Chapter: 1. Intertwined Serpents
The city of Iltael-Dora, the Citadel of Crystal Song, the majestic stronghold of the virn, was both beautiful and terrifying. Its spires, carved from white marble and veined with glowing silver, pierced the very vault of the gigantic underground cavern, as if challenging the abyss itself. The air hummed with magic—not thunderous and destructive, but subtle, melodic, as if millions of invisible strings were stretched between the crystalline towers. Here, the mushrooms did not sing—the very stone sang, and its song was one of order and control.
In the highest of the towers, in a hall with windows of polished amethyst, a lesson was underway. A dozen young mages in white and silver robes, their faces etched with concentration, moved their hands, making paired crystals levitate and trace complex runes of protection in the air. Their teacher, High Mage Saren Dahl, observed them with the calm assurance of the master of this ordered world.
He was young for his post, but his power was undeniable. Unlike the priestesses of Luen’teri, whose magic burst forth through will and pain, the mages of Iltael-Dora worked with a subtler energy. They were conductors, not the source of power. Their strength lay in precision, knowledge, and absolute harmony.
— Concentration, Kylan, — his voice was quiet, yet every word was perfectly audible in the magical resonance of the hall. — Do not force the crystal to move. Persuade space that it is more advantageous to move as you wish.
The youth named Kylan, his best student, pressed his lips together, and the hovering crystal obediently traced a perfect circle in the air.
Saren nodded with satisfaction. His eyes, the color of dark amethyst, glowed with pride. Here, in this citadel of reason and order, he had found himself. There was no place for the blind fanaticism of Luen’teri, only a cold thirst for knowledge.
The door to the hall opened quietly. On the threshold stood Elira, his colleague and friend, her usually serene face distorted by anxiety, a sharp dissonance in the hall’s tuned music.
— Saren. The Council is waiting. It’s urgent.
The silence in the Council of Mages was thick and ringing. The Elders, keepers of the virn wisdom, were pale.
— A messenger from Luen’teri, — began the most ancient of them, Master Voril. His voice trembled. — High Priestess Saen’Illa demands… strongly recommends… we join our forces to her army. She is preparing a campaign against the shaarn.
An oppressive silence fell over the hall. Everyone knew of Luen’teri’s growing paranoia, their obsession with “cleansing” the underworld of “impure filth.” The shadow of war, whispered about in the corridors, had finally taken form.
— This is madness, — Saren said coldly, and his words rang like crystal striking stone. — The shaarn have not attacked us. Their cities are far to the east. They are scholars, mystics, not warriors. This is not war; it is slaughter.
— They point to your origins, Saren, — Elira said quietly. — You were born near their lands. They say your sympathy for them is a sign of weakness or… treason.
— My ‘sympathy’ is the voice of reason! — Saren flared up. — Our magic is not for war! It is for knowledge, for creation! We cannot let them drag us into their bloody game!
The Council was in disarray. Fear of Luen’teri’s crushing power fought with horror at the senseless slaughter.
A Solomonic decision was reached. Saren Dahl, as the most diplomatic and powerful among them, would go to the neighboring fortress-city of Vir-Tar to attempt to form a neutral alliance of mages that could pressure Luen’teri and stop the war.
It was a mission of desperation, but Saren agreed without hesitation. He saw it as the last chance to preserve the fragile peace.
His small party—himself, Elira, and two mage-guards—was moving through a narrow crystalline canyon when the very shadow they hoped to avert fell upon them.
It was not a shaarn ambush. From the shadows behind the rocks rose figures in armor of blackened obsidian, bearing the Luen’teri crest on their chests. The magic they unleashed was crude, shattering, created for killing, not dueling. Elira’s glowing shields cracked under its assault with a soul-chilling crunch. The guards fell, pierced by spears of pure darkness, without even a chance to cry out.
Saren fought fiercely, his precise magic striking down the attackers one by one, but there were too many. At the decisive moment, he saw the squad’s commander—the cold, familiar face of Priestess Lika.
— Cowardice must be burned out with a hot iron, Dahl, — she spat, and her whip of condensed shadow wrapped around his neck, searing away his magic and his will.
He lost consciousness with her hoarse laughter in his ears, the laughter of Luen’teri.
He awoke not in a dungeon, but in a spacious, dimly lit cave. His wounds were bandaged; only a thin scar remained on his neck. A shaarn sat on a stone before him.
Saren had never seen one so close. Tall, with severe, refined features and skin the color of dark jade. Its large eyes with vertical pupils studied the prisoner without fear or hatred. With the curiosity of a scholar examining a rare phenomenon.
— My name is Kaelen, — the shaarn said, and its voice sounded like silk rustling over stone. — We found you and your companions. Your friends are dead. You are alive because your magic… is not like theirs. It sings; it does not scream.
The shaarn had not tortured him. They had healed him. And then they had shown him.
They led him through their cities, through Shi’Laren. He saw not camps of savages, but floating gardens of glowing mushrooms, libraries where knowledge was stored not in scrolls but in resonating crystals, laboratories where magic was used for healing, not killing. It was a world living not in spite of the underground, but in symbiosis with it.
And then they showed him maps made by their scouts. Images of Luen’teri armies massing at their borders. Images of burned-out watch posts. They told him of their attempts to negotiate, all of which ended with the death of the emissaries.
— They are not waging war, — Kaelen said, and for the first time, his voice held not sadness, but the weight of inevitability. — They are cleansing. As if we were an infection. They consider us a mistake to be erased. Your mission was doomed from the start. Your Council was too afraid to support you. And Luen’teri is too bitter to listen.
Saren looked at these calm, rational beings and saw his own civilization—the civilization of the virn that he loved—from the outside. As a killing machine driven by blind fanaticism.
He had not been convinced by force. His eyes had been opened.
That evening, gazing at the soft, breathing glow of Shi’Laren, Saren Dahl made a decision. He would not cowardly hide or meaninglessly fight for a side that had betrayed him and everything he believed in. He would fight for the future. For the right to live. And to stop the monster his homeland had become, he would have to study it inside and out. Understand its darkest secrets.
He turned to Kaelen.
— I will be your weapon. But not against my people. Against the plague that has infected their minds. I will be your blade that knows where to strike.
He was not a coward. He was the first to see the coming storm and dared to stand in its path. At the cost of everything he had.
Saren did not come to his senses immediately. The days blurred into a haze of pain, fog, and strange, healing dreams. He was treated not with potions that froze the veins with ice, as the virn would have done, but with resonance. Polished crystals were applied to his skin, which began to sing a quiet, vibrating melody, and his fractures knitted, his wounds closing almost without scars. The air smelled not of blood and incense, but of ozone after a storm and the sweet aroma of unfamiliar flowering mushrooms.
When his strength finally returned, he was not led to a prison. Kaelen came to him.
— You are strong enough to walk, — the shaarn stated. — Come. The choice is yours, but to choose, you must see.
And he led Saren through Shi’Laren.
Iltael-Dora was beautiful like frozen music. But the city of the shaarn was different. It did not strive upward but flowed, following the natural curves of the caves as if it were their continuation. The buildings were not built—they were grown from giant, intertwined roots of luminous mushrooms and crystalline formations. Light came not from torches, but from the walls themselves, from symbiotic lichens that glimmered with a soft silvery-green light.
And the silence. Yes, the city was full of life—shaarn moved across bridges of living vine, their quiet speech like the rustling of leaves—but there was none of the hollow echo, the eternal pressure of magic that hung over Luen’teri. Here, sound was not reflected by the stone but absorbed by it, creating a sense of incredible, peaceful calm.
Saren saw their faces. They held not fanaticism, but depth. Depth of thought, knowledge, calm assurance. They looked at him—a virn, an outsider—with curiosity, but without fear or hatred.
Kaelen brought him to an observatory. A huge, concave crystal showed views of the borders. And there, in the haze, Saren saw them. Luen’teri armies. Cohorts of guards in obsidian armor. Priestesses setting up ritual camps. And the familiar standard with intertwined serpents—the crest of his hometown, the banner under which he had grown up.
— They have not come to conquer, — Kaelen said quietly. — They have come to cleanse. To them, we are weeds in the garden of their goddess. They do not negotiate.
Saren was silent. He watched this and felt the last bastion of his old faith crumble within him.
— Why? — he finally forced out. — Why show this to me? Why not kill me?
Kaelen turned his calm face to him.
— Killing is a crude and inefficient solution. It destroys information. You are a source of information. About them. And about yourself. You are not like them. Your magic… it harmonizes with the world; it does not violate it. We sense this. We give you a choice they will not give us.
— What choice? — Saren whispered.
— To leave. We will give you provisions and guide you to the neutral tunnels. Or… to stay. And help us understand how to stop this madness without destroying those you once called your people.
It was not a call to betrayal. It was a call to reason. To salvation.
Saren looked at his hands. The hands of a mage, made for delicate work, for creation. Not for war. He looked at the image of the army ready to trample this amazing, fragile world of calm and knowledge.
He remembered Lika’s face, her hoarse laughter. He remembered the corpses of his friends.
He raised his head. No trace of doubt remained in his amethyst eyes.
— I will stay, — he said, and his voice, for the first time in many days, was firm as rock. — But I will not be your soldier. I will be your… advisor. Your scalpel. I know how they think. I know their weaknesses. And I know the strength of Luen’teri is a double-edged sword. The more powerful they become, the closer they come to tearing themselves apart from within. We need only to assist that process.
Kaelen nodded slowly. A spark of respect flickered in his bottomless eyes.
— Welcome to Shi’Laren, Saren Dahl. I hope together we will find a way to preserve both our worlds.
In that moment, Saren felt neither a traitor nor an outcast. He felt like an architect. An architect of a future he had to build from the ruins of the past.
That evening, Saren stood on a high bridge stretched from woven living vines. Below him shimmered a soft, breathing ocean of mushroom caps, each glowing with its own unique shade of green or blue, like an underground aurora. The air was filled with a quiet, almost inaudible hum—not the magical ring of Iltael-Dora, but the even, deep breath of Shi’Laren itself.
Kaelen was silent beside him. His presence was almost weightless—not like a teacher or overseer, but rather a companion ready to answer a question if asked.
— I have lost everything, — Saren said quietly, gazing into the distance at the cozy, glowing world of the shaarn. — Home, title, faith… And yet… it feels as if I have found something for the first time.
— Sometimes that is the way, — the shaarn answered, his voice merging with the rustling of the vines. — Loss opens doors. The question is only which one you decide to walk through.
Saren nodded. He did not yet know where his new path would lead, but he already felt there was no way back to the cold perfection of Iltael-Dora.
And in that moment, on the horizon, in an opening of the underground vault, a sharp, cold light flared—the beacons of the Luen’teri patrols igniting. The ghostly crest of intertwined serpents surfaced in his memory again, and in his chest, over the newfound peace, rose a familiar, heavy bitterness.
He clenched his fists. It was no longer just a symbol of his past. It was a poisonous shadow looming over the future of both peoples.
And he swore: if it must be, he would become the spark that would tear that shadow apart from within.
Kaelen, as if sensing his resolve, gestured for him to proceed further along the bridge. The vines gave softly underfoot but held firm, as if alive and feeling every step, accepting him.
— Shaarn… — Saren began, daring for the first time to voice the question burning inside him. — Who are you, truly? In Iltael-Dora, we were taught you are traitors. Outcasts. Those who broke the oaths of the Unified Tower.
Kaelen smiled faintly at the corner of his lips, and in his grey-green eyes, capable of seeing a shadow in utter darkness, sparks of bitter irony flashed.
— Amusing. We were taught almost the same thing—only from the opposite side. In our lore, Iltael-Dora is a tomb for the living. Towers that draw power from the earth, giving nothing in return. In them, people are merely stones in the masonry, and magic holds them in the shackles of order.
Saren frowned. To a virn’s ear, it sounded like blasphemy, but in Kaelen’s calm, measured words lay an uncomfortable truth that was hard to deny, looking at the living harmony surrounding them.
They came to a circle of mushroom trees. Their trunks shimmered like glass, silver veins flowing within—and Saren realized with amazement that these were not simply plants, but something between crystal and flesh, the very flesh of the underworld.
— We are the shaarn, — Kaelen continued, and his voice held the strength that binds the roots of mountains. — We are few. We do not build towers; we do not call ourselves masters. We listen to the earth and answer it. All you see around you—was not created by magic of violence, but born from symbiosis. We grow together with the underworld, and it nourishes us.
Saren lowered his hand onto a rough, mossy root and felt a light, rhythmic pulsation through his skin. He didn’t just feel a vibration—he almost heard a deep, slow breathing.
— It’s… alive? — he exhaled, pulling his hand back.
— Everything here is alive. Even the light. — Kaelen touched a nearby mushroom-column. It trembled, and in response, a wave of soft, gentle light ran through the area, as if the forest had answered the touch. — Iltael-Dora pulls power from the veins and crystals, it pumps out life. And we—we give back. And so the world shares its breath with us.
Saren pondered. For the first time, he felt that the underworld did not oppress him with the weight of stone, but seemed to embrace him, accept him. As if it had been waiting for him all this time.
But at the same time, on the back of his neck, the mark of Luen’teri stood like a cold needle—the serpent crest hanging over both worlds. And with sudden clarity, he understood: what nourished the shaarn, this fragile, living network, would be the first and main target for those who were accustomed only to taking and never returning.
Kaelen looked at him intently, reading his thoughts.
— You should know: we are not saints. We have our own taboos. We pay our own price for our power. Some shaarn rituals would seem to an outsider more terrible than any execution in Iltael-Dora. If you stay here, you will have to see everything. And accept it.
Saren was silent. He had not yet given his final oath, but he felt the boundary he stood on, between past and future, between virn and shaarn, had almost been erased.
Saren followed Kaelen deeper into the heart of Shi’Laren. The city had no strict streets or squares—it flowed like a living stream, winding through roots, descending in cascades of luminous bridges, and disappearing again into vaults where crystal veins pulsed with a steady, warm light. With every minute, his feeling grew stronger that this was not a place created by reason, but an ancient, wise being that had let him inside.
— We have no walls, — Kaelen said as they crossed another arch of fungal stone, living and breathing. — We believe if an enemy comes—stone walls will not save us. And if a friend comes—why are they needed?
Saren thought. In his native city, in the virn citadel, everything was different: impregnable towers, shining protective domes, rows of artifactor crystals tuned to repel any invasion. Iltael-Dora was a fortress; this was a sanctuary. But in this defenseless openness, there was something frightening, exposed, and therefore incredibly brave.
They emerged onto a round, sunken plaza where dozens of shaarn sat in complete, deep silence, connected by hands, their eyes closed. Before them hovered a giant crystal, almost completely black, and within it, like stars in the night sky, luminous symbols of a language unknown to Saren slowly rotated and flowed.
— This is the Council of Silence, — Kaelen’s voice quieted, becoming part of the general stillness. — The elder voices of the city. They speak little, but hear everything.
Saren felt a low, powerful vibration emanating from the crystal, penetrating his bones, his soul. His own magic, honed in the towers of Iltael-Dora, responded to it, trembling like a tuning fork placed next to the sound of a whole orchestra.
One of the shaarn opened his eyes. His gaze was heavy and ancient, inhumanly calm, having seen epochs change.
— Virn, — he said without malice, with a bottomless, studying curiosity. — The one who survived under the lash of Luen’teri. You stand here, and the city hears your rhythm. It does not scream. It sings.
Saren wanted to answer, to find worthy words, but they stuck in his throat. For the first time in a long while, the High Mage felt small, like a student standing on the threshold of great knowledge.
Kaelen gently touched his elbow, drawing him away, from the oppressive power of the Council.
— They know who you are. But the decision is yours. We can show you more, if you are ready.
— What exactly? — Saren finally managed, still recovering from what he had seen.
— Our root, — Kaelen’s voice grew lower, almost a whisper, full of sacred awe. — That which makes us strong and vulnerable at once. The source of our life and our Achilles’ heel.
They moved along a narrow tunnel leading down, into the most secret depths of Shi’Laren. The air grew damper, thicker, and the walls became utterly alive: glowing threads streamed down them like dewdrops, leaving silvery, pulsating trails. Finally, they entered a vast chamber whose powerful, even breath could be felt on the skin.
At the center, plunging into the floor and the vault, lay something colossal—a giant fungal root, intricately woven with crystalline veins. It pulsed rhythmically, like a great heart, and with each beat, a wave of warm light ran through the hall.
— Shi’Laren lives as long as the Core breathes, — Kaelen said, and his usually imperturbable voice held boundless devotion. — It is our gift and our weakness. We heal it, we feed it, and it feeds us. Without it, we… would vanish. Simply cease to exist.
Icy horror gripped Saren’s heart. He understood everything. If Luen’teri learned of this, they would not engage in an honest war with the people. They would simply find a way to burn this heart out, and this entire beautiful, breathing world would die in an instant, vanish like a dream.
He stood on the threshold of a new world, and before him opened not just a secret, but a terrible responsibility. His knowledge, his ability to think as a strategist and diplomat—this was the real weapon the shaarn were entrusting to him. But with this knowledge, a weight settled on his shoulders that he had never sought and for which he was never prepared.
