Veyra City was the third-largest settlement on the Island of Storm's Reach—the smallest of the five landmasses/Islands that made up the kingdom of Aetheria.
The kingdom itself was a cluster of these islands, all tethered to the mainland heart, Aetheria Island, by massive shimmering bridges of crystallized mana and reinforced steel that pulsed with soft blue light along their veins like the slow heartbeat of some patient, sleeping god.
Pryce had always found it fucking hilarious that the place that got flattened—their shithole hometown—was officially called Veyra's Fringe. A fitting name for the ass-end of a city that was, in turn, the ass-end of the kingdom.
Cartographers with a sense of humor, or cartographers with absolutely none.
He'd never been able to decide which was worse.
And now, here they were, in the actual city proper.
The gleaming spires and bustling markets seemed to mock the smoldering ruins they'd left behind.
Sky-barges hummed through the air on bound currents of wind while battered, smoke-belching wagons rumbled past on the cobblestones below. Floating carts drifted a hand's breadth above the pavement, their hawkers shouting praise for shimmering cubes of dream-fed bread and glowing vials of star-essence.
Guild enforcers in pristine white plate directed the throng with sharp gestures of their oath-staves, their faces hidden behind smooth porcelain visors that always made Pryce think of funeral masks.
Charlatans in colored silks shouted over one another, peddling miracle cures and forbidden relics from the broken towers of the Old Bloodlines.
It was all about collateral damage management, and the Fringe had been written off as acceptable losses long before the first stone fell.
The vibrant city proper stood as a gleaming testament to how little the so-calledheroes actually gave a wet shit about the people they were supposedly saving.
Pryce navigated the throng with Lulu tucked securely under his arm, a predator moving through a flock of oblivious sheep.
He pointed with his chin toward a distant, imposing structure that dominated the skyline—a stark white tower that seemed to drink the light around it rather than reflect it.
"See that ugly bastard?" he grumbled. "That's the Sanctum of Aegis. Biggest guild HQ in this whole gilded shithole of a city."
Unlike the other cities of Storm's Reach, Veyra had the distinct honor of avoiding a headquarters for the Guild of the Seven—the biggest collection of glorified bullies and celebrity sycophants in the known world.
That fact alone made the place almost tolerable.
Instead, a chaotic sprawl of smaller, hungrier guilds had set up shop here, all clawing at one another for territory, resources, and a fatter slice of the bleeding pie.
That was why it hadn't been so impossibly hard for him to scrape together a job and keep his sister fed.
Porters like him—the normal humans brave enough or stupid enough to enter the lethal dungeons and towers alongside the Awakened, Hunter parties to haul out their loot for them—were in constant demand.
He was the muscle, the pack mule, the poor bastard who carried the heavy, dripping, often-glowing crap, cores from killed beasts, their carcasses if the killers thought of the soulless bodies useful for the guild and to sell later.
Porters carried those loot out of death-traps so the fancy chosen ones wouldn't have to stain their pretty boots.
That was how he'd made sure Lulu went to school, was fed, and slept under a roof, even if the roof in question leaked half the year and the school had taught her more about dodging fists than reading.
But things were different now.
He looked up at the gleaming guilds towers no longer with the weary contempt of a laborer, but with the calculating gaze of a wolf eyeing a butcher's window. He was here to discover the full shape of these new gifts, to test the limits of this body the angel had rebuilt three times stronger than the one he'd died in.
He was going to become one of those glorified hunters. One of the bastards who made the real gold coins.
He'd claw his way up, every step paved with somebody else's teeth, and gods help anyone who tried to stand between him and the top of the heap.
And he wouldn't be doing it for fame, or to collect a parade of simpering groupies—well, all right, maybe a small one, he wasn't a fucking saint—but to make a real life for her, and for him.
No more carrying other people's bags. No more risking his neck for a handful of pocket change and a bowl of cold gruel.
He was going to be the one finding the treasure, and the world could line up and kiss his ass in alphabetical order if it didn't like it.
But how did this all work?
That was the million-gold question, wasn't it?
Pryce kept one arm locked around Lulu's waist as they pushed deeper into the throng, his stolen duster snapping against the evening breeze like a flag on a battlefield nobody had bothered to claim.
The girl's head was still swiveling like a temple-watcher's lantern, drinking in every floating cart, every glowing rune-banner, every spark of mana that danced between the chrome-pale spires.
But his mind was a thousand miles from the wonder—spinning through the same brutal loop it had been stuck in since the moment he'd woken up perfectly healed and completely fucking powerless.
What had happened was simple enough.
He'd taken the deal with the angel—who would've been the devil if the one offering hadn't been the most gut-punchingly gorgeous twelve-winged hottie any dead man woul ever lay eyes on.
Beside the point. He'd said yes, signed the glowing contract (agreed) with his soul or whatever scrap of it was still recognizable, and that had been that.
Next thing he knew he'd been hurled out of those stupidly luminous green plains in a blast of exaggerated brilliance and dropped straight back into the ruins like a sack of wet bricks.
And so... the million-gold question—how did this work from here?
As far as his finite, gutter-scraped knowledge of powers and the beings who handed them out went, the heroes and humans who got chosen just woke up with their gifts, plain and simple.
No graveside summons.
No chat with an angel or god or whatever cosmic landlord owned the deed to your particular soul.
No dramatic green-field therapy session in which a winged divinity walked you through the small print.
That wasn't how the stories went.
Then again, what the hell did he actually know? For all he knew, every lucky bastard in the chronicles might have died screaming in their sleep and woken up with lightning in their veins and just been too embarrassed to admit it later.
But the stories said what the stories said, so he'd cling to them. Those gifted ones.
Usually, a person woke up with their powers after some bullshit trigger: survived a wagon crash that should've turned them into red paste, lost all hope on the edge of a cliff, or stumbled into some other moment juicy enough to tickle a god's sadistic streak just right.
For some, the awakening came in the middle of a full breakdown—catching the same good dick-game boy fucking your fifth girlfriend like it had become his weekly devotional, and in the soul-crushing rage of that exact moment some bored deity decided your story was sad enough to be worth saving.
Despite all the gold you'd lavished on her, despite the silks and the bloody pet moonsprite, your woman still chose decent dick and good bed-game over every coin in your vault.
'Sadistic fucking bastards, the gods. Every last one of them.'
And the choosing wasn't bound by age, gender, virtue, or the size of your scars. The gifters took whoever they wanted.
Whoever made the happiest story or the saddest one.
Whoever made the best theater.
That was why the world swarmed with villains, with heroes, and with quiet, dangerous people who simply kept their powers folded under their tongues and waited patiently for some idiot to fuck with them so they could burn him to a crisp.
But Pryce had woken up with no power. No divine glow. No sudden lightning in his veins. Nothing but better reflexes, slightly sharper stats, and skin that looked like it had never known a hungry day in its life.
'Angel's blessings, apparently.'
'Real generous of her.'
So he was going for option two: force-awaken his Affinity Core.
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A/N: Daddy's cooking... this is something else!