Iron. Steam. Dread.

Centuries ago, desperate for a fuel source to end unending resource wars, a coalition of industrial scientists built The Core-Bore — a subterranean engine of impossible scale designed to tap unlimited geothermal energy from the planet's mantle.

They didn't hit magma. They hit a metaphysical fault line. The drill shattered the dimensional barrier, piercing into the dimension containing The Aether — and the resulting collapse annihilated the facility, fractured the sky across the continent, and permanently cracked open a wound that has been bleeding reality ever since.

Today, soldiers of The Tempered are conscripted into the mud and wire of The Slag Wastes to secure the volatile Aether Conduits before The Flux swallows the last safe zones. The gear is as likely to detonate as it is to fire. The Aether is hostile to physical law. And nobody knows what lives inside it.

The Aether

The Aether is not a place. It is an extra-dimensional frequency — a parallel vibration of reality that bleeds through where the barrier was cracked. It behaves like hyper-volatile radiation, but prolonged study has revealed a parasitic undercurrent: the energy doesn't just leak. It pushes. It reacts. It seeks weakness in containment vessels and human minds alike.

Prolonged exposure causes Conduit Sickness. Muscles twitch as if puppeted by unseen forces. Eyes cloud over with teal luminescence. The body becomes a living battery — until the host burns out from the inside. All Vanguard soldiers show early-stage symptoms. Broadcasters are further along than most. They know it.