The fall felt less like a physical drop and more like being flushed out of reality itself.
Kaelen tumbled through the smooth, reinforced metal of the Thermal Exhaust Shaft, the darkness spinning around him like a centrifuge. The air rushing past his ears roared like a jet engine, a deafening cacophony that stripped the breath from his lungs and pinned his tongue to the roof of his mouth.
He didn't scream—he couldn't. The G-force pressed against his chest like a heavy stone, and the pressure in his ears popped painfully, over and over again, as he descended deeper into the earth.
He counted the seconds in his head, trying to keep his sanity anchored. Five... ten... fifteen...
He wasn't just falling down; he was falling through. The atmosphere around him shifted. The damp, moldy chill of the Upper Archives vanished, replaced instantly by a dry, static-charged heat that smelled of ozone and raw power. He was passing the containment threshold.
Then, the angle of the shaft leveled out. The rough industrial metal turned to polished composite designed to reduce friction.
WHOOSH.
He shot out of the exit like a bullet leaving a barrel.
He hit something soft—a massive, spongy pile of industrial foam dampeners, likely placed there decades ago to catch debris or unfortunate maintenance workers. He tumbled, rolled, and slammed into a padded wall, the impact knocking the wind out of him completely.
Kaelen lay there for a long moment, gasping, his chest heaving as he fought to pull oxygen back into his starved lungs. His vision swam with spots of light, and his body throbbed with a dozen new bruises. His shoulder, where the Silencer's bullet had grazed him hours ago, burned with a dull, toxic heat.
But as his eyes focused, the pain faded into sheer, paralyzing awe.
He pushed himself up, his muscles screaming in protest, and looked around.
He wasn't in a basement anymore. He was in a cathedral of science.
[ LOCATION DISCOVERED: SECTOR B2 (THE CORE) ] [ DEPTH: 500 METERS ] [ VOID DENSITY: 0% ] [ ATMOSPHERE: STERILE / MANA-ENRICHED ]
Kaelen blinked, wiping dust from his lashes. Zero percent?
In a world where the Void had poisoned the sky, the water, and the very air they breathed, seeing a zero was impossible. It was a miracle.
He stood up, dusting off his trench coat, and walked toward the edge of the dampener pit.
The Core was massive. It was a circular chamber the size of a football stadium, built from white marble and gold metal that hummed with a low, resonant frequency. It didn't look like it had been built by human hands; it looked grown. The walls were lined with thousands of hexagonal panels that pulsed with a soft, rhythmic white light, like the heartbeat of a sleeping giant.
The air here was sweet—painfully pure. It smelled of crushed flowers, ozone, and static electricity. It was the smell of magic before it rotted.
Kaelen winced. He scratched at his neck. His skin began to itch violently.
The purity of the air was reacting to the trace amounts of Void infection in his blood. The room itself was trying to reject him.
I don't belong here, he realized, a shiver running down his spine. This place is a clean room, and I'm a germ.
In the center of the vast chamber, suspended over a bottomless pit of swirling blue energy, was a circular platform. The energy in the pit wasn't water; it was liquid mana, the raw, volatile lifeblood of the Sanctuary. It swirled like a nebula, casting dancing blue shadows across the white walls.
And on the platform, resting in the center of that storm of light, lay a crystal coffin.
"Elara," Kaelen whispered.
The name felt heavy on his tongue, charged with the weight of the Librarian's warning.
He checked his weapons. The heavy revolver: [ Ammo: 1/6 ]. The Void-Glass Dagger: [ Status: Agitated ].
The black glass blade in his boot was buzzing angrily against his ankle, vibrating like a trapped hornet. It hated this place. The weapon was a cancer in a sterile room, and the Core's energy was trying to crush it.
"Stay quiet," Kaelen muttered to the knife, limping toward the bridge.
He began to walk across the long, transparent walkway leading to the center platform. His boots clicked loudly on the pristine glass floor, the sound echoing endlessly in the vast space. Click. Clack. Click. Clack.
Every step felt heavier than the last. He wasn't just walking toward a person; he was walking toward a nuclear bomb that looked like a woman. Librarian Aris's voice replayed in his mind, clearer than his own thoughts.
Do not trust her eyes.
Kaelen activated his [Observer Eyes]. He needed to know what he was walking into.
[ SCANNING TARGET... ] [ TARGET: UNIT 7-ALPHA (ELARA) ] [ CLASS: DIVINE CONSTRUCT ] [ STATUS: HIBERNATION (FORCED) ] [ POWER LEVEL: ERROR... ERROR... MEASUREMENT IMPOSSIBLE ]
The text flickered red and distorted. The System couldn't measure her. It was like trying to measure the temperature of a supernova with a plastic thermometer. The attempt alone nearly crashed his interface.
He reached the platform and approached the coffin.
It wasn't made of glass. It was made of solidified light—a single, seamless diamond carved from the air itself. Inside, suspended in a field of pressurized stasis gas, she floated.
Kaelen's breath caught in his throat.
She was terrifyingly beautiful.
She was tall, taller than him, even in sleep. Her skin was the color of moonlight—pale, luminescent, and flawless. Her hair was a cascading river of silver that floated weightlessly around her head like a halo, shimmering with internal light. She wore armor, but it wasn't metal. It looked like woven porcelain and white silk, battered and scorched from a war fought years ago.
But then, Kaelen looked closer. He saw the truth.
Her left arm—the arm that lay across her chest—was not white.
From her fingertips up to her shoulder, the skin was cracked like broken pottery. Inside the cracks, black veins pulsed with a sickening, dark rhythm. The corruption looked like ink spilled on virgin snow. It was creeping toward her neck, seeking the arteries that led to her heart.
The stasis crystal had frozen the infection, stopping it just inches from her throat.
"You're not sleeping," Kaelen realized, his voice trembling as the horror set in. "You're paused."
She wasn't resting. She was in quarantine. The Librarian hadn't locked her away to save her; she had locked her away to stop the rot from reaching her logic center.
He walked around the coffin. He needed the Keycard. He needed to unlock the guns upstairs and purge the Cultists before they burned the Archives to ash.
He saw it.
Resting on her chest, held loosely in her corrupted black fingers, was a platinum card.
[ MASTER KEY: OVERRIDE ] [ ACCESS LEVEL: OMEGA ]
It was right there. Visible through the diamond lid.
All he had to do was open the seal, pry the card from her dead fingers, and run back to a terminal. He didn't need to wake her. He could leave her in the ice, safe and frozen.
HISSS... SCREEE...
The sound tore through the silence like a knife.
Kaelen froze. He spun around, looking up at the ventilation shaft he had fallen from, hundreds of feet above in the gloom of the ceiling.
A dark shape crawled out of the hole. A Scrivener.
The creature chittered, its quill-fingers twitching as it tried to crawl down the white marble wall. It moved like a spider, defying gravity.
But as soon as its gray skin touched the pure light of the Core, it shrieked.
SCREEEEEE!
It burst into flames. The purity of the room incinerated the Void creature instantly. It didn't even leave ash. It simply ceased to exist, falling like a burning torch into the blue pit of mana below.
The monsters can't enter, Kaelen thought, a flicker of hope rising in his chest. The light kills them. I'm safe.
But then, black ropes dropped from the darkness of the shaft.
Figures in heavy, lead-lined suits rappelled down. They wore gas masks and thick rubber cloaks that absorbed the light.
Valerius's elite guard. Humans.
"The light burns the beasts!" a voice shouted from above, distorted by a heavy breathing apparatus. "But we are flesh! Proceed!"
Kaelen cursed, backing up against the coffin. Valerius knew. The Prophet knew the monsters couldn't touch the Core, so he sent men who had sold their souls but kept their bodies. Men who could walk in the light without burning.
"He is with the vessel!" the captain shouted, pointing a gloved hand at Kaelen. "Drop the payload! Neutralize the Light!"
One of the soldiers unclipped a canister from his belt and threw it.
It spiraled down, trailing thick green smoke.
CLANG.
It hit the glass bridge behind Kaelen.
HISSS.
Green gas began to fill the chamber. It wasn't poison. It was Void Mist. It ate energy. It ate light.
The white pulsing lights of the Core began to flicker and die. The hum of the room dropped an octave, sounding like a dying engine. The barrier protecting the platform wavered.
Kaelen looked at the army descending from the ceiling like spiders. He looked at the gas eating the bridge, dissolving the glass floor into gray sludge. He looked at the sleeping goddess.
He did the math in his head, desperate for another option.
Option A: I open the lid to grab the card. The seal breaks. The gas enters the coffin. Option B: I don't open the lid. They land in thirty seconds, kill me, and take the coffin whole.
But the real danger wasn't his death.
If the Void Mist touched Elara while she was in stasis—defenseless, asleep, her immune system offline—it wouldn't just kill her. It would feed the corruption already inside her arm. It would bridge the gap to her heart.
It would turn the Keeper into a Silencer.
Valerius didn't want to destroy the weapon. He wanted to steal it. He wanted to corrupt the only thing left in the world that was pure.
"Damn it," Kaelen cursed, wiping sweat and blood from his eyes. "I hate moral dilemmas."
He couldn't leave her. And he couldn't protect her while she was asleep.
He looked at the control panel on the side of the crystal coffin. It had a single, flashing red button beneath a glass case.
[ EMERGENCY WAKE CYCLE ] [ WARNING: SUBJECT UNSTABLE ] [ WARNING: CORRUPTION CONTAINMENT WILL FAIL ] [ CONFIRM? ]
Kaelen placed his hand on the coffin. The cold stung his palm. He looked at the descending soldiers, their guns raised. He looked at the gas creeping closer.
"Aris said not to trust your eyes," Kaelen whispered to the sleeping face inside the diamond. "She said you were broken."
He looked at the black veins on her arm. He looked at his own hand—the one that glitched with blue static every time he used his power.
"We're both broken," he said.
He shattered the glass case with the heavy butt of his revolver. Glass tinkled onto the white floor.
He slammed his hand onto the release button.
KZANNNGGG.
The sound was deafening. It felt like a church bell ringing inside his skull.
The crystal coffin didn't open nicely. It shattered.
Shards of solidified light exploded outward, acting like shrapnel. The explosion blew the green gas back like a shockwave. A ripple of pure, white energy pulsed through the room, knocking the descending soldiers off their ropes and sending them tumbling into the pit.
Kaelen was thrown backward. He hit the floor hard, rolling to a stop near the edge of the blue abyss.
He groaned, tasting blood. He looked up, shielding his eyes.
The mist cleared.
Standing on the platform, surrounded by drifting particles of light and diamond dust, was Elara.
She took a breath—a sharp, gasping intake of air that sounded like a vacuum seal breaking after ten years of silence.
She opened her eyes.
They weren't human. They weren't soft. They held no gratitude.
They were burning wheels of gold fire, spinning with raw data and ancient rage. Gears of light turned within her pupils, processing the world in milliseconds.
She looked at her corrupted hand. She flexed the black fingers, watching the infection pulse now that the stasis was gone. She looked at the descending soldiers who were scrambling to recover on the bridge.
Then, she looked at Kaelen.
The temperature in the room plummeted. Frost began to form on the glass floor.
She raised her hand. The air around her began to boil, shimmering with heat.
"Intruder," she spoke.
Her voice wasn't soft. It sounded like a choir of bells, layered and distorted by static. It was the voice of a machine trying to remember how to be a god.
"You... woke... the... pain."