The story begins in the once-glorious Realm of Elastyr.
It was a land with a proud past, now mired in turmoil. Where harmony had once prevailed, chaos ruled now instead. The balance had been shattered by relentless wars between rival forces; magical, physical, or spiritual alike. None emerged victorious, and all were left scarred.
It had not always been so.
Long ago, humanity had enjoyed peace and shared prosperity. But that age ended when the first mages discovered magic. The early form of magic was a dangerous force, immensely powerful and unstable, far beyond the mages’ ability to control. With its discovery, a seed of limitless power took root, spreading through civilization like a sickness.
The years that followed were drenched in chaos, war, and bloodshed. It was an era so violent that humanity seemed poised to destroy itself for good. Civilizations collapsed. New factions rose from the ruins, each grasping for dominance. Their struggles nearly tore the world apart. Many long, grey years followed in the aftermath.
Even now, peace remained fragile.
The situation of the present age is far from simple, though power had settled into more stable forms and civilization had cautiously re-emerged. People gathered in city-states, while men were organized into various, rigidly structured orders. Each order was defined by a strict guiding principle known as a Core, which shaped its purpose and dictated its actions. They served as protectors of the cities, yet they also competed among themselves. Rivalries ran deep, and distrust lingered, ensuring that true, lasting peace never fully took hold.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the city of Primalis Flex.
Primalis Flex was one of the largest cities in Elastyr, situated exactly at the center of the world. Its fortune stemmed from several advantages: a favourable geological position, the fact that most major wars had passed it by, and its proximity to rare and valuable materials. In addition to this, powerful magical forces had gathered beneath the city, naturally arranging themselves into stable and unusually advantageous patterns.
Several orders laid claim to Primalis Flex, each competing with different Cores for the favour of its citizens. On the surface, this rivalry took the form of polite competition. Beneath it, however, lay far greater powers and far sharper ambitions. Among them were the Legion of the Onceblinking Star, the Corps of the Slashing Star, the Legion of the Twilight Star, the Order of the Fissilesun Star, and most notably, the Division of the Flaming Star.
Each sought to shape public perception, presenting its Core as noble, righteous, and indispensable to the city’s future.
Yet Primalis Flex had a huge problem that eluded most other city-states. The same magical forces that granted the city its wealth and opportunity occasionally manifested in dangerous forms. From time to time, massive magical outbursts erupted deep beneath the city. The power level of these outbursts almost matched the level of the early magic. These surges radiated outward into the surrounding lands, wrinkling reality in bizarre, unnatural folds and giving rise to bizarre magical phenomena.
And the orders, with their Cores, swore to prevent these, among other things, while quietly exploiting the city’s very real vulnerability and its desperate need for protection.
But not all men were fortunate enough to enjoy the security of an order and live a relatively stable, predictable life. Many sought their livelihoods beyond the bonds of orders, a path marked by stark contrasts: some rose to immense wealth, while others sank into misery in the city’s slums.
The orders, bound tightly to their respective Cores, contributed little to the wider needs of the populace, leaving space for a wide range of professions taken up by ordinary people, such as doctors, magicians, bureaucrats, infrastructure builders, and many others, who kept the city alive without ever sharing in its glory.
Even among these groups, the so-called scavengers performed the most menial labour. Often called Flex’s vultures, they clawed valuable remnants from the rubbish and mud upon which the city itself was built. Their work was important and sometimes even essential to the city’s functioning; yet without exception, they were looked down upon by everyone.
Such an inglorious life was Kaels life.
This young scavenger, like his peers, made a living by searching the ruins beneath the city for seemingly magical artifacts, which he sold for a small profit on the black market of Primalis Flex.
This work not only provided Kael with barely enough to survive, but was also especially dangerous. Beneath Primalis Flex, spaces warped by magical forces gave rise to perilous anomalies.
The most famous anomaly was the so-called Living Rubber.
It was neither a spell nor a creature, but a responsive arcane material. A black, glossy substance with a liquid sheen, resistant to conventional enchantment. Records described it as alive only in the loosest sense: it reacted to magic, pressure, and proximity in ways no inert substance should.
Only a handful of scavengers ever encountered it in its liquid state, most of them were collected as hardened nodules. But even in that form was exceedingly rare… and presumably exceedingly dangerous.
Entire districts were sealed after its appearance, not for what it had done, but for what it might do.
The orders of Primalis Flex disagreed on its origin and purpose, yet none contested its classification as dangerous.
The reason was simple: in Elastyr, anything that listened to magic without being commanded was treated as a threat.
Of course, Kael knew nothing about the dangers, and although he had heard of this material, he had never encountered it.
Kael lived his life day by day in the lower quarters of the city, and this day began as a completely ordinary one.
