Mist had replaced the rain, soft and clinging, curling over the jagged rocks and into the fractures of the shipwreck below. The Distant Reverie lay still, her hull groaning faintly as she settled deeper into the stone-strewn shore. What had once been a ship of deception was now just another ruin among many.
The Vermillion Troupe was already moving.
Kaelthari helped Kaelis hammer down the frame of a temporary lean-to, her mulberry scales dim in the low light. Ralyria was inspecting the wheels of the least-damaged vardo, her tools clicking in rhythm with the quiet murmur of her mana core. Children gathered around Nara near a shallow fire pit, tucked into blankets made from tarp and sailcloth.
And at the center of it all, Lyra stood tall beneath the broken mainmast, eyes to the horizon.
She turned the moment ProlixalParagon’s paws touched the stone.
“You’re back,” she said simply.
Prolix nodded, his face grim.
“Tell me.”
They moved to the fire’s edge, low and flickering. Lyra settled onto a barrel that had become a stool. Prolix sat on a crate. Others gathered nearby — Marx, Kaelthari, Ralyria, even a few of the older kits who had learned when to listen quietly.
“We’re not in Baigai,” Prolix said. “We’ve made landfall somewhere else. Somewhere old.”
Lyra’s expression sharpened.
“Where?”
“…The Lunar Empire.”
The words fell like stones into deep water.
The fire popped.
Ralyria blinked twice in unison.
Kaelthari slowly rested a hand on the hilt of her bardiche, her tail coiling tighter behind her.
Marx spat into the dirt. “That’s a myth.”
“No,” Prolix said. “It's real. I’ve seen it.”
“And how do you know that?” Lyra asked quietly.
He met her gaze.
“Because someone who lives here told me.”
He described the figure in black and silver — their gills, robes, the scent of spice and metal in the mist — and the unmistakable voice layered in tones that rolled like water over steel.
“PillowHorror,” Kaelthari muttered. “They survived.”
Prolix nodded. “More than survived. They welcomed me. They said we’ve landed on the shores of the Lunar Empire. And they seemed very… pleased.”
He paused, then added, “They also said Dedisco stirs here. That this place remembers him.”
At that, Lyra’s golden eyes narrowed. Not in fear. In calculation.
“Did they threaten us?”
“No. Not directly.” Prolix hesitated. “But they said change is coming. That this land never forgets. And that we might be part of what wakes it.”
Silence fell again.
Then Lyra stood, slow and deliberate.
“We’ve survived wars. Cities that hated us. Gods that never answered.”
She looked to each of them.
“We will survive this too.”
Her eyes returned to Prolix.
“Tomorrow you scout further. Track inland. If PillowHorror means to involve us, we must learn what else watches these shores.”
She stepped into the firelight, her silver-furred form stark against the dark.
“We are strangers here. But we are not without teeth. And we do not kneel.”
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That night, the wind changed again — coming not from the sea, but from the hills.
And somewhere past the ridgeline, the air pulsed once with silver light.
As if the Lunar Empire had noticed them.
And was thinking.
The dawn was a gauze of silver mist, stretched thin across a sky that had forgotten its sun.
The sea no longer raged, but it did not rest. It hissed against the black shore, dragging kelp and debris back into its frothing teeth, never quite finished with what it had taken.
Above the surf line, on fractured basalt and warped tide-flats, the Vermillion Troupe stirred.
Not in panic. Not in grief.
In motion.
This wasn’t the first time they’d lost a road.
And it wouldn’t be the last.
There were three Conestoga wagons, now tilted and battered, their pale canvas canopies patched and flapping in the wind. And around them: twenty-three vardo wagons, richly painted and scarred with the journey, clustered in a wide crescent facing inland.
Several had cracked wheels. Two had splintered axles. One had burned partially along its left side — blackened but not broken.
And yet, they stood.
Like the Troupe.
Kaelthari stalked between wagons, her mulberry scales slick with sea spray, her chain-laced horns glinting dimly in the filtered light. She drove wedges beneath slipping wheels, her bardiche set aside in favor of a hammer and scowl.
“This one’s axle is warped,” she told a young Goblin girl bracing a jacked wheel. “Use basalt, not driftwood. Drift splits.”
Ralyria worked without pause. Her arms whirred with effort as she connected mana-routing rods between wagons, repairing interrupted systems. Blue light flickered behind the translucent plate of her chest housing, dimming slightly with each pulse.
She only spoke when necessary.
And even then, her voice came as chimes and static.
Efficient. Focused.
Children stared at her with wide eyes.
Some mimicked her movements with sticks.
She didn’t seem to notice.
Marx limped across the upper edge of the camp, drawing a makeshift boundary line with colored twine. He carried a short blade in one hand and a coil of cord in the other.
“We set perimeter fire markers,” he told a cluster of older teens. “You see anything crossing them? Smoke, ash, beast or man? You don’t wait to shout.”
One boy raised a hand. “What if it smiles?”
Marx grunted. “That depends. How many teeth?”
In the eye of it all, Lyra stood among the wagons like a mast that had never snapped. Her silver fur rippled in the sea wind, her worn cloak caught with brass pins. She watched the ridge inland, not the ocean — a quiet refusal to let the horizon claim her gaze.
She gave no orders. None were needed.
Her people moved because they knew how to survive.
Because survival was their birthright.
ProlixalParagon hauled water for patch-mortar, helped re-secure cooking wagons, and rewired a gutted alchemy bench — but his mind drifted again and again to last night’s encounter.
To PillowHorror, and the truth they brought with them.
To the name that still echoed like a tide pulled from a deeper moon:
The Lunar Empire.
By noon, the camp was formed:
The three Conestoga wagons stationed as outer bulwarks.
The twenty-three vardos in a horseshoe, shielded from sea wind.
A salvaged tarp rigged for a central meeting space.
Two cooking fires.
A perimeter marked by salvaged brass bells, driftwood stakes, and Prolix’s low-frequency motion traps.
Still dangerous. Still exposed.
But theirs.
For now.
Lyra approached Prolix as he was cinching down a storm anchor beside her wagon. Her eyes scanned the hills.
“It’s time.”
He straightened. “Scouting?”
She handed him a wax-sealed satchel and a crystal flare.
“Follow the basalt ridge east. See where the green ends and the stone begins. You’re looking for signs of structure. Carvings. Ruins.”
She met his gaze. “Anything that isn’t bones.”
“And if it is bones?”
Her voice didn’t falter. “Count them.”
The basalt gave way to ridged stone ridgelines carved by ancient wind and stranger erosion, their jagged patterns too deliberate to be entirely natural. ProlixalParagon’s boots struck the ground in careful, measured steps, his balance shifting instinctively with the angled terrain. The mist thinned as he climbed, unveiling swathes of black grass, purple-veined ferns, and pale tree-like growths whose bark pulsed faintly with embedded bioluminescent threads.
There was mana here.
Stale, but waiting.
The land remembered being alive.
Prolix crested a narrow ridge and paused.
To the east, the terrain spread into sweeping highlands dotted with stone spires and sunken terraces. Some formations looked almost like scattered teeth — others, like the remains of amphitheaters long buried under moss and time. The air tasted metallic and cold, but clean.
He checked his interface:
>Exploration Zone: Lunar Empire – Outer Highlands<
>Warning: Unmapped Structure – Arcane Rupture Signature Present<
That last line made him slow his breath.
Dormant.
Potential.
Not dead.
He felt the presence behind him a second before they spoke.
“Mmm. I was wondering when you’d catch the scent.”
Prolix didn’t turn immediately.
The voice was unmistakable.
Liquid. Layered. Smug.
“Following me again?” he asked flatly, scanning a cracked path that wound between two shattered arches.
PillowHorror stepped up beside him with a grin that somehow managed to be lazy, predatory, and delighted all at once.
They were dressed today in a sleeveless robe of rippling storm-silk, their scaled skin catching the light in iridescent flashes. Their yellow eyes gleamed — sharp with insight, soft with amusement.
“Following?” they purred. “Dear little fox, I live here. You are the foreigner sniffing around my doorstep.”
Prolix arched a brow. “And yet you arrived behind me.”
They chuckled. “You’re not wrong. But not right either. Let’s call it mutual orbit.”
He turned to face them fully. “Why are you really here?”
They gave an exaggerated sigh, tail flicking behind them.
“Because,” PillowHorror said, voice low, “there’s a dungeon asleep beneath these ruins. One that hasn't stirred in a long, long time. And you’re precisely the sort of disturbance that might wake it.”
“You think I’m here to trigger another anomaly?”
“Oh no,” they said, teeth glinting. “I hope you are.”
They stepped forward, gesturing to the fallen terrace ahead, overgrown and cracked.
“This was once part of the Palace of Falling Light — a devotional stronghold. Not for Dedisco, of course. Not originally. But history is a flexible thing.”
They crouched beside a chunk of inscribed stone half-buried in the dirt, brushing it clean with a clawed hand.
“Most adventurers miss the signs. They chase quests. Loot. Titles.” A sharp smile. “But you? You read between the code.”
Prolix knelt beside a vine-covered plinth. The interface flickered softly as he brushed his hand along it:
>Ruined Interface Node Detected<
>Status: Inert / Resonance Trace: Soul | Void | Water | Echo<
>Potential: Sealed Dungeon Entrance (Level Range Estimated 20–35)<
His lattice pulsed beneath his ribcage.
The ruin beneath his feet knew he was there.
It was listening.
PillowHorror stood, robes whispering around them like the tide. “So… shall we?”
Prolix straightened, golden eyes locked on the terraces beyond.
The land was strange. The dungeon unknown. The danger certain.
But the road forward was finally clear.
“Let’s wake something up,” he said.