Before history, there was resonance. Before faith, there was frequency. Before creation learned to breathe, it learned to hum.

The docks of Arcova Terminal never truly slept. Even before dawn, the city murmured with motion—a low, breathing pulse that rose from the water itself. Engines beat beneath layers of fog, their hum stitched with the metallic cough of overworked exhaust vents. Cargo bells answered one another from pier to pier, each echo dissolving into the next until the whole port seemed to speak in iron syllables. Timber planks creaked under the synchronized rhythm of ten thousand boots and bare feet, a heartbeat of human traffic slick with frost and brine.

The air was a dense alchemy of worlds colliding. Salt and oil braided with the scent of ozone from exposed mana conduits. Iron filings clung to breath; fish scales glimmered in gutters like lost coins. Somewhere deep within the maze of cranes and cargo lifts, a generator coughed blue-white mana-steam into the fog, scattering motes of light that swirled like slow-moving stars. Every gust of wind carried a new dialect: the clipped commands of One World Force (OWF) dock marshals, the sing-song bargains of traders, the guttural hymns of Purist pilgrims invoking their elements before the day’s labor.

Arcova stood upon the southern landmass that bridged two extremes...

...passed a group of OWF soldiers drilling in perfect unison. Their gray armor gleamed like carved granite; every movement timed to the breath of the officer’s whistle. The cadence of their boots struck like a hammer on his nerves. The air around them smelled of treated leather and cold iron, a sterile sharpness that erased the scent of salt and smoke from the street...

...Her eyes, molten amber in the cold dawn, held that peculiar brightness found only in those who had already looked into fire and refused to blink. Beneath discipline lived something fierce — curiosity, pride, perhaps the unspoken hunger for something else. Officers watched her from the corners of their eyes, disguising appraisal as indifference. Her presence drew glances even from...

...climbed aboard, feeling the deck vibrate faintly beneath his boots — not from the engine, but from something deeper, resonant, like a heartbeat buried within the wood. This was an odd sensation. In the years of deckrunning for merchants and explorers he had not felt this on other ships in the harbor.

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