Episode 1 | The Everlight Protocol

“How much do you want to bet,” Silas muttered, leaning in close, breath hot against the shell of Hael’s ear, “that our unit gets saddled with that anomaly nightmare?” 

The vise of the memory shattered. Hael tore his gaze from the shroud of light pouring through the arched windows, where it glinted off the path of bronze planetary bodies inlaid in white stone. His knuckles ached from the death grip he had on the blade at his waist.

Thinking of the past again, are we?  Erde, his sve-wendril, whispered softly from the shadows of his mind. Her wings fluttered gently, dispelling lingering fragments of the memory with ripples of synaptic light. Through the neural link they shared, she must have sensed the sting of his eyes and the piercing needlepoint of his heart.

Always. The weight of that truth flowed between them as Hael laid a hand over his chest.  Hidden beneath the layers of his Starward Legion tunic, a star-forged key hung from a silver chain–its magic hummed against his sternum, attuned to renewed ache in his heart, as if trying to soothe him. Endure this only a little longer, it seemed to whisper. The bite of its cold metal against his bare skin dragged his mind from the memory back to the present—and the restless  knight mage breathing down his neck.

Exhaling through gritted teeth, Hael swatted Silas away with the back of his hand. “I will throw you out the window and into the boiling hellpit below if you keep hovering like a skagghard troll.” 

Silas sprang back with the deftness of a stray breeze, hands up in amused surrender. “Just saying, sir—if anyone is getting assigned that ‘hellpit’, it’ll be us. Our luck has been rotten as of late.”

Though Hael’s voice had been low, Pippa Evencrest—his knight guardian of the mechanic variety, who had been stabbing the screen of her touchpad with discreet fury—paused her hushed cursing. Her blonde head perked up at the mention of leaving the hall, even by way of murder. 

“If Silas is excused, then I–”

“He is not, and neither are you,” Hael stated firmly, yet quietly enough not to draw attention from the other knights pressed in around them. He pushed strands of silver-gray hair out of his face and cut her a sharp sideways glance. Its surface was a wall of seething red text and failure warnings. The perfect storm for a welcomed disaster, but still… his gut sank, bitter and laden with guilt.

Don’t look, Erde urged. It’ll only make you feel worse for what’s to come.

Too late, Hael sighed, shifting wearily on the stone seat and crossing his arms. 

 In the shadow of his deeds—espionage, terrorism, betrayal, and murder—he couldn’t afford to dwell on the consequences of his mission to cripple the orbital mirrors. To bring this empire to its knees and rip the blindfold off the eyes of its citizens.It was far too late for him to overthink all the reasons why he shouldn’t go through with it, and there were an equal number of reasons that backed up why he should. He couldn’t waver, even if he wanted to. 

Hael gathered the lingering fragments of memory and buried them in the back of his mind. To unpack and process later, when he had the emotional bandwidth to understand it. For now, he could only see this path through to the end, come what may. Failure wasn’t an option when promises were made to the Dread Knights, the Silvrenthriel Path, to his father. Nor was doubt when others had more to lose than he did. 

Hael beckoned Evencrest’s gaze with the crook of a finger, pointing straight ahead in a silent stop bothering me and pay attention. She tsked loudly, but her head snapped forward.

Amid the morning’s chaos, Knight Master Advern Thalas had called an emergency meeting at the Golden Spire of Pheria, though it was unofficial—no public announcement, no Citizen Councilors invited. Only those closest to the city’s leadership, those with the stomach for it, were summoned.

The purpose was to address the immediate threats to the city: wildfires to the east, escalating flux anomalies, and civil unrest fueled by sun-sickness. With alliances fraying and the Starward Legion stretched thin across the Solisglade, they were barely holding it together. Everything went to hell before anyone had had a cup of keffa or a shot of spirits to dull the tension.

A stellar projection loomed above the heart of the forum, dousing the gathered knights in an anxious glow. Its glitchy expanse displayed a massive three-dimensional map of Cystirin, the Imperial City of Arboros. The planet had other names–Cradle of the Cosmari Demir’s Paradise, and Yolk of the Astral Veil Empire–but after the Ardent Fractum, which had cut a rift through the system, separating the Solisglade from the Rim, only the last remained. Only the last mattered to those gathered in this illuminated hall.

The map was trapped on a loop, live data lost to the downed network. Welts of pulsing red light demarcated flux anomalies–unstable eruptions of magic born from the relentless heatwaves ravaging the city. The “nightmares” Silas had mentioned on full display. A warning was frozen in the upper right corner of its interface, its counter sending a shiver of unease down Hael’s spine: 30 hours, 17 minutes, 5 seconds—solar storms imminent.  

The world is falling apart faster than we thought, Erde said quietly, unspoken meaning weighing down each word. Perhaps our actions today will be a mercy.

It is only an act of mercy if they accept it, Hael swallowed hard, knots twisting in his gut. Too many ifs fluttered from one corner of his mind to the other, but this wasn’t the time to waver or question the moral underpinnings of his treasonous deeds. Otherwise, it will be a death sentence.

Beneath the projection, knight commanders and the Science Division clashed over a grand strategy table. It was more an altar to indecision and stubborn pride than a forum for peace and stability. Shouts echoed off the vaulted ceilings as knights shifted uneasily, exchanging weary glances and murmurs of concern. Reports, paper maps, and hand drawn schematics were strewn across the table, forgotten in the heat of rising tempers.

“You want to reroute power from the plasmic veils?” One of the knight commanders paused in her pacing, hand balanced on the hilt of her sword with deadly promise. Her words, laced with acid, hissed through clenched teeth, as she pinned one of the Science Division reps with a venomous glare. “You dare suggest such a thing?” 

“By the Oracles, has the lab rotted your brains?” Another knight commander threw down the report he’d been reading, its pages spilling onto the floor with a cascading thwack. “Do you have any idea what’s going on out there? What my knights have been fighting for weeks to control?”

“We do,” the Science Division rep implored, pinching the bridge of her nose. Bruised eyes slid from one objector to the next. “We’ve accounted for this. Several times.”

“Then account for this: if those winds shift to the east any harder, the wildfires in Sulna will sweep straight to our borders. You’re asking us to kill the only protection the citizens have against them.”

“First, it was drawing power from the dam. Before that, it was siphoning from the bots. You cannot expect us to trust a word that comes out of your mouth. We will not gamble lives based on guesses.”

“But we’re certain this time. We need only cut a portion of the power to restore half the Orbital Mirrors lost–”

“Damn the Orbital Mirrors! We’ll have no need for them if the city burns to the ground!”

“You’ll have no need for the plasmic veils if the mirrors suffer systemic failure. Which do you think the citizens of Cystirin would prefer—to burn inside a glass house or be crushed to death by falling panels?”

“This meeting is bullshit.” Evencrest huffed, throwing her hands down to her sides, and her one blinding moment, Hael was certain she would fling the touchpad across the room. With her deadly aim of a heat-seeking missile, it might even strike one of the knight commanders dead on, ending the meeting outright. The knight mechanic was utterly diabolical in that sense. “No one will be surprised to find Silas loafing in the shade, but at least excuse me so that I can do my job. I’m not afraid of a little heatwave.”

You should be. “You heard Knight Master Thalas earlier. No one is to leave until this matter is resolved.”

Evencrest scoffed, glancing around the room. “And yet, his son is nowhere to be seen. Why isn’t he here? Why do we have to pull our weight, but that boy gets to play in the dirt?”

Silas, who had been amusing himself by annoying Grand Knight Lu with his every unfiltered thought, kicked the back of her boot with his. 

Evencrest hissed, rounding on him. “What?”

“Don’t be stupid, Pip. Oryn is far from a child. It’s not as though he’s gone off on vacation to Duskra. We all know why he’ isn’t here.”

No, you don’t. Everyone speculated over Oryn Thalas’ sudden trip to Duskra six months ago, but few had ideas that even resembled the reality of it. It was a truth that only Hael, who had been Oryn’s guardian for half a decade and Knight Master Advern Thalas were privy to. Hael had paid good money and countless favors to keep in the dark.And it would be the one secret he would take with him when he left Arboros tonight.

Hael unglued his clenched jaw, each word clipped as though narrowly escaping a guillotine death by way of his teeth. “Knight Scholar Thalas is doing his duty to the Oracles of Aisil on Duskra. His business is not our business as long as he remains there.” 

Out of harm’s way and the reckoning that is about to shatter this sky. The thought came unbidden, quiet and grim, but Hael didn’t want to have to cut Oryn down. No—cut his father down in front of him the way he had once been forced to watch his own father’s demise.  His eyes flicked to Knight Master Advern Thalas. 

Knight Master Thalas watched from the sidelines as they tore into each other, still as a marble statue at the head of the table, appearing utterly bored with the entire affair. 

Four Infernal Witnesses—equally knights and emissaries for Emperor Vulcraith—were stationed on either side of him, dressed in black and bronze, which clashed with the sea of white uniforms around them.  Unease cut through Hael, burning cold with primal warnings. It wasn’t uncommon for Emperor Vulcraith, who was excluded from meetings held in the Golden Spire of Pheria, to send Infernal Witnesses to act as his vassals.

Hael couldn’t place it, but their presence in this meeting threw him off balance, as if he’d missed something vital in all his plans but couldn’t place it. After all, the Infernal Witnesses might have been mouthpieces and representative figureheads, but they were still loyal weapons and personal guards of the emperor—shadows capable of wielding Flux Arcana in copious amounts and eager to do his bidding at a whisper of his approval.

A deep, thunderous boom exploded through the forum. The entire meeting hall rattled, as if the very bones of the Golden Spire of Pheria had been struck by an unseen force. The sigils carved into the walls flared to life before flickering to a dull shimmer, struggling to maintain their protective power. 

Then, a metallic crack sliced through the air outside—sharp, grinding, screeching—followed by the bitter scent of rusted steel and melted glass, thick with the tang of burning ozone.

Hael sat back up, his heartbeat matching the tremors beneath his feet. His eyes fixed on the grand arched windows, where the skeletal silhouette of a broken Orbital Mirror hung in mid-air. Oily plumes of smoke spewed out of it like the labored breaths of a mangled, dying creature. Its hexagonal panel hung dangerously to its warped frame, held only by tendrils of worn wires and twisted metal. Melted bits of bio-glass and bronze meshing rained down on Sector 3, where, even at this distance, Hael could hear the hushed screams of terror rising from the city below.

That wasn’t us! Erde immediately went on the defensive, but before Hael could ask her what she meant, a  scurry of movement in his periphery caught his eye. The meeting hall doors–towering blocks of thick, blackened oak–creaked open, just enough to let a slender, cat-like knight mage slip in. Erkas Melovan. Hael’s lips curled as he watched the man slither through the crowd of knights, unseen and unheard even as he went to Knight Master Thalas’ side. The distance was too great and the hall too riotous for Hael to hear what passed between them, but whatever it was roused Knight Master Thalas to refined rage made his eyes glow a moltenous gold.

“This has gone on long enough,” Knight Master Thalas said, voice booming over the din as he stood. “I have urgent matters that I must attend to. By the time I return, you will have a decision.”

Follow him, Hael instructed Erde, eyes pinned to the back of the Knight Master as he followed his attendant out of the hall. Report on his movements. We can’t afford any more  surprises today.

The link between them wavered.

What is it?

We have a small problem, Erde said, voice deceptively neutral. He recalled her defensively moments before. One that I’m dealing with at present.

What kind of problem?

It would seem that our ‘tech pirate’ is gone.

Gone?

You’re right. Gone is such an understatement. The tech pirate has been…replaced.

By whom?

Erde hesitated again. Then, reluctantly—Griffin Hartwin.

“Fuck.” A few heads whipped in his direction.

“Aptly put, as always, Astraeus,” Grand Knight Lu said dryly.

Pippa let out a frustrated scoff, examining a now cracked touchpad. “I concur, sir. This meeting is fucked. Can we get the hell out of here now?”