Alvar: The Unseen

Screenplay draft

Title: ALVAR: THE UNSEEN
Credit: written by
Author: Working Screenwriter
Draft date: 10/01/2024
Contact: alvar@unseenfilm.com

FADE IN.

EXT. RIFT SPIRE CITY - DUSK

Rain sheets across broken gothic arches fused with biomechanical fractures. Crimson pulses throb beneath slick stone like veins under skin. Volumetric god rays cut through perpetual indigo dusk, illuminating mist that clings to jagged spires.

ALVAR VOSS stands alone amid collapsing masonry. His tattered dark leather armor bears glowing runes that flicker gold against shadow. Short salt-and-pepper beard glistens with rain. Piercing gray eyes fix on the horizon. A massive ornate sword rests in his grip, runes pulsing faint.

His last comrade, a young soldier in muddied cloak, staggers forward. The man reaches toward Alvar as the air tears open behind him. A rift yawns wide, swirling light and memory-devouring mist.

The soldier's form twists. Recollections spiral outward in bone-white threads, sucked into the void. His scream cuts short. He vanishes.

Alvar grips the relic blade tighter. It hums, a low metallic keen that vibrates the rain-slicked stones. The sound grows, singing against the wet tearing of the rift.

Water drips from Alvar's weathered face. Rune light reflects in his eyes. The fractures pulse brighter, biomechanical tendrils snaking across ruined walls.

The rift widens. Its edges distort reality, pulling at the edges of Alvar's own shadow. He does not move. The blade's song fills the silence between raindrops.

EXT. RIFT SPIRE CITY - DUSK

Rain sheets across broken gothic arches fused with biomechanical fractures that pulse faint crimson. Volumetric god rays cut through the mist, illuminating rain-slicked stone and the jagged spires that claw at the perpetual twilight sky. Alvar Voss stands alone amid the collapsing masonry, tattered dark leather armor etched with glowing runes clinging to his weathered frame. His short salt-and-pepper beard glistens with water. The relic blade hums in his grip, runes flaring gold against the indigo shadows.

Alvar grips the singing blade tighter. The metallic keen vibrates the stones beneath his boots.

Elara Nyx steps from shadow, raven braids dripping, clutching a glowing tome against her layered scholarly robes. Her intense green eyes fix on the rift tearing wider behind him.

ELARA NYX
The fractures spread with every pulse. Your blade drinks the light that holds them closed.

Alvar turns, gray eyes narrowing. He says nothing for a long moment, the only sound the wet tearing of distant memory drifting on the wind.

ALVAR VOSS
It kept me alive this long.

ELARA NYX
Survival is not the same as sealing. The Unseen cycle claims guardians first. The runes on your armor mark the cost already paid.

She opens the tome. Faint teal light spills across her sharp features, revealing faded glyphs that shift like living script. A low wind moans through the ruins, carrying the scent of scorched bone and wet iron.

Alvar steps closer to a fracture line in the street. The biomechanical vein throbs, leaking thin crimson mist that dissolves a nearby cobblestone into nothing. His blade's song grows louder, almost pained.

ALVAR VOSS
Then why show me this?

ELARA NYX
Because the scrolls name you. Last seal. Last key. The city will fall whether you swing or stand still.

Another rift hairline cracks open above them. God rays bend and distort around the tear. Alvar raises the blade instinctively. The runes flare brighter, casting bone-white reflections on his scarred face. Elara does not flinch.

ELARA NYX
Every strike feeds the hunger. Yet without the strikes, the Unseen walk free.

Alvar lowers the blade a fraction. Rain drips from the ornate hilt onto his glove. He studies the pulsing fractures scarring the gothic arches, then the empty street where his last comrade vanished moments before. The silence stretches, broken only by the steady drip of water on rune metal.

ALVAR VOSS
Show me the rest.

Elara closes the tome. The glow dims. She glances once at the widening rift, then back at Alvar, her measured tone unchanged.

ELARA NYX
The Archive still stands. For now. Follow or remain. The choice erases either way.

INT. ARCHIVE OF FORGOTTEN TOMES - NIGHT

Dim teal light filters through cracked vaults onto collapsed library halls. Burning scrolls curl along stone lecterns, their edges flaring crimson before blackening. Ancient tomes glow faintly on shelves fused with biomechanical fractures that pulse like slow heartbeats.

Elara Nyx walks ahead, raven braids swaying, one hand resting on her glowing tome. Alvar Voss follows three paces behind, relic blade sheathed across his back, runes dim under the teal wash. Rain drips from a high fissure onto rune-etched leather.

ELARA NYX
Every rift you close takes something with it. Not just the Unseen. The victors pay first.

Alvar stops. His hand brushes the hilt. The blade hums once, low and metallic.

ALVAR VOSS
(raspy)
My blade devours. Nothing more.

ELARA NYX
It devours what the cycle demands. Memory first. Then the one who wields it.

She turns at a lectern, opens her tome. Pages flicker with shifting script that writes itself then fades.

ELARA NYX
(precise)
The Unseen do not hunger for flesh. They strip the thread that binds us to what we were. Your comrade at the rift? Already gone from every mind but yours. Soon even that.

Alvar steps closer. A scroll ignites beside him, casting bone-white light across his weathered face.

ALVAR VOSS
Then why show me?

ELARA NYX
Because the scrolls name you. Last guardian. The fractures mark you as both seal and key. Victory widens them if you refuse the cost.

She closes the tome. The glow dims. Long silence stretches between them, broken only by the wet crackle of burning parchment.

ALVAR VOSS
I seal nothing that erases me.

ELARA NYX
Then the rifts remain open. And Vex feeds.

Alvar's gray eyes narrow. He turns toward the deeper hall, runes on his armor flickering once in the teal gloom.

EXT. RIFT SPIRE CITY - NIGHT

Rain hammers the broken cobblestones of Riftspire City. Perpetual twilight hangs low, indigo clouds streaked with faint crimson pulses from the fractures that spider across gothic spires and biomechanical ruins. Water sheets off fused stone and rusted metal veins.

Alvar Voss walks alone through the empty streets. His tattered dark leather armor clings wet to his frame, runes along the chest plate and bracers glowing faint gold. The massive relic blade rests across his back, its edge humming low against the downpour.

He pauses at a collapsed archway. A biomechanical fracture pulses crimson along the wall, reality warping in thin ripples. Alvar reaches out, fingers tracing the edge of his rune. The glow brightens for a moment then fades.

He continues forward. Boots splash through shallow pools reflecting bone-white light from distant rifts. The sword's song rises briefly, a metallic keen that vibrates the air, then settles back into silence.

Alvar stops beneath a leaning spire. He pulls the blade free and holds it before him. Rain drips from the ornate hilt. The runes pulse once, steady and deliberate, as if answering something unseen in the ruins.

He sheathes the sword without a word. The streets stretch ahead, empty and scarred, fractures breathing faint crimson light into the indigo dark. Alvar moves on, shoulders squared against the rain.

EXT. RIFT SPIRE CITY - NIGHT

Rain hammers the fused gothic spires and biomechanical fractures that vein the streets like exposed veins. Crimson pulses throb along cracked stone. Volumetric god rays cut through indigo mist rising from the gutters.

Alvar Voss stands alone on a rain-slicked ledge, tattered leather armor dark with water, relic blade strapped across his back. Runes along the hilt lie dormant. He breathes slow, gray eyes scanning the collapsing horizon.

A low metallic hum builds inside the blade.

The sky tears.

A fracture rips open above the central spire, reality peeling like wet parchment.

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