The Observer

[author here: if you have something to say you are welcome, this is a solo work and feedbacks are very much welcome]

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A gust of eerie wind slithered through the Blackthorn Forest its skeletal trees groaning as frost-laden branches clattered like bones. 

The air smelled of pine resin and iron, a metallic tang that clung to the tongue. Above, the Moon hung low, its bright blue surface marred by a crater shaped like a clawed hand—a relic from the ancient Gods war.

 Shadows writhed unnaturally, as if the forest itself were alive.  

Mana surged through the air in, twisting like sentient smoke. 

It seeped into tree bark, causing bioluminescent fungi to pulse faintly before withering to ash.

 A stag bolted as a mana stream grazed its antlers, leaving them cracked and smoldering.  

The adventurers huddled around a crackling fire of Blackpine logs, their sap hissing like angry serpents. 

The old man named Grey sat on a moss-covered stone, his tattered cloak  shimmering faintly despite its patches. His beard, the color of storm clouds, hid a scar that split his lip, and his gnarled hand clutched a staff topped with a Smooth rectangular Topaz Crystal, its faint screeches echoing when he gestured.  

Beside him, Lyra, a sharp-eyed scholar-adventurer, adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses (one lens cracked from a recent skirmish). Her emerald-green uniform bore the crest of the Ilacia Royal Archives, and her boots were caked with mud from the Ashen Marsh. 

She held a leather-bound tome, its pages yellowed and reeking of mildew.  

Lyra’s comrades included Tharos, a hulting dwarf sharpening a rune-etched axe, and Seraphine, an archer whose eyes glowed faintly violet a mark of her Shadowmeld training.  

**Dialogue expansion 

Lyra snapped the book shut, her voice quivering with curiosity. “But how could they survive? No magic, no gods… just… machines?” Her gloved finger traced an illustration of a crumbling city, its spires clawing at a smoke-choked sky.  

Gareth chuckled, a sound like gravel in a tin bucket. “Ah, child. They had worse than gods— ambition. Their ‘machines’ devoured mountains, drank seas. They forged rivers of steel and skies choked with  Some kind of technology’” He spat into the fire, the flames sizzling green. “But hubris felled them. Even the Sky Leviathan, their greatest creation, fell to our ancestors’ spellfire.”  

Seraphine’s bow creaked as she tensed. “And the Observer? You’ve seen him?”  

Gareth’s milky eyes narrowed. “Once. In the Wastes of Lament. 

He wore a cloak of living starlight, shifting with the hour.

 His mask… smooth as a child’s, He watched as villages burns, castles get raided, towns be plundered and how a country fall—didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. Just… watched”  

...

...

...

Tharos grunted. “Sounds like a ghost tale.”  

“Aye,” Gareth whispered, “but ghosts don’t leave footprints of molten glass.”  

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The Observer’s tower loomed over the Crystalline Vale, its obsidian walls seamless, as if carved from a single shard of void. Inside, (the Observer) woke in a zero-gravity chamber, his silver hair floating like tendrils of mercury. His pale, androgynous face bore no wrinkles, save a faint scar across his brow—a souvenir from the Godswar. He tugged on a quantum-weave robe that shifted from indigo to charcoal as he moved.  

**Beep. Beep. Beep.**  

He silenced the holographic alarm, its interface glowing cerulean. Outside, storm wyverns—their scales iridescent, wingspan blotting out the sun—crashed into the crystal fruit grove. 

The fruits, prismatic orbs humming with trapped energy, splattered like crushed geodes under talons.  

“Ace,” The observer muttered, his voice a monotone honed by millennia, “activate Protocol: Black smoke.”  

[Affirmative,] replied Ace, the AI’s voice a melodic chime that clashed with its function. Turrets erupted from the soil, barrels glowing white-hot.

 The wyverns shrieked as Tungsten rods were punched through their hides.

The Observer stepped onto the balcony, pink flip-flops slapping against nano-carbon tiles. He surveyed the damage—molekin (fur crackling with stolen magic) fled into tunnels, pursued by Ace’s scorpion drones. A thekwane lay electrocuted, its featherless wings twitching.  

“Collaborative assault,” The observer mused. “Evolved tactics. How… Amusing.”  

[Repairs at 34% efficiency. Suggest deploying nanite swarm.]

“Do it. And send a pulse to the Void Fence —I want these pests discouraged, and scater some Crystal fruit seeds outside, if they are this desperate i might as well give it to them”  

As drones whisked away wyvern carcasses (to be rendered into biofuel), The observer gazed at the Skies. “Still watching, old friend?” he whispered—to the moon, or something beyond.  

[Query: Will you intervene if they breach the perimeter again?] Ace asked.  

The observer's smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Why? They’ll only paint me a monster. Again.”  

He returned to bed, the tower sealing itself with a hum, as the Vale’s distorted echo of Gareth’s tale hung in the air like mana.