The Lunari advanced in steady formation, their silhouettes gliding like pale flames through the vast, starless void. Thalira Luna let the heaviness in her chest fall away and fixed her attention on the goal ahead.

Guided by their pathfinding skills, they drifted on for a time until something peculiar broke the uniform darkness. At first, it was only a shape, a wrongness in the emptiness. Then the shape resolved, and Thalira’s eyes widened.

"This..." Her voice thinned to a breath as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

It was not another floating islet like the ones they had passed. Suspended in the middle of nothing, a colossal book hung motionless, as if an invisible hand had set it there and abandoned it to the dark.

It looked to be around 20 meters long and 15 meters wide. A strange brown leather bound its cover, the surface rough and age-cracked; beneath that closed lid, the tome was thick, its edges yellowed like paper left too long in the sun.

More unsettling than its presence was the distortion around it.

Space itself seemed to pull toward the book, a faint inward draw that made the void look like fabric sagging around a hidden weight—time and distance bending inward to a single point. It felt like an anchor in the heart of nothing, a pin driven through the emptiness to hold the world still.

"Lady Thalira, this should be the Core the Wanderer Merchant mentioned, right?" an aide murmured as she edged close. Two others nodded at once, conviction rising as they stared.

The Rank 5 Adept had warned them he did not know the Core’s form—only that they would understand upon seeing it. And this, planted at the center of the void and pulling the dark toward itself, felt exactly like that.

Thalira gave a slight nod, accepting their reasoning, when something else in the emptiness caught her eye. She turned, eyes narrowing into the black beyond. "It seems the Gorathim found it before us."

A little farther on, figures glided soundlessly toward the book: Gorathim, their bodies moving with an unsettling ease that made the void look like water around them.

At the point of the group, Brakhtar Gorat tilted his head as if sensing their regard. He turned and met Thalira’s gaze, and after a heartbeat that felt like a wordless exchange, the Gorathim veered and began drifting toward the Lunari.

"Thalira of the Lunari," Brakhtar called as he approached, separating from his retinue. "As expected, you found it as well." He floated without a mount or a wing, a dark figure buoyed by unseen force.

"Young chief of the Gorathim." Thalira greeted him with composed ease, though a flicker of disappointment colored her eyes. "I accept my loss this time. The Core is yours."

For a moment, everything stilled. Even the Lunari Practitioners faltered, surprise loosening their focus. It was one of those rare moments when Thalira yielded without contest, allowing a rival to claim the prize.

"My Lady, are you sure we should let them take it without a fight?" an aide whispered, giving voice to the tension in all of them.

The Lunari were forged in conflict; war shaped their breath and bone. Prize or no prize, retreat without testing strength did not sit well. Still, Thalira only shook her head.

"I said we forfeit. We move. Perhaps we can still find resources worth taking before we leave." She turned her royal bird to withdraw, her decision clean and final.

With nothing else to do and unable to defy their leader’s order, the Lunari wheeled their flying birds into formation to follow—only to be stopped by a deep voice.

"Wait." Brakhtar’s voice cut across the stillness. "I’m glad for your decision, Thalira of the Lunari, but I may need your help."

The Lunari halted as one. Thalira arched a brow. "Help? For what?"

The book hung there, waiting to be claimed. What complication could make a Gorathim chief ask for aid now?

Brakhtar released a slow breath and raised his long, dark green, clawed index finger, pointing past the book. "Can’t you see it?"

"See what?" Thalira followed the line of his finger, confusion tightening into focus. At first, there was only the book and that subtle sag in the void. Then—something. A ripple, a slow disturbance behind the tome, so faint it barely existed.

"Wait," she whispered.

Silver kindled in her eyes. Light cracked across her irises, flint-bright, as she layered a Spark Skill over her vision. The void sharpened, the black peeled back, and then she saw it.

Something that made her breath run cold.

"Brakhtar." The steadiness in her voice thinned despite her will, "Should I assume we are in trouble?"

No one could fault the tremor that edged her words. Anyone whose senses were keen enough—or sufficiently augmented—to perceive what hid behind that book was already trembling, not from pain, but from something older: the clean, primal fear of a thing that should not be.

There, black on black, lay a creature coiled like a sleeping serpent.

Its scale was wrong for the space: too large, too dense, as if the void itself had folded around it. It did not merely sit in the darkness; it was a wound in reality, a gravity of its own, a living absence that swallowed sight. One look made instincts recoil. Step closer to claim the book, and you would cross a line from which you would not return.

"Is it..." Thalira glanced at Brakhtar, the question finishing itself as it rose. "A Rank 5 Spark?"

The thought sounded impossible; still, the same answer seemed to lurk behind every face.

There was no outward pressure, no aura to pin a rank to. Yet the effort of trying to see it—just the act of looking—filled the body with the certainty of danger, the way a cliff’s edge makes the stomach drop before the mind has measured the fall.

"I’m not sure," Brakhtar said at last. "We all know a Rank 5 Spark shouldn’t exist here."

This was the Sanctuary of a dead Rank 5 Adept. It had hung in the void for more than 100 years, fractured by time, its sea of energy long since dried to nothing. The survival of even a Rank 4 Spark under such conditions bordered on impossible.

And yet, what they knew and what they saw refused to agree.

"If it truly is Rank 5, then there’s only one choice," Her voice was unhesitating and unashamed. "We turn back and leave."

A single Rank 5 could scour the whole Outer Region if loosed. Against a force like that, two Rank 3s and a handful of Rank 2s were not a warband; they were kindling.

Brakhtar didn’t move. "If it’s Rank 4, there’s a path. If it’s Rank 5, we walk away."

The word landed with weight, and every gaze sharpened. Chance did not mean contest. It meant a theft executed under the shadow of something that could not be fought.

But still, snatching anything from the side of a Rank 4 Spark was not easy. It was, however, not impossible—if they secured help from a certain Human.

However, before they could choose, the creature delivered the choice.

The void shifted, space went rigid as glass, breath guttered in their chests, and a cold certainty settled that none would survive to tell it.