Kael landed with a wrenching thud in a space of cold, perfect order. The Temporal Stabiliser, utterly depleted, crumbled into dust beside him. He was back in the sterile, white pocket dimension the temporary haven provided by The Archivist.
He lay gasping, his body unresponsive, the heavy, geometrically complex Codex of Unwritten Space pressed against his chest. It thrummed with the raw, silent power of every unmapped reality.
The Archivist was instantly at his side, his face impassive but his movements efficient. He stabilised Kael's core with a specialised infusion, pulling him back from the brink of total collapse.
"Remarkable," The Archivist murmured, scanning the Codex. "The Chaos Maw is not easily tricked into paying its Debt of Origins. You have the object. The Debt of Restoration to the Fractured Library is complete. The Librarian will now honour the second half of the contract: the requisite intelligence to free your friend."
Kael managed a raspy whisper: "Lysandra... where is the Broker's vault?"
The Archivist accessed his comms. "The intelligence is inbound."
A crystalline burst of data slammed into Kael's mind, colder and more precise than anything the Cartographer had provided. It was raw, unedited Sovereign-level logistics.
> [LOCATION: Sector 7/Omega. Coordinates: (4.13.91.Δ). The Broker's Dissection Vault. It operates outside linear time, anchored by the Debt of Lineage.]
> [SECURITY: The Broker's core shield is the Debt of Silence. You must speak the Absolution to breach the perimeter. Internal defence is the Debt of Lineage, the compiled failures of all past Arbitrators.]
> [THE ARBITRATOR (LYSANDRA): Location is the central extraction pedestal. Status: Critical. Extraction begins in 30 minutes (local vault time). Her Karmic Arbitration is nearing its calculated limit. Failure to arrive means consumption.]
>
Kael gripped the Codex and pushed himself to his knees. The time constraint was absolute; he couldn't fully recover, but he couldn't wait.
"The Codex is too large to carry through the Broker's security fields," The Archivist pointed out. "It's a bomb of pure structure; it must be used strategically. The vault's weakness is its anchor point: the Debt of Lineage. The Broker is using the cumulative failure of Arbitrators' past as its power source."
He handed Kael a final item: a small, smooth iron coin. "This is a Debt-Anchor. It can absorb a fraction of a Sovereign's power source. When you reach Lysandra, place this on her extraction pedestal. Use the Codex to shatter the Debt of Lineage that binds her. When the Broker's power source explodes, the coin will absorb the backlash."
"And the Codex?" Kael asked, his eyes hard with focus.
"Leave it near the vault's entrance. Its presence will distract the Broker's deep-system security; it will believe you came only to restore the data." The Archivist's face betrayed a hint of admiration. "Now go. The Archivist is not a warrior, and my time is short."
Kael stood, securing the iron coin and the heavy burden of the Codex. He felt the cold, hard logic of the mission fuse with the burning, absolute necessity of his loyalty to Lysandra. The greatest risk was now facing the Broker on its home ground, where failure meant consumption, not just of his life, but of his Word.
He activated the dimensional shard, setting the coordinates. The pocket dimension tore open, revealing the cold, starless void of the jump.
"Thank you, Archivist," Kael said, the words a promise of future consequence.
He plunged into the void.