Fenri approached the barren earth just before the Iden Strait at the edge of the Desert of Aeon. The desert was quiet, howling winds wailed across the frozen, sandy flats and Fenri crossed them silently. His nose twinged as the subtle, but pungent odor of scorched glass sifted through the frozen ground. He got a firsthand view at the site of automated artillery that assailed the unlucky pair of interlopers who unleashed a scourge upon all of Vescrutia.
But for what? What could they possibly have gained exploring the Strait of Iden and returning with nothing to show for it but scars and regret?
Fenri’s curiosity overcame him in the dead of night for days after having his hand forced, aligning himself with the B’halian Empire to preserve the longevity of Diamond Dust. It irked him, left a sour taste, just felt bad, but their mission always stood larger than any one generational struggle.
Although Akundae’s ambitions put the Empire at the center of Vescrutia’s next great paradigm, like the phases of the moon, this too would pass.
Diamond Dust would persist.
The calmness at the edge of the Strait of Iden intrigued him, the scene was far less dynamic than what he observed from the front steps of Cold Frontier, watching Zero and Zeik navigate the gauntlet of turret fire. Fenri traversed the field time and’s time again over the weeks since Zero and Zeik retreated, every time he did he wondered more fervently how the two of them, together, could come back from their journey… defea— unsuccessful. Whatever their intention was, this pervasive malaise that sat atop the realm couldn’t have been their goal.
The sea still roiled, and Iden out in the rolling sea laid silent, a crimson-grey aura basking the quiet island in sinister, ominous light. Fenri’s frustration welled within his heart the same as it did every time he journeyed here alone to make sense of the state of affairs. His first few trips found him joined by David or Lana, Frankie even joined him once to give more lighthearted support, but his deep seated determination outlasted the open ended strategy conversations between them. Unfortunately, his trips devolved from meditations on solutions to rumination on the shortcomings of Arcturus’s most infamous remnants.
Nobody but Zero and Zeik knew exactly what happened here.
So Fenri stood there, breathing in the frigid, salty air and convinced himself to finally travel to Iden in person to assess the situation firsthand, regardless of what danger lie waiting there.
The Frozen Moon of Diamond Dust stepped off the coast of the Desert of Aeon, onto a frozen block of ice grown in response to the flick of his wrist, and started across the Strait of Aeon.
A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
Last edited by Fenri on Sat Dec 06, 2025 9:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: A FrostyCounteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
The rift in the sky drew shut behind Zeik with a long, cosmic groan, as if the heavens themselves were struggling to stitch their torn veil back together. Through the narrowing tear, the beasts that stalked behind him—creatures dredged from starless voids and impossible ecosystems—growled and clawed at the threshold, visible and audible but unwilling to cross into this unnervingly still world. Zeik stepped fully onto the cold sand, felt the unnatural quiet settle around him, and with a sharp motion of his hand, closed the portal entirely—severing the creatures’ path and leaving them behind.
And then the silence pressed in.
No towers.
No shimmering wards.
No artillery belching fire across the Strait.
Only cold wind and the faint, brittle scent of scorched glass.
Zeik took one slow breath, eyes narrowing. This place should not have been quiet. The last time he stood here, Zk at his side, the ground shook beneath them. They had fought a woman interlaced with machine—a grotesque symbiosis of flesh and alloy. Plates of alien metal fused into her skin. Tendrils of conduit running along her bones. Vents breathing for her like mechanical gills. Her movements produced a sound that offended his senses: half biological, half engineered, neither belonging to any natural order.
Not because it was advanced.
Not because it was foreign.
But because it had erased her.
A person turned into an instrument.
A herald of Death’s Subterfuge wearing a human face.
He and Zk defeated her, but the victory was hollow. She lived long enough to lay her hand upon the Traversing Mirror. To corrupt it. To twist its currents. And from that moment, the world shifted.
The Subterfuge bled into Vescrutia like venom.
The dead no longer rested—they rose as monsters, birthed from their own slaughtered bodies. Every battlefield became a womb for new horrors. Death had been inverted, weaponized, and spread across the world.
And at last, the nations of Vescrutia understood:
The horsemen were real.
Their heralds walked openly.
And the war they carried was already here.
Old enemies whispered alliances in dim rooms. Neighbors who once sharpened blades for one another now stood shoulder to shoulder. Even the B’halian War, with all its political poison, shrank beneath the enormity of what stalked the world.
Zeik had come to undo the corruption of the Subterfuge—to unravel Death’s grip on the planet thread by thread. He had come to quiet the blight that twisted fallen bodies into monsters, to halt the unnatural birth of horrors from corpses that should have known peace. If he could sever the Subterfuge’s influence here, even in part, Vescrutia might finally breathe again.
His appearance matched the fire inside him. He no longer wore the torn and trench-stained remnants from the Onyx Trench. Now his clothing was tailored, composed, ceremonial and martial in equal measure. A long battlecoat of storm-grey cloth and obsidian-threaded lining, sigils stitched into the interior seams—a sorcerer’s armor, a seer’s mantle, and a warrior’s uniform bound in one.
He looked like someone who had walked through prophecy and fire and returned carrying both.
But as his boots touched the sand, all that preparation dissolved into confusion.
The artillery that once tore the sky apart sat cold and empty.
The scorch marks were old.
The air unmoving.
The land felt as though time had taken a breath and forgotten to release it.
And then he saw the lone figure at the icy shore.
Fenri.
The Frozen Moon of Diamond Dust.
The last time their paths crossed, Fenri had spoken of aligning with Akundae—War’s herald. He claimed it was for the defense of his people… and perhaps it was. Zeik understood the burden of choosing a poison for the sake of those you must protect; he had lived that truth more times than he cared to remember.
But it still burned him.
Because Fenri had been critical in aiding Zk.
Because Fenri knew what they were truly up against.
Because the thought of someone like him bending even partially toward War’s shadow felt like a betrayal of the fragile world they were struggling to hold together.
Zeik had expected to arrive to an enemy fortification.
Instead, he found him.
Zeik stepped forward, Naten unraveling from his clenched fist like dissipating storm vapor. His coat fluttered behind him, stirring the snow.
He spoke without raising his voice, and yet the air felt carved by the words.
“…Fenri.”
The name fell into the quiet and was swallowed whole by it.
He had come to end a corruption—
—and found only silence.
And the silence felt wrong.
And then the silence pressed in.
No towers.
No shimmering wards.
No artillery belching fire across the Strait.
Only cold wind and the faint, brittle scent of scorched glass.
Zeik took one slow breath, eyes narrowing. This place should not have been quiet. The last time he stood here, Zk at his side, the ground shook beneath them. They had fought a woman interlaced with machine—a grotesque symbiosis of flesh and alloy. Plates of alien metal fused into her skin. Tendrils of conduit running along her bones. Vents breathing for her like mechanical gills. Her movements produced a sound that offended his senses: half biological, half engineered, neither belonging to any natural order.
Not because it was advanced.
Not because it was foreign.
But because it had erased her.
A person turned into an instrument.
A herald of Death’s Subterfuge wearing a human face.
He and Zk defeated her, but the victory was hollow. She lived long enough to lay her hand upon the Traversing Mirror. To corrupt it. To twist its currents. And from that moment, the world shifted.
The Subterfuge bled into Vescrutia like venom.
The dead no longer rested—they rose as monsters, birthed from their own slaughtered bodies. Every battlefield became a womb for new horrors. Death had been inverted, weaponized, and spread across the world.
And at last, the nations of Vescrutia understood:
The horsemen were real.
Their heralds walked openly.
And the war they carried was already here.
Old enemies whispered alliances in dim rooms. Neighbors who once sharpened blades for one another now stood shoulder to shoulder. Even the B’halian War, with all its political poison, shrank beneath the enormity of what stalked the world.
Zeik had come to undo the corruption of the Subterfuge—to unravel Death’s grip on the planet thread by thread. He had come to quiet the blight that twisted fallen bodies into monsters, to halt the unnatural birth of horrors from corpses that should have known peace. If he could sever the Subterfuge’s influence here, even in part, Vescrutia might finally breathe again.
His appearance matched the fire inside him. He no longer wore the torn and trench-stained remnants from the Onyx Trench. Now his clothing was tailored, composed, ceremonial and martial in equal measure. A long battlecoat of storm-grey cloth and obsidian-threaded lining, sigils stitched into the interior seams—a sorcerer’s armor, a seer’s mantle, and a warrior’s uniform bound in one.
He looked like someone who had walked through prophecy and fire and returned carrying both.
But as his boots touched the sand, all that preparation dissolved into confusion.
The artillery that once tore the sky apart sat cold and empty.
The scorch marks were old.
The air unmoving.
The land felt as though time had taken a breath and forgotten to release it.
And then he saw the lone figure at the icy shore.
Fenri.
The Frozen Moon of Diamond Dust.
The last time their paths crossed, Fenri had spoken of aligning with Akundae—War’s herald. He claimed it was for the defense of his people… and perhaps it was. Zeik understood the burden of choosing a poison for the sake of those you must protect; he had lived that truth more times than he cared to remember.
But it still burned him.
Because Fenri had been critical in aiding Zk.
Because Fenri knew what they were truly up against.
Because the thought of someone like him bending even partially toward War’s shadow felt like a betrayal of the fragile world they were struggling to hold together.
Zeik had expected to arrive to an enemy fortification.
Instead, he found him.
Zeik stepped forward, Naten unraveling from his clenched fist like dissipating storm vapor. His coat fluttered behind him, stirring the snow.
He spoke without raising his voice, and yet the air felt carved by the words.
“…Fenri.”
The name fell into the quiet and was swallowed whole by it.
He had come to end a corruption—
—and found only silence.
And the silence felt wrong.
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Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
A tingle crawled up Fenri's back, sensing a surge in energy appear behind him accompanied by the snarls and grumbles of otherworldly beasts. He turned to look over his shoulder only slightly, to make sure he wasn't going to be ambushed by any of the predators of Aeon. What he found turned out to be a battle ready Zeik, steeped in bloodlust and resolve stepping from a portal a new man, a resolved man with a goal in mind.
Zeik looked more than ready to take on an army if he found it here, probably shell shocked from the first time he and ZK ventured to this part of the continent. Zeik and Zero set off a number of security measures set by the Arceneaux Corporation that allowed Fenri to venture here unencumbered; the guards slept, the barrier vanished, and now the pair of them stood at the edge of the continent heading toward the End of the World across a roiling, freezing sea.
"Zeik... Again. And uninvited, no doubt." Fenri said, standing with one foot placed on a slab of ice, paused mid stride. "I would love to stay and trade pleasantries, but I have to clean up your mess. If you'll excuse me."
Fenri started walking out into the rolling Strait of Iden, a frozen path growing in front of him with every step. The reports from Diamond Dust stations all over Vescrutia replayed in his mind through the symphony of crashing waves and crackling ice. He aligned himself with a brutal Empire for the survival of his organization and had to face the Herald of War at his doorstep all because Zero and Zeik unleashed a curse upon Vescrutia. Whether it was Zero's typical callous curiosity or Zeik's sage wisdom receiving its comeuppance for keeping someone like Zero in close company, Fenri couldn't trust this man's judgment any more than he could trust that the pungent scourge stifling Vescrutia would resolve itself. As the Frozen Moon of Diamond Dust and the last chance to see his organization, comrades, and family survive to see the other side of this dilemma, he had a responsibility to take action.
Zeik looked more than ready to take on an army if he found it here, probably shell shocked from the first time he and ZK ventured to this part of the continent. Zeik and Zero set off a number of security measures set by the Arceneaux Corporation that allowed Fenri to venture here unencumbered; the guards slept, the barrier vanished, and now the pair of them stood at the edge of the continent heading toward the End of the World across a roiling, freezing sea.
"Zeik... Again. And uninvited, no doubt." Fenri said, standing with one foot placed on a slab of ice, paused mid stride. "I would love to stay and trade pleasantries, but I have to clean up your mess. If you'll excuse me."
Fenri started walking out into the rolling Strait of Iden, a frozen path growing in front of him with every step. The reports from Diamond Dust stations all over Vescrutia replayed in his mind through the symphony of crashing waves and crackling ice. He aligned himself with a brutal Empire for the survival of his organization and had to face the Herald of War at his doorstep all because Zero and Zeik unleashed a curse upon Vescrutia. Whether it was Zero's typical callous curiosity or Zeik's sage wisdom receiving its comeuppance for keeping someone like Zero in close company, Fenri couldn't trust this man's judgment any more than he could trust that the pungent scourge stifling Vescrutia would resolve itself. As the Frozen Moon of Diamond Dust and the last chance to see his organization, comrades, and family survive to see the other side of this dilemma, he had a responsibility to take action.
Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
Fenri’s words hit harder than the cold wind off the Strait.Zeik didn’t flinch, but something in his expression tightened—just enough that anyone watching closely would see it. Fenri always did that to him. Made him feel… off-balance. Not with awe, not with irritation—something quieter, sharper. The edge between respect and fear. A man he didn’t trust, but couldn’t quite dismiss.“Zeik… again. And uninvited, no doubt. I’d love to stay and trade pleasantries, but I have to clean up your mess. If you’ll excuse me.”
Zeik stepped forward anyway.
“My mess…” he echoed, the words low, controlled. He swallowed whatever long-winded and overtly poetic spell of unwanted insight tried to climb up his throat. This wasn’t the man to burden with thoughts like that—and Zeik wasn’t sure he’d survive the humiliation of trying.
He exhaled once, steady.
“…Never mind.” His voice returned to that crisp, professional plane he defaulted to around Fenri. “I’m here to undo the Subterfuge. I didn’t know you were versed in that type of spellcraft.”
He meant it without accusation, without challenge—just a statement of fact. But the unspoken question hung between them like frost:
What does he think happened here? What does he believe I’ve done?
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Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
"Subterfuge... Fitting."Zeik wrote: Mon Dec 08, 2025 9:50 pm “I’m here to undo the Subterfuge. I didn’t know you were versed in that type of spellcraft.”
Fenri only knew of it in terms of warfare and relations with Zero. His mastery of the common tongue introduced him to a number of concepts and the current state of Vescrutia could definitely be described as such. The dead rose again and terrorized the living with their memory. Every report that came back to him, every mangled survivor reeked of the same energy Zero and Zeik arrived with Akundae just shortly behind them.
"I'm not personally versed in complicated spellcraft or arbiter... I produce solutions in spite of complex machinations."
Fenri took steady steps across the Strait of Iden towards the island across from them, the site of some tragedy whose odor stained his senses with unrest. A lesser man might be driven crazy walking into the stagnant odor of sinister intent unleashed by two of the few present at the Fall of Arcturus, but Fenri often kept company with gods of mortal and beyond.
He outlasted his fair share of them as well.
"What is all your... wisdom... worth if it can't be distilled for the common man?"
Fenri respected Zeik. He saw him work at Arcturus and heard of his progressive agenda when dealing with relationships across the continent of Muu. Large swaths of the landmass held him in high regard, and Fenri might have followed suit if he kept the company of more trustworthy men.
The insights of the King of Chaos, the Cursed Flame, Zeik Hellgate of Acrix Solara, reached Fenri through the many stations of Diamond Dust across the Nine, the major landmasses across Vescrutia. They carried weight, Fenri often found himself musing on how much sense the mage's philosophy aligned with his own, but the company he kept with one of the most infamous pirates of the Big Blue, the scourge of at least seven seas, and the perpetrator of Madeira's Skyblight. Fenri had personal reservations with Zero Venkage, and the pair of Z's landing at the doorstep of Cold Frontier perplexed him, especially after Vescrutia gained a pungent odor and Akundae arrived just after them.
All Zeik's wisdom couldn't erase his partner's global transgressions.
Fenri also had a laundry list of personal offenses of Zero's he didn't find worth regaling Zeik with.
So he kept pace toward Iden with ice growing in front of every step he took, determined to do what he could to restore some semblance of normalcy to Vescrutia. With or without the Cursed Flame at his back, he felt it part of his duty as Frozen Moon of Diamond Dust to bring some order to the situation.
The survival of the organization depended on it.
Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
Zeik kept his distance as Fenri continued forward, ice flowering beneath each measured step. The space between them remained deliberate—not avoidance, not submission. Simply boundary. Fenri’s words still hung in the air, sharp and clean as cut glass.
He felt the tension behind the question before he considered its meaning. Fenri’s restraint carried more weight than accusation ever could. Not contempt—expectation. The expectation that power should explain itself. That it should kneel, simplify, make itself palatable.
That expectation unsettled him.
Not because it wounded his pride, but because it was familiar.
When Zeik finally spoke, his voice was calm, low, and carefully controlled.
“I’m not meant to be understood by the common man,” he said. Not defensively. Not apologetically. As fact. “No more than calculus is meant for newborns.”
He paused, letting the ice settle beneath his boots.
“A teacher doesn’t reduce truth to make it comfortable. They present it as it is, and trust others to meet it with effort. If all that’s ever heard are echoes… then someone stopped listening.”
There it was—the faint edge of agitation. Not anger. Friction. The quiet exhaustion of someone who had spent a lifetime watching meaning flatten itself in careless hands.
But it passed as quickly as it surfaced.
“Understanding isn’t owed,” he continued. “And leadership isn’t a performance. You do the work because it needs doing. Whether it’s praised, misunderstood, or quietly resented.”
The wind shifted, carrying with it the stagnant, wrong scent of the island ahead. Zeik’s gaze lifted toward it, his tone changing—narrowing—when he returned to purpose.
“Death’s curse,” he said, avoiding the other name as if it tasted foul. “That can be explained plainly.”
He slowed his pace slightly—not to walk beside Fenri, but not to trail as far behind either.
“The traversing mirror is part of a system that governs this realm’s connection to what many call the unseen. It predates our recorded eras. Maybe it was constructed. Maybe it was found. Either way, it functioned—until Death’s Pike disrupted it.”
A subtle frown crossed his face.
“I don’t understand that weapon. Its design, its origin. Only its effect. It polluted the process. Twisted it.”
He gestured faintly toward the island.
“Clean the mirror. Purify it. The system corrects itself. The curse breaks. The dead stop rising. It’s… almost offensively simple. Especially with a second pair of hands.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“But this place shouldn’t be empty.”
His eyes scanned the shoreline, the dormant artillery, the absence of resistance.
“You don’t leave your greatest advantage unguarded in a war like this,” Zeik said quietly. “Not unless you’re certain no one is coming.”
Or unless something else is already here.
The ice creaked beneath them as the silence deepened.
Zeik did not answer at once.What is all your… wisdom… worth if it can’t be distilled for the common man?
He felt the tension behind the question before he considered its meaning. Fenri’s restraint carried more weight than accusation ever could. Not contempt—expectation. The expectation that power should explain itself. That it should kneel, simplify, make itself palatable.
That expectation unsettled him.
Not because it wounded his pride, but because it was familiar.
When Zeik finally spoke, his voice was calm, low, and carefully controlled.
“I’m not meant to be understood by the common man,” he said. Not defensively. Not apologetically. As fact. “No more than calculus is meant for newborns.”
He paused, letting the ice settle beneath his boots.
“A teacher doesn’t reduce truth to make it comfortable. They present it as it is, and trust others to meet it with effort. If all that’s ever heard are echoes… then someone stopped listening.”
There it was—the faint edge of agitation. Not anger. Friction. The quiet exhaustion of someone who had spent a lifetime watching meaning flatten itself in careless hands.
But it passed as quickly as it surfaced.
“Understanding isn’t owed,” he continued. “And leadership isn’t a performance. You do the work because it needs doing. Whether it’s praised, misunderstood, or quietly resented.”
The wind shifted, carrying with it the stagnant, wrong scent of the island ahead. Zeik’s gaze lifted toward it, his tone changing—narrowing—when he returned to purpose.
“Death’s curse,” he said, avoiding the other name as if it tasted foul. “That can be explained plainly.”
He slowed his pace slightly—not to walk beside Fenri, but not to trail as far behind either.
“The traversing mirror is part of a system that governs this realm’s connection to what many call the unseen. It predates our recorded eras. Maybe it was constructed. Maybe it was found. Either way, it functioned—until Death’s Pike disrupted it.”
A subtle frown crossed his face.
“I don’t understand that weapon. Its design, its origin. Only its effect. It polluted the process. Twisted it.”
He gestured faintly toward the island.
“Clean the mirror. Purify it. The system corrects itself. The curse breaks. The dead stop rising. It’s… almost offensively simple. Especially with a second pair of hands.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“But this place shouldn’t be empty.”
His eyes scanned the shoreline, the dormant artillery, the absence of resistance.
“You don’t leave your greatest advantage unguarded in a war like this,” Zeik said quietly. “Not unless you’re certain no one is coming.”
Or unless something else is already here.
The ice creaked beneath them as the silence deepened.
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Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
"The virtue of calculus isn't its complexity, but its application."Zeik wrote: Sat Dec 13, 2025 8:39 pm
“I’m not meant to be understood by the common man,” he said. Not defensively. Not apologetically. As fact. “No more than calculus is meant for newborns.”
Fenri chuckled as Zeik mused over his lofty self-determination. He didn't plan to argue with him over the philosophy of his wisdom, but Fenri felt like Zeiks' ideals could use some refinement if they allowed him to keep company with the likes of Zero Venkage.
Zeik's most redeeming quality seemed to be his by any means necessary attitude, striving for results over connection. That particular notion Fenri felt validated the connection between Zeik and Zero, both of them possessed a conviction to see their machinations through to the end at any cost. Opposite them, Fenri aligned himself with a ruthless conqueror who would sooner see half the world eradicated than let his vision falter. His own vision for a more equitable world depended on the survival of Diamond Dust, a condition more important than his own interpretations of right and wrong.
For better or worse, the four of them had something in common, though Fenri wouldn't withhold judgment just because they shared philosophical similarities. Right and wrong are always relative to which side of conflict one stood on, and what is chaos for the fly is pedestrian for the spider.
"Maybe it should. Would you guard a broken mirror?"Zeik wrote: Sat Dec 13, 2025 8:39 pm
“Death’s curse,” he said, avoiding the other name as if it tasted foul. “That can be explained plainly.”
...
“The traversing mirror is part of a system that governs this realm’s connection to what many call the unseen. It predates our recorded eras. Maybe it was constructed. Maybe it was found. Either way, it functioned—until Death’s Pike disrupted it.”
...
“I don’t understand that weapon. Its design, its origin. Only its effect. It polluted the process. Twisted it.”
...
“Clean the mirror. Purify it. The system corrects itself. The curse breaks. The dead stop rising. It’s… almost offensively simple. Especially with a second pair of hands.”
...
“But this place shouldn’t be empty.”
The crackling of the Aeonian sea freezing under foot in tempo with the crashing waves guided Fenri and Zeik to the coast of Iden, the End of the World, and former home to the Traversing Mirror. Upon landing on the island, the rushing waters of the Strait of Iden carried away the loose chunks leaving no trace of their journey after only seconds. Fenri's nose turned up in disgust so close to the site of the curse's activation, the hair growing like a shawl from chest and all around his shoulders, down his back , all stood on end beneath his jacket.
"How does your calculus propose we deal with this now?"
At this point, Fenri finally confirmed with his own eyes the wreckage left behind on the island after Zero and Zeik clashed with the hellish force of the Horsemen. It reminded him of the same sense of dread from that day staring at the infernal tool that unleashed a curse on Vescrutia. The Tarnished Pike stood upright in the middle of the barren island, devoid of life in a way that could unsettle even the most seasoned adventurers. The crimson weapon stood upright in the middle of the island, its crimson-grey aura weeping from its tip and bleeding into the ground beneath it. Fenri expected to see a mirror here, some broken shards of the item that brought Zeik and Zero from across the Big Blue to acquire. All that appeared be left was the weapon that corrupted it, an effigy to the success of the Horsemen's ambition.
He still felt something amiss in the air, something that couldn't be seen but needed to be felt. Without the Arceneaux Arsenal on guard, he finally got to see what the corporation found hidden away from the rest of the world.
Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
Zeik did not answer Fenri at once.
The exchange had left him unsettled—not wounded, not insulted, just… misaligned. The rhythm of it all felt wrong. He could feel Fenri’s emotions brushing against him like cold iron: suspicion, judgment, a restrained hostility that never quite crossed into open challenge. Zeik didn’t understand where it all originated, and for once, he found himself too tired to untangle it.
So he didn’t try.
Whatever Fenri carried toward him—about Zero, about choices made at Arcturus, about philosophies that only converged when survival demanded it—those feelings were Fenri’s to own. And it was Zeik’s right not to answer for them.
He had come to fix something broken. Not to litigate his existence.
When he finally spoke, there was a quiet chuckle in it—not mocking, not dismissive. Just weary.
“Calculus…” he said, tasting the word, then letting it go.
He stepped past Fenri, boots crunching softly over frost and ash, and gestured toward the frozen expanse beneath their feet.
“The Traversing Mirror isn’t an object,” Zeik continued.”
He pressed his palm down.
The ice did not crack.
Instead, the surface shifted—subtly, impossibly—revealing what it once was. The illusion of solidity thinned. When Fenri focused, truly looked, the world refracted. The distant horizon flattened. The sky lost its curve. What had been sea and island became something vast and pale, like a salt flat stretching into nowhere.
“A lake,” Zeik said. “Though it isn’t frozen.”
He lowered himself onto the surface and sat as if it were solid ground, coat pooling around him, weight distributed with practiced care. The water held him.
He gestured towards Fenri. An invitation—not verbal, but clear.
“I wouldn’t leave this place unguarded,” Zeik went on, gaze fixed ahead. “And I wouldn’t allow a sorcerer as adept in banishment as myself to step onto its soil.”
Only then did he turn his head slightly, eyes narrowing—not at Fenri, but at the unseen tension looming about.
“So I sense a trap. One I can’t quite define.”
The agitation was still there, humming beneath his composure, but it no longer sought an outlet. Purpose replaced it.
“To prevent failure,” Zeik said, voice steady, “we’ll use my body as a bridge.”
A pause.
“We’ll both enter the mirror. But because I’m the bridge, you’ll have a far easier escape—should we need one.”
Zeik’s gaze drifted, not to the Pike itself, but to the way it didn’t belong—how it violated the geometry of the place. The weapon did not simply rest in the lake. It pierced it. The Pike extended upward from the waters, but its true length vanished below the surface, descending far deeper than the lake could possibly contain.
“That thing isn’t anchored here,” Zeik said quietly. Mostly to himself. “What you see is only the portion that crosses over. The rest of it stretches from within the mirror itself.”
He lifted a hand, fingers curling slightly, as if feeling for something just beyond reach.
“The Pike was driven through the veil—through the boundary between the mortal and the non-mortal. It exists in both states at once. To cleanse what it’s done, we can’t work from this side alone.”
His eyes returned to Fenri, steady now, all agitation stripped down to necessity.
“We’ll have to enter the mirror’s world. Cross the veil. Whatever holds the Pike in place is on the other side—and until it’s addressed there, Death’s curse will continue to bleed through here.”
The exchange had left him unsettled—not wounded, not insulted, just… misaligned. The rhythm of it all felt wrong. He could feel Fenri’s emotions brushing against him like cold iron: suspicion, judgment, a restrained hostility that never quite crossed into open challenge. Zeik didn’t understand where it all originated, and for once, he found himself too tired to untangle it.
So he didn’t try.
Whatever Fenri carried toward him—about Zero, about choices made at Arcturus, about philosophies that only converged when survival demanded it—those feelings were Fenri’s to own. And it was Zeik’s right not to answer for them.
He had come to fix something broken. Not to litigate his existence.
When he finally spoke, there was a quiet chuckle in it—not mocking, not dismissive. Just weary.
“Calculus…” he said, tasting the word, then letting it go.
He stepped past Fenri, boots crunching softly over frost and ash, and gestured toward the frozen expanse beneath their feet.
“The Traversing Mirror isn’t an object,” Zeik continued.”
He pressed his palm down.
The ice did not crack.
Instead, the surface shifted—subtly, impossibly—revealing what it once was. The illusion of solidity thinned. When Fenri focused, truly looked, the world refracted. The distant horizon flattened. The sky lost its curve. What had been sea and island became something vast and pale, like a salt flat stretching into nowhere.
“A lake,” Zeik said. “Though it isn’t frozen.”
He lowered himself onto the surface and sat as if it were solid ground, coat pooling around him, weight distributed with practiced care. The water held him.
He gestured towards Fenri. An invitation—not verbal, but clear.
“I wouldn’t leave this place unguarded,” Zeik went on, gaze fixed ahead. “And I wouldn’t allow a sorcerer as adept in banishment as myself to step onto its soil.”
Only then did he turn his head slightly, eyes narrowing—not at Fenri, but at the unseen tension looming about.
“So I sense a trap. One I can’t quite define.”
The agitation was still there, humming beneath his composure, but it no longer sought an outlet. Purpose replaced it.
“To prevent failure,” Zeik said, voice steady, “we’ll use my body as a bridge.”
A pause.
“We’ll both enter the mirror. But because I’m the bridge, you’ll have a far easier escape—should we need one.”
Zeik’s gaze drifted, not to the Pike itself, but to the way it didn’t belong—how it violated the geometry of the place. The weapon did not simply rest in the lake. It pierced it. The Pike extended upward from the waters, but its true length vanished below the surface, descending far deeper than the lake could possibly contain.
“That thing isn’t anchored here,” Zeik said quietly. Mostly to himself. “What you see is only the portion that crosses over. The rest of it stretches from within the mirror itself.”
He lifted a hand, fingers curling slightly, as if feeling for something just beyond reach.
“The Pike was driven through the veil—through the boundary between the mortal and the non-mortal. It exists in both states at once. To cleanse what it’s done, we can’t work from this side alone.”
His eyes returned to Fenri, steady now, all agitation stripped down to necessity.
“We’ll have to enter the mirror’s world. Cross the veil. Whatever holds the Pike in place is on the other side—and until it’s addressed there, Death’s curse will continue to bleed through here.”
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Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
"A bridge over troubled waters..."
Fenri crossed his arms as Zeik sat in the ashen, frozen snow.
"I'm not fond of walking into traps laid by... Whatever these Horsemen are..."
Fenri stepped forward to stand next to Zeik at his silent invitation. He knew it would be uncomfortable, passing through the Veil, but they had no other choice. Fenri's tools for dealing with this otherworldly condition were limited. Zeik, though, master mage that he was, Fenri trusted to get them to the source of this infernal curse.
"I would normally decline the polite gesture, but my flock would be stricken without me."
From the beginning, Fenri stood on a razor's edge deciding if he should come to the End of the World to assuage Vescrutia's affliction or call his Human wards back home before the B'halian expedition took off in full force. Just investigating what could be done gave him a better answer than he could produce by himself.
At least, it did since Zeik serendipitously returned to fix things himself.
The currency of trust carried Fenri a long way through life, provided a platform and haven for the members of Diamond Dust, his pack scattered all the world over. Though Fenri and Zeik blended about as well as fire an ice did, he took solace in the nature of their relationship. So long as they shared a goal, they'd see it taken care of. Fenri didn't understand the nature of the company Zeik kept, but he knew the man was the furthest from a liar a man could be.
"And matters beyond the Veil are not my forte. Lead the way, mage."
Fenri crossed his arms as Zeik sat in the ashen, frozen snow.
"I'm not fond of walking into traps laid by... Whatever these Horsemen are..."
Fenri stepped forward to stand next to Zeik at his silent invitation. He knew it would be uncomfortable, passing through the Veil, but they had no other choice. Fenri's tools for dealing with this otherworldly condition were limited. Zeik, though, master mage that he was, Fenri trusted to get them to the source of this infernal curse.
"I would normally decline the polite gesture, but my flock would be stricken without me."
From the beginning, Fenri stood on a razor's edge deciding if he should come to the End of the World to assuage Vescrutia's affliction or call his Human wards back home before the B'halian expedition took off in full force. Just investigating what could be done gave him a better answer than he could produce by himself.
At least, it did since Zeik serendipitously returned to fix things himself.
The currency of trust carried Fenri a long way through life, provided a platform and haven for the members of Diamond Dust, his pack scattered all the world over. Though Fenri and Zeik blended about as well as fire an ice did, he took solace in the nature of their relationship. So long as they shared a goal, they'd see it taken care of. Fenri didn't understand the nature of the company Zeik kept, but he knew the man was the furthest from a liar a man could be.
"And matters beyond the Veil are not my forte. Lead the way, mage."
Re: A Frosty Counteroffensive: Mending the Mirror
Zeik and Fenri settled onto the Traversing Mirror as if it were nothing more than a frozen lake at the end of the world.
The surface did not creak. It did not complain beneath their weight. Frost and ash lay unmoving, a perfect stillness that invited the mind to follow suit. Breath slowed. Muscles unclenched. Thoughts—those ever-churning, preverbal waters—gradually stilled.
And when they did, the lake answered.
There was no sensation of falling. No rupture, no tearing of self from flesh. Only the quiet certainty of elsewhere—an awakening rather than a crossing.
The salt-flat reflection they had glimpsed before was gone.
In its place stretched a vast, lightless expanse: ground as black as midnight, smooth and reflective like polished obsidian. It retained the endless openness of a salt flat, but its nature was inverted—an umbral plane that swallowed light and returned it altered, dimmed, truer somehow. Their reflections stared back at them from below, elongated and strange, as if the world itself were uncertain which version of them was real.
Above, below—it no longer mattered.
The Pike remained.
It stood exactly where it had before, thrust through both realms with equal authority. In the mortal world it pierced ice and water; here, it violated the obsidian plane itself, descending into depths that did not obey distance or direction. Its presence anchored the two realities together, a wound that refused to close.
Here, weight was a suggestion at best.
Fenri and Zeik felt it immediately—the loosening. Gravity’s grip fell away, along with the countless invisible forces their bodies had grown accustomed to obeying. No strain in the joints. No pull in the chest. They were lighter, unburdened, unchained—not floating.
Around them, the mirror began to remember.
Scenes unfolded across the obsidian surface like living reflections: Zeik and Terra clashing in impossible geometries; the Man Behind the Curtain, half-seen, half-denied; Death’s herald standing where no shadow should exist. Fractured moments repeated and overlapped, mirrors of mirrors. Some images bent away from comprehension entirely, refusing meaning no matter how long one stared.
Through it all, Zeik said nothing.
He had been quiet before the transition. He remained quiet after.
The color had drained from his eyes—not whitened, not darkened, but emptied, as though the concept of a pupil had simply ceased to apply. He moved without walking, gliding across the mirror plane as if guided by unseen hands rather than his own will.
He stopped before the Pike.
For the first time since entering the mirror world, Zeik hesitated.
His hand hovered inches from the weapon’s surface, fingers slightly curled, as if he could already feel the resistance waiting for him there—or remembered it. The reflections around him stuttered, distorted by his proximity, the obsidian ground rippling faintly beneath the Pike’s impossible weight.
Only then did the stillness deepen.
Whatever held the Pike in place was aware of him now.
The surface did not creak. It did not complain beneath their weight. Frost and ash lay unmoving, a perfect stillness that invited the mind to follow suit. Breath slowed. Muscles unclenched. Thoughts—those ever-churning, preverbal waters—gradually stilled.
And when they did, the lake answered.
There was no sensation of falling. No rupture, no tearing of self from flesh. Only the quiet certainty of elsewhere—an awakening rather than a crossing.
The salt-flat reflection they had glimpsed before was gone.
In its place stretched a vast, lightless expanse: ground as black as midnight, smooth and reflective like polished obsidian. It retained the endless openness of a salt flat, but its nature was inverted—an umbral plane that swallowed light and returned it altered, dimmed, truer somehow. Their reflections stared back at them from below, elongated and strange, as if the world itself were uncertain which version of them was real.
Above, below—it no longer mattered.
The Pike remained.
It stood exactly where it had before, thrust through both realms with equal authority. In the mortal world it pierced ice and water; here, it violated the obsidian plane itself, descending into depths that did not obey distance or direction. Its presence anchored the two realities together, a wound that refused to close.
Here, weight was a suggestion at best.
Fenri and Zeik felt it immediately—the loosening. Gravity’s grip fell away, along with the countless invisible forces their bodies had grown accustomed to obeying. No strain in the joints. No pull in the chest. They were lighter, unburdened, unchained—not floating.
Around them, the mirror began to remember.
Scenes unfolded across the obsidian surface like living reflections: Zeik and Terra clashing in impossible geometries; the Man Behind the Curtain, half-seen, half-denied; Death’s herald standing where no shadow should exist. Fractured moments repeated and overlapped, mirrors of mirrors. Some images bent away from comprehension entirely, refusing meaning no matter how long one stared.
Through it all, Zeik said nothing.
He had been quiet before the transition. He remained quiet after.
The color had drained from his eyes—not whitened, not darkened, but emptied, as though the concept of a pupil had simply ceased to apply. He moved without walking, gliding across the mirror plane as if guided by unseen hands rather than his own will.
He stopped before the Pike.
For the first time since entering the mirror world, Zeik hesitated.
His hand hovered inches from the weapon’s surface, fingers slightly curled, as if he could already feel the resistance waiting for him there—or remembered it. The reflections around him stuttered, distorted by his proximity, the obsidian ground rippling faintly beneath the Pike’s impossible weight.
Only then did the stillness deepen.
Whatever held the Pike in place was aware of him now.
Everything posted by this account is official property of ©Vescrutia2018, no reproduction, or reposting of this content identical to or closely resembling is allowed.
The team