It's been a little over a month since Y'vel was ripped from this world. The Stalgott Empire lost one of its strongest graduates of the mages college. The ripples of the event still shook the Empire. Not just from the loss, but from future implications. The rift that swallowed Y'vel was merely the first to be noticed. With the passing weeks more and more of these breaks in reality appeared and vanished. From these rifts creatures emerged, both familiar and not, as well as objects and structures from other worlds. The Empire's various guilds namely the Adventurers guild, Artificery, Mage's academy, and Archivists have spared no expense in the research in these rifts and the creatures and objects that fell through.
At the Academy students and instructors alike poured over tomes, studied arcane fluctuations, and conducted experiments to understand the nature of these rifts. The instructors, once focused solely on honing their students' magical prowess, now found themselves acting as researchers, investigators, and sometimes even field operatives. Every day, new reports flooded the Academy—strange creatures sighted in remote regions, artifacts of unknown origin discovered in ruins that had not been there before, and testimonies from adventurers who had barely survived encounters with beings that defied logic.
Headmaster Konig Lauffeuer barely left his office, poring over every scrap of information that crossed his desk. The loss of Y'vel was personal, but the emergence of more rifts turned grief into urgency. If one of his best students had been swallowed by the first, how many more could be lost to the next? And if things were coming through from other worlds, was there a way to send something—or someone—back?
Within the Academy's sprawling campus, students gathered in study halls, debating theories and comparing notes. The Artificery Guild worked tirelessly to craft devices capable of detecting and, perhaps, stabilizing the rifts. Meanwhile, the Adventurers Guild had begun assembling elite teams to investigate and, if necessary, fight back against the growing threats spilling into the Empire.
Among them were Y'vel's closest friends—Liora, Elias, an artificer and Knowledge domain cleric respectively. Determined to honor Y'vel and ensure his fate would not befall others, they threw themselves into the work, following every lead, every fluctuation in the fabric of reality. If there was even a sliver of a chance to find a way to him, they would take it.
The weeks blurred together as both Liora and Elias gleaned new information. Liora was the first to notice that not all of the rifts led to the same places. But there were some that held very faint threads of Y'vel's magic. She had trekked out to a nearby rift towards the Dust Bowl along the southern border of the Empire. She brought three of her golems that she'd repaired with her. This was purely to confirm these rifts did have Y'vel's faint magical signature coming from them. And perhaps develop a means to recognize these rifts from others.
Liora adjusted the lenses of her enchanted goggles, the arcane etchings along the rims glowing faintly as she studied the swirling rift before her. The Dust Bowl's winds howled around her, kicking up plumes of dry earth, but she paid them little mind. Her focus was solely on the anomaly before her—a jagged tear in reality, shifting between hues of deep amber and crackling blues and reds. Her golems stood at her side, hulking constructs of bronze, their rune-inscribed forms whistled with latent energy and steam as they awaited her command.
She reached out, palm open, allowing the ambient magic to dance along her fingertips. It was faint, nearly imperceptible, but it was there—a resonance that tugged at the edges of her senses, reminiscent of Y'vel's spellwork. A thrill of vindication ran through her.
"Gotcha, you're not too far Vel. We feel you."
Her excitement and relief was short lived as a low growl echoed from the rift. The energy from the rift flared as one of the bronze golems shielded Liora from the sand and unstable magic. Scorched sand was blasted outwards as a hulking form tore its way through. A wyvern landed in the sand and gave a bone shaking roar. Its black scales shimmered in the sun. It was slightly larger than the wyverns she was used to dealing with. But all the same, it would fall by her and her mechanized companions hands.
"Rush it! Keep it from flying!" Liora commanded, her golems sprang forward meeting the large wyvern. Each golem individually weighed enough to exceed its strength , and with the three of them the wyvern was pinned and thrashing. The golems held the wyvern down while Liora approached it. Their heated bodies damaged it as they held on. "This is no place for invaders." Liora spoke as she pulled a detention orb from her hip and contained the dragonoid within it. It struggled for a time before the orb locked around it. The detention orb was hoisted between two of the Bronze Golems.
Liora exhaled sharply as the detention orb locked with a final pulse of arcane light. The wyvern's struggles ceased, its form now safely contained. She took a moment to steady her breath, pressing a hand to her chest as she surveyed the surrounding dunes. The sand was still cooling from the heat of her golems, the scent of scorched earth mingling with the lingering metallic tang of magic.
"Good work," she murmured, patting the nearest golem's bronze-plated arm before turning back to the rift. The unstable energies still pulsed, but her focus had shifted—combat was done, now came the real test.
She unclipped her satchel and retrieved the resonance crystals, arranging them in a wide arc around the anomaly. If her theory was correct, these would attune to the rift's unique energy signature, allowing her to track others like it—specifically, those that carried traces of Y'vel's magic. After a few hours Liora had attuned the Wayfinders Eye to specifically show the direction of portals that radiate Y'vel's magical signature. She wanted to perform a couple more tests but just as she conjured her familiar Sprocket, the rift sealed. "Damn, oh well the important part is complete." She spoke to herself before pulling an improved sending stone from her hip and updating the Headmaster about her findings.
Elias sat hunched over a massive desk in the Grand Archives of the Academy, the air thick with the scent of ink, parchment, and ancient dust. Towering bookshelves rose around him like silent sentinels, enclosing him in a world of knowledge and speculation. His red hair, usually loose around his shoulders, was tied into a tight bun to keep it out of his face. The flickering glow of nearby mage-lights danced across the pages as he flipped between dense tomes and tightly packed scrolls, his eyes sharp with determination.
Stacks of books on divination, planar theory, and magical resonance surrounded him, many bookmarked with strips of cloth or held open by enchanted weights. He had long since memorized the incantation for Scrying, but he kept reading, hunting for overlooked nuances or alternative casting methods—anything that might offer a better grasp of how the spell might behave when the subject was no longer on the same plane.
Elias had spent a significant portion of his personal funds acquiring copies of the spell in scroll form, hoping that repeated attempts might yield a clearer result. He'd even gone so far as to consult with instructors and fellow clerics of Mystra, engaging in long, spirited debates about the boundaries of divination magic.
When he finally sat down to cast the spell, surrounded by faintly glowing glyphs and the quiet hum of warding circles meant to focus magical interference, he expected one of two outcomes: to see Y'vel wherever he was—or for the spell to fail entirely, confirming his death.
But what happened was stranger.
The spell worked. It activated, the magic taking hold as it should. But rather than revealing Y'vel himself, it showed the sealed rift where he'd vanished. A jagged, cold scar in space, quiet and dormant… but there.
Elias stared into the vision, brow furrowed, trying to suppress the surge of emotion that rose in his chest. Not a grave. A door. That was the only conclusion he could draw. If Y'vel were gone—truly gone—there would have been nothing. No vision. No magic. But the spell recognized him. It found something. The closed rift had become a kind of placeholder in the fabric of the world, still bound to Y'vel's essence.
He cast the spell again. And again. Each time, the image was the same. Not flickering. Not random. Consistent.
He scribbled notes furiously in his leather-bound journal, marking arcane patterns, divination flowcharts, and emotional triggers. Each result was dated, time-stamped, and cross-referenced. The consistency gave him hope—but also unease. If the spell kept anchoring to that same spot, then Y'vel was still out there. Still reachable. But why hadn't he reached back?
His thoughts spiraled, chasing themselves through half-formed theories and possible explanations—until a familiar voice crackled to life in his ear.
"Eli, meet me in the observatory. Got some stuff to show you."
Liora's voice, calm but tinged with that electric buzz she always got when a theory panned out. Elias shut his journal with a snap, carefully placing it among the stacks beside him. He rose from his desk in the Grand Archives and moved with purpose, his long coat trailing behind him as he made his way through the marble halls of the Academy.
Minutes later, the tall doors of the observatory creaked open, revealing Liora already waiting with a grin and one of her bronze golems at her side. The low evening light gleamed off its polished plating. Elias could see half-dismantled tools, rune-etched lenses, and a lattice of glowing crystals laid out on the central table.
"I take it that the Dust Bowl trip was productive?" he asked, stepping inside and closing the door behind him.
Liora didn't even look up from the device she was tuning. "Productive is an understatement. Not only did I pick up on Y'vel's signature, I calibrated a Wayfinder to lock onto it. If that resonance holds true across other rifts, we might just have a compass pointing to him."
Elias's brow rose, impressed. "Then it wasn't just theory. That's incredible. The Scrying spell kept leading me back to the rift he vanished through. Same result every time. I thought it was a failure at first—but the spell never broke. It clung to that rift like it was tethered to him."
Liora leaned forward, eyes narrowing in interest. "Then that confirms it. The spell doesn't see the dead. If it's fixating on that rift, then he's alive. Trapped somewhere, maybe, but alive."
They were quiet for a moment, letting the realization settle. The rifts weren't random anymore. They had a pattern, however faint—a trail.
Together, they climbed the marble stairs to the Headmaster's office. Konig Lauffeuer looked up as they entered, his desk buried under scrolls, crystals, and dispatches from all corners of the Empire. He looked tired—more than either of them had ever seen—but there was a flicker of expectation in his eyes.
"Well?" he asked, voice clipped but not unkind.
"We found him," Elias said simply.
"Not directly," Liora clarified, "but his magic is traceable now. I've attuned a device to detect rifts that radiate his signature. And Elias's divine spells are still tethering to the rift he vanished through. He's not gone. Not yet."
Konig sat back slowly, the tension in his shoulders loosening for the first time in weeks. He exhaled, the weight of doubt and grief replaced with cautious hope. "Then we have a thread," he murmured. "And threads can be followed."
He stood and turned to face the window, gazing out over the academy grounds, voice firm with resolve. "Get me a list of every rift your device can track. We'll deploy teams immediately. If Y'vel is leaving footprints between the planes, then we will follow them."
Elias and Liora exchanged a look—tired but energized, uncertain but determined.
The room sat in contemplative silence. Magical projections flickered gently overhead as Elias and Liora stood before the Headmaster, both visibly weighed by the scope of what they'd uncovered.
"We can't go after him," Elias finally said, voice tight. "Not directly. Not yet. We'd be gambling everything."
Konig inclined his head, his expression unreadable.
Liora exhaled, her fingers drumming against the edge of a table. "Then maybe… maybe we don't go to him."
Both Elias and Konig looked at her.
"We send something."
Elias blinked. "You mean like a message? A tether?"
"No." She turned, eyes alight now with a clarity she hadn't shown in days. "A construct. Not like the golems I used in my day to day—something smarter, more autonomous. Something bound with his magical resonance, with shielding, and utility enchantments. A companion. A lifeline."
Elias stepped closer, catching on. "You want to build him a guardian. A kind of arcane assistant to keep him safe while he's alone."
"Exactly," Liora nodded. "I can attune it to follow the same magical trails we've tracked. If we launch it through a rift that matches his signature, it might find him—or at least land nearby. It could carry supplies, defend him if needed, relay information back to us possibly…"
"And if he's out there surviving," Konig murmured, "this could give him the edge to keep surviving. Until the way home opens. Or he gains the strength to come home on his own."
Liora looked between them, the first embers of hope returning to her face. "I can't build a portal… but I can build a friend."
Elias let out a breath and smiled. "Let's get to work, then."
Konig stepped forward, resting a hand on Liora's shoulder. "You may not be able to walk the path he's on—but you can still reach him. That may be more powerful than you know."
With that the trio started the next leg of their mission. L.Y.E.K: Guardian's Reach.