The Mule-class freighter lived up to its name. It was a jarring, groaning vessel that felt less like a ship and more like a collection of spare parts having a violent disagreement in the emptiness of space. The constant vibration through the deck plates was a teeth-rattling bass note to the symphony of creaks and distant, worrying clangs. In the main compartment, the two factions from another world found their own ways to cope with the journey.
Aurélie Nakano sat with her back straight against a bulkhead, a worn leather-bound journal open on her knee. A pencil was clamped between her teeth, its wood bearing the faint marks of her frustration. Her steel-gray eyes were fixed on a half-finished stanza, her brow furrowed in concentration that seemed to defy the ship's violent shudders.
The locust's wing, a shattered glass...
Against a sky of...
She gnawed gently on the pencil. 'Broken promises'? Too melodramatic. 'Forgotten past'? Cliché. The hunt for the perfect word was a battle as demanding as any she'd fought.
Nearby, Charlie Leonard Wooley had somehow carved out a bubble of academic serenity. He was immersed in a thick, data-slate he'd procured, its title glowing faintly: A Preliminary Taxonomy of Jovian Flora & Fauna. He occasionally made a small, satisfied "hmm" and adjusted his pith helmet, which he had stubbornly refused to remove.
Bianca Clark had spread a roll of flimsy schematic paper across a crate she was using as a desk, using a stylus to sketch furious, intricate additions to the submarine's power conduit designs. Her tongue was stuck out in focus, her other hand unconsciously twisting a lock of her escaped black hair.
On the other side of the compartment, the atmosphere was different. Kuro and Souta sat close, their heads inclined towards one another. Their conversation was a low, hushed murmur, a stream of quiet words lost under the ship's complaints. Kuro's gloves hands were steepled, while Souta's tattoos coiled restlessly, forming and unforming silent, intricate maps and symbols on his skin.
Ember, utterly bored, had coaxed one of Souta's ink creations into the form of a lopsided frog and was gleefully trying to catch it as it hopped erratically across the grimy floor, her mismatched eyes alight with a simple, destructive joy.
The relative quiet was shattered by a crackle from the grille overhead. Caden's voice, flat and stripped of all enthusiasm, announced, "Rust Belt in sight. Landing in five. You'll want to strap in."
The spell was broken. Bianca was the first to her feet, rolling her schematics with a practiced flick of her wrist. She moved to one of the thick, reinforced viewports, wiping a sleeve across the grime-streaked window. "Whoa," she breathed, her eyes widening. "Okay. I see why they call it the Rust Belt."
The others gathered, drawn by the tone in her voice. The view that unfolded before them was both magnificent and terrifying.
It was a city of shipwrecks, a sprawling, chaotic collage of metal on a scale that defied belief. There was no central plan, no symmetry. It was as if a god had gathered every vessel ever lost in the Cluster and crushed them together in a furious fist. The skeletons of colossal CUA battleships, their gun barrels bent and frozen in silent agony, were woven through with the spindly frames of freighters and the jagged, armor-plated husks of Armored Frames. Everything was painted in a universal hue of burnt orange, deep umber, and the black of old, vacuum-baked scars. Patches of greenish corrosion spread across hulls like lichen on ancient stone.
Tiny points of light—welding torches, navigation beacons, the warm glow of viewports—dotted the colossal structure, hinting at the life teeming within its metallic guts. Makeshift bridges of woven cable and gridded walkways connected larger hulls, and the entire conglomerate slowly, imperceptibly rotated, a derelict waltz set to the music of gravity.
Souta let out a low groan, his sharp features pinched with distaste. "This does not look promising. It appears the local definition of 'capital' differs significantly from my own."
Charlie cleared his throat, adjusting his wire-framed glasses. "Ahem! While I would concede the aesthetic leaves something to be desired, one must appreciate the sheer historical record present. This is, in effect, a stratified archaeological dig of the CUA's military failures. Each layer of wreckage represents a different era of strategic overreach."
"How comforting," Kuro droned, not taking his eyes from the view. "We are to be archaeologists in a graveyard that is still actively consuming its inhabitants."
Before anyone could reply, the freighter gave a sudden, violent lurch, accompanied by a shriek of stressed metal from the port side. Aurélie's hand shot out to steady herself against the viewport, her journal clutched tight in the other.
Kuro, his balance impeccable, merely turned his head towards the group, his expression utterly unimpressed. "I suggest we take our seats," he said, his voice cutting through the noise. "It would be a profoundly undignified end to be splattered across the history lesson before we've even begun."
As they moved to buckle into the worn, stained acceleration couches, the Rust Belt loomed larger in the viewport, no longer a distant spectacle but a jagged, hungry maw of metal waiting to swallow them whole.
The final approach was a symphony of groaning metal and the intermittent, sharp hiss of maneuvering thrusters fighting the pull of countless gravitational anomalies. The Mule shuddered and complained, a testament to Caden's piloting that they weren't dashed against the jagged hull of a derelict cruiser. With a final, resonant clang that traveled through the deck plates and up into their bones, the freighter docked. The constant vibration ceased, leaving an eerie silence broken only by the faint, metallic tick of the ship cooling around them.
Soon after, the door to the passenger hold slid open with a worn grind. Caden and Evander stood framed in the doorway. Caden's usual tired expression was unchanged, but Evander offered a small, formal nod. "The way is clear. If you would follow us," the crimson-haired pilot said.
They were led through the ship's cramped corridors to the main cargo hold. As the massive door began to lower, becoming a ramp, the full sensory force of the Rust Belt hit them. The air was thick with the smell of old lubricant, charged with the sharpness of recent welding, and layered underneath it all, the dry, ancient scent of iron oxidation—the breath of a thousand dying ships. A low, pervasive hum of generators, machinery, and distant, echoing industry filled the space, a constant reminder of the life clinging to this carcass of metal.
Caden gestured vaguely with one hand as the ramp settled. "Welcome to the Rust Belt."
Before them stretched a space dock carved from the gutted hangar bay of a ruined CUA carrier. The ceiling was a tangled web of exposed conduits and support beams, from which hung power lines and makeshift lighting that cast a jittery, uneven glow. The walls were a patchwork of original hull plating and newer, cruder welded sheets. In the distance, through a vast opening that served as a bay door, the rest of the Belt unfolded—a chaotic, breathtaking sprawl of interconnected shipwrecks, a labyrinth of monumental proportions under a sky of cold stars and the colossal, banded face of Jörmungandr.
Kuro's sharp eyes scanned the scene, his lips thinning. "Charmed," he droned, the single word dripping with profound disdain.
Two figures were waiting for them. One was a short, energetic young woman with copper hair tied in a messy bun, goggles pushed up on her forehead, and smudges of grease on her cheeks. She practically vibrated with excitement. Beside her stood a more relaxed man with a roguish grin, unkempt hair, and a scarred knuckle that tapped a rhythm on his leg.
Evander walked down the ramp first. "Chloe, Jack. This is everyone."
The copper-haired woman—Chloe—bounced on the balls of her feet, her gaze sweeping over the six newcomers with unbridled curiosity. "So this is them? The ones who fell from the sky in that weird sub?"
"Yeah," Evander confirmed. He turned, offering formal introductions with a gesture. "Aurélie Nakano, Bianca Clark, and Charlie Leonard Wooley." He then motioned to the other trio. "And Kuro, Ember, and Souta."
"I'm Chloe Drivas!" the engineer said, her words tumbling out in an eager rush. "And this grumpy-looking fellow is Jack Gerou. Don't let the face fool you, he's mostly harmless."
Jack offered a lazy, two-fingered salute. "Mostly. So, you're the new blood. Let's see if you can handle the neighborhood."
Chloe's attention immediately snapped back to the individuals who most interested her. "Right! So, I'll take Charlie and Bianca. I've got a million questions and I can't wait to pick your brains on some ideas I've got for the power conduits." She looked at Jack, Evander, and Caden. "You guys can have them after I'm done, promise."
Jack gave a shrug, turning his amused gaze to the remaining four. "Alright then, you lot are with me. Try to keep up."
As Chloe enthusiastically beckoned Bianca and a slightly apprehensive Charlie away, Caden finally stepped forward, his hazel eyes settling on Kuro, Aurélie, Ember, and Souta. He clapped his hands together once, the sound sharp and purposeful in the metallic air. "Alright. Let's see who can fly."
*****
The air changed the moment Marya crossed the threshold. The damp, ash-tanged breeze of Ohara's surface vanished, replaced by a profound, dry stillness that felt older than the island itself. The corridor was a wide, downward-sloping tunnel, its walls made of the same smooth, dark stone as the archway, but here they seemed to swallow the light from the entrance, forcing them into a deepening twilight. Their footsteps, which should have echoed, were hushed, as if the very air was too thick with time to carry sound.
Marya led without hesitation, her combat boots making near-silent contact with the polished floor. Jelly bounced at her side, a wobbling azure shape in the gloom, emitting soft, random "Bloop!" and "Squish!" noises that were the only true sounds in the oppressive quiet.
Behind them, Eliane's small hand was a vise-grip around Jannali's fingers. "It's so dark," the young Lunarian whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
"Steady on, little chef," Jannali murmured back, her twang a familiar, grounding anchor in the unnatural silence. "Just a bit of an underground stroll. Nothing to fret about." But her own eyes, wide and alert, scanned the darkness, her head tilted as if trying to catch a frequency just beyond human hearing.
"How far down do you think this goes?" Atlas's voice was a low growl, his lynx-like eyes gleaming in the dimness. He cracked his knuckles, the sound abnormally loud. "Feels like we're walking into the world's belly."
Galit, his long neck coiled tight with tension, let out a slow breath. "I just hope there aren't any traps," he muttered, one hand resting on the hilt of a Vipera Whip. "Ancient civilizations with a penchant for hidden doors tend to have a very… final… sense of interior design."
Marya didn't reply, her focus entirely on the path ahead. The tunnel was beginning to level out, and a faint, pearlescent glow was emanating from up ahead, not bright, but a soft, pervasive radiance that seemed to have no single source.
Then, they stepped out of the tunnel and onto an enormous, circular platform. The air left every lung in a collective, stunned exhale.
They stood in the heart of a colossal, spherical cavern. This was the Athenaeum of All Things. The walls, the floor, the impossibly high ceiling far above—all were made of that same dark, mirror-smooth stone, reflecting the soft glow that permeated the space a thousand times over, creating the illusion of standing in the center of a universe of frozen, star-dappled night. The scale was dizzying, a vacuum given architecture.
In the very center of the vast platform rose a single, crystalline dais, its form clear and geometric amidst the organic curves of the chamber. But it was the walls that commanded awe. They were not carved with shelves or stacked with scrolls. Instead, they flowed.
Across every surface, light and shadow moved in constant, slow, liquid currents. It was not a projection; it was as if the stone itself had become a liquid canvas, and upon it, history was painting itself. Faint, ghostly images would coalesce—the silhouette of a massive ship under a strange constellation, the brief, fiery bloom of an unknown energy source, the fleeting shape of a joyous, dancing figure—only to dissolve back into the shimmering tapestry a moment later. A low, resonant hum filled the air, a chord so deep it was felt in the bones more than heard by the ears, the sound of the world remembering.
"Stone the crows," Jannali breathed, her hand slipping from Eliane's as she took an involuntary step forward, utterly captivated.
Jelly had stopped bouncing. He stared, his wobbly body still, his starry eyes wide. "Ooooh," he whispered, a sound of pure, unadulterated wonder.
Zola Newton pointed a trembling finger, not at anything specific, but at the entirety of the swirling chamber. "The Ley-Lines… the planetary energy… it's a recording! A full-sensory, historical imprint! The Poneglyphs are the sheet music, but this… this is the symphony!" Her voice was a mix of scientific triumph and reverent terror.
Aokiji stood rigid, his usual lazy slouch gone. His eyes, hidden behind his sunglasses, were undoubtedly sweeping the room, but his mind was elsewhere. This is what they were so afraid of, he thought, the memory of the Buster Call's flames feeling like a childish tantrum compared to this quiet, immense truth. This wasn't just knowledge; it was alive.
Emmet Pascal, the grand mathematician, was silent. His mind, which constantly calculated variables and probabilities, had simply stopped. There was no equation for this. He simply watched the light of a forgotten sunrise wash over the mirrored dome above, his slate hanging forgotten at his side.
Jax moved closer to Marya, his voice a low rumble. "This is it, isn't it? What the scholars died for."
Marya didn't look at him. Her golden eyes were fixed on the central dais, reflecting the flowing light of ages. A rare, genuine expression of awe had softened her guarded features. She nodded slowly. "The truth isn't in a book," she said, her voice barely louder than the chamber's hum. "It's in the air. It's in the stone. You don't read it. You… experience it."
She took a step toward the dais, the heart of the Athenaeum, where the voices of a lost century waited, finally, to be heard.
The chamber stilled. The slow, flowing dance of light across the mirrored dome seemed to pause in anticipation as Marya stepped onto the crystalline dais. She placed a single, leather-gloved hand upon its cool, clear surface.
The Athenaeum erupted.
The gentle currents of light shattered into a storm of living memory. The air grew thick with the scent of hot metal and volcanic ash. Before them, figures woven from starlight and shadow moved with urgent purpose. They saw smiths with skin the color of olive and hair of silver, their backs bearing faint, flickering outlines of wings, hammering a strange, luminous alloy—Lunarians, working alongside robed scholars. A woman with a prominent third eye that glowed with inner sight—an oracle of the Three-Eye Tribe—guided their hands, her voice a whisper that seemed to come from the walls themselves: "To chart the power, not to hoard it. For all people, not for kings." The image coalesced into the form of a beautiful, hexagonal prism, the Celestial Tideglass, its core a dark opal that swirled with captured night.
But then the vision soured. The collaborative light fractured. New figures, clad in stark, authoritative armor, descended upon the workshop. The word "HERESY" burned across the chamber in a script of fire, a condemnation from the nascent World Government. They saw the Three-Eye elder, Lyra, her face a mask of tragic resolution, take up the completed Tideglass. With a cry that was both a prayer and a curse, she shattered it against an anvil. The three fragments flew like falling stars, and she cast them into a raging, phantom sea. Then, the most chilling image: vast libraries set to the torch, scrolls and portraits—Lyra's face among them—blackening and curling into ash, purged from history.
The vision shifted again, becoming a map etched in fire on the dark glass of the walls. One fragment, glowing, was shown nestled within the very chamber they stood in—a hidden vault beneath the Athenaeum. Another was seen being entrusted to giant, stone-like Valkyries beneath the roots of a massive oak tree on Elbaph. The third was carried skyward, to a floating island adrift in a unnaturally calm sea, where people with rudimentary wings revered it as a gift from the moon.
As the final images faded, leaving the chamber once again bathed in its gentle, flowing light, a stunned silence prevailed.
"Blimey," Jannali breathed, her voice hushed. "Is that what you're after, mate? That… Glass thing?"
Marya, her hand still on the dais, gave a slow, single nod. Her golden eyes were alight with a sharp, recognizing fire. "The one on Elbaph," she said quietly. "I have it."
Galit, his long neck uncoiling as he analyzed the phantom cartography, nodded. "It appears to be giving you directions. A rather explicit treasure map."
Jax stepped closer, his brow furrowed in frustration. "What's so important about a broken compass? What makes it worth all this?" He gestured at the immense, secret library around them.
A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched Marya's lips. She finally lifted her hand from the dais. "Sentimental value."
Jax scowled deeply, the scar on his cheek pulling tight. A wave of soft chuckles passed through her crew—Atlas's gruff snort, Jannali's quiet shake of her head, even a faint smile from Atlas. They were accustomed to her deflections.
At that moment, a section of the seamless wall to their right slid away with a deep, grinding rumble, revealing a new, darker passage leading upward. "Well, looks like we go this way," Atlas announced, already moving toward the new exit with a predator's readiness.
The group began to gather themselves, turning from the dais toward the fresh path. Emmet looked back to where Zola stood, rooted to the spot, her sharp violet eyes wide as she watched new images begin to form on the walls—a great flood swallowing continents, the violent upheaval of the Red Line, a cataclysm that shattered the world, and strange, elegant vessels falling from a starry sky like tears from the moon.
"You coming?" Emmet called to her.
"I… I think I'll stay for a bit," Zola whispered, her voice trembling with a hunger that was almost religious. She took a step toward the dais, drawn by the siren song of fundamental truths.
Aokiji had paused at the threshold of the new door. His large frame was silhouetted against the darkness of the exit. He watched the cascading history on the walls, the birth and death of epochs, the secrets Imu had killed to bury. A deep, weary sigh escaped him. The weight of what he was witnessing—and the weight of his own inaction during Ohara's destruction—pressed down on him. He saw Zola move toward the heart of it all, a moth to a flame of ultimate knowledge.
"Aokiji?" Galit called, his tone neutral.
The former Admiral tore his gaze away from the swirling visions of moons, conflicts and floods. He gave one last, long look at Zola, then turned his back on the Athenaeum. "Yeah," he said, his voice a low rumble. "I'm coming." He stepped into the dark passage, leaving the echoes of a lost world behind.