The air inside the Dissonant Chamber shifted.

  Pressurized, artificially cold.

  Standing at the center of the intake zone was the host. Some other Martyrs were already waiting. And there, leaning against a chitinous pillar, was Marcus.

  He didn't join the others in their awe. He was watching Val.

  As their eyes met, Marcus slowly tapped the center of his own chest, right over his heart, and then pointed at Val’s tattered CERN lab coat. It wasn't a greeting; it was a claim.

  ‘He knows,’ Val thought, his own hand instinctively twitching toward the Obsidian Heart pulsing under his skin. ‘He knows I’m the one who opened the door.’

  At the same time the host spoke: A mechanical pulse whirred across all of their grey Phaistos Halos.

  Syncing…

  [AUTO-TRANSLATION MOD ACTIVATED]

  “Earth Martyrs,” he said. “You may call me Varick. You are in Ortho, my homeworld. We will act as your Mentor.”

  He didn’t look like a savior. He looked sculpted.

  Unlike the guards and technicians from ‘The Facility’ who were undeniably human.

  Varick’s skin was reinforced with iridescent chitin.

  The dark, translucent plating was fused cleanly into pale flesh.

  It wasn’t armor worn; it was armor wrought.

  A mark of his true Ortho origin.

  As he turned his head, his Halo flared into existence. It wasn’t the flat, stagnant disc the others wore.

  Above Varick’s head, a strip of luminous silver twisted into a single, unending loop. A M?bius curve that seemed to fold the air into itself.

  It hummed with a vibration, casting an authoritative light.

  “We were once like you,” Varick said calmly. “Helpless. Without the means to fight ‘the stain’. The Abyssal.”

  He stepped forward. Too smooth. Too precise.

  “This,” he continued, gesturing briefly to the Halo, “is how we won our war against them. Now, the remaining 5% of these ‘stains’ run like bugs after our presence.”

  His compound eyes paused on Val’s torn coat, on the CERN logo.

  “A scientist,” Varick mused. His compound eyes moved from the CERN logo to the obsidian veins tracing Val's wrist.

  Something shifted in his expression. Not alarm. The particular distaste of a man who has spent his life cleaning and recognized the smell of a contagion.

  “You spent your life mapping laws that were already decaying. And it seems they left a mark.”

  He leaned closer.

  “Here, logic isn't a theory, Martyr 0996. It is a weapon.”

  “I was perfected,” Varick said softly.

  “You are a leak in the system.”

  Val felt it then.

  Not intimidation.

  Evaluation.

  Varick clapped his hands to break the deafening silence. His chitin ridges shifted, the Ortho equivalent of a smile when he saw Val’s helplessness.

  “Next step. We’ll see if any of you can discharge Ether… Failure will lead to your death.”

  “Ahora.”

  He moved with authority, raised a single finger into the air. Then swept his palm sideways.

  The motion was like wiping dust from glass.

  Space rippled.

  A translucent card object bloomed into existence before his hand, etched with shifting equations, alien sigils, and Ortho logic that refused to settle into any single shape.

  The air hummed.

  [VERSE: GHOST HAND]

  And reality complied. At the edges of the chamber, ten Iron-Oak Rungus tore free from their racks.

  They were dragged by invisible vectors, snapping into a perfect orbit around Varick.

  A low resonance crawled through the hall. Fine fractures raced across the card object, pixel by pixel, before it shattered into pale fragments of light and vanished.

  Varick lowered his hand.

  “You are standing in the Primeval Sector of Ortho. Your steel is useless. Your muscles are irrelevant.”

  His hand remained suspended, the levitating wood answering to the slightest twitch of his knuckles.

  “But the Iron-Oak Rungu…” He tilted his head. “It may discharge Ether enough to deal with the Stains.”

  He let his hand fall. The weapons stayed aloft, defying gravity, awaiting a master the System deemed worthy.

  The Dissonant Chamber was no mere room, but a cathedral of lost knowledge. Deep blue marble, stretched across the floor in a complex octagonal weave. It was a place designed for magic research. But the true purpose of the room lay at its heart.

  At the center of the chamber lay a circular seal carved directly into the stone.

  Within this seal, a massive Armillary Sphere hummed with a life of its own. Its golden rings revolving around a central core of pure blue energy.

  “Ether is a mirror,” he said, studying the flame. “It looks for resonance already in your cells.”

  “The baker, twenty years at the hearth. You will be a Flame-Bearer.”

  “The sailor, you bring salt and tide. You will call the frost.”

  He turned his compound eyes toward the group, the M?bius Halo behind his head spinning faster.

  Varick reached out and closed his hand around a standard Iron-Oak Rungu. The crystal orb atop it ignited, structured orange light locking into place.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Ether reads the essence inside,” Varick continued. “It takes the history written in your soul and gives you the edge to express it.”

  “Your turn,” Varick said, his voice empty of warmth.

  The first Martyr to step forward was a man Val recognized: a panicked accountant from the facility.

  His Halo flickered a dull, stuttering grey.

  The man placed his hands on the Armillary Sphere at the chamber’s center. His face twisted with effort.

  For a heartbeat, a spark of orange flickered in his palms. The room held its breath. Then the sound changed.

  The Dissonant part of the chamber revealed itself: a low, grinding frequency that crawled through bone and marrow.

  The orange spark didn’t grow. It folded inward.

  “I—I can’t!” the man gasped.

  “You are incompatible,” Varick said, already bored.

  The runeworded ground inverted. The sigils beneath the man’s feet splintered, and the grey silt liquefied.

  There was no scream. The chamber’s Dead Silence swallowed it whole.

  Three seconds. Then nothing.

  The ground smoothed over like glass.

  [MARTYR 1042: RECLAIMED]

  The text burned across every HUD in cold, systematic red. Some people gasped in terror, some people trembled, some even vomited immediately.

  “This is the consequence of salvation, Martyr. Bear that in your little minds,” the cold face of the mentor unchanged. “The Abyssals, won’t play nice and fair. They will tear through your intestines like a ragdoll.”

  He paused for a moment. Then his eyes flashed, bitter memories of the past he was trying to bury came to light. “Desperate times call for desperate measures...”

  What followed was a montage of judgment.

  Marcus stepped onto the sigils with the resolve of a man facing a firing line. The runes flared a jagged metallic bronze: the resonance of a life spent grinding against war.

  Elena followed. Porcelain calm. The stone answered with a deep, poisonous violet: a shadow that healed as often as it choked.

  Rafa’s calibration stuttered neon-yellow, unstable, barely tolerated.

  Five others were not. No resonance.

  Five deaths in under a minute. Only collapsing sigils, the silence, and red notifications.

  One by one, the Martyrs were culled—until the air grew thick with desperation.

  ‘What if the corruption in my hand acts up?’ Val recalculated all his options, but he found none.

  He let out a single, aggressive breath to steady his mind. ‘I don’t jump into a Wormhole to be a wuss.’

  Val stepped onto the runeworded ground.

  He looked down at his hand, the obsidian veins throbbed beneath his skin.

  ‘Just cooperate this time, you freak.’

  Varick leaned in, his voice a dry whisper.

  “0996. Show me your… soul.”

  Val placed his palm against the etched sigils. The Armillary Sphere didn’t flare with color.

  For a fraction of a second, the light was consumed. The gleaming orb failed to register an output.

  The runewords beneath Val’s hand lost definition, their sharp geometry blurring as if reality itself couldn’t hold their shape.

  Val wasn’t discharging Ether.

  He was absorbing the environment.

  Varick stepped back. For the first time, his composure fractured.

  “A leak…” he muttered. “…No. A void.”

  His eyes moved to Val's arm. The obsidian veins were climbing.

  “Of course,” he said quietly. To himself more than to Val. “Of course, it's the contaminated one.”

  The calibration light flickered wildly, searching for a history to translate.

  It found none.

  The obsidian veins crawled higher along Val’s neck, pulsing in quiet synchrony.

  A low-frequency whine flowed through the sphere.

  [ANOMALY: SINGULARITY RESONANCE DETECTED]

  The silver light switched into darkness.

  For a heartbeat, the Armillary Sphere lost illumination entirely. The air itself seemed to rush inward, black static thundered outward.

  “What are you?” Varick barked and took half-step backward. “Your resonance isn’t an element. It’s a glitch.”

  [CALIBRATION ABORTED: RISK OF REALITY TEAR]

  Varick’s tablet chirped. He glanced down at the red, blinking alert from the Archival Officer, Hogard.

  “0996?” Hogard’s voice crackled through the comms, cold and bureaucratic. “That unit is a contamination risk. Quarantine Rungu permissions.”

  “And the Reclamation, sire?”

  “…Negative. Technically, subject 0996 did not fail the dissonance.”

  “Without a Rungu, he’s as good as dead. Let the Primeval Sector claim his life. Over.”

  Varick straightened, regaining his composure. Though his eyes lingered on the black stains crawling along Val’s arm.

  “Step off the ground, 0996,” Varick spat, disgust settling back into his voice.

  “You're a Null-Unit. A dead zone wrapped in Abyssal rot,” he looked at the obsidian veins one final time and decided quickly. “You don't get a weapon. The Iron-Oak rejects the rot.”

  He gestured toward the jungle. “Move out. You're bait now. At least the Stains will choke on whatever's in your blood.”

  A series of pings echoed directly into Val’s nerves.

  [SYSTEM ERROR!]

  [MANDATE: REACH THE DISSONANT CHAMBER (COMPLETED)]

  [REWARD: +22 RUBAL; IRON-OAK RUNGU (ERROR)]

  [PROCESSING…]

  [REWARD SUBVERTED!]

  [NEW REWARD GRANTED: +22 GOLDEN RUBAL]

  Val stepped off the magic circle, his boots silent on the silt.

  He stared at his HUD as the Iron-Oak weapon reward broke apart into red pixels, and was replaced by a single shimmering icon.

  Golden Rubal.

  A king’s ransom in a dead man’s hand.

  The other Martyrs looked away as he passed.

  Some with pity, others with the cold, predatory calculation of those who had already decided he was a ghost walking.

  They had their weapons.

  Fire. Frost. Steel.

  Val had an error message and a body that was already broken even before the trial began. He fell into line behind Marcus and Elena, losing his breath.

  The space before the Martyrs fractured. Hard-light windows unfolded.

  [MANDATE: OBTAIN AT LEAST 1 ABYSSAL HEART]

  [TIME REMAINING: 120H 00M]

  [REWARD: (CALCULATED UPON COMPLETION); WORMHOLE ACCESS]

  [FAILURE: WORMHOLE REJECTION]

  “Wormhole rejection,” Marcus muttered, his bronze Rungu humming softly in his grip. “A fancy way of saying we get left behind in the dirt.”

  Varick scanned the survivors: the Soldier, the Surgeon, the Brute, and the Void.

  “Any more questions?”

  “How are we supposed to eat?”

  Rafa stepped forward, his neon-yellow Halo flickering with high-frequency agitation. He gestured wildly at the emerald abyss of the jungle beyond the chamber doors.

  “You don't expect us to fight those 'stains' on an empty stomach, do you? Better as well hand our necks to them now and save the walk.”

  Varick let out a long, weary sigh. It was the first sign of impatience he had shown.

  “Very well. Not far from the Dissonance Chamber, you will find a Vending Beacon. There, you may spend your Rubal for your... needs.”

  Rafa blinked, his face scrunching, “Rubal? Vending machine? What the heck are you talking about, man? Is this some 7-Eleven shi' we're talkin' about?”

  Varick didn't answer Rafa directly. He turned his back, but paused, considering whether the next information was necessary.

  “The Beacons are neutral ground,” Varick said finally, his voice dropping into a warning register.

  “But the paths between them are not. There are those who survived the trials only to reject the Mandate. Ortho Martyrs who became scavengers.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, his iridescent eyes locking onto the group.

  “To them, you are not comrades. You are 'Merchandise.' They will peel the Halo from your skull for a handful of Rubal. If you meet any Ortho locals in the bronze gloom who doesn’t wear a Mentor’s mark... run.”

  He turned his back, and glided toward the inner sanctum.

  Val didn’t wait. He chased after the Mentor, his boots echoing sharply on the floor. He needed a theory; he needed the why. "Wait!" Val called out.

  Varick stopped, though he did not turn.

  "If you've already won your war. If the Abyssal are just 'bugs' to you. Why are you here?" Val's voice was low, cutting through the ambient room. "Why does Ortho care about a decaying world like ours?”

  “It is not for you, Martyr, to question,” Varick whispered, his voice trembling with a weight that wasn't entirely his own. “The Grand Mandate was issued to us by the Voice. To seek the why is to invite an audit you will not survive.”

  “Who is this Voice you are talking about?”

  The Mentor’s chitinous ridges stiffened.

  He didn't look at Val. He looked up at the M?bius Halo spinning above his own head, his gaze searching the empty air as if he were being watched from a higher dimension.

  CHARACTER ART: VARICK (BEHIND ARMILLARY SPHERE)