In the sprawling, chaotic expanse of Faromë, the world did not simply exist—it breathed. A realm of impossible scale, where continents stretched like the hide of some primordial beast, and three moons hung in a perpetual dance of silver, copper, and bruised violet. According to the Scripts of Teckled, it was the name of the god who laughed creation into being with a cosmic tickle. From that divine mirth, individual gods and goddesses were born, each claiming dominion over a fragment of reality: stone, dream, shadow, melody, decay.
Yet theirs was a fractured unity. They existed merged in purpose but far apart in essence, their will weaving the laws of magic and nature. This delicate balance did not birth peace alone. From the cracks between divine intentions spilled the Demon Lords—beings of consuming hunger who saw creation not as a wonder, but as a feast to be claimed. A war, silent and ancient, began.
And so, humanity and the other races—the swift Elun, the stoic Stone-Shaped, the elusive Veil-Weavers—were not merely born; they were armed. To those rare souls whose spirits resonated with a particular virtue, an Angel was granted. Not a winged servant, but a conceptual force bound to the soul—a manifestation of Justice, Cunning, Endurance, or other ideals—that could be wielded as both shield and sword.
This is the world of the misfits. The reckless, the abandoned, and the desperately lucky.
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Part 2 – A Bad Day in Balamony Forest
Foran was having the kind of day that made him question every life choice since he was weaned.
His tan skin was smudged with dirt, his short black hair peppered with leaves. The black robe and white scarf—his only respectable possessions—were now torn in places that were inconvenient, not stylish. The black gloves were slick with something he didn't want to identify. He moved through the Forest of Balamony with the caution .
"Damn it," he muttered, his voice a low growl. "Those glorified pack mules left me behind and stole my provisions… and my spare gloves. Huh. Just my luck."
His "team." Lard, whose name was ironic given his scrawny frame and greed. Mizty, all bluster and fragile pride. Ram, who had the observational skills of a brick. They'd taken the pay from their last guild contract and vanished into the thick woods, leaving him with a canteen of water and a map to a location that, he now realized, was probably fictional.
He took another step.
A soft click beneath his boot.
"Oh, you have got to be—"
Flash.
The world erupted in sound and fury. An earth-shaping rune, triggered. The ground heaved, stones and roots vomiting into the air. Instinct, honed by paranoia, took over. Foran's right hand snapped up, fingers splaying. A glowing, translucent card, the size of a dinner plate and etched with a geometric shield, materialized before him.
"Barrier!"
The explosion hit the card and shattered it, but the force was deflected, channeled around him in a roaring cone of destruction. He was flung backward, tumbling through the air before landing in a skidding crouch, lungs burning with dust and adrenaline.
Through the settling debris, he glared at the crater. "Man… that was close." He let out a shaky breath, the phantom image of the card fading from his palm. "What was that just now? A trap? For me?" He patted his chest, feeling the warm, solid lump beneath his tunic. "Luckily I had my card ability… good thing I made that contract."
He carried no magic in his blood. Not a spark. In a world where magic was as common as rain, he was a void. His only power came from the Pillar Gem—a thumb-sized, amber crystal humming with condensed, external magic—bound to his soul by a desperate contract. It let him manifest Spell Cards: single-use, powerful effects that drained the gem's stored energy. He was a man with a revolver in a world of machine guns.
Then came the rumble.
Not an explosion. Something deeper, rhythmic. A thunder that moved.
He turned.
From the darker depths of the forest, a tide was coming. A wall of fur, muscle, and frantic, glowing amber eyes.
Radeo. Massive, six-legged herbivores with hides like granite and tempers like spoiled royalty. Usually docile. Except now.
"Oh, man," Foran whispered, dread curdling in his stomach. "Why did it have to be this time of the year?"
It was the Radeo mating season. The females, larger and far more aggressive, led the stampede, driven by a furious, single-minded imperative. And right now, their imperative seemed to be: trample the scrawny human in the black robe.
He ran. He dodged under low branches, leapt over gnarled roots, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. He glanced back. The lead females were terrifyingly close, their hot, grassy breath fogging the air. He saw their expressions—not mindless rage, but a sort of offended, possessive fury. Our forest. Our season. Our trample-ee.
He skidded to a halt. A cliff face, mossy and sheer, rose before him. A dead end.
"Well," he sighed, brushing a leaf from his scarf. "There's no other choice, is there?"
He drew his short sword—a simple, well-kept blade. He planted his feet, closed his eyes, and focused inward. To the warmth of the Pillar Gem. He visualized not a card, but a flow. A circuit opening.
"Release: Akur."
A crimson card, blazing with inner fire, flashed into existence before his chest. It didn't hover—it slammed into him, dissolving into his body. Heat, raw and exhilarating, flooded his veins. His muscles thrummed with enhanced power, his vision sharpened. Akur—the Card of Physical Surge. A temporary, draining boost.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAH!" The yell was half-battle cry, half-therapeutic release of frustration.
He launched himself toward the stampede.
"Crimson Fall!"
He became a blur of red-tinged motion. He didn't meet the charge head-on; he cut across it. His blade flashed, not hacking, but slicing precise, deep cuts into Radeo legs as he passed. He rolled between stomping feet, sprang from a back, used a lowered head as a springboard to flip over another. It was less a fight, more a desperate, acrobatic negotiation for a path.
He landed in a small, trampled clearing, now completely surrounded. A ring of furious, snorting females and a few panicked males closed in.
"You guys…" he panted, sweat stinging his eyes. "I'm not going to have you take my body. Or my dignity. The guild tavern stories are bad enough."
One particularly massive female, with a notch in her ear, pawed the ground. Her gaze was disturbingly focused.
"Okay. Fine. Let's make this quick."
He raised his sword high, pointing it skyward. The Akur energy still in him coalesced at the tip, swirling into a vortex of red light. The Pillar Gem at his chest pulsed, growing uncomfortably hot. He was burning through his reserves fast.
"Fifty percent discharge! WORLD SLASH!"
He didn't swing. He stepped—a blinding, sideways burst of speed—and then thrust forward. A crescent wave of crimson energy, thin as a wire and sharp as a god's regret, ripped out from his blade. It didn't explode; it passed through. It was a line of perfect, silent severance.
A hundred Radeo in its path simply… stopped. Thin red lines appeared across legs, tusks, and hides. A moment of stunned silence. Then, a chorus of pained bellows as the front ranks stumbled, collapsing or veering away in confusion, breaking the stampede's cohesion.
The fight dissolved into chaos and retreating thunder. Foran stood, the red aura around him guttering out. The sun had begun to set, painting the forest in long, sorrowful shadows. He slumped, sword-point in the dirt, gulping air. The Pillar Gem was cool, its light dimmed. He was running on fumes.
"That… was too close," he wheezed. "I thought I was going to lose something vital. Probably my pants." He looked at the scene of dazed and departing Radeo. "Anyway… I can't exactly take this many 'trophies' to the guild. Huh. I have a long way to go. And no dinner."
He sheathed his sword, a profound and comedic weariness settling on his shoulders.
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Far Side of the Forest
Lard, Mizty, and Ram picked their way through the undergrowth. The stolen pack, heavy with Foran's supplies, was on Lard's back.
"Are you sure this is the right way to the shortcut?" Mizty snapped, a tall woman with permanently narrowed eyes. "This feels deeper."
"The map said—" Lard began.
"The map is a piece of shit you won off a drunkard!" Mizty retorted.
Ram, a broad-shouldered man with a perpetually vacant expression, tilted his head. "I hear water."
"It's a forest, you oaf. There's always—!"
Ram's eyes widened. "DOWN!"
He tackled both of them into a thicket. A millisecond later, a searing jet of pressurized water, blue-white and humming with lethal force, sliced through the space where their heads had been. It sheared through three ancient trees in a line, which groaned and crashed to the earth with earth-shaking finality.
They peered up, hearts frozen.
From the deepening shadows between the trees, a figure stepped into a sliver of copper moonlight.
He was short, slender, dressed in dark blue mage's robes. His hair was a waterfall of silky blue, with long bangs covering one eye entirely. The visible eye was a stunning, cerulean blue—and utterly, terrifyingly empty. It held no malice, no curiosity. It was like looking into a still, deep pond that reflected nothing. He held an ornate staff of pale wood, its tip still dripping with spectral water.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Mizty shrieked, her fear morphing into rage. "Who are you, anyway?!"
Lard, however, was trembling. He wasn't looking at the staff or the robes. He was staring into that one visible eye. There was a… lag there. A disconnect between the act and the being. The air around the mage didn't feel cold; it felt absent.
"Mizty…" Lard whispered, voice paper-thin.
"Huh? Speak up, coward!"
"I think… we should run."
"From this little twerp? I'll turn him into a—"
"NOW!" Lard screamed, pure animal terror ripping through him. "Or we will be KILLED!"
The blue-haired mage tilted his head, a motion so mechanically smooth it was more unsettling than any snarl. His lips, pale and delicate, did not move. No word, no incantation. He simply raised his staff again, and the air began to crackle, coalescing into dozens of shimmering, needle-like points of water around him.
He was a puppet. A beautiful, deadly puppet, and someone, somewhere, was holding the strings.
Mizty's bravado shattered. Ram was already scrambling backward.
The last thing they saw as they turned to flee was the mage's single visible eye, watching them with the serene, empty gaze of a stormcloud, as the first volley of crystalline water-spears lanced silently through the night toward their fleeing backs.
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