed to escape, the figure lunged forward. A hand shot out, grabbing her by the front of her tunic, lifting her off her feet despite her struggles. Fujina gasped, pinned, helpless against the raw power in that grip.
The hooded figure held her suspended with one hand, their burning eyes fixed on hers. With the other hand, they pointed deliberately towards a tangled pile of rusted scrap metal and broken rebar near the edge of the rooftop.
Then, with terrifying force, Fujina was thrown.
A distinct, sharp *crack-whump* sound echoed in the air. Fujina flew backwards, propelled with impossible speed, hitting the scrap pile with sickening impact.
She screamed as searing pain exploded in her left arm. Looking down in horror, she saw a thick, rusted metal bar, dislodged by the force of her impact, had pierced clean through her forearm, pinning her to the debris beneath. Blood welled up quickly, staining her sleeve, the metal bar a brutal anchor holding her captive. The hooded Fire Sorcerai stood watching, motionless, their face obscured by shadow, their glowing eyes promising only more pain.
The figure moved closer. They stopped a few feet away, their face still obscured by the deep shadow of their hood, but the intensity of their glowing, jagged Fire Sorcerai pupils was chillingly clear. They raised their hands, not in anger, but with a chilling, almost surgical precision.
A searing, white-hot flame ignited between their palms, focused and intense. It was a controlled beam. Fujina watched in horror as they directed the beam towards her impaled forearm, the flame inches from her skin.
Fujina screamed as the flame grazed her skin, the heat excruciating, followed by an even sharper, more horrifying pain as the beam completed its path, severing her arm.
She felt the abrupt cessation of resistance. The pain was so intense it threatened to overwhelm her consciousness.
But then, almost instantly, the horrifying pain of the severing was followed by a different kind of heat, focused and intense, pressing directly onto the raw stump of her arm. The hooded figure had shifted the flame, applying it directly to the wound, not to burn further, but to cauterize the severed blood vessels, sealing the wound with brutal, efficient heat.
Fujina bit down hard on a scream, her body convulsing with shock and pain. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, sickeningly sweet and metallic. The cauterization lasted only a few agonizing seconds before the figure extinguished the flame.
...
Boltar managed finally, his voice raw, stripped of its usual power.
A collective gasp went through the small group. Mireia's loss was still a fresh wound; Grok, the pragmatic Morphai technician, their vital link to the vehicle project, was gone.
Ferran added, his voice tight with suppressed rage.
He stopped, unable to say it.
The hope that had flickered in the camp since the plan's conception was brutally extinguished. The hum of potential energy, the focus on a tangible escape route, dissolved into a crushing silence. The camp atmosphere grew heavy, thick with despair. The air felt colder, despite the ambient elemental light.
But the news wasn't just about death and destruction. As the initial shock subsided, another, more terrifying realization settled over the remaining Sorcerai.
Gravus asked, his gaze sweeping the camp area, noticing their absence.
A nervous energy rippled through the group. Flareon and Seren hadn't returned yet. Fujina was also overdue.
As the sun dipped below the ruined horizon, casting long, distorted shadows that twisted familiar shapes into lurking monsters, the tension became almost unbearable. Gravus stood near the entrance, scanning the darkening streets with grim determination, his senses probing the unstable ground. Boltar paced restlessly, his hands clenching and unclenching, frustrated energy radiating off him in restless waves. Ferran staring into the middle distance, his face a mask of grim calculation, his senses reaching out, trying to feel for any metallic resonance, any tell-tale sign of the attacker who had struck them twice now.
The silence in the camp was the hushed, terrified silence of prey waiting in the dark. Every creak of stressed metal in the ruins, every howl of the wind, sounded like approaching danger. Their numbers were few, their hope for escape shattered, and now, their members were missing, swallowed by the chaos or hunted by an unseen enemy. The night promised to be long, filled with gnawing anxiety and the chilling possibility that they were the next targets.