Central Control was not a single room, but a vast, tiered canyon of humming server banks and data terminals, stretching three stories high. Above, a circular window—the Luminar Viewer—showed a sickeningly red pulse where the city's power signature should have been a steady azure.
"4 minutes, 40 seconds remaining," Seraphina spat, pushing Elias ahead of her toward a bank of archaic, glowing consoles at the center. She didn't use her hands; she simply pushed a wave of targeted kinetic force against the small of his back, guiding him precisely. "Where is the bypass port? The primary terminal is locked by protocols."
Elias didn't even look at the consoles. He looked at the dust motes dancing in the sterile air, the specific pattern of electromagnetic interference coming from the unused pre-Cascade ventilation shaft 37 meters away, and the subtle, crystalline signature of the city's Core energy passing through the floor.
"Terminal C-14, Director. Hidden behind the Level 2 power conduit housing. It's a physical coaxial port," Elias said, pointing a finger at a blank section of wall. "The Authority designated it 'Legacy Fail-Safe 7B,' but the official schematic has it filed under 'Auxiliary Airflow Monitoring.' It's a backdoor. Use your Kinetic Ability to melt the polymer adhesive on the conduit housing joints—pressure point 4, 7, and 12, precisely."
Seraphina didn't hesitate. She threw three concentrated pulses of Mana-enhanced kinetic force. Clack. Hiss. Pop. The housing shield snapped cleanly off, revealing the ancient, dusty port. Elias moved, plugging the thin, fiber-optic line from Seraphina's wrist cuff directly into the coaxial port.
Bypass successful. Data access granted.
The primary consoles lit up violently. The Luminar Viewer above flashed a stark warning: CORE INTEGRITY: 11%.
"The core diagnostics confirm his assessment," Seraphina's actual voice was clipped, devoid of any emotional inflection, but Elias heard the sheer terror in the rapid spike of her heart rate. "The decay rate is exponential. What is the counter-frequency input? We need a stabilizing Mana source, but nothing we have is resonant enough!"
Elias watched the data scroll—millions of variables, historical usage logs, stress factors, and the mathematical fingerprint of the pre-Cascade Luminar Loop. He processed the entire city's Mana output against the Core's requirements.
"We need to inject a pure, high-amplitude, single-frequency signal, specifically at 7.08 Hertz, delivered via the Core's physical Mana-intake valve," Elias recited, his voice a drone of scientific certainty. "The Mana Cores of the general population—the Luminar Loop—are too dispersed. We need a single, potent source."
He turned, his violet-black eyes meeting Seraphina's deep black ones. The answer was horrifyingly simple and utterly dangerous.
"Director Sara," Elias said, using the name that cut through her professional armor. "The only Mana source in this entire Sector with sufficient potency and purity to stabilize the core is yours. You are an S-Rank. You are the source."
Seraphina recoiled slightly. To use an S-Rank Core as a raw stabilizing input was practically suicide. It would drain her to nothingness, potentially fracturing her Core—the source of her power and identity.
"The input terminal is protected by an antique safety mechanism, the 'Aetheric Lock'," Elias continued, already comprehending the forgotten technique. "It requires an active, focused Chrono-Tuning Sequence—a pre-Cascade technique for harmonizing physical and psychic Mana projection, which has been lost for 75 years. I know the sequence."
3 minutes, 5 seconds.
"I can teach you the sequence now," Elias said, raising his hands, his fingers moving in sharp, precise, complex patterns in the air, tracing an invisible diagram of energy flow. "Your ability is to manipulate psychic energy, but this is a physical Mana weave. It requires you to simultaneously stabilize your breath, vibrate your Mana Core at a specific harmonic, and visualize the geometric structure of the original Cascade event. I will give you the instructions one millisecond at a time."
Seraphina's face hardened. She was staring at a weak, unranked boy dictating her life-and-death actions. But the data didn't lie, and Elias's precision was absolute truth.
"Do it," she commanded, moving to the designated input valve—a complicated brass mechanism built into the floor.
Elias began to speak, but not with his voice. His mind flooded hers—not with unnecessary data, but with pure, instantaneous, muscle-memory instructions, bypassing the need for language.
«FIRST: Breath. Shallow, focused diaphragmatic contraction. 75% capacity.» Seraphina inhaled.
«SECOND: Core Vibration. Initiate the 'Whispering Helix' counter-rotation. 4.9 revolutions per minute.» Seraphina winced as her Core rebelled, but she forced the unnatural, internal movement.
«THIRD: Visualization. The Cascade was not chaos; it was a rupture. See the planar fracture. See the source code. Push the pure Mana along the red line only.»
In seconds, Seraphina was performing a nearly forgotten S-Rank-level Mana control feat, guided solely by the instantaneous instructions flooding her mind from Elias. A stream of intensely bright, solid white Mana—her S-Rank energy—flowed from her hands and into the antique brass valve.
BZZZZZZZ.
The Core integrity meter froze at 7.03 Hertz. Then, slowly, it began to climb.
7.04... 7.05...
Elias watched the digital numbers, his mind running final checks on the stabilization equation. Success is achieved at 7.08.
A minute passed in agonizing, absolute silence, punctuated only by Seraphina's ragged breathing as she poured her soul into the machine.
CORE STABILIZED: 7.08 HERTZ.
The Luminar Viewer above shifted from the warning red to a triumphant, steady azure. The city was safe.
Seraphina collapsed onto the floor, utterly drained, her S-Rank Core momentarily dormant.
Elias, however, did not relax. He looked at the now-stable Core readings, and his Instant Comprehension saw something else—a lingering data echo, a phantom signature left on the system when the frequency had been pushed to decay.
It wasn't random decay. The harmonic drift had been artificially accelerated by a complex, external Mana-sequence delivered moments before the test. Someone had been running a test run on the Core's destruction.
As Elias fully comprehended this chilling realization, the violet-black aura around him flared. His vision momentarily superimposed itself with the digital world. He saw the spectral residue of the attack sequence, and within that residue, he saw a single, recurring symbol—a symbol associated with ancient, pre-Cascade sects.
Then, the floor of the control center seemed to ripple, and a wave of pure, cold information washed over Elias's mind, causing an agonizing spike of pain.
<<...Target acquired. Anomalous Core ID: Black. Commencing observation. The Century is over.>>
The psychic message was ancient, cold, and not from Seraphina. Elias fell to his knees beside the unconscious S-Rank Director, clutching his head, realizing that by saving the city, he had just announced his existence to something far older and far more dangerous than the Authority.