The Calm in the Eye

The Calm in the Eye
The Port of Seda / The Etheric Institute

The adrenaline that had fueled them on the pier began to curdle into exhaustion. The fire still raged in the distance, painting the sky in bruised purples and angry oranges, but here, at the water’s edge, the air was cold and quiet.

Skooh Otaga was failing. The golden construct leaned heavily against a mooring post, his light flickering like a dying candle. The pool of star-fluid beneath him was growing alarmingly wide, his internal mechanisms grinding with a sound like dry leaves.

"We cannot stay," Skooh synthesized, his voice a whisper of static. "My containment is... negligible. Taba-Taba. The Sun-Forges. It is the only place..."

"Yeah, yeah, I hear you, Tinkerman," Agapititus grunted, waving down a sleek, darkened cutter moored at the end of the dock. It bore no flag, but the hull was etched with the same geometric patterns as Skooh’s mask—a stealth vessel from the desert kingdom. "Your ride is here. Try not to drip on the deck."

The drunkard turned to the group. He looked at Elara, then Faren, and finally rested his gaze on Aga.

"You're a scary bastard," Agapititus said to the woodsman, a grin splitting his soot-stained face. "But you cleared the path. I appreciate that."

Aga nodded, a single, sharp incline of his head. "Keep him alive, Rat. He has a part to play yet."

"I'm just in it for the ruby," Agapititus lied again, patting the pocket where he kept his rusted knife. He hooked his arm under Skooh’s shoulder. "Come on, your tra-jesty. Let's go find you a desert."

The pair hobbled up the gangplank—a dying artifact and a gutter philosopher. As the ship cast off, slipping silently into the dark harbor, Aga watched them go. He felt a strange pang of loss. In the chaos of the last hour, that strange, leaking machine had felt more honest than half the men he’d met in the civilized world.

"He will survive," Elara said, moving to stand beside Aga. She wasn't looking at the ship; she was checking the dressing on Gaidan's arm. "His architecture is redundant. He is... resilient."

"We need to move," Gaidan rasped, wincing as he tightened the sling. "The riots will spread to the docks by dawn. We need a stronghold."

"The Institute," Faren said, his voice surprisingly steady, though his eyes were hollow. He was looking up at the high district, where a single, massive dome still glowed with an unbroken, blue-white light. "Look. The wards held."

The trek back up through the city was a journey through a nightmare, but the closer they got to the Institute, the quieter it became. The chaotic "Sepsis" seemed to hit a wall around the Scholar's District, repelled by ancient protections.

They reached the massive iron gates of the Etheric Institute just as the first light of dawn began to bleed into the smoke-choked sky.

The gates were not barred. They were open.

Standing in the courtyard, flanked by a dozen armed wardens in pristine blue robes, was an old man. He did not look like a warrior, but he held himself with the gravity of a mountain. He wore the high-collared, silver-threaded robes of the Headmaster, and he leaned on a staff made of white ash wood. His face was a map of deep lines and fierce intelligence, framed by a shock of white hair.

Corvin Crowstooth. The Arch-Mage of Seda.

He watched them approach—the battered soldier, the rogue senator, the exhausted scholars, and the giant barbarian carrying a bloody sword.

Gaidan stiffened, snapping a crisp salute despite his broken arm. "Headmaster. Asset secured. Mission... compromised."

Crowstooth’s eyes, sharp as a hawk’s, swept over the group. He looked at the smoke rising from the lower city, then at the weary survivors.

"Compromised?" Crowstooth’s voice was deep, resonant, and filled with a profound sadness. "No, Sergeant. The mission was a failure long before you left the gates. We were blind."

He stepped forward, his gaze landing on Aga. He looked at the silver cuffs hanging broken from Aga’s belt, then at the fierce, unyielding set of the woodsman’s jaw.

"You are the anomaly," Crowstooth said softly.

"I am Aga," the hunter corrected.

"And he is a free man," Rina interjected, stepping between them. She looked like a ruin herself—her dress torn, covered in sewer muck, producing an odor most rank that it swallowed the entire group—but she held herself with the imperious authority of the Senate. "By my order, as a ranking surviving member of the Senatorial body, his status as a prisoner is revoked. He saved us. He saved the city from the worst of it."

Crowstooth looked at Rina, a flicker of surprise and respect crossing his face. "Senator Cassius. I am... sorry."

"Save your pity," Rina said hard. "We need sanctuary. And we need answers."

Crowstooth nodded slowly. "Sanctuary you shall have. The Institute stands, though the city bleeds." He turned back to Aga. "And as for you, woodsman... I owe you an apology."

Aga narrowed his eyes. He expected chains. He expected lightning. He did not expect humility.

"We sought to study you like a bug in a jar," Crowstooth admitted, gesturing to the pristine white buildings behind him. "We thought we were the masters of this world's power. Tonight has proven us arrogant fools. Master Root..."

"He escaped," Aga said, his voice a low growl. "He went into the water."

"He will return," Crowstooth agreed. "And when he does, Seda will need more than scholars and soldiers. It will need hunters."

The Headmaster extended a hand—not to shake, but to offer entry.

"Come inside, Aga. We have libraries that go back to the First Age. You seek the Isle of Dreams? It is not merely a legend. It is a prison."

Aga hesitated. "A prison?"

Crowstooth’s expression darkened, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Before Time, there was only the Emptiness and the Seven Dead Kings—Hunger, Sorrow, Rage, Envy, Sloth, Greed, and Lust. But one, the Empty King, defied them. He craved form. He created Ether, the first spark. For this betrayal, he was cast out, bound to a desolate demi-plane."

Crowstooth pointed to the east, toward the ocean.

"That prison is the Isle of Dreams. It is a place where the laws of reality are thin, where the Empty King's dreams bleed into our world. If you seek it, you seek the source of all magic, and perhaps, the source of the void inside your son."

Aga looked at the white stone towers. It was a cage of a different sort. A place of words and papers, things he despised. But then he thought of Luka. He thought of the scent of the predator.

"You have maps?" Aga asked.

"We have the route," Crowstooth promised. "If you help us understand this enemy... if you help us hunt the Sanguine... the resources of the Institute are yours."

Aga looked at Elara, who nodded once, a silent promise of cooperation. He looked at Faren, who offered a weak, grateful smile. He looked at Rina, who stood ready to tear the world down to find the truth.

They were a strange pack. But they were a pack.

Aga sheathed his sword.

"I do not do this for your city," Aga said, walking past the Headmaster into the courtyard. "I do it for my son."

"Then we have a bargain," Crowstooth said, turning to follow them.

Inside the Great Hall of the Institute, the silence was absolute. Faren collapsed onto a bench, putting his head in his hands.

"The registry," he whispered to a passing clerk. "The refugee lists. My family... Anya..."

The clerk, a young woman with ash-stained robes, shook her head sadly. "The lists are incomplete, Scholar Faren. Most of the residential district fled to the hills. The diaspora... it's scattered. We have no way of knowing who made it."

Faren stared at the floor. The hope that had sustained him on the road evaporated. His home was gone. His family was gone. He looked around the cold, white hall. This place—his work, his duty—was all he had left. The emptiness in his chest mirrored the void Aga spoke of, but Faren had no map to fix it.

On the other side of the hall, Rina stood before a gathering of stunned bureaucrats and junior senators who had sought refuge in the Institute. They looked to her for guidance, their eyes wide with fear.

"The Senate is broken," Rina announced, her voice echoing in the hall. "The Council is dead or scattered. The Constitution of Seda has a provision for this."

A hush fell over the room.

"Article Four," Rina said, her voice steel. "In times of total collapse, when the body cannot govern itself, a head must be chosen. I am calling for a Moot. We will not debate. We will not vote. We will name an Emperor of Seda."

Gasps rippled through the crowd. It was treason. It was heresy. And it was the only way they would survive the winter.

The City Gates - Dawn

While the Institute plotted survival, the city gates stood open, a gaping mouth of a dead beast.

The refugees were gone. The rioters had retreated to the shadows to count their spoils. The smoke still swirled, thick and yellow.

Through the haze, a figure walked.

He was not leaving the city. He was entering it.

He wore the vibrant, flowing silks of Taba-Taba—crimson, orange, and gold—though they were stained with the dust of a long road. He moved with a loose, dangerous grace, like a desert cat. At his hip hung a scimitar of black steel, curved like a crescent moon, its sheath battered and worn.

He stopped at the archway of the gate, looking at the devastation. He looked at the ruined fountain, the looted shops, the bodies in the street.

He reached up and pulled down his scarf, revealing a face bronze from the sun, yet eerily unweathered. His skin was smooth, almost porcelain, and his eyes held a strange, glass-like stillness that did not blink as often as a man's should.

He smiled, but there was no humor in it. It was the smile of a man who had finally come home, only to find his house on fire.

"Well," the figure whispered. He rested his hand on the pommel of his black scimitar. The blade shuddered in its sheath, a distinct, eager vibration that ran up his arm. He squeezed the hilt, a silent, practiced command for patience.

"We step away for five years," he murmured to the smoking ruins, soothing the humming steel at his hip, "and look what they do to the place."

He stepped over the threshold, walking calmly into the hellscape of Seda.