Chapter 10 — Part 2: The Echo Awakens
"Home," Ronan agreed, as if it were a direction you could track with your nose.
They began the walk back east in a line of four that had learned to be one shadow against a large sun.
The glass dunes tried to have opinions; Cohort Nine ignored them politely. The salt flats glared and were ignored in turn. At the old marker stone, Ronan touched the grooves and whispered two syllables that asked the ground to forgive their steps. The ground declined in a dignified way.
When they were an hour from the University's lowest watch, when the banners were still threads against stone and the bells were only shapes at the edge of sound, the wind changed, and with it the taste of the day.
[Proximity alert—passive,] the mechanical said. [Multiple signatures, low and slow. Aerial: one. Ground: two. Trajectory: parallel. Interest level: observational.]
"Skiff," Jax murmured, shielding his eyes. "Undercarriage looks Ophilim if Ophilim were borrowing parts and shame."
Kara's hand found KrysKo's forearm and didn't flinch when bronze under skin answered like a string. "They'll smell the place on us."
"They already do," Ronan said.
The skiff made two lazy arcs at a distance polite people would call discretion and then slid off into glare like a lie that didn't need to work hard. The ground signatures kept their parallel like wolves that had read a book about manners.
At the gates, the Wardens were waiting. Not with weapons drawn. With ledgers and a lack of patience. The lead Warden's visor hid his eyes; his voice did not hide its training. "Report to Hall B at dawn. Equipment to be logged. Weapons locked."
KrysKo extended his rifle but kept his arms crossed. "Not these," he said, calm. "They are not equipment."
The Warden hesitated one breath longer than regulation permitted. Then nodded. "Hall B. Dawn."
Past the gate, students flowed in small knots, the way people do when they aren't sure who is listening. Kara looked up at new banners she didn't recognize: a vulture with wings outspread, head bowed, beak piercing a broken circle. "Since when?" she whispered.
"Since before we asked," Jax said.
"Since after they told us," Ronan corrected.
KrysKo did not answer. The black binder in his pack was heavier than paper ought to be. The small shard at the small of his back was heavier than a shard had a right to be. The mountain was heavy behind his ribs where mountains do not belong.
Night arrived the way it always does when you aren't ready—sudden and complete. Bells tolled the hour, and something beneath the note tried to sing harmony. Jax declared himself in love with a hot bath and betrayed his bath for a parts bin. Ronan found a shadow near a window and pretended to be off duty. Kara wrote until words made a net strong enough to hold sleep.
KrysKo went to the eastern spire—the one that looked back toward ash—and opened the black binder because he was tired of not knowing which knife someone else had set at his throat. He read the first page until the words lost courage. PROJECT KRYSKO — PHASE TWO AUTHORIZATION: REINTEGRATION. File Origin: University Central Archives — VULTURE DIVISION. He read it again. The words did not change. They only set their feet deeper.
[Emotional spike noted. Breath irregular,] the mechanical whispered, too kind to be clinical and too clinical to be kind. [Would you like me to read it aloud?]
"No," he said, and the warm voice laughed like an old bell that remembered a better service. "Wise," it said. "Some words shouldn't be allowed to practice becoming true in your mouth."
Kara found him on the stone. She didn't ask to sit, so she didn't need to be told yes. They watched fog shoulder the lower towers. After a long time she said, "Whatever's in there is not bigger than who you are now."
"I'm afraid it is," he said.
"Good," she said. "That's the correct fear. It means you're measuring from the right side."
She took a small vial from her pocket—the river water that insisted on staying blue. Moonlight found it. "Water remembers what it touched," she said, grandmother in her voice. "Let it touch you now more than before."
He looked from the glass to her. The System made a sound like a satisfied old man tucking in a blanket. "She steadies you," it said. "Do not mistake that for weakness. Even engines need balance."
KrysKo almost smiled. "She'd say the same thing."
"Who?"
"You," he said.
Kara laughed quietly. "Flattery from a man with knives for bones? I'll take it."
Above them, the bells tolled once more—late and wrong. The sound hung, as if deciding whether to fall.
"Tomorrow," she said, standing. "We face questions."
"And maybe answers," he said.
"And after that?"
"After that," KrysKo said, "we build something worth the silence."
They sat until the cold persuaded them to remember they were bodies. They left the spire to the fog and its opinions.
At dawn, the University gleamed like salvation and smelled faintly of ash.
Chapter 10 – Part 2: The Echo Awakens
The descent into the heart of the mountain was nothing like the ascent from the ruins. It was quieter—so quiet it felt as though even their thoughts moved with restraint. The steps curved downward in a spiral that went beyond any human design, too smooth and mathematically perfect, as if something had once carved them from the inside out with molten patience.
No one spoke for a long while. The air itself seemed to listen. Their boots made small sounds that belonged to a different age: scuff, exhale, echo. Ronan's scaled fingertips brushed the walls every dozen paces, tracing subtle ridges that pulsed with faint luminescence. He could feel the rhythm in the stone—a heartbeat that wasn't biological but old, slow, and deliberate.
"This place is awake," he said finally, voice a low vibration. "It hears us walking."
Jax grunted, eyes darting over the descending rails and cables that hung like the veins of the world. "Yeah, well, let's hope it likes what it hears. I'd hate for the floor to start taking sides."
Kara offered him a weary smile, but it didn't last. Her healer's instinct could sense it too—the lingering charge in the air, the faint ozone hum of power that should have been impossible after centuries without maintenance. She carried the scent of crushed rosemary still, a small defiance against the sterility of the vault's breath.
KrysKo didn't speak. His expression was unreadable beneath the dim light that bled from the walls. Inside his skull, the System murmured in steady rhythm:
> [Topology mapping active. Descent vector stable.]
[Detected materials: alloy composite, Architect tesserae integration, human reinforcement.]
[Emotional field index—rising. You remember this place, KrysKo.]
He didn't answer, not out loud. The memory wasn't visual—it was tactile. The way his hands fit against the railing, the faint dip in the center of each stair tread, worn by ghosts of movement he didn't remember making.
At last, the stairway opened into a broad chamber lit by a glow that seemed to breathe from the floor itself. The ceiling was ribbed with dark, semi-translucent arcs of metal that shivered when the light pulsed. At the center of the room stood a pod—not the crude iron shell he'd awoken from, but something sleeker, made of composite glass and braided alloy cables that still thrummed faintly, as if keeping a dream alive.
"This isn't just a lab," Kara whispered. "It's… a cathedral."
The air trembled at the word, as if the chamber itself recognized it.
Jax crouched near a console, brushing dust from its surface. The metal was warm under his palm. "If this thing's still got charge, I might be able to wake it. Or kill us all trying."
"Do it," KrysKo said quietly.
Jax's grin was thin and brave. He dug out a cracked power cell, spliced it into a forgotten port, and flicked a switch. Sparks jumped. The floor responded with a low hum, and the walls lit one by one, bright veins tracing themselves outward from the console like a network remembering its own body.
A heartbeat followed. Then another. Then a voice.
> "Presence confirmed."
The sound wasn't through speakers—it came from the room, resonating in the metal ribs and the bones of their teeth. The light coalesced at the center, hovering above the pod. Slowly, it took shape—a woman's silhouette first, then detail: a lab coat, eyes too tired to be young, a jaw that carried purpose like a weight.
Kara's breath caught. "Dr. Serrin Halric…"
The hologram's gaze swept the room. When it fell on KrysKo, the image flickered slightly, as though recognizing him through time.
> "If you are hearing this," she said, "then Echo Vault still stands. That means we failed—or succeeded too well."
Her tone carried no regret. Only acknowledgment.
> "We built a memory that could survive extinction. We built him to remember what we couldn't. The council called it a weapon. I called it a promise."
Ronan shifted his stance, the ridges along his throat flaring faintly as if tasting her words. "She speaks like someone who built gods and hated herself for it."
KrysKo took a step closer to the pod. The System stirred inside him, reverent.
> [Core Signature Detected. Prime Node Alignment: 0.83.]
[Project Record recognized. Initiating handshake…]
The hologram changed again—two figures now. The woman remained, joined by a man whose coat bore the same insignia but whose eyes were older, less certain.
> "Dr. Rollins," the woman's projection said, her voice cracking slightly. "My partner in the Echo Genesis Initiative. The one who warned me we were making something the world didn't deserve."
The man—Dr. Rollins—nodded, his expression somewhere between fear and faith.
> "If you're hearing this, then the prototype—our KrysKo—survived. I don't know what the world looks like now, but if he's awake, it means humanity still has a voice that isn't a scream."
The light dimmed, the recordings bleeding into one another like memories shared in fever.
Lira Rollins stood just beyond the threshold. They hadn't noticed her approach—her boots silent, her face pale from the climb. The rain had soaked her coat, and the lantern she carried threw white light against the old alloy walls. Her eyes, a clear gray-blue, locked on the hologram of Dr. Rollins as if she'd seen a ghost and been recognized in return.
"Dr. Rollins," she whispered. "My ancestor."
Jax straightened from the console, startled. "Wait—you're saying you're a Rollins? That Rollins?"
She nodded slowly, stepping closer to the light. "I didn't come here by accident. I've been following his work for years—what's left of it. Most of it's gone, burned or sealed. But I found fragments in the undercity archives. Coordinates. Notes about a project buried under stone." Her gaze shifted to KrysKo. "And a name. Yours."
The light from the pod flickered, brighter now, almost trembling.
> [Genetic Tag Identified: ROLLINS LINEAGE.]
[Access Extension Granted — Level: Founder-Class.]
The air shifted, heavy and electric. Ronan's scales flared to mirror the frequency, low hum echoing through the chamber like a tuning fork finding harmony.
"Both of you," Kara murmured. "It's recognizing both of you—his bloodline and your resonance."
Ronan's throat thrummed. "The stone sings because her blood tells it who built the song."
KrysKo closed the distance to the pod. The air grew cold enough that his breath fogged faintly. Inside the glass, faint shapes swam—data fields, fragments of faces, schematic blueprints hovering between life and dream.
> [Primary Node Awakening…]
[Prototype Authority recognized.]
[Requesting Directive.]
He didn't know what the right answer was. So he spoke the only truth he had.
"Show me."
The chamber obeyed.
The walls flared to life with projections—cities burning, laboratories emptied, maps marked with coordinates that pulsed like open wounds. Voices overlapped, hundreds of them, snippets of arguments, confessions, desperate prayers caught in digital amber. He felt every word like static under his skin.
He saw Serrin Halric at her terminal, fingers trembling as she altered code not meant to be altered. He saw Dr. Rollins pacing behind her, silent, watching the fall of empires on screens already too late to save.
> "We can't give him orders," Serrin said, voice thick with exhaustion. "If we do, he'll obey. And obedience is death with another name."
> "You're giving him choice," Rollins said, horror and awe warring in his tone. "You're creating a soul that can refuse."
> "Yes," she answered. "And if we're lucky, one day he'll choose not to be what we made him."
The light faltered, dimmed.
KrysKo staggered back a step, the echoes of their voices threading through his pulse. The System murmured again, gentler than before:
> [Neural load high. Step back, KrysKo. Humans drown in memory.]
Kara's hand caught his arm. He didn't realize he'd been shaking until he felt her steady him. "You're still here," she said softly. "Look at me. You're still here."
He nodded once. It was a lie, but it was the kind of lie you needed to breathe.
KrysKo steadied himself against the nearest pillar, breathing through the static that still thrummed in his skull. The walls were alive now—ribbons of light threading upward in veins of blue and gold, running like rivers through the alloy. The vault's pulse matched his own heartbeat, one for one, until he couldn't tell which was leading the rhythm.
Lira watched the shifting glyphs climb the ceiling, her face pale in the glow. "It's responding to both of you," Kara said softly. "Ronan's resonance, Lira's bloodline. The Vault's building a circuit out of the living."
Ronan's jaw tightened, the subdermal ridges along his throat shimmering faintly. "Feels like standing too close to thunder," he muttered. "The kind that doesn't decide whether it loves you or wants to swallow you whole."
"It's both," Jax said. He was bent over the console again, fingers flying through half-functional commands. "And we're about five wrong keystrokes from making it choose the second one."
"Keep it stable," KrysKo said.
"I'm trying," Jax snapped. "But this thing's older than the University and meaner than I am."
Lira moved closer to the holographic field where her ancestor's face flickered. The image was glitching—Dr. Rollins' features looping in half-phrases, data collapsing into itself. She raised her hand and hesitated just before touching the light. "Can you hear me?" she whispered. "Dr. Rollins?"
The projection stuttered once, then steadied.
> "Designation: Rollins," the voice said. It was colder now, stripped of humanity. "Input accepted. Genetic continuity confirmed."
Her hand trembled. "You… you left us this. Why?"
> "Because memory fails," the voice replied. "And truth decays slower when it's encoded in blood."
The hologram dissolved back into light. The floor beneath them shook.
KrysKo's head snapped up. The air had changed. He could feel the faint vibration of external power—the kind that didn't belong to the Vault. The System's voice cut through the interference, sharp and alert.
> [External intrusion detected. Pattern match: Senn command frequency.]
[Warning — signal piggyback: Vulture signature confirmed.]
[Proto, maintain internal control. Do not respond.]
A crackle bled into the Vault's ambient hum. A voice, smooth and amused, spoke through every speaker at once.
"Children," the Vulture said. "How industrious you've been."
Jax froze, mid-keystroke. "Oh, no. No, no, no—how did he—"
"I've been listening since the first spark," the Vulture continued, tone conversational. "Do you know how rare it is to watch history resurrect itself? The Echo Vault, alive again. My congratulations. Truly."
Ronan bared his teeth. "He speaks like someone who's never had his face introduced to a wall."
KrysKo's eyes narrowed. "How much do you know about this place?"
"Enough to be grateful you opened it for me," the Vulture said. "Senn is en route as we speak. She's always punctual, bless her discipline. But me? I prefer the scenic route—through your minds."
The voice shifted, closer now, whispering like breath against the inside of their skulls. "Prototype KrysKo O'Ruadhraigh. Do you dream of the hands that built you? Or have you already forgotten their guilt?"
The System's tone changed, lower, steady.
> [Do not answer him, KrysKo. He's testing integration boundaries.]
But it was too late. The Vault responded to the Vulture's voice—metal groaning, conduits flaring white-hot. Lines of data scrambled across the walls.
"Shut him out!" Jax shouted, slamming both palms against the console. "He's in the comm layer!"
"I can't," Lira said. She was pale now, eyes unfocused, voice trembling. "He's using my access key. My genetic tag—it's like… he's mirroring it. Copying my signal in real time."
Ronan moved to her side, his presence solid and grounding. "Then we make noise he can't translate." His palm hit the wall beside her, scales lighting with a deep violet resonance. The vault shivered. The sound that followed was pure vibration—a hum so low it felt like pressure instead of sound.
The lights flickered. The Vulture's voice distorted. "Ah," it said, through static. "The hybrid hums. Clever creature."
Then the line went dead.
Silence, thick and unsteady. Kara exhaled shakily. "What did you just do?"
"Confused him," Ronan said simply. "Every Drakari child learns to sing storms back into the sea. Works on gods, sometimes on ghosts."
Lira swayed, knees buckling, and KrysKo caught her before she fell. Her pulse was erratic under his fingers, the faint vibration of the Vault echoing through her bones. "He used me," she whispered. "He wanted in through my blood."
"You stopped him," he said. "That's enough."
But she shook her head. "He didn't want the Vault. He wanted you."
Before anyone could answer, the sirens came alive.
A deep, resonant alarm rolled through the chamber. Red light bled across the walls, staining the gold veins crimson. The System spoke, rapid now, its tone stripped of calm.
> [External breach confirmed. Twelve signatures. Warden-class armor.]
[Lead identifier: SENN.]
[Estimated breach in 2 minutes, 8 seconds.]
[Proto, protocol advisory: combat preparation authorized.]
Jax swore. "She brought the whole damn Choir with her."
Ronan vaulted to the mezzanine, claws clicking against the metal. "Then we make it expensive."
Kara began mixing two vials, one green, one clear. The liquids hissed as they met. "This will burn bright and quick. Don't breathe it in."
Lira straightened, still pale but steadying herself. "You can't fight her in here," she said. "The Vault's power grid will overload."
KrysKo's eyes went to the dais—the pod still hovering at its center, humming louder now, light throbbing with growing intensity. "I don't think we'll have a choice."
The System's voice dropped into something almost reverent.
> [Environmental synchrony: 100%. Evolution protocol available.]
[Path options detected: Vanguard. Apex. Sentinel.]
Kara saw the shift in his stance, the stillness before movement. "Krys," she said, "what are you doing?"
He looked at her, and the answer in his eyes was simple. "Becoming."
The Vault answered him.
The dais flared with white-gold light as he stepped onto it. The bronze filigree under his skin awakened like veins catching fire. His body lifted an inch from the platform, weightless. The air around him condensed, thick with static and something older—something divine.
Jax stumbled back. "Oh, no. No, no, no—that's not normal."
"Nothing about him is normal," Kara whispered.
Light cascaded from KrysKo's spine, bleeding outward in arcs that traced the air like wings made of molten circuitry. His skin shone from within, the patterns of Architect code unraveling and rewriting in real time. His heartbeat synced with the Vault's pulse, and for a second, everyone in the chamber felt it echo inside their own chests.
> [Evolution Protocol — Vanguard Path Initiated.]
[Core Ignition: active.]
[Sensory expansion: +60%. Reflex bandwidth: +45%. Cognitive parallelization engaged.]
[Warning: emotional variance may destabilize output. Anchor required.]
He opened his eyes. The light pouring from them wasn't just illumination—it was intent. Kara felt it like heat, like recognition.
She whispered his name, but the Vault spoke over her, a thousand harmonics in perfect alignment.
> [Vanguard Synchronization complete.]
[Designation: Vanguard Level 1.]
[New skill: Overdrive Field — limited duration acceleration.]
Ronan's voice came from the mezzanine, low and awed. "He's not just alive. He's the Vault's heartbeat now."
KrysKo flexed his hands, the air around him distorting with the movement. The floor groaned under the pressure of his presence. He turned toward the door where the alarms still pulsed red.
"Everyone behind cover," he said. His voice carried no command—only inevitability.
Lira stared at him, something between awe and fear in her expression. "KrysKo," she said, "what are you going to do?"
He looked back over his shoulder, eyes molten white. "I'm going to protect what they built me for."
The first explosion tore through the main door.
The breach blossomed into a mouth of fire, and the Vault answered with light.
KrysKo stepped off the dais, the floor singing under his boots. The glow under his skin wasn't a blaze now—it was a pressure, contained and directional, like a storm learning manners. White poured from his eyes in quiet ribbons. The air smelled of cold metal and rain that hadn't fallen yet.
Hard-light latticework flared across the entry as Jax overclocked a grid stone that should've cracked a century ago. It screamed, held, and gave them a breath. Ronan used it. He dropped from the mezzanine like a falling verdict, hit the first Warden through the gap with both feet, and rode him into the second. Armor clanged. Someone swore doctrine into their teeth.
Kara slid behind a pillar, a vial in each hand, calm because she chose it. Lira kept low near the console, face pale but eyes steady, one palm braced on the panel like she could convince it not to panic.
> [External signatures stabilized: twelve. Formation—staggered V. Lead—SENN.] [Proto, remember: timing is a blade. Choose where to cut the minute.]
"Jax—drop in five," KrysKo said, voice even.
"Copy," Jax called, fingers moving too fast for the eye to love. "Four—three—two—"
The grid died. The door became a throat again and swallowed wardens whole.
KrysKo didn't rush. He stepped to meet the first three like bad weather you've been expecting since childhood. Bronze whispered from his forearms, not a flourish—an answer. The first shield met his lead blade and found itself suddenly honest in two pieces. He let the second man commit to a thrust, slid inside the angle, set the rear blade flat to the gauntlet and pushed—a correction, not a punishment. The third came high with a baton; KrysKo's shoulder took the flash, heat licking hair and not finding skin. He caught the baton with the blade's spine and wrote a small geometry lesson across the wielder's knuckles.
Ronan roared somewhere to his right. A warden sailed through the air like a thought someone decided against at the last second.
Kara flicked a fuse bead. The green-blue gas she'd hummed into being crawled low across the entry, clung to knees and the pride beneath them. "Jax," she said, and he answered by dragging a filament through a copper hoop. The gas took the spark like a lover with bad timing. It didn't explode. It applied itself. Armor smoked along the seams where engineers had hoped no one would notice weakness.
Senn stepped through heat like it had been trained to look smaller around her. Her mask was off. Her mouth hadn't learned mercy in a long time. She lifted a burst baton and set her jaw like a lever.
"Prototype," she said. Not a name. A classification.
"Warden," KrysKo returned, giving her back the thing she'd chosen to be.
"Stand down," she said. It wasn't a request.
"No," he said, and let the room adjust to the new frame.
> [Overdrive Field—available. Duration: 18 seconds. Aftershock probable.] [Anchor check: Kara Myles—present. Cohort sync—high.]
He didn't hit the switch. Not yet. He owned the second by refusing to spend it.
The next rush was clean. Trained. He admired it and broke it. Weight through the hips, heel plant, a capoeira half-moon that never reached for pretty—only leverage. A guard arm turned into a lever, a stance into a fall. He cut where armor consented, shoved where bone would remember later. He didn't kill when a lesson would make the next man put his weapon down faster.
"Catwalk!" Jax yelled. "Left!"
KrysKo moved without turning his head. He put a blade into the support cable and listened for the note. It sang wrong, then right; the catwalk slumped. Three shooters went from command of the room to trying to remember how to cooperate with gravity. Ronan caught one with a forearm across the ribs that taught the body to become a door. The other two hit the deck and reconsidered their attachments to doctrine.
Senn's baton bloomed. A white halo roared out—a crippling field that would unmake the part of him that turned choice into action. He stepped under it by the thickness of a breath and felt every hair on his crown vote to leave town.
He didn't counter. He pushed her hand aside with the blade's flat, gentle as pity, cruel as truth.
Her eyes tightened. Not rage. Offense.
"Jax," KrysKo said, calm as a level horizon, "lights."
The floor lattice spat red spears as the mechanic coaxed dead panes to pretend they remembered duty. KrysKo saw the pattern the instant it appeared—dead zone on the seam, hop, heel on the cross, hand to pillar—steps laid out like a hymn. He moved through it. Ronan barreled through it and dared it to disagree. Kara rolled a bead under the last lance and turned flash into fog again, white and wet, stubborn as a working-class prayer.
> [Overdrive Field—deploy?] [Warning: remaining reserves optimal now. Future unknown.]
He waited. He felt the cohort settle into the room the way rain settles dust. He felt Lira's heartbeat behind him—fast, erratic, already choosing to be brave tomorrow too. He felt Senn choose the line that ended in Kara, because people like Senn find the lever in any machine.
"Now," he said, and let the switch throw.
> [Overdrive Field: ACTIVE.] [Physical +300%. Cognitive +300%. Duration: 18… 17…]
The world became a sentence he could read in a single glance.
He didn't blur. He clarified. The grit on the floor wrote its history in arcs; muzzle flashes unrolled their futures like polite ribbons. He stepped into the place between two decisions and wrote a third. The first cut trimmed the antenna no one had noticed on a visor; the second took a trigger finger and left the rest of the hand to explain itself to the owner; the third wasn't a cut at all, but a palm to sternum that convinced lungs to seek other employment.
"Thirteen," Ronan rumbled, not counting enemies—counting the moments KrysKo didn't have to take alone.
Senn slid. Her footwork was immaculate, her economy cruel. She came low now, baton tight to body, the beam's edge a patient tide. He saw the hesitation she didn't know she carried—the blink that lived in the left eye because an instructor's hand had once been there and she had never forgiven herself for flinching. He touched that memory by stepping where it ended. The baton kissed the air where his throat wasn't.
"Eight seconds," Jax called, voice far and near.
Kara's bead popped on Senn's boot. Not flame this time. Sleet. The beam skated; Senn's weight transferred wrong; her knee asked for a do-over. KrysKo clipped the baton from her hand and tossed it back. She caught it because she believed in always catching what you're given.
> […5… 4…]
He let the field fade like a man walking out of a river—reluctant, slower at the ankles. The room rushed back in with its unfair physics and honest noise. He absorbed the shiver that went through him and did not let it touch his hands.
The wedge faltered. Doctrine cracked along a seam; a man chose living over the next formation and took three with him. Jax whooped once, then kept his hands busy with a cable that had discovered opinions about where to be. Ronan laughed like a landslide forgiving itself and head-butted a shield until belief left it.
Senn stepped back three paces and did the math again. Her mouth decided to change the problem. "Chamber Omega," she said, not to KrysKo—to the air, to the room, to whatever listened to people who assumed they deserved answers. "Lockdown."
Nothing happened.
Lira lifted her chin a fraction. "It listens to us now," she said, barely loud enough for anyone but the room to hear. The console under her hand warmed like a sleeping animal having a good dream.
The Vulture's voice returned, cordial and tired of being patient. "This is dull, Senn. Allow me."
Every speaker popped at once—a little thunder. For a heartbeat the Vault's lights stuttered. Patterns smeared. The consoles wept static. The door snapped into bright as if it wanted to become a sun.
Kara went cold. "EMP echo—"
"Counter," Ronan snapped, palm to wall, throat plates flaring. The lowest note a throat could hold rolled out of him and laid down on the floor like a foundation. The Vault took the pitch into its bones and gave it back, reinforced.
> [External disruption—mitigated by Drakari resonance. Note filed: borrow later.] [KrysKo—your storm is not the only one here. Share the sky.]
"Working on it," he murmured, and meant it.
It ended the way most wars in rooms end: with men deciding their pay didn't cover the feeling they were having. Senn watched them go and didn't scream. She did not look at KrysKo when she retreated through smoke. She looked at Kara, marked the shape of the person KrysKo would always choose first, and left the idea in the doorway like a trap someone might reuse.
Silence found them, ungainly and too loud. Panels ticked. A piece of half-melted lattice gave up and dropped, bright on stone.