The Skyrend Hauler hummed like a restless beast as it sped across the broken eastward roads, its arcane engines pushing a subtle vibration through the reinforced benches. Outside, the landscape blurred—ash-soaked plains, burned-out treelines, and the distant shimmer of warped ley fields, fractured by a dozen minor battles long forgotten by most. But not by the earth.
Inside, the air was warmer now, less tense. Combat gear hung in its harnesses. Weapons were secured. And for a moment, the war felt like it lived elsewhere.
Rett had his boots propped on a crate labeled WARD-BOUND: DO NOT JOSTLE, chewing on what remained of a jerky strip. "So there we were, second year, mid-term trials, and someone"—he looked toward Jinn—"decides to open a portal under the dueling arena."
Jinn spread his arms like a bard awaiting applause. "I had good reason. The instructor failed me on a theoretical! The solution was spatial displacement!"
Here's a version of your passage with Arven chiming in and the joke exchange about which class they were in:
"You dropped the entire arena floor into the laundry tunnels," Mira growled, deadpan. "I had to fight a summoned banshee while standing on a rolling hamper."
"That's called adapting to the battlefield!" Jinn shot back. "Besides, my real crime was much darker." He leaned forward with a conspiratorial grin. "Stealing cookies from the principal's office."
Rett gasped. "You mean the principal's office? The one warded with bans, locks, and a grumpy golem?"
"The very same," Jinn said. "Twelve glyphs, one angry custodian, and exactly seven chocolate-dusted regrets later—I made it out. Worth it."
Arven blinked. "Wait, what year was this? What class were you three in?"
"Third year," Jinn and Mira said in unison.
Rett nodded sagely. "Ah, yes. Peak chaos development phase."
"Explains a lot, honestly," Arven smirked. "Like why the third-floor water elementals still hiss at me."
Laughter rolled through the hauler like warmth in the cold.
To one side of the cabin, Leon and Arven faced each other across an open sparring rune etched into the floor. With a tap of her ring, Arven conjured a whirling illusion of twin blades—semi-real, constructed from will and light. Leon responded with a lance of crystalized arc-light, flickering between real and imagined force.
They clashed once, twice—Arven parried with a twist and dropped low, her illusion bursting in a flare of frost. Leon stumbled, laughed, and fell back on the bench.
"I'm not the strongest," he said, brushing frost from his collar. "Just the most stubborn."
"You keep telling yourself that," Arven said, winking.
Cael sat apart from the circle, notebook in his lap, pen scratching lightly across the page.
He smiled—mechanically. Laughed when he should. But Mira saw through it. Across from him, she studied his face with that quiet, patient intensity only she could wield. Not suspicion, exactly. But concern. Cael's gaze drifted toward her, catching hers for a heartbeat longer than comfort allowed.
He looked away.
The hauler carried more than Gloamspear 9.
Captain Lyra Drenholt, commander of the op, stood near the front, one hand braced on an overhead grip, the other flipping through tactical charts projected by a hovering glyph. She was in her late thirties, with iron-gray hair tied back in a high knot, and a jagged scar trailing from brow to cheekbone. Her armor was lighter than Vale's, but no less imposing—layered with glyph-laced chain and crimson trim. Rumor said she'd once led a peacekeeping force into a nightmare bloom and walked out with half her squad alive. That made her a legend.
Beside her stood Tamsin the witch, a younger conjurer with ink-stained gloves and a nervous energy that sparked with every movement. She carried no visible weapon—just a scroll case buzzing with static and charm-strands coiled around her neck like jewelry.
Opposite them, Vellon—a hulking older man with a shield permanently affixed to one arm and a dozen battle charms dangling from his belt—chuckled at Jinn's story and muttered something about "kids and their illusions."
A younger recruit named Nico, no older than seventeen, was wide-eyed, laughing too hard at every joke. His armor was slightly too big. But his glaive looked freshly polished, and his posture hadn't cracked once.
There was a rhythm now. They were becoming a unit.
And then, as dusk pressed its fingers over the landscape, the hauler pulled to a halt just beyond the ridge. The doors hissed open with a burst of chilled wind. The scent that met them was wrong.
Ozone. Ash. Decay.
"Formation," Lyra commanded. "We go in quiet. Masks on."
Helmets sealed, visors glowed.
Alwenreach lay ahead like a corpse.
The town was silent, blanketed in an unnatural stillness. Buildings leaned like weary sentries. Lanterns still burned in some windows, casting flickers on empty doorways. A pie sat on a windowsill, untouched, half-rotted. Chairs overturned in the street. A merchant's cart split down the middle—contents spilled, uneaten.
As if everyone had simply… vanished.
No signs of struggle. No blood. No bodies.
Just absence.
Rett muttered, "I hate it when it's this quiet."
Tamsin cast a detection web. The glyphs came back tangled and mute.
"Even the echoes are wrong," she whispered.
Then—clang.
A sound cut through the stillness.
They turned, weapons half-drawn, but it was only the church bell.
It tolled once.
There was no wind.
The group moved toward the cathedral, a tall and elegant structure of stone and quartz that loomed over the square. The doors creaked open on command—but no one touched them.
Inside, dust floated in long, slow spirals through dead sunbeams. Pews were shattered near the front, as if something had exploded outward from the altar. Statues of the Divine Three stood cracked and eyeless, heads bent unnaturally.
And on the back wall, a massive mural.
Or what had been one.
It was melted—painted faces warped into grotesque masks, arms reaching for things not visible. The divine figures once depicted in gold now bled black, their halos cracked.
At the altar, something had been carved.
A warning, etched in shaking hands, burned deep into the stone:
"WE FED THEM OUR SINS."