Morethorne: Soulbound
Long before Caelen and Calora, long before the Lock, the world belonged to power. Magic ruled the old age, but forbidden technomancy changed who could reach for it. Through the ancient....
Long before Caelen and Calora, long before the Lock, the world belonged to power. Magic ruled the old age, but forbidden technomancy changed who could reach for it. Through the ancient lattice, one will could become many. A single practitioner could command the fractured remnants of captured minds, using them as calculation, fear, memory, force, and obedience. Great works that once required circles of trained magic users could now be forced through receivers fed by stripped souls. To Varric Morethorne, this is not horror. It is progress. Rising through conquest, feared by enemies and valued by those who profit from his victories, Varric sees the lattice as the answer to an unfair world. Magic users inherit power. Forbidden technomancers take it. Every burned mind is only a cost. Every conquered city is only supply. Every scream is only proof that the system still works. But the age is already beginning to rot beneath its own strength. The lattice is hungry. Its greatest workings consume the minds that power it, and the forbidden technomancers who depend on it have no intention of stopping. They will not surrender their reach. They will not ask permission. They will not accept restraint. As cities fall and the stolen lattice spreads, the world moves closer to a war that cannot be won by power alone. Somewhere beyond Varric’s certainty waits a different path: resonant technomancy, a form of power built not on force, but on relation, consent, and balance. And when Varric’s path finally crosses that truth, the future of the world will begin to change. This is the story of the age before the Lock. The rise of forbidden technomancy. The cost of the ancient lattice. And the choices that will one day seal magic away for thousands of years.