Voltaris had once tried to touch the sky.

Crystal spires still speared upward through a haze of purple smog, their facets catching what little daylight bled through the fractured night sky. Some towers leaned at impossible angles, held aloft by shimmering arcane lattices that flickered in dying neon colours. Others had collapsed entirely, their shards scattered across cobbled streets threaded with glowing conduits and rusted rail lines.

The wind moved softly through the ruins, carrying with it the faint chime of broken crystal. Shattered towers rose like jagged teeth against the gray sky, their once-glowing conduits now cold and silent. Fragments of glass lay scattered across the streets

Wind moved through the ruins with a hollow, glassy moan.

Alara walked ahead without hesitation.

Her boots clicked against crystal-dusted stone, cloak brushing the edge of a dead conduit that pulsed faintly beneath transparent paving. To her right, an old archway sagged beneath cables. Banners, once embroidered with sigils, now displayed glitching projections of symbols that no longer resolved properly.

Cyren followed, hands tucked into his coat pockets, gaze sweeping the skyline.

“Well,” he said lightly, stepping over a fallen construct’s arm, gears exposed, rune-plates cracked, “if this place collapses any further, I’m going to start applauding. Turning ‘total destruction’ into an ongoing series instead of a one-time event? Bold choice. I admire the consistency.”

Alara didn’t slow. “It already is a total destruction.”

“That wasn’t a joke.”

“I know.”

He grinned despite himself.

Alara didn't even try to acknowledge his attempts at a joke. After staying hidden during their first meeting, they left the basement at first sunlight, making sure they weren't followed or in any danger. Traveling down towards Voltaris was more strenuous than she would have imagined. Not only were they delayed multiple times by strange anomalies in their environment that forced them to change their route to the city, but Alara's patience started running thin, listening to Cyren. 

They arrived two days ago in Voltaris, trying to find answers anywhere. But the more they searched, the emptier the city seemed. The few humans they saw ran to shelter the second they saw the two outsiders and on more than one occasion Alara and Cyren had to hide from metallic constructs roaming the area. 

The nights were not any better. Ever since Alara remembered her name, her thoughts were spiraling. A storm of questions with no answers kept her awake, whenever she tried to close her eyes, runes started dancing in front of her, building words and constructs. But whenever she tried to decipher anything, a sudden wash of panic forced her eyes open. The runes would disappear, only to be replaced by others. 

Frustrated and tired, Alara kicked a little rock against the remnants of a building, seemingly being held in mid-fall at an unnatural angle. She has never been here, or at least she does not remember ever being here, but she felt almost lost, looking at the destruction around her. Something, in the back of her mind, nudged her, almost reprimanding her that it was her fault and that she needed to hurry ...

Cyren stood still at the edge of what had once been a plaza. His hands were folded behind his back, posture straight, gaze steady on the horizon of collapsed spires.

Alara stepped up beside him, her boots crunching lightly on crystal shards. She studied the ruins with quiet curiosity rather than grief. She looked at the broken towers, the shattered skybridges hanging between them like snapped threads.

“This city must have been enormous.”

“It was.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The wind slid through hollow streets where power once flowed through glass conduits and floating lanterns.

Alara tilted her head slightly. “I don’t remember …”

Cyren glanced at her briefly, acknowledging the quiet admission. Then he looked back out over the ruins.

“Voltaris,” he said. “Most people didn’t bother with this name after the collapse.”

He gestured faintly toward the broken skyline.

“Now it's just the Broken Kingdom of Glass.”

“Broken… fits.”

“Yes.”

She looked at his clenched jaw. 

“You used to live here,” she said after a moment. Not a question.

Cyren nodded.

“This was my home once. But I don't think I've stepped foot in here for over … I guess it's been five years. Around the time the collapse started.”

Since travelling together Cyren had carefully started to fill in the gaps. From what Alara understood, half a decade ago, the slow disintegration of this world started. Magic started failing, in isolated places at first, then it became a widespread phenomenon. Slowly but steadily, industries failed, crops withered when growing during the wrong season and the stable lives most people knew got disrupted. The night Alara awoke under the spires was just any ordinary day in a chaotic, unstable world.

Alara watched Cyren instead of the city now, studying the steadiness in his voice.

“I knew it wouldn’t last forever.” His eyes moved slowly across the ruins. “Nothing built on power alone ever does”, he murmured, directed to no one except the vast emptiness of the plaza.

A faint metallic creak echoed somewhere far down the street as a loose shard shifted in the wind.

Alara crouched briefly, picking up a thin fragment of glass. She turned it between her fingers, light sliding across its surface.

“It must have been beautiful.”

Cyren took a slow breath before answering.

“It was, but … too much magic in too fragile a frame. Too many people convinced the system would hold because it always had.”

Alara nodded thoughtfully, as if he were explaining a mechanical failure.

“Yet you survived.”

“Yes.”

“And now?”

Cyren looked out over the broken skyline again. His expression wasn’t grief. It was something steadier than that.

“Now it’s a reminder.”

“Of what?”

“That even the brightest things break.” He paused. “And that the next city shouldn’t be built the same way.”

Alara stood again and let the shard fall gently back to the ground. Her gaze followed the silent towers one last time, then she glanced at him.

“Will you rebuild it?”

Cyren shook his head slowly.

“Not this one.”

He turned away from the ruins.

“But something better.”

He tore his gaze from the horizon. 

“We should get going. Reminiscing won’t give you the answers you’re looking for.” Behind his eyes was a spark, Alara couldn’t place. Anticipation maybe?

The air prickled. Mana fields tangled with old circuitry, causing faint auroras to ripple along the streets. Here and there, automated constructs stood in eternal pause, iron knights fused with chrome plating, lenses dim but not dead. Alara looked at them not without a slight feeling of awe.

Cyren tilted his head at one as they passed. “Do you ever get the feeling they’re just waiting for a cue?”

“They are,” Alara replied. “Power cycles stall. They don’t just end.”

He blinked at her. “That sounded ominous.”

“It wasn’t meant to.”

Both of them rounded the corner in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. The city seemed to hold its breath with them, until, without warning, something above gave way. A sharp snap split the air.

One of the tram cables severed, and the carriage dropped. Metal screamed as it plummeted.

Alara and Cyren froze for half a heartbeat, then moved, sidestepping just as the tram crashed down where they’d been standing. The impact rattled the street, a violent shudder that threw Alara off balance. She hit the ground hard, pain flaring through her shoulder.

“Damn it …,” she hissed, rolling onto her back, the world still ringing around her.

She pushed herself up, breath catching, when Cyren’s hand appeared in front of her, steady and unshaken, already on his feet, as if the chaos had simply missed him.

For a moment, she just stared at his outstretched hand. She’d noticed it before, his reflexes, the way he always seemed a step ahead of disaster. More than once on their journey, he’d pulled her clear of danger that should have caught them both. Still, it never stopped being unsettling. Or impressive.

Alara took his hand and let him pull her to her feet.

He smiled thinly and looked at the tramcar that was now just lying in front of them. The skeletal remains of a “passenger” fell out, making it clear that when the tram had stopped mid-air years ago, no one came to help the people trapped inside. Cyren took one good look at it. 

“You can measure a civilization by its monuments. I prefer to measure it by how fast it falls when you kick the supports out.”

He crouched down, studying the wreckage like an engineer examining a faulty machine.

“Well … good news.”

Alara didn’t look at him. Her gaze remained fixed on the devastation. “There is no good news here.”

Cyren shrugged, with a faint, almost academic smile on his lips. “The conduit network is only mostly destroyed. Sixty percent, give or take. By local standards, that’s practically pristine. Otherwise the tram would have fallen even earlier. Even before … well…,” he gestured loosely at the city, “… all of this happened.”

“Cyren.”

“What?”

“Your home is gone.” 

He tilted his head, as if reconsidering the statement. “Parts of it. The foundation is still intact. Turns out it’s harder to destroy what’s buried under everything else.”

Alara’s tired, bloodshot eyes narrowed. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Deflecting.”

He stood up, stepping over the remnants of a broken building next to the carriage. Sliced cleanly in half, with one half laying in shambles, the other half just vanished. “I prefer the term maintaining morale.”

“You’re joking.”

He shrugged, “Bad habit.”

“People died here.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re talking about conduit percentages.”

Cyren’s expression didn’t change. “Because the conduits matter.”

“Not right now.”

He sharply turned around, facing her.

“Especially right now.”

Alara looked at his face to study him fully. His voice was steady. Not a tremor. Not a crack.

“You don’t sound angry.”

“I’m furious.”

“You don’t look devastated.”

He sighed. “Trust me, I am.”

“Then why …,” she swept her arm across the shattered skyline, the broken towers, the hollowed streets, then pointed at him, “... this?”

Cyren crouched beside a cracked mana crystal half-buried in soot. He brushed its surface clean with careful fingers, as though it were something delicate rather than debris.

“Have you ever seen a pressure valve on an arcane engine?”

Alara exhaled sharply. “This is not the time for-”

“Humor me.”

“… Fine.”

“Pressure builds up inside the core,” Cyren said, still focused on the crystal. “Too much, and the whole engine tears itself apart.”

“I know how engines work.”

“Good. Then you know why the valve exists.”

She hesitated, then answered quietly, “To release the pressure.”

Cyren nodded once. “Exactly.”

He rose to his feet and looked out across the ruins.

The wind stirred, carrying with it the faint crackle of unstable magic from a distant, damaged tower.

“You’re saying you’re about to break,” Alara said.

“I’m saying if I didn’t joke,” Cyren replied, “I already would have.”

Silence stretched between them.

“You saw … something happen,” she said at last.

Cyren’s jaw tightened, just slightly. “I was here when the first strike hit. The very plaza we just walked over. It was a crowded day, preparations for some festival were underway. Lights were everywhere.”

He gestured faintly at a broken building in the distance.

“Then the sky lit up for a very different reason.”

Alara said nothing.

“The first tower went down fast,” he continued. “Magitech cores don’t like being detonated.” A faint, brittle smile flickered across his face. “Turns out neither do the people standing next to them.”

“Cyren …”

“I’m sorry. I heard the collapse before I saw it,” he swallowed, eyes fixed somewhere far beyond the ruins, “You know that sound when a structure fails? That deep groan right before gravity wins?”

He didn’t wait for a reply. He knew she didn’t have an answer for him.

“Half my neighborhood was still inside.”

The smile was gone now. The memories from this day seemed to flash before his eyes.

“Friends. Family …”

The words settled heavily in the air.

Alara stepped closer to him.

“And joking about conduits helps,” she said, more gently this time.

Cyren gave a small shrug. “It keeps me moving.”

“Moving toward what?”

He looked out over Voltaris again; at the broken towers, the shattered streets, the flickering remnants of what had once been a marvel of arcane design.

“Fixing whatever’s left.”

Alara studied him, something in her expression shifting as understanding began to take hold.

“You’re not indifferent.”

“Not even close.”

“You’re containing it.”

“If I let all of it out at once, this place won’t be the only thing in ruins.”

Another pause.

Then Cyren exhaled, some of the tension easing from his shoulders. He turned back toward the shattered towers of Voltaris. A thin, tired smile crossed his face.

For a moment, the silence returned.

Then a quiet sound escaped Alara, a small, startled chuckle, as if it had slipped past her defenses before she could stop it.

Cyren glanced at her, one brow lifting.

“I knew you had emotions,” he said, his tone utterly serious despite the words.

Alara huffed softly, shaking her head, but the faintest trace of a smile lingered.

Around them, the ruins of Voltaris whispered and crackled, but for the first time, the weight of it felt just a fraction lighter.

They picked up the pace again. Alara was still in thoughts about Cyren’s words. She couldn’t deny his remark about her emotional detachment. She spoke with precision, in comparison to Cyren, whose words were always marked by a sentimental pattern. Without realizing, they entered what was once a big intersection, some cars still parked in the middle of the street, as if they just waited for their owner to return. Medieval stone stalls circled a central fountain, except the fountain wasn’t water. It was a spiraling column of suspended liquid light, frozen in a corkscrew mid-splash. Around it, arcane projectors flickered, projecting advertisements for enchantments long obsolete.

Alara stopped.

The air felt wrong.

Cyren noticed it too. His humor thinned. “Okay. That is new.”

The ground beneath the fountain trembled.

The spiral of light shuddered, then started flowing again, inverted. Crystal shrieked.

From the fountain’s core, something tore itself into existence.

It wasn’t flesh. It wasn’t machine. It was both and neither, an asymmetrical mass of rotating rings and liquid shadow, covered with glowing runes that flickered like corrupted code. Fragments of broken constructs lifted from the square and snapped into orbit around it, dragged by magnetic pulses of warped mana.

Cyren swore softly.

The anomaly screamed, a sound like a feedback surge that cracked remaining windows and split stone. The air tasted metallic and bitter.

Alara’s mind went very still.

The anomaly lashed outward. A beam of condensed light sheared across the square, slicing through a row of stone stalls. Cyren rolled aside with practiced ease, coming up behind a fallen arch.

“Alara!,” he called, “If you’ve got one of your quiet, decisive plans, now’s a great time!”

She was already moving.

At the edge of the square, half-buried beneath crystal debris, something pulsed in answer to the anomaly’s rhythm. It seemed to be a relic of some sorts. A narrow cylinder of prismatic alloy etched with the now almost familiar runes. Its surface shimmered like frozen lightning.

Alara recognized it. Not consciously. Not yet.

Her body did.

She reached it just as the anomaly turned toward her. The rings started accelerating, the gravitational pull slowly intensifying. Broken stone skidded across the ground toward its core.

Cyren braced himself against the arch, eyes wide. “Please tell me you’re not about to touch that.”

Without giving him an answer, she just placed her hand against the relic.

Light surged up her arm, but it didn’t burn. The marks on her hand started lighting up. Threads of structured mana and dormant code unfolded in her mind as if she’d always known their pattern. Interfaces opened, layers upon layers of control architecture bridging spell matrices and mechanical controllers.

The anomaly shrieked again, slowly beginning to destabilize.

Alara inhaled once. Then she interfaced.

Her vision fractured into overlays: containment protocols, emergency damping arrays, a failsafe sequence labeled in a language she somehow understood. She reached through the relic, not with muscle but with intent, rewriting the collision point where magic and machine had tangled.

Cyren stared. “You’re glowing.”

“I know.”

The relic responded, as if it was recognizing her.

Its junction points flared bright white. The square was suddenly flooded with light. The anomaly convulsed, its orbiting debris crashing to the ground. Runes flickered from a chaotic red to stable blue. The rings slowed down.

Alara repeated the pattern, rerouting the excess charge into dormant conduits beneath the square.

With a final, shuddering pulse the anomaly collapsed inward, folding into a single point of dim light that blinked once … and vanished.

Cyren exhaled slowly, lowering himself on the ground. “Right,” he said, brushing crystal powder from his sleeve. “So that was horrifying.”

Alara withdrew her hand from the relic.

The cylinder dimmed with a soft glow like ember remaining.

She stared at it. It had responded to her touch like a lock to its key. Cyren walked toward her, gaze flicking between her and the relic. His usual smirk didn’t return.

“That wasn’t random,” he said quietly.

“No.”

“You didn’t hesitate.”

“No.”

He studied her face. “You knew how to do that.”

Alara met his eyes. 

“Yes.”

A beat passed.

“You remembered something?” he asked.

She hesitated.

“Not a memory,” she said. “A function. Some … purpose.”

Cyren huffed a soft laugh, though it lacked its usual brightness. “That’s worse.”

Then she looked at her. “What purpose?”

Around them, constructs that had been frozen for years shifted subtly. A lens brightened. A joint unlocked. In distant towers, lines of light reactivated one by one.

As if something had acknowledged their presence. Her presence.

Alara suddenly turned around, looking at small movements at the horizon. She wanted to answer him, when suddenly her vision turned black.