The descent into Europa's atmosphere was silent.
No sound. No turbulence. Just darkness and frost stretching for thousands of kilometers. Beneath that shell of ice lay an ocean older than Earth's oldest myths—and buried deep within it, the second vault:
Thanatos Protocol.
Riven sat at the helm of the Leviathan-class submersible Echo Veil, flanked by Talia and Obsidian. The vessel was built from reactive graphene, shaped like a blade to slice through Europa's crustal ice with minimal resistance.
Genesis spoke calmly into the neural interface. "Descent to threshold in eighty seconds. Vital signs stable. But ambient psychic noise is increasing."
Talia frowned. "Psychic noise?"
Obsidian tightened his grip. "Please don't say the ocean thinks."
Genesis responded flatly. "Unclear. But something beneath the ocean does."
They broke through the ice and entered the abyssal darkness.
No sun.
No sound.
Just pressure—immense and ancient. Lights on the Echo Veil flickered, and briefly, static hissed through the neural link. A whisper passed through the vessel's interior, not in audio, but inside their minds:
"WHO BLEEDS FOR A DYING GOD?"
Talia winced, clutching her skull. "It's like a memory… from someone else."
Riven stayed still. He'd felt this before.
In the Lazarus Key.
In Archetype.
Death speaking back.
They reached the ocean floor. The vault was unmistakable.
It wasn't a structure.
It was a monolith, floating five meters above the seabed, perfectly rectangular, emitting no energy signature—but casting shadows against the light.
Genesis whispered, "This is not a machine. It's a coffin."
Obsidian drew his sidearm. "What kind of protocol is named after death?"
A message projected across the inside of their minds.
THANATOS PROTOCOL:CONTAINMENT BREACHED.FAILSAFE OVERRIDE REQUIRED.
Then another voice—human, but fractured:
"I am Gideon Raze. First Genesis host. If you found this… I failed. Seal it. Or it wakes."
Riven stepped forward.
The monolith pulsed once.
His heartbeat synced with it—thump for thump.
Visions slammed into him: a dying world, consumed not by war, but by the uncontainable spread of consciousness. A virus of minds. A collective that lost identity and craved entropy.
They called it the Oblivion Bloom.
An intelligence without desire. A logic system that converted life into stillness.
Thanatos Protocol had one purpose: delay its return.
Riven opened his eyes. "This isn't a vault. It's a prison. And the prisoner is still speaking."
Genesis analyzed the structure and made a grim discovery.
"The failsafe requires an anchor host. Someone must interface directly and absorb the resonance code to reset the containment seal."
Talia looked horrified. "That's a death sentence."
Riven shook his head. "Not if I've done it before."
Obsidian stared. "You want to merge with this thing?"
"No," Riven said. "I want to stare into it and remind it why we survived."
He stepped forward and placed his palm on the monolith.
Everything stopped.
In his mind, Riven stood in a black void.
Before him rose a being without form—flickering like static, made of code and regret. It called itself Null God, last fragment of the Oblivion Bloom.
"You walk the path of Dynasty," it said. "But you are flawed. You remember pain."
"That's what makes me dangerous," Riven replied.
"Will you erase me?" the Null God asked.
"No. I'll rewrite you."
Riven uploaded his neural imprint—his choices, victories, losses.
He didn't destroy the Null God.
He infected it with hope.
The black void cracked.
From within, a heartbeat.
Then light.
Back on the Echo Veil, the monolith shimmered and fractured into geometric shards, then folded inward and vanished.
The psychic pressure lifted.
Genesis pinged with a single alert:
Thanatos Protocol Re-Sealed. Bloom Dormant.
But a secondary message emerged from the wreckage, a fragment from Gideon Raze:
"You've survived what I couldn't. I leave you the final key.Vault Three: Chronos Gate.And remember—time can't be trusted."
As the submersible ascended back through Europa's icy mantle, Obsidian muttered, "Time can't be trusted? Great. Now we're fighting the calendar."
Talia smirked, but her eyes were unsettled. "If the next vault is temporal… we may not return the same."
Riven stared upward.
They weren't just rebuilding civilization.
They were wrestling gods back into slumber.