The workshop beneath the observatory buzzed with quiet energy. Luma sat hunched over a dismantled frequency tuner, cheeks smudged with graphite and a half-eaten ration bar tucked into her side pouch. Across the table, Rhon tapped away at a cracked-screen console, while Selka adjusted the knobs on a resonance scanner that purred like a cat in sunlight.
"I swear if I hear one more beep from that thing, I'll rewire it into a coffee maker," Luma muttered.
"That's actually a pretty good idea," Rhon replied, not looking up. "We'd finally get Ion to stop brooding in silence and start brooding while caffeinated."
Selka grinned. "Focus, both of you. We're close. One of Kaelen's entries had coordinates—but encoded with phasing harmonics. Took us all night to reverse it."
Luma perked up. "Wait. You cracked the location?"
"Not just that," Rhon said, swiveling the console around. "We think it's a vault beneath the Spire. Or rather… beneath the Underlight Citadel. Some sort of central archive hidden in an entropy-null zone."
Ion entered just then, brushing snow from his coat. "You're certain?"
Selka nodded. "As certain as we can be without a parade and a GPS. We followed the harmonic fingerprint through layered data—spectral bouncebacks, gas density distortions, even gravitational echo points."
Luma blinked. "You tracked gravity… like sonar?"
"Exactly," Selka said. "Used fluctuations in wave timing—kind of like a bat echolocating through fog made of spacetime."
Ion exhaled slowly. "If it's what I think it is, the Citadel holds records from before the Masters rose. Possibly even Kaelen's final theorem."
Luma stood, gauntlet crackling softly. "Then we're going."
Later That Night – Overlook Ridge
Their campfire crackled beneath the open sky, embers drifting like red stars. The group huddled around a paper map—annotated, taped, and stained with rain. Selka traced a finger along the ridge's contour.
"The entry is through here—this forested pass," she said. "But there's an energy dome over the perimeter. It's not a full barrier—more like a harmonics field. Anything without the right frequency signature will get scrambled like eggs in a blender."
Rhon pointed to a device strapped to his chest. "That's where this comes in. It samples our body's natural resonance—the tiny EM pulses we give off—and amplifies them to trick the dome into letting us pass."
Luma raised an eyebrow. "So we're hacking a forcefield with… vibes?"
"Pretty much," Rhon said.
Ion frowned. "We'll have to move carefully. The Bureau's sensors will pick up any disruption in entropy flow."
"And Tarn Vesh isn't known for forgiving curiosity," Selka added.
Juno adjusted her goggles, already loading supply packs onto a hover-cart. "Then let's not give them time to notice. We sneak in, grab the data, and get out."
Luma hesitated, then nodded. "But if we find anything that can help more people understand what's happening… we don't just take it. We share it."
Ion looked at her, something almost proud behind his eyes. "Agreed."
As the fire burned low, they went quiet, each person staring into the flames—thinking of the city above them, of the lies stitched into science, and of the truths hidden in the codes of two brilliant engineers.
The path to the Underlight Citadel had been found.
Now all they had to do… was walk it.