Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users

The operative assigned to the submerged gate moved through the forgotten channels of a world that had stopped remembering its own corners.

He passed through maintenance shafts half-swallowed by rust, ducked beneath low ceilings held together by memory and wire, and climbed down ladders that creaked like bones left too long in the dark.

He didn't need light. He knew the way, or at least enough of it to get there. The path wasn't meant for visitors.

Eventually, he reached it.

The gate, but surprisingly, it didn't open when he arrived.

It didn't react; it just sat there, old and half-sunken into the seabed, its edges crusted with silt and pressure-slick grime. But there was no mistaking the feeling around it.

It was watching.

It was not like a sensor, not like a trap. It was just... watching. It was aware, in the way only the oldest things could be.

He didn't go closer. He didn't test it.

He placed the sensor on the edge of the platform, took a silent scan, and turned to leave. He didn't need more. Whatever was behind that gate—it wasn't asleep.

It was waiting.

And he didn't want to be the one standing there when it stopped.

The second operative—the empath—moved through the capital like a ghost with a schedule.

She wore a courier's robes, walked with a soft step, and carried scrolls with just enough importance to move through temples without question.

She didn't draw attention or stand out. Her records were clean, fabricated, and perfect.

Her mission wasn't to deliver anything.

It was to find a child.

Not one marked by politics or power. Not a noble born into great houses or watched by rival factions.

Just a little girl.

Five years old.

Living in a household barely holding onto a sliver of recognition. No lands, no titles. A family name that wouldn't get you into anything more than the outer courtyard of a mid-tier festival.

But in that bloodline, somewhere back in the faded branches, something had rooted itself.

Passed down through marriages that had been erased from ledgers, buried in birthrights that had long since lost meaning.

She waited until nightfall.

Slipped into the house without making a sound.

No wards stopped her. No spirits stirred.

Not until she reached the child's room.

Then, it hit her.

Like walking into a story she wasn't supposed to hear.

This wasn't power. It wasn't potential.

It was a claim.

The child had been marked, albeit not recently.

From the moment she was born.

Not by Crescent. Not by her bloodline.

By something older.

Something divine.

Not a gift.

Not a blessing.

Ownership.

The empath didn't touch her. Didn't breathe too deeply. She stepped back slowly, turned, and left the way she came.

Whatever had marked that child, it wasn't looking to share.

The third operative, the curse-breaker, headed straight for the places no one liked to talk about. The old districts.

Where the edges of Crescent authority frayed and bent. Where people traded in words and whispers, and no one asked for receipts.

He didn't walk like a hunter.

Didn't flash his name.

He waited. Then followed.

A known courier. Someone was flagged months ago for suspected relic movement. The man didn't even know he was being watched.

It took time.

But eventually, the trail led him to the real source.

Not a vault.

Not a shrine.

A dying man. Curled in a dim back room behind a shuttered apothecary, he was breathing shallow and slow, unaware that something was burning beneath his skin.

It wasn't a curse.

It was a shard.

Etched directly into his chest, between the ribs, lines drawn with something more precise than any blade.

A memory shard.

Still active.

Still pulsing.

The curse-breaker moved fast. Quiet. Clean.

No pain.

Just extraction.

He sealed it. Contained it.

Left the man to die in peace, unaware of what had been inside him.

Then turned and walked back into the dark.

At the shrine, the woman who had summoned them sat once again.

The shard lay before her.

Still faintly warm from its last breath.

She opened it.

Placed her fingers over the lines and let the memory rise.

It wasn't complicated.

Just a map.

Drawn in skin.

Marked with clear points, coordinates that didn't exist on any public record.

The destination: a city.

New. Ten years old. Built fast. Built cheap. A project passed between developers like a tax write-off. Crowded, messy, full of lights.

And unknowingly raised over something ancient.

A temple.

Not Crescent.

Not even human.

Half-sealed. Half-forgotten.

Now starting to breathe again.

She stared at the final image.

Then closed the case.

And whispered the only words her rank was allowed to speak.

"They're preparing a second descent."

Then she stood.

Turned to the east.

And began readying the fires.

While Crescent's shadows moved, deep in the forests where light passed slow and the ground hummed with buried memory, something older stirred in response.

Elowen stood beneath the oldest trees. Her gloves were tight over her fingers, her posture calm.

The message had returned—not carried by bird, or sealed in wax, or transmitted through tech.

It had come in a bark. In stone. In memory.

Her people didn't hunt like Crescent did. They didn't kick down doors or break through walls.

They listened.

And when the leylines whispered of wrongness, they moved.

The first to leave was a pathwalker. Lean, silent, hood drawn low. He moved with the trees—not against them.

Let the wind decide which root to follow. Let instinct carry him to a clearing used only once every few decades, when the stars were in line and the soil remembered its own name.

But when he got there, the trees didn't welcome him.

They didn't sway.

They didn't creak.

They stood still.

And when he placed his palm to the ground, the truth met him.

The earth wasn't calm.

It was afraid.

He carved a token, left it behind, and vanished without a sound.

The second was a seer—young, sure-footed, trained in the ways that had no name. She moved across branches instead of paths, a blur between bark and breath.

She followed the pulse of the past to a reflection pond—a place where old voices echoed if the wind was kind.

But the pond wasn't still.

It rippled. Constantly. No breeze. No insects.

Just motion.