The First Incision

The First Incision

Root - Seda, Refinery District

The noise was an affront.

It was not the panicked, wet screaming of the refinery guards—that had been fleeting, a brief, messy inconvenience. He perceived it, registered it, and filed it away as irrelevant. No, it was the unceasing, high-pitched, arrogant shriek of the Etheric refinery itself. It was a sound of such hollow, technological pride it set his one remaining eye vibrating in its socket.

It was the sound of sickness. A monument to the city's hollow, suicidal logic. A logic that built its towers to the sky while forgetting the rot in its own foundation. And Master Root was here to bring the cure.

He stood on the central control platform, a ghost in the heart of the machine. The cavernous chamber was a cathedral of brass and crystal, pulsing with a blinding, blue-white light that cast no shadows. Below him, his acolytes, black-robed and silent, had finished their work. They had... re-consecrated... the primary conduits.

The air was thick with the coppery tang of their sacrifice. He breathed it in deeply, a familiar perfume. The sterile, ozone-sharp smell of the Ether was an observable symptom of the a larger disease—raw, chaotic, unearned power. The copper was the smell of the cure - power, paid for, controlled, and given purpose.

Root was a figure of stark, terrifying purpose. A polished, scar-like metal plate was bolted over the ruined socket of his right eye. His left arm was gone, the sleeve of his dark, severed robes pinned neatly at the shoulder. He moved with a precise, unnerving grace, his one remaining eye, dark and cold as a winter stone, scanning the control panel.

He did not need to smash it. He was not a brute. He was a surgeon. No, an artist, and this destruction would be his finest canvas yet.

He placed his single, calloused hand on the primary focusing crystal of the refinery. It was the size of a carriage, and it vibrated with enough power to level the entire district. It was warm, thrumming with the stolen energy of the world.

"Such pride," he whispered, his voice a dry rasp. "Such an imbalance."

He thought of Shimura Kaito, an idealistic fool who had once believed in honor, in oaths, in the "wisdom" of the Council. The boy who had been fed to the meat grinder of pointless wars, who had lost his eye, his arm, and his soul in the mud for a city that had forgotten its heart.

That boy was dead. He had died – died on a forgotten battlefield, and in his place, a cold, hard truth had been born: His nation was sick - the capital city was the infection site. And a true surgeon does not ask the cancer for permission to cut it out.

The only law was the procedure. The only virtue was the cure.

"Now," he commanded.

Below, his acolytes made the final connection. Root closed his one eye. He did not fight the energy in the crystal; he infected it. He opened a channel within himself, and his power—cold, ancient, and hungry—flowed from his own living essence. It was the Sanguine Rite. The power of blood, of sacrifice, of life, forced into the heart of a machine that only understood logic.

It was anathema – a curse.

The blue-white light of the crystal convulsed. It did not flicker; it curdled, turning a sick, jaundiced yellow. The arrogant shriek of the refinery wavered, fracturing into a guttural, panicked howl, like a dying and angry god. The machine, a marvel of logic and air, had just been poisoned by blood and shadow. It was now a bomb.

Alarms began to blare, a new, idiotic noise added to the cacophony. Root ignored them. He could feel the vibration of the overload through the soles of his boots, a frantic, thudding heartbeat. The very air began to crackle, and the brass conduits glowed a dull, cherry red as they began to melt.

He turned his back on the dying machine, his robes swirling. He was already moving toward the exit, his acolytes melting into the shadows. He did not need to see the results. He would feel it.

If Root was a surgeon, the first, cleansing incision had been made. Now, the true battle for Seda—it’s healing—could begin.