The Academy's alarms were not loud. They were precise—sharp lines of light and command that cut the air and rearranged minds.
One moment the Inner Wing hummed with study and repair; the next, every screen and rune bled red.
Vale moved like a blade. "Gather in the Grand Hall. No one leaves. Secure the perimeter. I want the Council on line in ten." Her voice left no choice.
Students poured from classrooms and labs, faces pale, uniforms trembling with static from the Network's panic. Word spread without sound: the Architect's core had picked up a full note. The Void Cradle's pulse climbed. The fragments they'd stitched together were singing in answer.
Stark felt it first as a pressure at the base of his skull—soft, insistent, like a name brushing past his ear. The mark at his wrist surged hot, burning through bandage and skin as if it had been waiting for this second.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
Architect Activation: Increased Resonance
Void Cradle: Progressing → Critical
Stark — Sync: 96% (Warning)
He staggered toward the Grand Hall with Lira and Aiden at his sides. The Ash Phantom followed like a shadow with teeth—less visible here, but heavier for it.
Inside, the Grand Hall was a wash of faces and static light. Vale stood before the assembly, but even she was small beneath the dome that displayed the city's ley-lines converging at a single, pulsing point—the Void Cradle.
"We have minutes," she told them. "We cannot predict what the Architect will send. It will test you. It will look for the Summoner-line, and it will try to use them as keys."
A murmur rippled through the crowd. Fear tastes different when it's shared.
Aiden pivoted to Stark, eyes dark. "So what now? Hide you in a vault until the Network forgets?"
"No," Stark said. His voice was rough. The mark thrummed like a caged bird. "We go to it. We close it."
Behind Vale, a holo-panel blinked. Council liaison Korr's face filled the screen—sharp, unreadable. "We advise containment protocols," Korr said. "Isolate the node. Evacuate non-essential personnel. Do not engage directly."
Vale's jaw tightened. "Containment risks a cascade. If the Architect anchors to a city node—"
"Then we lose Sanctum-9," Korr finished. "We advise quarantine."
Arguments rose. Voices tangled. The Assembly fractured into gridlocked counsel.
The mark on Stark's wrist pulsed, louder, urgent. It wanted a sound, a word, a response.
Something moved in the dome's reflection—a ripple like oil on water—then another, and another until the air itself seemed to breathe.
A shadow fell across the floor.
It condensed from the dome's projection like smoke becoming a thing. Chains of blacklight braided together, forming a figure that stepped off the hologram as if from a stage.
Every head turned. The room dropped its breath.
[Entity Manifestation]
Designation: Herald of Chains (Avatar)
Origin: Void Cradle — Projection/Proxy
Threat Level: Extreme
The Herald was no spirit the students had learned to catalog. It wore armor of rusted chain and shattered script; its head was a crown of broken code; its voice came like two tones at once—one old, one new.
"Summoners," it intoned. The word rolled through the dome. "Child of the chain, answer."
The mark burned. The Ash Phantom rasped like a dying bell. "It called you by name."
Aiden moved first—spear a blur. The Herald did not flinch. Chains snapped out and swallowed his spear as if it were thread.
Vale barked an order. Guards surged forward with barrier rods, their light contacting the Herald and splintering into ash.
The Herald laughed, a sound like grinding gears. "Futile. I am the Architect's whisper made solid. I test to unmake. Give me the key—or I will take it."
Stark felt the key turn in his chest. The urge to reach, to answer, to let the chain do what it had been designed for rose like a tide. If he yielded, the Architect's voice would take shape inside him and speak through his bones.
He saw, impossibly, a vision: the cradle opening, the Architect's throne rising, a city folding into the shape of chains. He saw faces—friends, strangers—caught in a net of memory.
"Do not," the First Summoner's voice echoed faintly at the edge of his mind. "Listen. Do not answer."
The Herald stepped closer. Its chains coiled, tasting the air. The mark's glow crawled up his forearm. The room felt small. The moment felt enormous.
Aiden lunged again, reckless. The spear struck a chain; the chain wrapped and tightened, trying to drag the weapon—and Aiden—toward the Herald's center. The guard barriers flared but the Herald pulled through them like tearing cloth.
Lira let the wolf loose. It leapt, teeth bared, jaws closing on a tendril. The tendril dissolved into sparks where the wolf's bite met it, but the Herald did not falter.
Vale shouted, "Focus on the links! Break its projection!"
They hammered, spears and seals and spells chipping at the figure. The Herald flickered—once, twice—but when it roared its chains grew longer, snaking outward to snag runes and sever their anchors.
Stark felt his will like a line fraying in his hands. The chain inside him hummed a melody of promise—recall, power, the easy answer of obedience.
He tasted the word that would open the gate.
He could not speak it.
Instead, he remembered the First Summoner's link—the single name that was not an order but a story. He took that tone and shaped it in his mouth like a breath.
"Listen," he whispered—soft enough that only he and the Herald could hear—then louder, so the sound carried like a thread through the dome.
The word had no power of command. It had the shape of an offering.
The Herald stopped. For the first time, its head tilted like a curious beast.
Chains slackened.
Vale seized the moment. "Now! Break the anchors!"
The guards struck the runic anchors embedded in the floor. The dome's projection convulsed. The Herald's form flickered, its armor cracking into script, its chains thinning like string.
But the creature did not fall. It turned its head slowly and focused on Stark with a patience like a tide.
"You sing like a child," it said. "But children grow."
Its voice pushed against the fabric of Stark's mind—gentle, corrosive, and impossible to resist. The mark shivered. The Ash Phantom screamed and, for a heartbeat, looked younger and older at once.
"Hold," Lira snapped, grabbing Stark's sleeve. "Do not answer."
Stark closed his eyes. He felt the word on his tongue, the open door waiting. He thought of people: the First Summoner who trusted him with a link, Lira who stood beside him in every dark stairwell, Aiden who had threatened to end him and now bled beside him in the same fight, Vale who studied him like someone studying a weather system before the storm.
He chose—small and stubborn.
He sang the First Summoner's chord again, low and plain. It was a patch to a wound, not a key to a lock. It was a story offered where the Herald expected orders.
The Herald recoiled like a being slapped by sunlight. Its chains slackened, its projection shuddered.
Then, with a noise like iron striking stone, the Herald dissolved into slivers of code and drifted—harmless now—back into the dome. The void's point dimmed a fraction.
The Grand Hall lay in a stunned silence.
Korr's face on the panel was pale. Vale's shoulders trembled once and steadied. Aiden's chest heaved. Lira's wolf licked Stark's hand, grateful and ancient in a way that made his throat burn.
[System Notice]
Herald Neutralized — Temporary
Stark — Sync: 94% (Stabilized)
Warning: Architect Influence Unabated
They had held the line. They had not given the key. But the Architect had listened. It would learn from the Herald's failure, and the node would remember their faces.
Stark sank to his knees, exhausted. The mark on his wrist still glowed, but different now—less like a leash, more like a wound healing.
Vale's voice was soft when she spoke. "You did well. But understand this: every time you sing, it learns a part of your tone. It will come again—sharper, quieter, or in a friend's voice."
He nodded, throat tight.
Outside, the dome's pulse slowed slightly—but the map they carried glowed with a single, terrible certainty: the Void Cradle was waking, and it would not stop until it had spoken its name.