Dust still hung in the air, shimmering in the glow of Cael's shoulder-lamp.
He stood at the edge of the collapse, staring at the blinking icon projected by the system. The rubble still crackled with energy—soft pulses of distorted heat that made the air hum against his skin.
[REMNANT SIGNAL FOUND]Core Fragment Detected: Status – Dormant
Signature: Architect-Level, Origin UnconfirmedEstimated Age: 3,100+ Sparks
Extraction: ManualWarning: Compatibility Instability – 63%
Three thousand Sparks.
That was over eight Deepturns. The world had already ended long before Cael had gone into cryosleep, and this fragment had still been here—hidden, radiating its silent call.
He climbed carefully over the stones, mindful of every step. A wrong move could destabilize the makeshift trap he'd used to kill the Tunnelstalker. But the creature was silent now, crushed beneath tons of engineered debris.
He found it—buried between two slabs of broken shielding plate.
It was no larger than his fist. A jagged, semi-translucent core with fine etchings like veins of crystal and circuitry combined. Faint light pulsed through it—not steady, but organic, like a struggling heartbeat.
Cael reached out.
The moment his fingertips touched it, the system surged to life.
[CORE FRAGMENT INTEGRATION IN PROGRESS]Architect-Class Echo Detected… Parsing data…
Fragment Category: Blueprint Memory + Echo Vision
Would you like to proceed?
[Y/N]
He hesitated.
Then pressed Y.
The light consumed him.
—
He stood in a city that no longer existed.
Towering arches stretched into a sky made of crystal and stormlight. Bridges suspended between impossible heights glowed with living runes. At the center of it all, a spire—not built of stone or metal, but of will—rose like the core of a thought made physical.
And then it was burning.
He turned—no, he was turned—toward a man in black and white robes, arms outstretched toward a broken ring of orbiting constructs. His voice echoed not with sound, but with code.
"The Cycle must collapse so the Pattern can begin.""They won't listen. So we bury it."
Cael tried to move. Couldn't.
He was a ghost in someone else's death.
Flames rose. Towers fell. The world folded in on itself, like a schematic being erased mid-draw.
—
When he came to, he was on his knees beside the rubble, breath ragged.
The fragment was gone—absorbed into the system.
The HUD flared.
[NEW BLUEPRINT UNLOCKED]Structure: Corelight Beacon (Prototype)Function: Generates high-efficiency directional energy pulses. Can be used to project power to off-grid modules, activate dormant zones, or signal deep-space arrays (unverified).
Rarity: UNKNOWNTier: 2.5
It was… too advanced.
He didn't have the materials. Didn't have the workforce.
And yet—now it lived in him. Ready. Waiting.
He stood slowly.
The fragment had shown him a world of impossible beauty. And its destruction.
Someone, long ago, had buried a seed of knowledge here—hoping someone like him would find it.
And now that he had?
The Deep would no longer be quiet.