The crystal case was heavier than it had any right to be. Most of what I carried, I carried for show — the case was the exception. Purification crystals had weight for a reason. So did the hand resting on top of them.
Three figures stood near the main gate, checking gear.
"Vera Blackwell." The man was tall and broad-shouldered, C-rank vanguard insignia pinned to his vest. Brant Kessler. Not on the list. I logged him anyway — I logged everyone. "You're with us today. Standard sweep. Stay behind the line, do your job, we'll have you back by lunch."
I nodded. "Understood."
The other two were already looking me over. A woman with close-cropped hair and a C-rank archer's bracer, her bow unstrung but ready. A man about my age, fingers tracing idle patterns in the air—a C-rank mage, probably elemental focus. Neither introduced themselves. That was fine.
Brant Kessler handed me a comm earpiece. "Channel three. Short-range only. The Fogwood Rift dampens long-distance signals. You hear anything strange, you report it. Not to me—to everyone. Clear?"
"Clear."
I fitted the earpiece. The faint hum of the channel settled into my hearing. A courier in Celestial Balance grey was unloading sealed record-crates at the gate — older paper, pre-Awakening archive stock. Iron Edge had contracted the archival audit last quarter. The archer—Rue, according to the roster I'd memorized last night—clicked her tongue. "Another temp. Hope you're not jumpy."
"I'm not," I said.
The mage, Varen, smirked. "They all say that until the first spore cloud."
Brant Kessler shot him a look. "Enough. Move out."
The transport was a modified ground vehicle, armor plating dull gray. I took the rear seat, crystal case secured between my boots. The numbers ran in my head. Healing Pool: 99.2%. No change since the last check. This was a C-rank Rift, designated Fogwood. Low threat, standard sweep protocol. My role was support—minor injury stabilization, toxin purification if needed. Nothing that should draw attention.
Nothing that should cost pool. The pool was the only resource I owned. Everything else was borrowed, including my face.
The vehicle hummed to life. Through the reinforced window, the city blurred into streaks of gray and green. Brant Kessler spoke over his shoulder, not looking at me. "Rift manifested two weeks ago. Stable C-class. Flora-based hostile entities. Primary threat: Mycelial Puppets. They're slow, but they release hallucinogenic spores in close quarters. Standard countermeasure is a filtered mask, but if you get a lungful, you'll start seeing things that aren't there. Or not seeing things that are."
"Understood," I said again.
"Your job is to keep us clean. If one of us gets spored, you purge it. Fast. We can't have someone swinging a sword at imaginary enemies while the real ones chew on our legs."
Rue chuckled. "Happened last time. Newbie healer froze. Took three minutes. I almost lost a foot."
"I won't freeze," I said.
Varen glanced back, eyes lingering on my hands. "We'll see."
He would see. He just wouldn't understand what he was looking at.
The ride fell into silence. I kept my right hand flat against my thigh, feeling the familiar coolness seep through the fabric of my pants. The decay touch was quiet, dormant. Today wasn't about that. Today was about learning how to move inside Iron Edge's rhythm, how to be invisible inside the machinery of a standard guild operation.
The transport slowed. Outside, the air had changed—thicker, heavier with moisture. We were at the Rift perimeter, a temporary outpost of prefab structures and scanner arrays. An Iron Edge sentry waved us through a checkpoint.
Brant Kessler shouldered his door open. "Gear check. Two minutes."
I unclipped my case, opened it on the seat. Standard healer's kit: purification crystals, sterile gauze, injectors of neutralizer, a handheld scanner. All of it legitimate, all of it clean. I slung the kit over my shoulder, adjusted the weight.
The Rift entrance wasn't dramatic—a distortion in the air about twenty meters ahead, like heat haze over asphalt, but tinged with a faint greenish glow. The ground around it was already overgrown with strange, fleshy moss that pulsed slowly. Fog curled from the distortion, thick and white, smelling of damp earth and something sweetly rotten.
Brant Kessler pulled a filtered mask over his lower face. The rest of us did the same. My mask sealed with a faint hiss, the filters humming to life.
"Stay in formation," Brant Kessler said, his voice muffled but clear through the comm. "Rue, point. Varen, left flank. Blackwell, center rear. Move."
We stepped into the fog.
Sound went muffled, like a door closing behind us. The light thickened, green-tinged. The trees were not trees — woven fungal stalks, caps glowing in patches. The ground gave underfoot. Violet moss released puffs of sparkling dust. I kept my breathing even.
Rue moved ahead, silent, her bow now strung, an arrow nocked but not drawn. Varen's fingers were moving again, tracing symbols that left faint blue trails in the air—a detection ward.
"Mycelial signatures ahead," Varen murmured through the comm. "Three. Stationary."
"Coordinates," Brant Kessler said.
"Twenty meters, eleven o'clock."
"Advance. Slow."
We pushed deeper. The fog thickened. I could barely see Rue five meters ahead. My scanner showed ambient spore concentration rising, but still within safe limits for masked personnel. The numbers on the display were steady. My right hand stayed cool.
A shape loomed out of the mist.
It was humanoid, roughly, but made of woven fungal strands, pale and fibrous. No face, just a smooth oval head with clusters of glowing spores embedded like eyes. It stood motionless, one arm fused with a nearby stalk.
"Puppet," Brant Kessler whispered. "Rue."
The arrow left her bow without a sound. It struck the thing's chest, a perfect hit. The Puppet shuddered, then began to crumble, dissolving into a pile of fibrous dust and a cloud of spores. The cloud drifted toward us.
"Hold breath," Brant Kessler ordered.
We froze. The spores floated past, glittering in the dim light, settling on our masks and gear. My scanner spiked briefly, then settled. The filters were holding.
"Clear," Varen said.
We moved past the dissolving remains. I glanced down. The dust was already being absorbed by the moss, vanishing. Efficient decomposition. The Rift recycled everything.
Two more Puppets appeared ahead, these ones moving—a slow, shuffling gait. Brant Kessler didn't wait. He drew the sword from his back—a heavy, single-edged blade—and moved forward. His movements were economical, powerful. The blade cleaved through the first Puppet, then the second, in two clean arcs. More spore clouds billowed.
"Spore concentration rising," I reported through the comm. "Ambient levels approaching mask tolerance."
"Noted," Brant Kessler said. "Varen, widen the detection ward. I don't want surprises."
Varen's fingers flew. The blue tracery expanded, forming a dome around us that pushed the fog back slightly. Better visibility, maybe ten meters now.
We continued the sweep. The Rift was larger than I'd anticipated—a sprawling fungal forest, silent except for the occasional drip of moisture from overhead caps. We encountered clusters of Puppets, all dispatched with methodical precision. Rue's arrows rarely missed. Brant Kessler's sword work was brutal and efficient. Varen's wards kept the spore clouds from concentrating.
My role was minimal. I monitored squad vitals through linked biosensors — all green, all stable. I was a passenger with access. That was the useful kind.
I watched Brant Kessler's movements, the way his Imprint energy flowed—visible to my senses as a steady, amber glow around his hands and blade. When he struck, the energy flared, cutting through the fungal entities. A B-rank combat Imprint, strength-enhanced, durability-augmented. Standard guild frontline material.
I watched Varen's spellwork. The blue tracery was intricate, a pattern of containment and detection. His Imprint felt cool, precise—a C-rank mage specializing in environmental control.
And Rue—her Imprint was subtle, a faint green shimmer along her bowstring, guiding her arrows with unnatural accuracy. A C-rank archer with precision enhancement.
Three different Imprint signatures. Three different energy pathways.
My right hand tingled.
I pushed the sensation down. Not now.
We reached a clearing—a circular space where the fungal trees thinned, dominated by a massive, pulsating fungal heart in the center. It was the size of a small vehicle, covered in throbbing veins that glowed with sickly yellow light. Around it, dozens of Mycelial Puppets stood motionless, like guardians.
"Nexus," Brant Kessler said, his voice tight. "That's the source. Standard protocol: destroy the heart, the Rift destabilizes, we extract before collapse."
"Guardian count?" Rue asked.
"Twenty-plus. They'll activate when we approach."
Varen was already casting. "I can lay a suppression field. It'll slow them, but not stop them."
"Do it. Rue, you take the heart. I'll hold the line. Blackwell—" Brant Kessler glanced back at me. "You stay at the edge of the clearing. If any spores get through, you purge. If anyone gets hit, you purge. Understood?"
"Understood."
Varen's ward flared, expanding across the clearing. The blue light settled over the guardian Puppets, causing them to shudder, their movements slowing to a crawl. The fungal heart pulsed faster, as if agitated.
"Go," Brant Kessler said.
Rue moved, sprinting along the edge of the clearing, nocking an arrow tipped with a small explosive charge. Brant Kessler charged straight into the slowed guardians, his sword a blur of amber light.
I stayed at the tree line, my kit open, scanner active. Spore concentration was spiking—the heart was releasing clouds of visible yellow spores, thick as smoke. My mask filters whined in protest.
The fight was chaos in slow motion. Brant Kessler cut through Puppets, each strike releasing more spores. Rue reached a vantage point, drew her bow, aimed for the heart.
Then the heart pulsed one more time, and spores burst outward—not yellow, but a deep, vibrant purple.
My scanner screamed. "New spore variant! Toxicity unknown! Masks may not filter!"
Too late.
The purple cloud washed over Brant Kessler. He staggered, his sword swing going wide. He ripped his mask off, coughing violently. "Can't—breathe—"
"Captain!" Rue shouted.
Brant Kessler's eyes were wide, unfocused. He turned, not toward the Puppets, but toward Varen, who was still maintaining the suppression ward. "Traitor!" Brant Kessler roared, his voice distorted. "You're with them!"
Hallucinations. The purple spores were a stronger variant.
Brant Kessler charged Varen, sword raised.
Varen's eyes widened. He couldn't drop the ward—if he did, the guardians would swarm. But if he didn't, Brant Kessler would cut him down.
"Blackwell! Now!" Varen yelled.
I was already moving.
The chill in my right palm pulsed once, insistent. I ignored it and reached for the purification crystals in my kit. Standard procedure. I sprinted toward Brant Kessler, who was now swinging his sword at Varen's head. Varen ducked, the blade whistling past.
"Captain, it's me! Varen!"
Brant Kessler didn't hear. His eyes were seeing something else—some enemy, some betrayal.
I slid to a stop behind him. Not safe, but necessary. I slapped a purification crystal against the back of his neck, activating it with a pulse of my own healing energy—clean, white, legitimate.
The crystal flared, emitting a hard pulse of cleansing light. It should have purged the spores from his system.
It did not.
Brant roared and backhanded me without looking. The blow caught my shoulder. I stumbled. I kept my feet. Pain I could work with. Pain was data.
The spores were embedded deeper. Standard purification wasn't enough.
Through the comm, Rue was shouting. "I can't get a clear shot! He's moving too erratically!"
Varen was sweating, his hands trembling as he held the ward. "Blackwell, do something!"
I looked at Brant Kessler. His Imprint energy was going wild, amber light flaring unpredictably. The spores had integrated with his system, hijacking his neural pathways. Purification had to be delivered internally, directly into the energy stream.
That meant touch.
I dropped my kit, stepped forward again. Brant Kessler turned toward me, his eyes blank. "Another one," he muttered, raising his sword.
I didn't flinch. I let him swing.
The blade came down. I sidestepped, not fully—the edge grazed my arm, slicing through fabric and skin. A line of fire across my bicep. Blood welled.
The pain was the point. For him.
In that moment of contact, his Imprint flared toward the injury—an automatic healing response, even in his hallucinating state. All Awakened had it, a low-level self-repair instinct.
I reached out with my left hand—my healing hand—and pressed my palm against the wound on my own arm. Let him see the gesture. Let his Imprint lock onto it.
Then I brought my right hand up, cold and steady, and placed it over his heart.
Not decay. Not yet.
I pushed a thread of healing energy into him, following the pathway his own Imprint had opened when he'd sensed my injury. It was a backdoor—a sympathetic link. The healing energy flowed into his system, white and pure, seeking the spore infestation.
I could feel it—the foreign presence, the purple spores woven into his energy channels like parasitic threads. My healing energy wrapped around them, began to dissolve them.
Standard procedure. Just deeper, more precise than most E-rank healers could manage.
But as I worked, I felt something else.
The pathway I was using—the channel through which healing energy flowed into his body—was exactly the same pathway my decay touch used. The same neural interfaces, the same energy meridians, the same points of entry. The only difference was the direction of the flow—one toward restoration, one toward unraveling.
I could see it, clear as a schematic. The same channel. The same meridians. The same points of entry. To deliver decay I would only have to reverse the current. The body would not know the difference. Not until it was already too late to matter.
The spores dissolved. Brant Kessler's wild energy settled. His eyes cleared. He blinked, looked at me, at his sword, at Varen still holding the ward.
"What…" he began.
"You were spored," I said. My voice was flat. I removed my hand from his chest. The cold in it did not go anywhere. "It's purged now."
He stared at me for a second longer, then shook his head, as if clearing water from his ears. "Right. The heart."
"Rue!" Varen shouted. "Now!"
An arrow streaked across the clearing. It struck the fungal heart dead center.
The explosive tip detonated.
The heart burst apart in a shower of viscous fluid and fungal matter. The guardian Puppets all froze, then crumbled simultaneously into dust. The entire Rift shuddered. The greenish light flickered.
"Rift collapse initiated!" Varen yelled. "Extract! Now!"
We ran. Brant Kessler in the lead, Varen after him, me following, Rue bringing up the rear. The fungal forest was dissolving around us, the trees wilting, the moss turning gray and brittle. The fog thickened, turned acidic.
We burst out of the Rift entrance just as the distortion behind us collapsed in on itself with a sound like a sigh. The air cleared. The sweet-rotten smell faded, replaced by the mundane scent of wet grass and ozone.
Back at the transport, we stripped off our masks. Brant Kessler was breathing heavily, leaning against the vehicle. He looked at his sword, then at me.
"That was good work," he said finally. "Fast thinking. Most temps would've frozen."
I wrapped a bandage around the cut on my arm. Not deep, bleeding steady. "Standard procedure."
"Standard procedure doesn't usually involve letting yourself get cut to open a healing link," Brant Kessler said. His eyes were sharp, assessing. "That was tactical. You've done field work before."
"Some," I said.
He nodded, as if that explained everything. "Well. You saved Varen's neck. And maybe mine. Thanks."
Varen clapped me on the shoulder—the uninjured one. "Yeah. Thanks. I owe you one."
Rue just gave me a nod, but her expression was less dismissive than before.
We loaded up. The ride back was quiet, but the atmosphere had shifted. I was no longer just a temp. I was a competent temp. That was a useful category to occupy.
Back at Iron Edge headquarters, Brant Kessler handed me a mission completion chit. "Turn this in at the quartermaster. You'll get your credits by tomorrow."
"Thank you."
He started to walk away, then turned back. "Your hands were steady. Even when I was coming at you with a sword. That's rare." He met my eyes. "Dark Flame letting you go was their loss."
He walked away.
I stood with the chit in my hand. *Their loss.* A kind thing to say. I filed it next to the other kind things people had said before they stopped saying anything.
I had learned something today. The pathway was the same. Healing and decay ran on a single channel. Which meant a good healer was also, by construction, a good executioner. I had the technique either way.
I filed the mission chit, collected my gear, and headed toward the dormitory wing. The cut on my arm throbbed dully. I'd heal it properly later, when I was alone. For now, I let it ache. A reminder.
As I passed the main guild hall, I saw the announcement board had been updated. A new notice, fresh-printed.
**Cross-Guild Joint Rift Assault: Operation Shatterspine**
**Participating Guilds: Iron Edge, Dark Flame, Silver Peak**
**Schedule: Next week, details to follow.**
My eyes scanned the participant list. Iron Edge names, Silver Peak names, then Dark Flame.
There it was. Fifth name down.
Sol Mercer.
My lips curved. Not a smile. Something thinner. Something I had been practicing for three years without meaning to.
I turned and walked, my right hand cold against my thigh.
The list had four names left. Now I knew exactly where one of them would be standing.
---
── Author's Note ──
Quick one: whose ruin do you want next?
Drop a name in the comments. Top vote at week's end gets prioritized.
Power Stones for cadence, comments for targets.
Vera reads both. (I do. She doesn't. She's busy.)