My name is Knight-Captain Aiden Vanta of the Dominion of Vera.

  This is my last note—my confession.

  We were transporting sensitive materials across the lower tiers of the Wastes when we were ambushed by rogue elements of unknown origin. We don’t know how they found our coordinates, or how they struck with such precision and power. What I do know is this: we are likely going to die here.

  If anyone finds this, I put these words out to my family and friends—we died on our feet.

  We’ve been here twenty-two days. We have been captured, and we are waiting. There is no end in sight.

  Mother, if you ever hear this, know that I love you. The same for Allie and Sam. I know you didn’t want this life for me, but know that I did my duty until the very end. I was not afraid.

  Thank you to my friends, my family, and the Knights under my command.

  May your mana burn ever bright.

  —Knight Captain Aiden Vanta

  The recording ended. A moment later, one of our captors entered the room.

  He was a massive man, scarred and brutal, his body marked by the telltale corruption of spell pollution that came from living too long in the Wastes. His eyes glowed faint red, his presence radiating the kind of madness bred in battlefields that never stopped burning.

  The Wastes had been the graveyard of nations for three centuries—lower-tier worlds stripped bare by endless wars. Every time we crossed them, we prayed to the gods of Vera that luck would hold. This time, it hadn’t. Most of our soldiers had been slaughtered in the initial ambush. The rest of us were dragged below ground.

  Only one among us seemed to matter to them: Professor Adeline, a ruin-tech expert hiding under a false name. A genius in the manipulation and creation of lost technologies. She was supposed to be traveling as a humanitarian. They discovered her anyway. I believe she’s the reason we’re still alive. They can’t decide whether to ransom her, use her, or break her.

  The scarred man sneered down at us, his voice like gravel.

  “Your government has refused to negotiate on your behalf. You will be executed tonight, to prove that the Raiders of Ikana are not to be trifled with.”

  Ikana. A splinter group born of the fallen Yagatha nation two decades past. I thought them long dead. But looking at the red-eyed monster before me, the truth was obvious—they had nothing left but this cause.

  And yet… how did they know our route? Our mission? How did they know about Adeline?

  Before I could think further, something changed.

  The raider leader’s words cut off mid-sentence. His eyes went wide. His lips parted—and blood poured out in a sudden, violent stream. A figure loomed behind him, silent and terrible.

  He wore Technica ruin armor, blackened and scarred, a mask shaped like a glowing necromantic skull. Its hollow sockets burned with violet light unlike anything I had ever seen.

  The stranger’s voice was low, distorted, final.

  “Bring the prisoners. I’m here to get you out.”

  Shock held me still for a heartbeat. Then I scrambled to my feet, pulling Professor Adeline and the two surviving soldiers up with me. We followed.

  The rebel base ran deep underground, its halls fortified with ruin-tech to hold back the poison of the Wastes. But now its corridors were painted red. Bodies lay in rows where they had fallen, sliced apart with clinical precision.

  I forced myself to speak, my throat dry. “What division are you with? How many are here in this rescue op?”

  The skull-mask turned toward me, violet eyes unwavering.

  “I am no one. A ghost,” he said. “Nothing else.”

  That was all.

  And for reasons I couldn’t name, those words chilled me more than anything the Raiders of Ikana had done.

  I looked around at the bodies—dozens of them, killed with a blade, a fist, or a spell. It was hard to tell which in many instances. “Where is the rest of the team?”

  The skull-masked man turned his head. Only the violet glow of his eyes was visible, studying me intently. The mask held no expression or disposition. He remained silent.

  At last, he spoke. “I’m the only one here. We have to move.”

  The words sank in.

  The only one here?

  Twenty men dead. Slaughtered without a sound. And I hadn’t heard a thing. My pulse hammered, questions burning in my throat.

  “There’s no way… you couldn’t have done all this by yourself.”

  He didn’t answer. He just raised a finger.

  Three more rebels rounded the corner, battered Aura armor clinging to their frames, jagged Aura blades in their hands. My breath caught.

  These were Aura swordsmen—close-combat specialists, if they were any good at their craft.

  This was going to be a fight. We were about to make noise. A whole lot of it. I looked around and picked up a discarded Aura Rifle near me. I check the reservior then pointed, finger tightening on the trigger—then a hand shot up in front of me. The skull-mask.

  “Let me.”

  His mana flared, and I watched the change in his Aura in real time. It was visible. I actually saw it coursing into his limbs, pooling at his joints, condensing at his feet and hands. It was so dense it shimmered in the air, impossible to miss.

  Then he moved like an Aura bolt.

  He blurred with a crack of displaced air and was on them before I could blink.

  An Aura blade materialized in his grip—Technica steel shaped and made deadly through artful application of Kinetica and Fortis, two Aura subfields that were notoriously difficult to master.

  There was no hesitation on his part. Two quick strikes—one carving through a weak point in the low-grade armor, another sliding under ribs. A third slash severed a throat. Two men dropped before their bodies even realized they were dead.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The last rebel managed to raise his Aura blade, mouth opening to scream—but he never got the chance. The skull-mask was already behind him, blade buried in his throat. The man collapsed soundlessly.

  I stared, my bolt thrower still aimed uselessly. This skill—this was on par with, no, even higher than our most dedicated and well-trained soldiers. Hell, this was as good as—if not better than—any knight I had personally fought or trained with.

  I pulled tighter on my bolt thrower, wishing desperately that I had access to my own mana and at least one of my Expressions. There were any number of things I could have said. Instead, I landed on, “Who the hell are you?”

  He turned, and I realized the violet glow wasn’t part of the mask at all.

  Those were his eyes.

  The violet was bleeding—actually bleeding—into a bright crimson.

  “Try not to use the Aura rifle if you can avoid it,” he said. “Noise will bring the whole organization down on us. And I can’t let that happen.”

  He spoke as though I were cargo, a liability to manage. I clenched my teeth. Doesn’t he know who I am?

  “I’m a Knight-Captain of the Dominion Army—Aiden Vanta, son of the Duke of Vanta,” I hissed. “I won’t be baggage or a burden. Get this restraining collar off me so I can help you. I’ve got internal magics—silent ones.”

  He paused, again taking a moment to consider me. Then he pulled a ring of Technica cards from his belt—clearly taken from one of the guards he’d killed earlier. He pressed one into the lock at my neck. With a click, the collar fell away.

  Raw mana surged back into me like blood into a numbed limb. I checked my cores; they stirred, and my body hummed in response. I cycled mana through my meridians and felt my cores wake fully, tugging at my individual Expressions.

  Aura. Check.

  Arcanum—needs cycling, but viable.

  My half-formed Sanatio core—still there, though the interruption would cost me.

  Still better than expected.

  I didn’t have a casting aid or a built-in Technica interface. Nothing to channel it but my mind and my understanding of my most familiar Expression formulas. Raw casting in its most basic form. Dangerous—but powerful, if I didn’t kill myself.

  I whispered the old words, formed the formulas for my most common battle spells, and projected them under my breath, picturing the circles, arrays, and runes that made up battle magic. My Expressions did not disappoint. I felt the familiar tug of Aura bolts waiting to be unleashed.

  Before I could ready them, the skull-mask crouched and strapped a small casting aid around my wrist. A crude ruin-tech gauntlet, patched and scarred, based on less-developed technology that struggled to process multiple Expressions properly.

  “Sit with that,” he said flatly. “Raw casting is dangerous. This aid is old, but it handles Aura well. Used correctly, it’ll keep most of your Aura projectile spells nearly silent. Don’t oversaturate it. Keep your reserve and activation separate if you can—this thing isn’t good enough to do that for you.”

  I flexed my fingers, feeling the faint hum of unstable tech under my skin. “It’ll hold,” I muttered.

  But the thought dug in deep: Who is this man, who moves like death itself, and why the hell is he here?

  We followed him down the corridor, quiet, measured steps echoing in the stale air. I glanced back—the professor and the two soldiers limped along, pale but alive.

  The skull-mask reached a corner and raised a fist—the universal signal to hug the wall.

  We obeyed instantly. He slipped forward, and I saw the brief flare of his caster’s aid on his right hand as he whispered a word that bent the surroundings themselves.

  This was not Elementa. This was something deeper—an advanced Arcanum application that suppressed presence and light. Shadows thickened around us, not gathering so much as forgetting we were there, until the wall seemed to absorb us whole.

  We held our breath.

  No fewer than twenty men marched through the crossroads ahead. Boots scraped. Armor rattled. Weapons glinted. Too many. Even with me and him, even if we tried, it would have been suicide. Maybe he could have handled it—but not without noise, and not without getting us killed.

  They passed. We exhaled as one.

  We kept moving. Turned another corner. And then—five more rebels. Right in front of us.

  The twenty weren’t far behind.

  Shit. We’re dead.

  Our rescuer moved before I could even call upon my own Expressions.

  Two Aura blades flickered into existence, gleaming steel with inlaid glyphs. He blurred forward, pumping the blades with such dense Aura that it became visible again. Two of the rebels reacted instantly—trained swordsmen, pulling extended Aura blades from their belts with a flick of intent and a push of a button. For a heartbeat, it looked like they might put up a fight.

  I was very wrong.

  They blocked his first strike, but neither survived the second. His style was brutal and clean, lacking the flourish and wasted movement of dueling styles common in Vera. Everything he did was about brutal efficiency—strikes to joints, to arteries, crippling before killing. Limbs severed, throats opened, men fell like broken machines.

  Five rebels eviscerated in seconds.

  He didn’t even slow.

  We pushed on through more tunnels and tense moments until suddenly—daylight broke upon us like a heavenly concourse. The corridors ended, spitting us out onto what passed for a road.

  The Wastes stretched before us—land corrupted by mana pollution, twisting the air and raising rocks into unnatural formations. The terrain looked both beautiful and wrong, flora bent by centuries of power storms and structural realignments. The ground itself appeared disjointed, like a boundary between earth and the underworld.

  Still, it was good to be outside after a month of thinking we were going to die.

  The skull-mask barely glanced at the surroundings. He didn’t hesitate. He just kept moving, pace brisk but steady enough for the injured to keep up.

  Ten minutes later, we dropped into an open field between two jagged rock crevices.

  And there—they were waiting.

  My men.

  The survivors.

  Most sat hunched, chewing on rations or strapping on battered tech. A few stood guard. Every head turned as we stumbled into the clearing.

  “Captain!”

  My second-in-command, Fanggore Broken, strode forward. The half-orc was an ugly brute—scarred jaw, broken tusks, bulk like a siege tower—but loyal to the bone. He grabbed me in a crushing embrace.

  “Captain, we thought you were gone.”

  “It’s damn good to see you, Fanggore,” I said. “But let’s hug later. Status. Tell me what’s happening.”

  “We pulled as many men out as we could. No new casualties since the initial attack.” He jerked a thumb toward the skull-mask. “The Ghost here got us clear.”

  I froze.

  The Ghost.

  I’d heard the name before. Everyone had.

  The Ghost of the Wastes. A legend. A mercenary who never failed a mission, bound by a code no one had ever seen broken. Stories said he walked into impossible strongholds, through armies, through corrupted mana storms—and walked back out alive. He was said to be one of the most deadly arcane artists alive, an Aura expert so advanced he was considered a national-level asset—or threat—depending on who you asked.

  I looked at him differently then. No wonder he’d carved through twenty men in silence. No wonder he’d freed us. This was simply another day for the Ghost.

  Unbelievable.

  I stepped forward. “Thank you. I don’t know who—”

  He raised a hand, stopping me.

  Then his head tilted, as if listening to something only he could hear.

  Suddenly, his entire body lit with raw mana. Power flared off him in waves, violet energy crackling along his armor.

  “Incoming,” he said, voice sharp as a blade. “Strategic Aura and Arcanum spells. Layer them with as much power as you can. Everyone—defensive measures, now.”

  The sky screamed.

  Firebombs rained down, tearing the world apart in a storm of flame and thunder. The ground convulsed. Stone shattered. Smoke and ash swallowed the clearing in a single breath.

  I thought it was the end, barely getting up my version of a barrier spell—a combination Aura and Water Elementa Arcanum construct I had developed myself.

  Debris crashed down. Men screamed. The stench of burning earth and flesh twisted my stomach.

  And then—silence.

  When the dust cleared, I saw him.

  The Ghost.

  He stood at the center of the wreckage, mana pouring off him in violet torrents, a shimmering wall of force towering around us. The steel shield pulsed with converted Aura, pumping through a tech I didn’t recognize, one that seemed to exploit Aura’s reinforcement properties to their fullest. Cracks laced the shield’s surface, but it held.

  It held against a shucking Firestorm spell, a strategic bombardment Arcanum that normally required at least six coordinated casters.

  The shield wasn’t perfect. A few firebursts punched through. Men were down, wounded. But without that shield, we would all have been ash.

  I stared, stunned. Firebombing of that precision was nearly impossible to block unless you used reinforced shield arrays with multiple Aura specialists layered together—constructs built for sieges. Yet he had done it with nothing but will, Aura, and a single piece of unfamiliar tech.

  Just him.

  The Ghost of the Wastes.

  But then I saw it.

  Half his mask was gone, ripped away by the blast. Sparks still danced along the broken ruin-tech frame.

  And behind it—

  His face.

  Not the weathered features of a veteran mercenary.

  Not the scarred visage of a monster born in the Wastes.

  A boy.

  He couldn’t have been more than eighteen.

  I froze, the legend collapsing in front of me.

  The Ghost of the Wastes…was a teenager?