FFXIVWrite 2026 Day 1 — Key

Author’s note

This is an AU I’ve wanted to write for a while, and this prompt was the perfect excuse. Even… even if Azem’s key turned out to be Sir Not Appearing In This Fic.

I can’t promise that I’ll continue the AU on subsequent FFXIVWrite days, but either way, I’ll probably go back and refine it sometime in the future. Right now it’s just word-vomit in the FFXIVWrite tradition.

The dome came down around Enuo’s domain, a vast ocean littered with floating archipelagos. Enuo objected to this before involuntarily providing ample aether for the Endless and thousands of souls for the living.

The other voidsent within the dome were less reluctant to offer themselves up, once they understood that it would mean an escape from the mortal coil.

Calyx could not understand their willingness — their eagerness to die. The Thirteenth that Halmarut had described to him sounded like a paradise, a land where none had died for thousands of years. She had mentioned the insatiable hunger for mortal aether, yes, but that was a problem easily solved by the implementation of the Endless, who required corporeal aether but did not crave it as the voidsent did.

Sphene had made the offer to all those voidsent who had offered their aether, that they might live on as Endless, but none had accepted. It baffled Calyx, but he had no complaints. There was more aether to go around, this way.

He tabbed idly between monitors. People were going about their lives on the streets of Solution Nine. Endless milled about in the paradise that was Living Memory. Archaeologists delved beneath the waves in Heritage Found in search of ruins or relics. Mortals were ever so devoted to remembering the past. Calyx cared more for the future.

Out of bored curiosity, he sent a camera drone to follow one archaeologist in their diving suit.

It was widely thought that no hostile voidsent remained within the dome. When the sentinels ventured outside the dome, yes, the voidsent there had no understanding of what Alexandria had to offer them. But those within understood there was nothing to fear, and everything to gain from these otherworldly settlers.

That was what everyone thought, anyway.

A creature like a massive shark rose out of the depths and lunged for the archaeologist Calyx was monitoring. His eyes went wide with surprise. There was nothing he could do to protect them and no sentinels patrolling in this area — a stupid oversight.

The shark swallowed the diver in one gulp.

Calyx wrinkled his nose in disgust. The diver’s regulator would attempt to revive them, but they would have no room to do anything but die again. He glanced to another screen and looked this person up. A woman, Amethyst, with a balance of several hundred souls. Ah, that was truly unfortunate.

A sudden motion from the first monitor drew Calyx’s eye again. The shark-like voidsent writhed and twisted. Calyx saw the telltale glow of a regulator’s resurrection process.

No, it can’t be…

The shark’s form bulged grotesquely. Mutated into something more humanoid. Grossly muscular arms sprouted and clutched desperately at their face. A round shape sprouted on one side of the voidsent’s head, blinking with the familiar, reassuring lights of a regulator.

Ah. Calyx dropped his stylus pen. This was not ideal.