Long before the academy refined minds instead of blades, before the empire learned to fear brilliance more than rebellion, there was a time when Virellia still believed preparation could outrun consequence.
This was the early era of consolidation. The Detestation was no longer fresh enough to paralyze decision, yet not distant enough to mythologize. Ruins still breathed. Ley lines still bled wrong. And the Crimson Catalyst still pulsed beneath the mountain like a heart that refused to die.
The empire did not announce its intention.
It never did.
Officially, there was no expedition. No sanction. No declaration of interest. Only a sealed directive issued under the authority of the Inner Council, classified so deeply that even its existence was denied outside a single chamber of stone and silence.
The goal was not conquest.
It was proximity.
Five individuals were selected.
Not at once. Not publicly. They were gathered over years, drawn from different branches of imperial infrastructure, each chosen not for loyalty alone, but for something harder to cultivate.
Compatibility.
The first was Aurelian Vos, a cartographer by title, a mathematician by temperament. He had mapped regions deemed unmappable, not by walking them, but by reconstructing terrain through wind patterns, soil drift, and migratory anomalies. He believed land remembered what walked upon it. That belief made him dangerous, and useful.
The second was Seris Halven, a thaumaturgical historian. Not a mage in the traditional sense. She could not conjure flame or bend steel. What she could do was read residue. Old spells left echoes, and Seris could hear them. Her presence alone caused relics to hum, as if recognizing a witness.
The third was Kael Dravorn, formerly of the imperial legions. He had survived three campaigns in territories where magic misfired unpredictably, where discipline mattered more than strength. He was not the strongest. He was the one who held the line when orders dissolved.
The fourth was Lysenne Mare, a theologian stripped of rank. She had once argued, in closed council, that the gods had not abandoned the world during the Detestation. They had simply been rendered irrelevant. For that, she was silenced. For her insight, she was later retrieved.
The fifth was Irix Vale.
Records struggle with him.
Some list him as an alchemist. Others as an engineer. A few as nothing more than an observer. What is consistent is this: every system he worked within improved. Quietly. Without attribution. He did not innovate. He optimized what already existed until failure had nowhere left to hide.
They were never called heroes.
The Inner Council avoided that word deliberately.
They were referred to as a cohort. Temporary. Replaceable, if necessary. Their mandate was simple: approach the region surrounding the mountain, observe the behavior of magic, terrain, and psychological pressure, and return.
They were not to touch the Catalyst.
They were not to enter the inner ruins.
They were not to linger.
Before their departure, the palace performed what would later be euphemistically recorded as a blessing.
In truth, it was a containment protocol.
Each of the five was marked, not visibly, but metaphysically. Anchors were placed within their bodies and minds, keyed to imperial sigils stored deep beneath the capital. If corruption took hold, if influence spread, the anchors would activate. They would burn the connection. Possibly the host.
None of them were told this explicitly.
Consent was assumed by service.
On the day of their departure, there was no ceremony. No crowd. No farewell banners. They left at dawn, through a side gate used mostly by supply caravans. The palace did not watch from the towers.
It is said that the empire does not like to witness its own gambles.
Their journey began uneventfully.
That should have been the first warning.
The closer they drew to the abandoned zones, the more the world behaved as if it were holding its breath. Wildlife thinned, then returned in wrong patterns. Birds nested facing inward. Rivers curved subtly toward the mountain, even when elevation argued otherwise.
Seris documented everything.
Aurelian recalculated routes nightly.
Lysenne prayed, not to gods, but to memory.
Kael kept watch.
Irix said little.
They encountered ruins not marked on any map. Villages swallowed by time, their stones worn smooth not by weather, but by absence. Places where sound carried oddly, where footsteps echoed too long, where names spoken aloud felt heavier than they should.
At night, they dreamed the same dream.
Not identical images, but identical emotions. A sense of standing before something vast and wounded. Not hostile. Not benevolent. Just waiting.
On the twelfth day, they reached the perimeter.
There were no walls.
No signs.
Just a line where the air changed.
Aurelian noted that compasses failed beyond it, spinning not wildly, but slowly, as if undecided. Seris felt the echoes immediately. Spells layered atop spells, centuries old, none fully resolved. Lysenne fell to her knees, not in reverence, but recognition.
"This place remembers," she said.
Kael ordered a halt.
Irix adjusted a device he had been carrying since the capital, something between a lens and a tuning fork. When he activated it, the sound it produced was almost imperceptible, but the ground responded.
It vibrated.
Not violently. In acknowledgement.
They established a forward camp and sent their first report.
It reached the palace intact.
Measured. Calm. Clinical.
No mention of fear.
Over the following days, they pushed closer.
The mountain loomed larger than expected. Not in height, but in presence. Its silhouette refused to settle in the eye, edges shifting subtly when unobserved directly. Trees near its base grew twisted, their rings uneven, as if time itself had hiccupped mid-growth.
Seris began to lose sleep.
Aurelian's maps grew dense with annotations.
Lysenne stopped writing altogether.
Kael doubled the watch.
Irix began dismantling and reassembling imperial devices, altering them in ways no one fully understood, yet which somehow allowed the cohort to function where they should not have.
Their second report was delayed.
When it arrived, it contained one line not present before.
We believe the mountain is not a place, but a consequence.
The palace took notice.
Orders were prepared. New protocols drafted. Reinforcements considered.
They were never sent.
The cohort continued inward.
They crossed thresholds not marked by stone or spell, but by sensation. Areas where memories sharpened unexpectedly. Where childhood recollections surfaced uninvited. Where guilt felt heavier, more specific.
Lysenne spoke again.
Not to the group.
To something unseen.
Seris recorded a fluctuation in the Catalyst's resonance, though they were still miles from the core.
Aurelian's maps no longer aligned with physical space.
Kael reported that his dreams had stopped.
Irix smiled for the first time.
The last confirmed message from the cohort was brief.
We are proceeding beyond the projected safe boundary. Anchors stable. Influence manageable. We will return with data.
No one knows who decided to wait.
Perhaps the council feared provoking what slept.
Perhaps they believed patience would succeed where haste failed.
Perhaps, somewhere deep beneath the palace, an anchor trembled, and no one wanted to acknowledge what that might mean.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
Then silence.
Search parties were assembled and dissolved before departure. Scholars argued semantics. Generals debated risk. The Inner Council sealed the records and reclassified the mission as a failure due to environmental instability.
Officially, the five were declared dead.
No bodies were found.
No anchors triggered.
No corruption signatures were detected.
The mountain did not react.
And that, more than anything else, unsettled the empire.
Because silence, in a world shaped by grief, was never neutral