Day 116 Post-Impact
The archives were a mess.
Before the Impact, Harmony's location had been a government research facility, which meant it came with storage rooms full of pre-disaster documentation. Most of it was useless now - budget reports, personnel files, scientific papers on topics that no longer mattered. But somewhere in the chaos, there might be answers.
Sarnav sat surrounded by boxes, dust coating his fingers, searching for something he wasn't sure existed.
"You've been in here for six hours."
Nisha's voice pulled him from the fog of frustration. She stood in the doorway, holding a tray with tea and rice, her expression soft with concern.
"I'm fine," he said automatically.
"You're not fine. You're obsessing." She set the tray down and settled beside him on the floor, her presence warm and grounding. "What are you looking for?"
"Anything about my family. My father. My bloodline." He gestured at the scattered papers. "The system said the Kish family has historically served as conduits. That we sealed these things. But I don't remember any of that. My father never mentioned anything about ancient entities or magical bloodlines. He was just... Dad."
Nisha was quiet for a moment, her hand finding his. Through the bond, he felt her steady presence, the calm center she always provided.
"What do you remember about him?"
Sarnav closed his eyes. Vikram Kish. Day Zero. The memory was complicated even now, months later.
"He wasn't even there when the Impact hit. He was in Bangsar with..." He swallowed the old bitterness. "He was cheating on my mother. Died in the impact crater before he could even know what was happening."
"I'm sorry."
"The worst part is wondering if he ever knew anything about this bloodline stuff. If he died completely ignorant of what we were supposed to be." He opened his eyes, the old resentment mixing with newer questions. "Or if he knew and just... never bothered to tell me. Was too busy with his other life to pass on something that actually mattered."
Nisha squeezed his hand. "Would it change anything? If he had known?"
"I don't know. Maybe." He met her gaze. "I just need to understand, Nisha. This thing inside me, this bloodline power - where does it come from? What am I supposed to do with it? The entity said I could free them or become their cage. The system says the wives are anchors to keep me human. Everyone seems to know what I am except me."
"Then let's find out together." She pulled him to his feet. "But not like this. Not alone in a dusty room, skipping meals and pushing yourself to exhaustion." Her voice gentled. "That's not how we solve problems. That's how you burn out."
He wanted to argue. The urgency pressed against him, the knowledge that the entity would return, that time was limited. But Nisha's steady presence reminded him of something he'd been forgetting.
He wasn't alone in this.
The research lab was considerably more organized than the archives.
Jade had commandeered every available screen, data streams flowing across multiple displays. Yuki sat beside her, tablet in hand, cross-referencing information between their systems. The two of them had developed a working rhythm over the past weeks, their different styles complementing each other.
"You're researching the Kish bloodline," Jade said without looking up. It wasn't a question.
"How did you know?"
"Because I started the same search three days ago." She pulled up a display, showing him. "After the entity mentioned your family's connection to the seals, I began digging. Government records, historical archives, anything that survived the Impact in digital form."
"And?"
"Almost nothing." Frustration colored her voice. "The Kish name appears in scattered references across Southeast Asian history, but always peripherally. A Kish mentioned as a witness to a temple dedication in the 1800s. Another referenced in colonial records as a 'local spiritual advisor.' Nothing concrete."
Yuki looked up from her tablet. "I've been checking Japanese records as well. There are similar patterns - families associated with sealed sites, their names appearing and disappearing across centuries. But the knowledge was always passed orally, father to son, mother to daughter. Very little was written down."
"On purpose," Imam Malik's voice came from the doorway. The Indonesian spiritual leader entered slowly, his presence carrying the weight of someone who had seen too much. "The guardians learned long ago that written knowledge could be stolen, corrupted, used against them. The important things were kept in blood and memory."
Sarnav turned to face him. "You know something."
"I know fragments. Pieces of a larger picture." Malik moved to join them, his robes rustling softly. "In Indonesia, we had families like yours. The Setiabudhis. The Wiranatakusumas. Ancient lineages tasked with maintaining the barriers between our world and... others."
"Seal Wardens," Jade said, testing the term.
"We called them Penjaga Batas. Border Keepers." Malik settled into a chair, his movements slow and deliberate. "Each family was tied to a specific seal, a specific entity. They performed rituals at the turning of seasons. Sacrificed small things - blood, tears, memories - to keep the barriers strong. Most of them didn't even understand what they were doing anymore. Just tradition, they thought. Family obligation."
"What happened to them?"
"The same thing that happened to all such families, eventually. The knowledge faded. Younger generations dismissed the old stories as superstition. The rituals became empty traditions, performed without understanding." His eyes were heavy with sorrow. "The Setiabudi line ended in the 1970s when the last son refused to marry and continue the duty. The Wiranatakusumas scattered across the world, their connections to the seal severed by distance and disbelief. By the time the Impact came, most of the guardian lineages had forgotten their purpose entirely."
"But the seals held anyway," Yuki observed. "For thousands of years, even with degrading maintenance."
"The original seals were strong. Built to last." Malik's voice dropped. "But strong is not the same as eternal. Every generation that forgot, every ritual left unperformed, every bloodline that ended - it all accumulated. Cracks forming in walls that should have been inspected and repaired. The Impact didn't create the weakness. It simply revealed how fragile the barriers had become."
"And now the entities are waking up," Sarnav said.
"Now they sense the opportunity. The guardians are gone or scattered. The seals are damaged. And the world is in chaos, too distracted by monsters and rifts to notice the ancient prisons crumbling." Malik met his eyes. "You may be the last functioning guardian bloodline in Southeast Asia. Perhaps the world."
"But not all of them forgot," Jade said, her attention sharpening. "The system chose Sarnav specifically. That suggests his bloodline retained something the others lost."
Malik nodded slowly. "When the entity emerged in Indonesia, I felt its consciousness brush against mine. It was searching for something. Someone. The way a predator tracks familiar prey." He looked at Sarnav. "It recognized you not as a random human, but as an heir. The descendant of those who imprisoned it."
The words settled over the room like a weight.
"My father," Sarnav said quietly. "Did he know?"
"I cannot say for certain. But..." Malik hesitated. "The old guardians often kept the knowledge dormant until it was needed. They would live normal lives, raise normal families, never speaking of their heritage. Only when a threat emerged would the knowledge awaken."
"The Impact."
"Yes. The Impact should have awakened any dormant guardian bloodlines. Those who survived would have felt the call, understood their purpose." Malik's expression was troubled. "Your father died on Day Zero. Before the awakening could complete."
The implication hung in the air.
"The knowledge was supposed to pass to him," Sarnav realized. "And from him to me. But he died before it could happen."
"Which may explain why the system had to intervene directly." Jade was already incorporating this into her analysis. "Your bloodline carried the potential, but without proper transmission, you had no access to the ancestral knowledge. The system filled the gap."
"Imperfectly," Yuki added. "The system can grant abilities and provide guidance, but it can't replicate generations of accumulated wisdom. You're operating with the power but not the instruction manual."
Sarnav thought of his father. Not heroic final moments - there hadn't been any. Vikram had died in Bangsar, in bed with his mistress, while the world ended around them. There was no noble sacrifice, no passing of the torch, no last words of wisdom. Just a man caught in an affair when an impact crater erased half a district.
Had Vikram even known about the bloodline? Had the knowledge been dormant in him too, waiting for an awakening that never came? Or had he known and simply not cared enough to prepare his son?
The uncertainty was almost worse than knowing.
"My grandmother," Sarnav said slowly, a memory surfacing. "She used to tell me stories when I was young. About shadows that walked and voices that whispered and the importance of keeping promises to things you couldn't see. I thought they were fairy tales."
"They probably weren't," Jade said quietly.
"She died when I was twelve. My father never talked about her stories. Never explained them." He felt something tighten in his chest. "Maybe he was waiting until I was older. Maybe he didn't believe them himself. Or maybe he just didn't think it mattered."
"Or maybe the knowledge was dormant in him too," Nisha offered through the bond, her presence a warm comfort. "The Impact might have awakened it, if he'd survived. You can't blame him for not teaching you something he might not have consciously known."
She was being generous. More generous than Vikram probably deserved, given everything he'd put their family through. But that was Nisha - always looking for the kindest interpretation.
The Impact had come before any of them were ready. Before any knowledge could pass. And Vikram had died oblivious, leaving his son to figure everything out alone.
Maybe that was the cruelest part of his legacy.
That evening, Sarnav found himself on the observation deck again.
The compound spread out below, lights flickering in the darkness. Over thirteen hundred people going about their lives, building something new from the ashes of the old world. They didn't know about bloodlines and ancient entities and the weight of inherited duty. They just knew that Harmony was safe, and Sarnav was their leader.
He felt Nisha before he saw her, her presence a warm thread in the bond network.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" she asked, joining him at the railing.
"Some of it. Enough to understand a little more." He stared out at the darkness beyond their perimeter. "The Kish family were guardians. Seal Wardens, Jade is calling them. We maintained the barriers between worlds for generations. And now I'm the last one."
"That's a heavy burden."
"It is." He turned to look at her. "But Imam Malik said something that stuck with me. The guardians didn't carry the weight alone. They had families. Communities. People who supported them even if they didn't fully understand the duty."
Nisha smiled softly. "Sounds familiar."
"You're my anchor, Nisha. The system said the wives would keep me human. I think I understand now what that means." He took her hand. "Without you, without all of you, I'd lose myself in this. The power, the responsibility, the weight of what I'm supposed to become. You remind me why it matters."
"That's what family is for." She leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. "We carry each other."
They stood together in comfortable silence, watching the stars emerge. Somewhere out there, the entity was gathering strength, preparing for its return. Somewhere, the Purifiers were spreading their message of hatred. Somewhere, other sealed entities were stirring, communicating, planning.
But here, in this moment, there was peace.
"The system gave me more information today," Sarnav said quietly. "After Jade's research triggered something."
"What did it say?"
He pulled up the notification he'd been processing all afternoon.
[BLOODLINE ANALYSIS: PARTIAL UNLOCK]
[KISH LINEAGE: CONFIRMED SEAL WARDEN DESCENT]
[HISTORICAL FUNCTION: CONDUIT BETWEEN REALMS, SEAL MAINTENANCE, ENTITY NEGOTIATION]
[CURRENT STATUS: DORMANT ABILITIES AWAKENING]
[WARNING: FULL ACTIVATION REQUIRES THRESHOLD EVENT]
[THRESHOLD EVENT: UNDEFINED - INSUFFICIENT DATA]
The system notes that the user's father, Vikram Kish, was the intended recipient of the awakened bloodline. His death transferred the dormant potential to the user prematurely. The system has been compensating for this discontinuity since Day Zero.
Additional note: The entity's recognition of the user stems from ancestral conflict. The Kish lineage participated in the original sealing approximately 3,000 years ago. The entity remembers.
"Three thousand years," Nisha breathed. "Your family has been fighting these things for three thousand years."
"And now I'm the only one left." He dismissed the notification. "No pressure."
She laughed, a small sound but genuine. "You're not alone. You have eleven wives, over a thousand people who believe in you, and apparently three millennia of ancestral stubbornness backing you up." She squeezed his hand. "The entity doesn't stand a chance."
He wanted to believe her. Wanted to feel the confidence she projected through the bond. But he'd seen what the entity could do. Felt its power pressing against their defenses. Heard its laughter in the shadows.
Still, Nisha's faith wasn't nothing. Neither was the support of his wives, the loyalty of Harmony's people, the emerging network of alliances they were building.
Maybe that was the point. The guardians had never fought alone. They'd had families, communities, people who stood with them against the darkness.
He had that too.
"Tomorrow," he said, "we start preparing properly. Training with the formation. Developing new strategies. Finding ways to enhance Sana's Holy Light effect."
"And tonight?"
"Tonight, I rest." He pulled her closer. "With my family. Where I belong."
Through the bond, he felt the other wives respond to his words. Warmth from Sana. Fierce approval from Elena. Competitive determination from Ishani. Each of them, in their own way, affirming what Nisha had said.
They would carry each other.
Whatever came next, they would face it together.
[DAY 116]
[SARNAV: S-RANK (HARMONY SOVEREIGN - FIRST STAGE)][PROGRESS TO SECOND STAGE: 23%]
[WIFE CULTIVATION STATUS][1. NISHA - C | 2. ISHANI - C | 3. ANANYA - C][4. MINJI - D+ | 5. JADE - C | 6. SANA - C+][7. JIYEON - C | 8. SERENA - C+ | 9. ZARA - C+][10. ELENA - S | 11. YUKI - D]
[HARMONY SAFE ZONE: 1,335 SURVIVORS | 3 SECTORS]
[SEAL INTEGRITY: 92.8% (STABLE)]
[BLOODLINE STATUS: PARTIAL UNLOCK - SEAL WARDEN LINEAGE CONFIRMED][ANCESTRAL HISTORY: 3,000 YEARS OF GUARDIAN DUTY][FATHER'S DEATH: DISRUPTED NORMAL KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER][THRESHOLD EVENT: PENDING - UNDEFINED]
[ENTITY STATUS: RETREATED - GATHERING STRENGTH]
[WIVES BONDED: 11/32]