The Museum of Ages stood at the southern edge of the Aethelberg like a mausoleum refusing to surrender to time.
Its architecture shifted depending on where one stood. From the front it resembled a cathedral carved from pale stone and greymarble, enormous pillars rising toward a domed ceiling engraved with scenes from forgotten wars.
From the sides it looked almost fortress-like, its walls reinforced with old Flowstone veins that glowed faintly beneath the surface at night. And from above—if one could somehow see it from the skies—it resembled a massive circular sigil embedded into the capital itself.
People often came expecting a museum.
They left realizing it was closer to a tomb.
Emma Gable did not enter through the front doors. He walked through its central halls in silence. Morning light filtered through stained-glass windows overhead, casting fractured colors across ancient relics displayed behind reinforced crystal. The museum was quiet today. Only a handful of nobles, students, and tourists wandered its galleries beneath the watchful eyes of attendants.
The first hall belonged to the Era of Kingdoms.
Modern history.
Safe history.
Paintings depicted the founding of Aerthos, the rise of noble houses, the expansion of trade routes across the continent, and the formation of institutions like the Royal Enforcement and the Hunter's Bureau. Weapons carried by legendary generals stood mounted beside banners stained dark with centuries-old blood.
A plaque beneath one rusted sword read:
Blade of King Kael I
Used during the Unification Wars — 412 EK
Emma passed it without slowing. The world was currently in the two thousandth year of this era, 2000 EK.
The next halls grew older.
The Era of Heroes.
The museum became quieter there.
Massive murals stretched across entire walls depicting Saints battling horrors large enough to swallow cities. One sculpture showed a woman tearing open the jaws of a dragon-like beast with her bare hands while another depicted a man standing alone before an endless black tide beneath a burning sky.
The dates changed.
1240 EH.
2788 EH.
4999 EH.
Five thousand years. An entire era reduced to fragments.
Most relics from the Era of Heroes were damaged beyond repair. Weapons melted into abstract shapes. Armor fused into crystalline masses corrupted by ancient Flow exposure. Text faded beyond comprehension. Many displays lacked explanations entirely because no one truly understood what they were looking at anymore.
One section displayed a broken crown suspended within a containment field.
Its plaque simply read:
Unknown Monarch — Late Era of Heroes 4999 EH
Recovered beneath The Old Ruins
Nothing else.
No kingdom.
No language.
No identity.
History became increasingly uncertain the further backward one looked.
The Era of Gods occupied an entire isolated wing. Unlike the Heroic Era, this section felt… reverent. Not because of religion, because of absence. Very little survived from that period.
The records agreed on only a few facts:
Humanity once lived in terror. Then the Gods descended and liberated mankind from extinction. Civilization spread. Cities rose. The world changed.
Everything else was fragmented mythology.
One mural depicted colossal figures descending from the heavens wrapped in light while monstrous beasts knelt beneath them. Another showed humans huddled inside caves while enormous shadows og a bird wreathed in lighning and a mountainous lizard moved beyond the firelight.
But none of it could be verified. No bodies of gods existed. No confirmed divine artifacts.No universally agreed historical record.
Only stories.
And before that?
The Era of Beasts.
Practically nothing remained.
No functioning cities had been recovered from that age. No preserved records. Only scattered ruins buried beneath continents and oceans alike.
And before even that—
The Era Primordial.
A complete void.
Scholars debated endlessly whether civilization even existed then.
Emma descended a spiral staircase near the back of the museum. The public never noticed the guards but that was intentional. The tunnel branched. Emma took the leftmost passage without hesitation. Another door. Another sigil. Another corridor.
He passed the first checkpoint. A woman sat behind a desk, reading a romance novel. She did not look up.
"Evening."
"Morning."
He walked past.
The second checkpoint. A man polishing a dsiplay. He glanced at Emma, who sctratched his left ear. The man nodded, returned to his work.
The third. A young woman rearranging some artifacts. She smiled.
"Long walk?"
"Always."
A janitor pushing a cleaning cart glanced at him briefly before scratching twice against the handle with his thumb.
Recognition.
Emma responded by adjusting his glove slightly.
Another checkpoint passed.
Further below, the architecture changed. Further below, the architecture changed. The corridor grew narrower. The walls wept moisture. The air grew heavy.
The refined stonework of the museum gave way to older foundations—massive dark bricks worn smooth by time. Ancient tunnels stretched beneath Aethelberg like veins beneath skin.
The Old Ruins.
Nobody truly knew who built them.
Some researchers believed modern Aethelberg had been constructed atop the ruins of a far older city dating back to the Era of Heroes. Others argued it belonged to an entirely separate kingdom that predated Aerthos itself.
Whatever the truth was, the underground stretched for kilometers even beyond current Aethelberg.
Entire districts existed beneath the capital.
Most had been sealed. Some tunnels collapsed under age. Others remained unexplored and contained dangerous levels of corruption. Entire chambers saturated with lingering Flow phenomena capable of driving ordinary people insane within minutes.
And some sections had simply become… strange.
Geometry warped.
Distance changed.
Perception behaved incorrectly.
Naturally, the government claimed them. The Enforcement used certain passages for covert movement. The Inquisition maintained hidden interrogation sites below the city. The Nobles and the wealthy purchased secured underground compounds as emergency shelters in case of riots, coups, or war.
Humanity adapted to danger the same way it adapted to everything else.
By monetizing it.
Humanity adapted to danger the same way it adapted to everything else.
By monetizing it.
Eventually Emma reached a dead end, or rather, what appeared to be one. The wall ahead shimmered faintly.
Space Distortion.
Even before crossing it he could feel the corruption beyond. Ancient. Dense. Heavy enough that weaker Flow users would begin hallucinating almost immediately.
The Forbidden Vault had been deliberately constructed here.
The logic was horrifyingly simple.
The underground chamber possessed an unknown corruptive essence powerful enough to threaten even Paragons like Ortis Mellou. So the kingdom had decided to store forbidden relics there because the ambient corruption counterbalanced the corruption emitted by the artifacts themselves. Equilibrium through mutual annihilation.
Like forcing two singularities to crush one another indefinitely. One mistake and everything collapsed.
Emma stepped through. The sensation was not pleasant. It was like two hench giants each holding one arm and pulling in opposite directions. The sensation lasted less than a second yet felt like drowning sideways.
Then the Vault appeared.
It did not resemble a building.
It resembled the inside of a hive suspended outside reality. Walkways stretched in impossible directions. Some paths curved vertically along walls. Others hung upside down across distant ceilings. Entire staircases rotated slowly through open air. Gravity shifted depending on where one stood. Hexagonal containment chambers glowed throughout the vast structure like embedded stars.
Researchers in white coats and blue robes. Technicians in protective gear. They walked on the walls, on the ceiling, on platforms that rotated slowly through the void. They carried clipboards and artifacts. They talked to each other through enchanted crystals. Others operated containment equipment reinforced with Anti-Flow alloys.
The Vault itself technically did not exist within reality anymore. Spatial Severance kept it detached from the physical world like a bubble floating outside existence. Without that membrane everyone inside would already be dead.
Even with protection, researchers worked in shifts. Too much exposure led to corruption. Those leaving the Vault after a shift underwent partial memory cleansing to reduce long-term contamination risks. Those begining underwent same although it was to set up mental blocks to prevent them from knowing too much.
Far below, something screamed. Emma did not react.
A Hollow shuffled against a distant containment barrier several levels beneath him.
Its body resembled a dried corpse wrapped around jagged crystal growths. Hollows were what remained of Flow users who had overconsumed their own life force until nothing human survived. Only an empty husk whose insinct was to consume.
Nearby floated several Wraiths inside suspended containment cylinders. Their bodies no longer physical—only unstable masses of luminous energy writhing endlessly against reinforced seals.
Similar to Hollows, Wraiths were once Flow users but they had overused thier energy beyond the limits till their bodies burned away leaving only a mass of energy that retained no true will. Only the instinct to posses another being in hopes of gaining a corporeal form.
Researchers utilized both creatures to maintain the Vault as they possesed no ego and therefore were difficult to corrupt. They were also used within controlled experiments involving relic interaction and corruption response.
Emma personally hated those experiments.
He moved through the hive-like corridors until reaching a descending lift.
The outer sectors belonged to the Punishers who oversaw the vault and researchers from Fazhan University, one of the foremost institutions studying Flow phenomena on the planet.
The lift descended for nearly a full minute.
When the doors opened Emma entered a laboratory filled with researchers arguing loudly around floating projections and perculiar apparatus.
Nobody noticed him initially.
"…I'm telling you the resonance pattern is asymmetrical!"
"That's because you calibrated it incorrectly!"
"My calibration was perfect!"
"Your academic record says otherwise!"
Emma cleared his throat.
Silence.
Several researchers turned simultaneously. One slender woman sitting atop a counter while smoking grinned immediately. She was in her late forties, her wild dark hair was streaked in grey. Her lab coat looked perpetually one step away from violating every known safety regulation.
"Ah," she said.
"The walking regulation manual arrived."
Emma ignored the insult.
"Chief Researcher Firdaus."
"Captain Emma Gable."
"What brings you here, has your closeted attraction to older women pushed you to propose to me?"
Emma's expression did not change.
"I am here to check on the artifact."
Firdaus grinned and hopped off the counter.
"Still stiff as a board, I see."
Firdaus snapped her fingers.
"Bring out the fluffy thing."
One younger researcher disappeared briefly before returning with a containment box. Emma immediately frowned.
"No gloves?"
The researcher blinked.
"Hm?"
"Researcher—the proper procedure requires—"
"It's fine." Firdaus said rolling her eyes.
"That is a breach of protocol."
"Relax, Captain." Firdaus reached for the box. "I've been doing this since before you were born."
"Its a wonder how you lived so long"
"Hmpf, kids these days have no respect for thier elders at all..."
She opened the box and inside rested… a ball of fluff.
It was a small, rounded object covered in white hair. It genuinely resembled an oversized feather duster with soft white hair running along its length.
Emma's expression darkened instantly.
"Put that down immediately."
"Oh relax," Firdaus said lazily.
"It's harmless."
"That conclusion should not be reached without—"
Firdaus held it up.
"See? Harmless."
Emma stared.
"That is... not what I expected."
"Neither did we."
She set the artifact on the table.
"We already tested it."
Another researcher spoke up enthusiastically.
"We ran it through every test we could think of. Spectroscopy. Resonance analysis. Corruption. Thermal destabilization—"
"It caught on fire once," someone added.
"Golden fire," added another.
"And sometimes it becomes mist."
"Stylized mist," the first researcher clarified importantly.
Emma pinched the bridge of his nose.
"So what exactly does it do?"
Firdaus shrugged.
"Nothing."
"That is impossible."
"It absorbs Flow," one researcher explained. "And standard detection methods can't properly identify it."
"But otherwise?"
"Nothing."
"We even tried feeding it beast essence," another said proudly.
"It sneezed."
There was a pause.
"So all sides involved used an excessive amount of force for this thing?" Emma said.
Firdaus poked it. The artifact twitched. Emma stared silently at the fluffy thing.
"Maybe the artifact isn't fake," one researcher muttered thoughtfully.
"Maybe. Or maybe we're missing something in our approach. That's why we need to question the pirate you caught."
Firdaus tilted her head.
"Oh, about that," Firdaus said casually.
"He's here."
Emma froze.
"What?"
"The pirate."
"You transferred an active prisoner to the Vault?That is a breach of—"
"Yes yes, breach of protocol, collapse of civilization, wrath of bureaucracy, we know." Firdaus waved dismissively.
"There was something weird about his psyche and it would be too dangerous for Cognitive Class interogators to try anything so they brought him here. The explanation sounded legit so i gave a thumbs up." Firdaus gave a thumbs up.
"There are Inquisitors with him already."
"And no one thought to inform me?"
"You're being informed now."
Emma exhaled slowly through his nose. Every instinct in his body hated this entire facility.
"Where?"
Firdaus pointed deeper into the lower sectors.
Emma turned immediately.
As he left, one of the researchers looked toward Firdaus.
"So what do we do with the fluffy thing?"
Firdaus glanced toward the artifact. It twitched slightly, as though reacting to Emma's departing Presence. She turned it over in her hands.
"It's harmless," she said. "We might as well display it in the museum. The public loves mysteries."
She smiled.
"And my daughter Todd loves fluffy things."
She poked the artifact once.
"And if this thing suddenly destroys reality later, at least it'll have looked adorable first."