Memory Mist at Pringle Manor

The teleportation circle worked. That did not mean it worked well. The Ex Force vanished from Arx Fire Plaza and reappeared before the gates of Pringle Manor in a shimmer of blue-gold energy. The pale brick manor rose ahead of them with clockwork parapets, arcane fencing, and overgrown hedgerows. It should have been a clean arrival. Instead, the dormant glyphs at the gate flared. Old magic bled through the landing site and released a wave of emotional memory-mist. The visions came fast and wrong. Oskar saw a foggy graveyard, familiar names he could not pronounce, and an older version of himself melting as it warned that he had only begun to inherit what he had been promised. Nick saw an amphitheater full of static faces and a robed figure playing a violin with an iridescent feather. Dhaz saw a snowy Stormcall street and a blurred figure rushing toward him through wind. Ash saw fire and felt recognition without enough clarity to name it. Eveline reeled too. She apologized, dizzy and off-balance, then identified the problem: her grandfather's travel glyphs were old, overpowered, and poorly maintained. The circle was still using mid-Centrum-era mapping tech, something thirty or forty years out of date. It had gotten them there, but it was throwing dangerous feedback into anyone unlucky enough to arrive through it. Dhaz stepped in. He read the overloaded glyphs, found the surge point, and stabilized the system before it could erupt again. The circle quieted. The manor gates opened. Point Pringle had made its first impression: brilliant, inherited, neglected, and not entirely safe.