Anya was still standing at the entrance, exactly where Riven had left her, with her gaze fixed on him.
He crossed the room slowly. When he reached her, he crouched low so their eyes were at the same level. "You're in there somewhere," he said. "I know you can understand me. Maybe not all the words, but I know I can reach through..."
She didn't move.
"The system down here seems to respond to you. This is not just a guess, you've been triggering things. It's like everything here already knows you, which is why I also think you can stop it."
Her gaze drifted slightly somewhere inward, like she was trying to reach deep within herself.
Riven tried again. "This zone is collapsing, and we're almost out of time. Talia is doing what she can from the surface, but if we can't stop this…" He trailed off. There was no point in explaining the rest. There were too many variables, too much she likely wouldn't comprehend, so he kept it simple.
"If you know how to stop this, if there's anything you can do..." his voice thinned slightly, "I need you to do it. For everyone still up there."
He didn't know how much time was left, twenty minutes, maybe less.
Anya blinked, stepped away from the edge of the room, and settled her eyes on the platform at the center. As she approached, the stone surface began to glow faintly, revealing the flow patterns etched into it. Her fingers moved across them, tracing the lines. With each touch, the patterns lit up, forming soft lines of light that followed her fingertip like a current. She paused, then continued. There was a rhythm to it. A sequence.
It was the same instinctive precision Riven had seen before in the patterns she used to form in the sand back at the village. A faint vibration passed through the floor beneath him. Then he saw the lights along the nearest wall change, fading from pale blue to white.
Anya didn't react. She just kept going.
Then the voice came. "Welcome back, Glasswing."
It was a female voice, gentle, almost warm, and most of all, aware. Nothing like any system prompt he'd heard before.
Startled, Riven straightened and stepped back for a second as he re-scanned the room. The countdown kept going in the corner of the screen: fourteen minutes now. The screens stayed frozen, no alarms, no alerts. Just that voice, and Anya, who hadn't moved at all, as if whatever had just acknowledged her was actually expected.
Then the tendrils he'd seen before emerged from narrow seams in the walls and ceiling, thin lines of light unfolding with movements that looked strange but precise.
Riven took another step back, unsure what they were reaching for or how he was supposed to respond.
Anya turned slowly, almost like she'd been waiting for a signal. She moved across the control room toward a curved recess in the far wall. It was subtle, half-shadowed, and easy to miss. Riven wouldn't have seen it if she hadn't walked straight toward it. The shape fit her. The panel adjusted slightly as she approached, rotating enough to accommodate her height and posture. Then, a central ring unfolded from the wall, revealing an array of barely glowing nodes. She stopped in front of it.
For a moment, Riven thought she was about to speak. Her mouth opened slightly, as if trying to form a sound, but nothing came out of it.
The tendrils slipped forward, thinner this time, smoother, and attached directly to her skin: one touched the base of her spine, while the other reached the back of her neck. Two more slipped down from the ceiling, aligning gently against her temples.
Her jaw relaxed slowly, and her eyes steadied.
Riven moved forward instinctively. "Anya..." He didn't know what else to say, or even if he was supposed to intervene at all.
The wall panel beside her brightened. Symbols, moving diagrams and patterns spilled across its surface. Then the voice returned, surprisingly, directed at him this time. "Glasswing is stable, Riven."
He froze. Was it really speaking to him? How? Why? What did it mean?
The screen nearest him lit up, displaying waveforms and vertical columns of text he couldn't parse fast enough.
"What are you doing to her?" He asked with a sharp voice.
"I am listening," the system replied.
A subtle pulse ran through the floor as the platform beneath Anya adjusted, aligning cleanly with the recess while new lights activated, tracing the chamber's outline in different patterns.
Then Anya slowly turned her head, meeting his eyes. She raised her hands just slightly, reaching toward him.
He hesitated at first, but then stepped forward and took her hands. As they met, another cluster of tendrils appeared from some part of the ceiling, reaching down until one brushed the side of his neck. And before he could think anything, the vision came: a system map unfolded behind his eyes, layered, structured, impossibly wide, revealing the network beneath the node. It was a web of interlinked pathways stretching far beyond anything they'd mapped.
Anya looked at him and smiled a genuine smile, the first he'd seen from her since they met. But then her smile faded as the lights around her changed from pale white to a faint amber. The vibration under the floor changed, too, subtle but faster, more precise. Her hands remained in his, the tendrils still connected, but her expression had stilled, more distant now, as if something behind her eyes had shut, leaving the rest of her in place.
The voice returned. "Remodeling suspended. Structural override confirmed."
The countdown froze just above 6 minutes.
Riven took a deep slow breath. The numbers had been running in his brain for minutes, unrelenting, and now they had just… stopped. For a moment, he let himself think it might hold.
Then static broke through his comm, like a signal that was pushing through a dozen unstable layers. Cassian's voice came through behind it. "Riven, are you there? Things are settling up here... did something actually work?"
Riven's eyes stayed on Anya. "The sequence stopped," he said. "She did it."
"Wait. Something else is happening."
The chamber darkened. The wall to Riven's left changed slightly. Then the platform beneath Anya's feet realigned, too, this time retracting into the floor by a few centimeters, as if resetting.
The system spoke again, calm as ever. "Node no longer required. Removing from network."
The lights around them dropped to red.
Anya jolted as a pulse struck the base of her neck with a deep click. Her body folded before she could realize, and Riven stepped in and caught her just in time. The tendrils pulled back all at once, slipping back into the walls.
Then the first shockwave hit, like the chamber was moving on its own axis. Dust dropped from the ceiling, and the steady vibration that had held steady for minutes spiked suddenly, then faltered.
"Cassian," Riven said sharply. "I think this place is collapsing."
"I see it, you need to get out of there now. There's an exit through the east wall. Talia is sending you the most direct path in a couple of minutes. Just hold on, okay?"
Riven moved with Anya in his arms. The floor vibrated beneath him, the whole level beginning to tilt, like pressure was drawing away from one side and pushing into another. A few panels burst near the wall behind him, discharging heat and light. He kept moving through it.
Each step pulled him farther from what the place might've held. Every corridor he passed, every screen gone dark or wall now crumbling, felt like a door closing. The data, the system pathways, the logic behind all of it, it was slipping through his fingers, and there was no time to stay, no chance to go back. Whatever this node had known, it would die with it.
He tightened his grip on Anya and pushed forward, jaw clenched against the thought. It shouldn't have mattered, not compared to getting out alive, but it still felt like failure.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a memory surfaced. A moment from years ago, his sister, sitting across from him at a half-lit terminal, elbow-deep in wiring, smiling like none of it was hopeless.
"You never know which thread will hold the whole thing together. That's the one you can't afford to cut, even if it looks frayed."
He hadn't understood it then. Maybe he still didn't. But he kept running.
Then Cassian's voice came again. "I'm heading to the junction point. Get there and don't look back."
Riven didn't answer, he couldn't spare the breath. He passed through a narrowed column space, half-blocked by fallen debris, ducking low as the ceiling dipped. Anya's weight was awkward, but not unbearable. What actually slowed him was the angle of the floor, moving in unpredictable patterns and making traction unreliable.
The corridor narrowed as light filtered through the smoke and dust, and through the haze, he spotted movement. It was Cassian, already at the edge of the junction with one hand outstretched. "Come on!"
Riven didn't hesitate. The last stretch was uneven, the floor starting to slope sharply, but he pushed through it and reached Cassian's outstretched hand.
Cassian pulled them both across just as the corridor behind them gave way.
The moment they cleared the threshold, the tunnel behind them caved in completely, and the red lights blinked out, until they disappeared entirely behind a wall of smoke.
Silence settled around them.
Cassian let go and stepped back against the wall with his shoulders dropping as he exhaled, hands braced on his knees. Dust clung to his coat, sweat sliding down his temple through dust and mud.
"Well," he managed to say, "That was..."
He stopped, and the joke slipped away before it could land at all. There wasn't enough left in him to lean on humor anymore.
Riven didn't answer. He was already lowering himself beside Anya, easing her down with care. She was limp but warm, and most importantly, still breathing. He drew her coat back, revealing the markings, thin, pale lines tracing along her arm just beneath the sleeve, exactly where the tendrils had touched. He held a hand over them, unsure whether it was right to touch them.
Cassian dropped beside him. "You good?"
Riven didn't answer. The question didn't make sense to him yet. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on Anya. He couldn't stop thinking about the moment her hand had reached for his, about the smile she gave, and the way it had vanished the second the system let her go. Whatever she'd been connected to, it had taken a part of her with it.
Cassian tried again. "What happened down there?"
Riven shook his head. "I don't know yet."
They sat there for a few seconds, enough for adrenaline to settle and for their breathing to return to normal.
Then came the footsteps. Someone was approaching.
Cassian was the first to move. He stood with a quick change in posture that didn't hide the tension, eyes narrowing as he turned toward the sound.
A few figures stepped in from one of the collapsed corridors. At first, they were just shapes. Then rifles. Then faces. Five of them.
And at the front: Bram.
He looked like he'd already decided what this scene meant before he even stepped into it.
"I warned you," Bram said with a flat and sharp voice.
Cassian's hand moved towards his belt, but it was already too late, and they both knew it. Bram's men were spreading out with their rifles lowered but ready.
Riven stood slowly, hands open, making no move to resist.
"We're not a threat," he said.
Bram's eyes moved to Anya.
"We'll be the judges of that," he replied coldly.
He gave a short nod, and two of his men stepped forward.
Riven stepped in without thinking, "Easy…", and as he said it, one of the rifles lifted slightly in warning.
Bram's voice cut through. "You brought this down on us. It's always the same with outsiders like you, chasing what was never yours to take."
"If we hadn't gone down there, this entire zone would've been gone by now."
Bram gave a short shrug. "We wouldn't be dragging fallout if you'd stayed out of it."
The two men carefully lifted Anya, who was still unconscious.
Riven stayed still, didn't resist, not without knowing what that fallout would be.
"You're coming too. Try not to trip on the way out," Bram said without looking back.
Neither of them answered. They just walked.