Veinstone

Evander Thorne

Morning in Zadale was never quiet, not truly. Even as the sun barely crested the distant hills, the city stirred like a waking beast. Evander moved through the streets, the chill still clinging to stone and steel, while shutters creaked open above and the clatter of hooves echoed faintly down the alleys. Smoke curled from chimney tops, mixing with the tang of coal fires and spice.

Evander moved at a steady pace through the narrow street, his coat pulled tight against the morning breeze. As he walked, the murmurs of the market bloomed like low thunder in the distance. But something drew his eye near the edge of a crooked lane: a vendor kneeling beside a splintered cart, muttering under his breath as he picked up a tomato from the floor.

Wooden crates lay scattered around him, their contents, dried herbs, vegetables, fruits, and a few shattered clay jars, spilled across the cobblestones. Some of the produce was squished as if someone walked over it. One cart leaned awkwardly against the wall, broken spokes jutting out like snapped ribs.

“Damn this city,” the vendor hissed, struggling to gather the mess. “Every bloody morning it’s something…”

Evander stepped closer, crouching beside him and grabbing a handful of herbs to help sort. “Rough night?”

The man snorted. “Some drunkard, most likely. Barrel-headed fool must’ve crashed through the lot of it. I come down before dawn and find this,” he gestured at the wreckage with an exasperated wave.

Evander nodded slowly, his eyes scanning the scene. He rolled up the sleeves of his coat and moved with quiet precision, setting the herbs aside first, carefully separating those still usable from the crushed ones. He placed them in a shallow wooden tray nearby, his hands steady, practiced.

“Those jars, anything valuable in them?” he asked, reaching for a shard of clay.

“Pickled roots,” the vendor muttered, shaking his head. “Gone now.”

Evander nodded, rising briefly to lift the edge of the broken cart and ease it upright, careful not to splinter it further. With practiced movements, he adjusted the axle so it wasn’t sitting at such an angle and began picking up the scattered vegetables, apples, onions, bruised tomatoes, wiping away grime, and placing what he could salvage in a nearby sack.

He rose to his feet, brushing dust from his gloves.

“Thanks for the help,” the vendor grunted, already returning to his repairs.

But Evander wasn’t listening anymore. His gaze had locked on something nearby: half-buried in the shadows, wedged between a barrel and the alley wall. A glint of violet. Stone, smooth, and pulsing faintly.

He stepped toward it.

He stopped just short of touching it. The way it almost pulsed made it seem arcane in nature, and that’s what caught his interest. From his coat pocket, he pulled a square of thick, white cloth covered in grease. Without taking his eyes off the stone, he crouched, folded the fabric once, then carefully reached out.

He tightened the cloth quickly, folding it around the stone, and slipped it into the inner pocket of his coat. The weight of it settled against his chest, heavier than it should’ve been. The cogs in his mind had already begun to turn, quietly but rapidly, as he considered how best to approach this new arcane artifact he’d stumbled upon. The way it pulsed made it feel alive, maybe a little volatile and wild. Dangerous, certainly. But that only made it more valuable to him.

Evander’s steps led him away from the bustle of the markets and into the quieter, more orderly streets towards his workstation. The roads here were clean, the buildings of stone and darkwood, uniform in their function and placement. Watch patrols passed at regular intervals, their armor polished and expressions unreadable. He moved past an iron-gated checkpoint with a nod to the guardsmen who recognized his face.

His workshop stood at the end of a narrow lane, nestled between a long-disused barracks and a storeroom for alchemical supplies. From the outside, it looked like a modest clerical office: a simple door, no signage, just a bronze knocker shaped like a raven’s head.

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He unlocked it with a flick of his wrist, as the door creaked open, revealing a wide chamber of stone and dark oak lit by slow-burning arcane lanterns. The trebuchet was no longer there; instead, charts and blueprints were pinned across one wall, along with shelves filled with labeled vials, crystals, and preserved components in pale fluid. The warforge no longer stood behind his table but was moved to one corner of the room.

Evander walked in, letting the door close softly behind him. His reinforced worktable, its surface already buried beneath scattered tools, half-assembled components, coils of wire, and blueprints layered atop one another. He unwrapped the cloth from around the stone and placed it carefully on a metal disk in the center of his workbench.

He stared at it for a long moment. Even inert, it pulsed faintly, a subtle glow deep within the shard’s violet core. Darker lines seemed to spread around the stone like veins.

“Let’s find out what you are,” he murmured, and began his preparations.

Evander reached for a pair of leather gloves and slid them on with practiced ease. He adjusted the lantern light above his worktable, the warm, golden glow giving the stone a richer hue.

He opened a drawer and pulled out a thick silver-threaded chalk, its edges worn smooth from years of use. Kneeling beside the worktable, Evander began drawing slow, deliberate arcs across the surface, forming the structure of a containment glyph. Layer by layer, he etched protective enchantments, each one overlapping the last like tempered glass. The lines shimmered faintly as the magic took hold, glowing with quiet energy.

When the circle was complete, he reached for a pair of tongs and carefully lifted the veinstone, placing it at the center of the glyphs.

He reached for a second device, a wire-thin needle connected to a crystal dial. Gently, he pushed the tip just close enough to graze the surface of the stone. It was meant to read the energy levels of this arcane artefact, but the dial quivered.

Then spun violently.

Evander moved his hand back. “Well,” he muttered, recording the reaction in a leather-bound journal, “you’re definitely not inert.”

This had his full attention now. Unstable arcane energy, more potent than anything he’d worked with before. He tapped his pencil twice against the edge of the journal, thinking. If this thing could spike a calibrated dial like that with just a surface reading, then its core was brimming with raw, unfiltered magic.

He wanted to know more. How did it respond to other forms of magic?

Carefully, Evander reached for a second object on his bench, a tiny arcane orb that held a stabilized cantrip, a weak illumination spell designed to emit harmless light when triggered. He activated it, causing it to glow faintly in his palm. Then, slowly, he brought the orb closer to the stone.

The moment the orb went beyond the containment glyph surrounding the stone, the glow in the orb flared bright, far beyond its usual strength. For a heartbeat, the entire room lit up in a burst of silver light. Then the orb sputtered and cracked, breaking into two.

Evander shielded his eyes, blinking away the afterglow. “Power enhancer,” he whispered to himself, voice barely above a breath. “It amplifies arcane output.” His mind immediately began to turn. He was an engineer after all, a weapons builder. And this, this wasn’t just an energy source. It was an amplifier. If harnessed correctly, it could strengthen even a simple enchantment into something devastating. Channel it into a weapon, and the results could be exponential. Precision, range, destructive capacity, it would all scale with terrifying efficiency.

A shiver of excitement ran through him, laced with dread. Yet if the stone was unstable, any weapon forged with it could be just as deadly to its wielder as to its target. And how exactly would be stabilise it?

Evander set the broken orb aside, his thoughts racing. He needed control. Without it, the stone was just a bomb waiting for the wrong spell.

He moved to the far corner of his workbench and returned with a prism, an arcanotechnical device he’d built to regulate wild magical currents. It had worked on volatile foci before: broken runestones, unstable elemental cores. He placed the stone inside and activated the prism’s sequence.

The glass cracked instantly.

A spiderweb of fractures ran across the surface, glowing faintly before the entire casing erupted with a loud snap! Evander flinched back again as shards flew across the table. He muttered a curse and added another note to the journal. It was too energetic to be contained in that.

Next, he etched a suppression glyph directly onto the stone using liquified silver, one of the oldest methods of dampening arcane surges. If he could suppress the unstable mana output, lower the stone’s energy even slightly, it might give him the foothold he needed to work with it safely.

The moment the silver touched the surface, the reaction was immediate. A violent hiss tore through the quiet, the silver vaporizing on contact. A sharp pulse of arcane static burst outward, crackling through the air only to halt just at the edge of the containment glyphs he had etched into the table, the energy snapping against the invisible boundary like lightning against glass.

He stared at the stone, jaw clenched. So much for suppression.

He took a slow breath, resisting the urge to swear. If the stone broke everything he put near it, how in the nine hells was he supposed to shape or contain it?

The containment glyphs buzzed faintly, strained but intact. He crouched once more, studying the stone as if sheer focus might unravel its mysteries.

“Stubborn thing,” he muttered, as if the stone might respond. He leaned back, running a hand through his hair, frustration flickering behind his tired eyes. It was like trying to cradle a thunderstorm in your bare hands.

“I’ll crack you eventually,” he said under his breath.