The transport ship didn't roar when it arrived.
It hummed.
Like it was politely asking reality for permission to exist.
Ken always hated that hum. It wasn't mechanical. It was responsive. As if the machine could hear what the wearer was thinking. Azure flux flickered once around his fingertips, syncing with the ship for just a moment before he closed his fist and forced it still.
He didn't want it talking today.
Tojo, Ozaru, Nina, and Ken stood in a half-circle, watching the shimmering CDC shuttle settle on the violet-cracked surface of Eclipsera-5. The Riftfall site was sealed now, but nobody felt like it was closed. Just covered.
Tojo muttered, "You ever feel like some things aren't over even when they're over?"
Ken didn't look at him.
"They're not," he said.
Alkhaz walked past them, calm as usual. Not a scratch. Not out of breath. But something in the way the air moved around him made even the sand notice him now.
Even the silence noticed him.
The hatch opened. The CDC emblem blinked alive—two interlocked circles splitting light around a fractured core.
Council-class transport. Headquarters bound.
Nina crossed her arms, her Crimson stone faint under her sleeve. Flickering. Like it was thinking.
She didn't like when it thought.
"You coming?" Ozaru asked her.
She nodded, eyes still lingering on the place where the porcelain mask had vanished.
—
Inside the shuttle, no one spoke for at least ten minutes.
It wasn't exhaustion.
It wasn't shock.
It was realization.
They weren't leaving a battlefield.
They were leaving a memory.
—
CDC Headquarters — Genesis Council Citadel Orbiting Helion-3
The Citadel didn't have walls. It had living circuits. You didn't walk through corridors. The corridors walked around you. Metal, silver, crystal, and light—all folding in shifting geometric symmetry, always changing, always aware.
Tojo stepped inside and almost forgot to breathe.
"Every time," he whispered. "I feel like this place remembers more than we do."
Ozaru nodded.
Ken didn't answer. He was already ahead, upgrade-band on his wrist blinking as it logged his return with Sigma-level clearance.
Nina walked confidently, her Captain-level entry making the floor pulse once under her boots. They didn't need ID cards. They were their ID cards.
Two Sentinels approached—automated watchguards, shaped like humanoid silhouettes sculpted from liquid steel.
"Captain Nina Kuruzama," one intoned.
"Vice-Captain Ken of Azure Division."
"UNIDENTIFIED Ozaru."
"And… Tojo."
"WHO THE HELL IS THESE BOTH"
The Sentinel paused slightly when it said that last part.
Most stones didn't pause machines.
The Sentinel didn't bow. But it did step back.
Respect, without acknowledgment.
They stepped into a healing sector. The walls unfurled and re-formed into lounge modules. Beds made of adaptive bio-tissue read their vitals and molded accordingly.
No bandages. No drips. Healing here wasn't about the body alone. It was about calibration.
The universe remembered them differently now. Their own Genesis needed to match that memory.
Ken didn't sit. He stood near the glass, hands in pockets, watching Helion-3 burn gold-orange beneath the Citadel. His Azure flickered occasionally—never wildly, just faint. Like a reminder.
Ozaru sprawled back, exhausted. Tojo collapsed face-first on the bed. Nina… didn't sit. She paced. Like she could feel something trying to speak to her through silence.
And Alkhaz?
He wasn't with them.
He walked alone.
Past the healers. Past the Sentinel gates. Past the Archive Gate—which briefly flickered when he walked by. Like something old had recognized something older.
He stopped at a window that wasn't a window.
It looked out into space. But space didn't look back.
He didn't speak. Didn't frown.
He just lifted one finger and traced something faint on the surface.
A porcelain outline.
Half-mask.
Not solid. Not real.
But seen.
"If you've come this far," he said calmly, quietly, "then we both know it isn't about Genesis anymore."
The reflection didn't answer.
But it didn't vanish either.
That was more concerning.
He sighed gently, almost amused.
"They're not ready yet," he whispered.
Silence didn't argue.
Back in the recovery bay…
Tojo sat up. "We should be shouting about this, right? Celebrating? Freaking out?"
Ozaru threw a pillow at him. "I vote for food first. Then crisis."
Nina finally stopped pacing. Her eyes were sharper now, calmer—not scared. Aware.
"Ken," she said.
He didn't turn, just hummed.
"That mask… or whatever it was. It didn't feel like it wanted to hurt us."
Ken nodded slightly.
"It wasn't warning us," he said.
Tojo looked confused. "Then what was it doing?"
Ken finally turned.
His Azure flickered once. Like an eye opening.
"It was introducing itself."
A pause.
Nobody spoke.
Even the Citadel lights dimmed for a moment.
Ozaru sat up. "To us?"
Ken looked out the glass.
"No," he said. "To something looking at us."
EXECUTIVE SUMMONS — GENESIS COUNCIL
A summons blinked on Ken, Ozaru, Nina, and Tojo's comm displays.
All four.
Same time.
Not random.
Not about Riftfall incident report.
This was different.
Ken's Azure blinked.
Nina's Crimson warmed like embers.
Ozaru's pale-blue Creation pulsed—soft, almost curious.
And deep in Tojo's chest—Destruction pulsed, like a heartbeat but older.
Alkhaz didn't look surprised when the summons echoed across the Citadel walls.
He was already walking back.
Already knowing this next part wasn't optional.
He didn't say, "You are stepping onto a bigger board now."
He didn't say, "You're being watched."
He only said one thing as they stood before the Council Chamber doors.
"From here on," he said softly, "it won't be about powers anymore."
Nina swallowed. "Nina swallowed.
"What will it be about then?"
Alkhaz looked at her, not with mystery, not with some wise mentor aura. Just plainly. Like someone who had already seen the answer and was tired of watching everyone else miss it.
"Choice," he said.
The Council doors unfolded—not opened—like they had been listening.
The chamber didn't look like a hall of authority. No throne. No long table. No dramatic lighting. Just six elevated rings of light, suspended in air, each one holding a silhouette. Not physical figures. Not holograms. Something in between.
Oversight-class projections.
Ozaru whispered, "The Genesis Council…"
But before awe could settle—something else did.
A presence.
Old, curious, and not loud—but definitely not silent. Something in the air that didn't belong to stones, powers, or even Council authority.
Ken felt it first. His Azure flickered—not wild, not unstable. Just alert. Like it recognized a pattern it had been waiting for.
Ozaru's creation stone glowed faintly. Not radiant. Not flashy. Just alive.
Tojo, for once, didn't move.
And Nina… her Crimson didn't flare. It didn't burn.
It pulsed.
Like a heart.
The silhouettes didn't speak. They didn't need to.
A voice resonated—but nobody said it.
It did not speak like a command. It spoke like a pattern.
"GENESIS IS NOT A POWER."
Tojo tensed. His pulse synchronized with something he didn't understand.
"GENESIS IS HOW THE UNIVERSE REMEMBERS YOU."
For a second… no one breathed.
Ozaru frowned. "Wait—then how did Riftfall move—how did that mask—?"
The pattern-voice continued. Calm. Almost kind.
"YOU DID NOT ENCOUNTER AN ENEMY."
Ken's eyes widened.
"YOU ENCOUNTERED A WITNESS."
Silence.
Something clicked in Ken's mind. He didn't speak it out loud. But he didn't need to.
Genesis wasn't about fighting.
It was about being seen.
Nina blinked, slow. "Then—Riftfall wasn't trying to open. It was trying to… show?"
Alkhaz nodded once.
Ozaru exhaled. "And the porcelain mask—"
Ken finished softly.
"—wasn't threatening us. It was watching. Testing if we could see it back."
Tojo looked at his hands.
"Why us?"
This time, Alkhaz answered—not as teacher, not as captain, not even as friend.
As someone who had been asked that a very long time ago.
"Because some people use Genesis," he said quietly.
"Some fight with it…"
He looked right at them.
"But a few—very few—are remembered by it."
Then one of the silhouettes shifted. The chamber dimmed. Not dark, not sinister—just focused.
They saw something form in the center of the chamber.
At first, it looked like dust.
Then like broken light.
Then like… memory.
Shape assembling.
Mask.
The same porcelain-white mask from Riftfall.
Except this time, it wasn't watching.
It was waiting.
Everyone felt it.
Not a presence.
Not a monster.
Not a threat.
Something that didn't belong to this moment…
…but was still part of their story.
The Council's voice didn't speak.
Because it didn't need to.
The mask was the message.
Not enemy.
Not ally.
Witness.
Waiting to see what they would become.
And then—to everyone's surprise—it didn't speak to Alkhaz.
It faced Ken.
Not threatening.
Not calling.
Just looking.
Ken felt his Azure stir. Not react. Not flare.
Connect.
Choice.
Alkhaz didn't move. Didn't interfere.
He just said one thing.
"Chapter Seven begins when someone answers it."
The mask floated still.
Nobody spoke.
But everyone knew…
Some choices don't wait.
The air inside Null Sector didn't calm after the mask vanished.
It remembered.
Ozaru didn't say a word. He just stood there, palms open, like he was waiting for something to land that never would. Nina's Crimson flickered once—not like fire, but like a pulse trying to sync with something distant. Tojo stepped forward, then stopped. Not because he was scared, but because, for the first time, he understood this wasn't something you ran toward.
It was something you had to become ready for.
On the far side of the Riftfall echo, Ken's silhouette faded into particles—not disappearing, just… syncing with something on the other side. Like he was aligning with a rhythm only his Genesis could hear.
Alkhaz didn't move. He just watched the silent space where Ken had stood.
No panic. No rush.
"Now," he said quietly, "Genesis starts remembering him."
And for the first time—
they all understood what that actually meant.