The Iron Sanctuary grew silent in the wake of Valen's message, the glowing glyphs on the walls pulsing slowly, like the breath of a sleeping colossus. Elias stood motionless, the echo of his brother's voice unraveling every thread of certainty he had stitched into his mind over the years. Valen Vayne—dead to the world, a martyr, a mystery, a ghost. But now, Elias knew better. He had seen it. Felt it.
His brother wasn't gone.
He was transformed.
The residual heat from the projection lingered in the air, mixing with the chilled ozone that clung to every steel panel. It smelled like burning circuits and frost—the scent of forbidden science and halted time. Slowly, the light in the Sanctuary adjusted, revealing a corridor Elias hadn't noticed before. It hadn't been there. Not until Valen had awoken.
Without a word, Elias moved forward, his long coat sweeping behind him like the tail of a specter. The corridor narrowed into a chamber lined with memory tanks—glass cylinders filled with a silvery fluid that shimmered with the motion of frozen echoes. Each tank housed a different artifact: a glove etched with Arcanet runes, a blackened crown twisted by Rift energy, a mechanical spine wrapped around a cracked crystal core.
At the far end, a terminal flickered to life.
Its screen displayed a file.
"Echelon-01 Archive Access: Project Riftborne."
Elias touched the panel.
A flood of data burst forth in light and sound. Valen's voice narrated over ghostly images:
"They thought I was trying to harness the Rift. That I had gone mad. But I wasn't seeking power. I was unraveling our origin. You see, the Rift isn't just a rupture. It's a mirror—a veil. Behind it lies the world before memory. The world before time. We... we are not the first Vaynes."
Images surged: Valen in an obsidian lab-coat, standing beneath a sky filled with twin moons; laboratories suspended above abyssal craters; humanoid figures wreathed in light stepping through shimmering portals. Then: chaos. Explosions of light. Screams. Valen crawling through a collapsing corridor, gripping a bloodstained drive.
"I saw the echo of a forgotten empire. I saw what broke it. I sealed myself away before it could take me. I became the lock and the key."
The projection ended with a pulsing sigil.
Mireille, standing behind Elias now, whispered, "Your brother didn't just disappear. He sacrificed himself."
Elias nodded, slowly. "And he left a map."
The sigil exploded into a holographic constellation—six points of light scattered across the globe. At the center: LUX-SEVEN.
Elsewhere.
The city of LUX-SEVEN shimmered beneath the aurora skies of the Northern Rim. Suspended on gravity pillars above glacial cliffs, the city was a vertical marvel—all chrome towers and gold-veined roads, where the rich lived in glass gardens and neon sanctums. The scent of blooming helithorn flowers drifted in the air, mixed with the ozone of the high-altitude engines keeping the city afloat.
Deep beneath the central tower, a vault stirred.
An attendant in a teal cloak passed through security gates of silver and ultraviolet, carrying a sealed container. Her heels clicked softly against the obsidian floors, echoing into silence. At her hip, a datapad displayed a warning: "Archive Fragment 3: Active Pulse Detected."
The vault door hissed open. Inside, resting in a field of anti-time flux, was another prism—twinned with the one Elias held. It pulsed in sync.
The artifact was awake.
Back in the Sanctuary, Elias turned to Mireille.
"He wanted us to find the others. This is what he died for. Or what he became for."
She met his eyes, and for a moment, the weight of history passed silently between them.
"Then we leave tonight," she said. "For LUX-SEVEN."
The Iron Sanctuary began to seal itself again, the machines returning to sleep. The scent of copper faded. But something ancient had been disturbed.
And far above, where auroras danced and secrets waited, the next truth shimmered, just out of reach.