CHAPTER TWELVE: GODS BELOW, GODS ABOVE
Day 13
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The silence beneath Ephra Dusk was not empty.
It was full.
Full of breath the earth should not have. Full of weight no architecture could explain. With every step, the air grew heavier, denser, until even sound felt dragged down by unseen hands.
And Jex hated it.
"This place smells like memory," he muttered, brushing dust from his gloves. "Rotting, locked-in, traumatized memory."
No one answered. No one needed to. They all felt it—tight across the chest, prickling at the back of their teeth. A tension under the skin. A breath drawn too slowly. Too deeply. Something breathing too far below to be human.
The stairs spiraled endlessly into the bedrock.
Beyond Rift exposure.
Beyond mapped tunnels.
Beyond history itself.
Until the stone ended.
They reached a sealed wall—smooth and unbroken, but alive with quiet resonance. The hum made the bones in Silas's wrist vibrate, subtle as a memory, sharp as a scar.
The seams were faint, visible only by the thin prism-shaped glyph etched into the center.
Senya stepped forward first, scanning for traps.
Torren stayed back, fists low, stance squared.
Nira was already close, eyes wide with awe.
"This isn't modern architecture," she whispered, fingers barely grazing the glyph. "This is... Forge Prime tech. Pre-Fall."
But it was Dawn who opened it.
She didn't speak. Didn't wave her hand or press a sigil. She simply placed her palm at the center.
The metal shivered, rippling inward like liquid drawn into a breath. No hiss. No whine. Just—acceptance.
A soft pulse of white light flared...
And the wall folded away.
What lay beyond was not a hallway. It was a vault.
Massive. Circular. Designed like the interior of a sunken coliseum.
Pods lined the walls—glass and alloy, coffin-sized, ringed with glyphs that shimmered faintly in the gloom. Many were shattered. Some flickered dimly, still humming with dormant energy. The air smelled faintly of burnt ozone, sterilization fluid... and time.
None of it was comforting.
These weren't medical capsules.
They weren't incubation chambers.
They radiated one word, unspoken but deafening:
Containment.
Silas stepped forward, his Boon flickering faintly at his fingers—shadowlight like smoke flickering across glass. "These weren't made to heal anyone."
"They were made to hold someone," Senya agreed.
Jex crept to one of the shattered pods, squinting through the fractured surface. "There's ash inside... and plating residue. These weren't test subjects. These were assets."
"Seraphim," Torren said grimly.
The word lingered. Like blood on a blade.
Then something shifted.
A pod near the far end hissed.
Not broken. Opening.
A whisper of steam curled from the edges, white and slow and soundless. The glyphs around it pulsed once—like a heartbeat. Then again.
The team moved instantly—formation muscle memory now.
From within, a boy stepped out.
Seventeen, maybe. Pale, hair like brushed silver. Eyes pitch black—no whites, no pupils. He wore armor built into his spine and ribs, plated over flesh like it had grown there, breathing with him.
He didn't fall. He didn't stumble.
He just stood.
Then he looked at them.
Senya's rifle lifted instantly. "Contractors—formation. He's waking up hostile."
The boy tilted his head—no aggression.
Just processing.
And then the words hit them.
Carved into their minds. No sound. No voice. No screen. Just knowledge, etched in memory-space like a branded command.
> "Subject Designation: EX-07 – Guardian Node."
"Status: Dormant Override Lifted. Directive Upload: Active."
"Current Classification: Ashbinder Cell. Tribunal Flagged. Execute Priority Kill Order."
The boy moved.
Too fast.
Senya fired—two clean shots, center mass. But they twisted. Mid-air. Curved like water under invisible force. The rounds hit the far wall with a hiss.
Torren lunged, both fists igniting. He came down with a hammer-fist—
EX-07 caught it.
With one hand.
Unflinching.
Torren screamed. Something in his shoulder crunched sickeningly, and he dropped to one knee, breath ragged.
Jex flanked left, Nira flanked right.
Silas reacted on instinct.
His shadows lashed forward—black tendrils hardening into chains. They struck true, wrapped, held.
For a moment.
Then the chains burned. Not by fire. Not by heat. But unmade. Unwritten by the aura seething from EX-07's form—an ambient field of code, violence, and annihilation.
Dawn stepped forward.
"Stop."
No change.
"Stop! Override. Authorization: Dawnbreak-Class Alpha!"
A second passed.
Then—
> "Override Recognized."
"Command State Entered."
Everything stopped.
The boy froze. Not rigid. Not tense. Just... waiting.
Senya didn't lower her weapon. Her finger stayed on the trigger.
Dawn exhaled. "He's one of mine."
Jex, holding his side, stared in disbelief. "You're telling me we've had a Tribunal murder weapon buried under our floor for who knows how long, and you can just... command him?"
Dawn nodded. "He was built to protect us. Then they rewrote him. But his core code—his real purpose—is still Dawnbreak-era."
Silas helped Torren sit against the wall. "And they sealed him because that code was trying to break back through."
Senya's eyes didn't blink. "And now he's ours?"
Dawn shook her head.
"No. Now he's awake."
---
Elsewhere — Black Zone 5
The forest was gone.
Not burned. Not cut.
Erased.
Charred earth stretched to the horizon—glassified, raw, lifeless. A geometric wound carved by precision, not chaos.
At the center stood a figure cloaked in shifting void. Feminine. Elegant. Terrifying. She moved like static, like gravity rebuked.
Six curved blades orbited her. Remnant-forged. Ancient. Each one etched with code, memory, and madness.
Seraphim V-09 stood in the remains of her latest assignment. Two full Choir units. Erased. Echo remnants silenced. Rift ruptures closed by mere presence.
She turned her gaze north. Toward Ephra Dusk.
A Tribunal transport floated behind her, kept aloft by engines that stuttered in her aura.
Inside, an Inquisitor whispered into a command log.
"Seraphim V-09 deployment complete. No civilian collateral. Rift zone purged. Commencing re-vector toward Ephra Dusk. Estimated arrival: 42 hours."
Onscreen, the mission list updated.
> Target: Ashbinder Cell. Dawnbreak Host Confirmed.
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Above Ephra Dusk — The White Spire
The clouds hung low, choked in gray.
Inside the apex chamber, Velae stood still—hands clasped, eyes watching.
A red glyph blinked slowly across a topographic map—one pulse, then another, marking the Vault below.
"They've activated one," whispered a masked figure at her side.
"Two," Velae replied. "The Ashbinders... and the Seraphim."
The silence that followed was reverent. Dreadful.
She smiled softly. Cold. Measured.
"Let them meet."