Shattered Chains and Vanishing Mentors

Staltz awoke in the real world to the smell of toasted bagels and coffee, but his mind was already hammering steel in the Pale Forest. Scrolling through the official forums on his phone while eating, he skimmed thread after thread of players boasting about their own impossible, AI-scripted odysseys: one had accidentally triggered a continental war by sneezing on a princess; another had befriended a dragon that turned out to be a heartbroken god in disguise. With a grin that threatened to split his real face, he phoned work, croaked out a convincingly grave “food poisoning,” and dove straight back into full-dive.

He materialized beside the forge in a swirl of pale motes. Don did not even glance up; the ancient smith’s hammer rose and fell in perfect, mindless rhythm.

“Swords delivered yet, apprentice?”

“Just heading out now.”

Don grunted acknowledgment. Staltz gathered the twelve finished longswords into a floating bundle (thank the devs for weight-reduction enchantments) and marched the familiar gloomy road to Nocturne Veil.

At the barracks, Sergeant Valthor accepted the blades with theatrical disgust.

“About bloody time. I was looking forward to dragging you both back in chains before sunset.” He spat a glob of black ichor onto the flagstones. “Piss off, bone-bag.”

Staltz gave a mental chuckle at the sheer cartoon villainy of it all and left without a word.

When he returned to the clearing, Don was quenching a dagger that screamed faintly as it cooled. Staltz planted his feet, crossed his arms, and asked the question that had been burning in his hollow chest since the night before.

“Do you want to be free?”

Don’s hammer froze mid-air. Slowly, he turned, crimson eyes narrowing. “Do not toy with an old skeleton over dreams he buried centuries ago.”

Staltz opened his inventory and materialized the Eldritch Blacksmith Hammer. The air itself seemed to inhale sharply. Violet unlight crawled along the weapon’s head like living veins.

Don recoiled as though struck. “You fool. You absolute madman. You forged it.”

“The voices don’t seem to bother me,” Staltz said with a shrug of bare clavicles. “Perks of being Touched, I guess. Put your foot on the anvil.”

For a long moment Don did not move. Then, with the solemnity of a man stepping onto his own grave, he removed the split-side boot that accommodated the binding cuff and rested the silver-shackled ankle on the anvil’s face. The runes flared in warning.

Staltz swung.

There was no dramatic explosion, no thunderclap. Only a brittle crystalline crack, as though the world itself fractured along a hairline. The silver cuff shattered into glittering dust that was immediately sucked into the hammer’s voids-black surface. The binding spell unraveled like burnt thread.

Don stared at his bare ankle bone for three full heartbeats that neither of them possessed.

“I’m… free.” His voice cracked like old parchment. “Actually free.”

He bolted into the cabin. Drawers slammed, wood splintered. Thirty seconds later he burst out transformed: every inch of midnight bone swaddled in dark wrappings, face concealed behind a featureless porcelain mask that glowed with soft necromantic sigils—the twin of the one Staltz would soon find.

“If you ever wish to see me again,” Don called over his shoulder as he sprinted toward the deeper forest with impossible speed, “seek the undercity beneath Vyr’Kalthor! That is where the truly unforgiven go to live.” His voice faded into the trees. “Take whatever you want and run, boy—the guards will smell the broken binding before the hour is out!”

Staltz did exactly that.

He descended through the trapdoor, opened every crate, and vacuumed the remaining ore into his inventory:

Iron Ore ×33

Copper Ore ×25

Silver Ore ×30

Mithril Ore ×1 (from a small iron-banded chest he simply pulverized with one casual tap of the eldritch hammer)

Old tools he ignored; a hidden side chamber contained training dummies draped in moth-eaten armor. Only two pieces remained:

Mask of the Unforgiven (glows faintly, conceals identity and reputation titles from all but the most powerful divination)

Wolf-Fur Lined Iron Bracers (+8 defense, minor cold resistance, set bonus unknown)

He equipped both. The mask settled over his skull with a soft click, its inner surface warm as living skin. His infamous title “The Naked Prodigal” vanished from above his head, replaced by a neutral <<Wanderer>>.

Somewhere in Nocturne Veil, alarm bells began to toll—deep, mournful tones that carried the promise of manhunts.

Staltz took one last look at the empty forge, shouldered his hammers, and followed the trail of crushed undergrowth Don had left behind. Toward Vyr’Kalthor. Toward whatever came next.

Unbeknownst to him, the AI overseers of Might and Magic: A Realm Reborn registered the severance of a centuries-old punishment flag tied to one of the game’s most meticulously hidden lore threads. Global event timers shifted imperceptibly. Certain ancient entities, long dormant, turned their attention toward a naked skeleton marching mask-first into legend.

The crime Don had committed was so profound, so woven into the fabric of the undead nations, that entire quest lines had been sealed behind it for years of real-world time.

By shattering that cuff, Staltz had just yanked a cornerstone out of the world’s foundation.

And the world, being alive and vindictive, noticed.