The wave of cold, ancient information that had slammed into Elias's mind receded, leaving behind a searing migraine and a profound, chilling certainty: The Great Cascade was not an accident.
Elias fought the nausea, pushing himself up from the floor. The immense weight of Seraphina's S-Rank Mana was gone, replaced by the residual, stabilizing hum of the Neo-Kyoto Core, now purring at 7.08 Hertz.
Director Seraphina, pale and trembling, pushed herself into a sitting position. Her S-Rank white uniform was stained with dust and Mana residue, but her black eyes were sharp and immediately focused on Elias.
"That message," Seraphina whispered, her voice rough. "You felt it. The residual psychic echo. It wasn't a random thought. It was… a transmission."
"An observation log," Elias confirmed, rubbing his temples. "It wasn't meant for us. It was a status report. Target acquired. Anomalous Core ID: Black. They were watching the Core fail, and now they are watching me."
Seraphina slowly reached into her pocket, not for a weapon, but for a small, metallic card—the Authority's blank designation tag.
"Your designation," she stated, her voice regaining its iron resonance, "is not S-Rank. S-Ranks manage energy, matter, and will. You manage Truth. Your ability is non-physical, yet it is utterly decisive." She paused, looking at the black aura that was now fading back into his skin, leaving only a subtle, vibrant shimmer in his eyes.
"You are classified as Black-I. Provisional. Temporary. And confidential."
Black-I. The 'I' stands for Information. I like it, Elias thought, accepting the card. The rank felt less like an achievement and more like a target painted on his back.
A small squad of high-ranking Authority Agents—Rix and Elara among them—arrived, running into the Control Center, their faces a mix of terror and confusion.
"Director Seraphina! What happened? The Core—" Rix started, but Seraphina cut him off with a single, sharp look.
"The Core is stabilized. A critical failure was averted. This facility is now under a Level Zero security blackout. Commander Rix, you and Assessor Elara will file a report stating that I performed the stabilization personally. Failure to comply will result in an immediate Core review and reassignment to E-Rank duties."
The threat was clear. Rix, still recovering from the massive psychic suppression, swallowed hard. "Understood, Director. You averted the crisis."
Seraphina then turned to Elias. "We are leaving. We need somewhere secure, away from the Authority's own surveillance. Your next task begins now, Black-I."
Ten minutes later, Elias found himself in a sleek, obsidian-black shuttle ascending rapidly over Neo-Kyoto. Seraphina sat across from him, sipping a potent-looking synth-tea, her body language radiating controlled exhaustion.
"The attack sequence you identified," Seraphina began, finally settling into a conversation free from immediate threat. "The one that accelerated the harmonic decay. Can you read it again? Trace its origin point?"
Elias closed his eyes. Instant Comprehension was not like accessing a library; it was like becoming the library. He reached back into the recent memory of the Core's system logs and pulled out the ghost of the attack sequence.
The sequence was an elegant, horrifyingly efficient string of 100 AC Mana-code. It was structured like a nested array, designed to slip past every modern defense. But Elias saw the truth behind the code.
"It originated from a satellite uplink—specifically, a repurposed pre-Cascade weather satellite, designated Luminar-1," Elias analyzed, reciting the data flow like a news report. "The satellite is currently in an unstable geostationary orbit over the ruins of Old Tokyo, operating on 2% power. Its broadcast signature is a Mana-frequency filter—a type of 'stealth coding' that hasn't been used since the first decade AC."
"Old Tokyo…" Seraphina murmured, her cup freezing halfway to her lips. The ruins of Old Tokyo were the designated 'Zero-Zone'—the epicenter of the Great Cascade and a place where Mana was too volatile for even S-Ranks to linger.
"The physical source is the satellite," Elias continued, looking out the viewport at the sprawling, neon-drenched city below, which he had just saved. "But the knowledge—the Chrono-Tuning Sequence I taught you, the elegance of the attack code… this isn't the work of modern Abilities. This knowledge is archaic. The organization running these tests is not new. They survived the Cascade, or they woke up after it."
Elias leaned forward, a grim fascination overcoming his exhaustion. "I need a specific piece of data, Director. To understand who they are, I need to know what they are looking for. I need the original, unredacted, unclassified research from the Authority's initial study into the Cascade. The Project Omega Files."
Seraphina slowly put down her cup. Her gaze was intense, analytical, and surprisingly accepting. Elias had just asked for the single most classified collection of data in the 100 AC world—the files that explained what the Great Cascade truly was.
"Project Omega files," Seraphina repeated. "They are secured in an insulated sub-vault beneath Authority Headquarters. They are protected by a quadruple-redundancy system, including a Kinetic lock, an Ethereal dampener, a biological retinal scan, and a Mana-Core frequency scrambler."
"All of which are based on 100 AC security paradigms," Elias noted with a weary sigh. "Give me access to the vault's external schematics and its four-digit manual override code, and I can calculate the necessary simultaneous Mana injection to trick the scrambler into accepting my Black-I signature as a universal key."
Seraphina stared at the boy, who was no longer a civilian, but a terrifying force of objective reality. He was asking her to betray every oath she had ever taken. But he had just saved her city.
A tense silence filled the cabin as the shuttle continued its ascent, moving toward an unknown, high-security location.
Finally, Seraphina gave a sharp, decisive nod. "I will give you the manual override code. But you will not breach the vault in person. You will interface with the system remotely. Black-I," she said, her voice a low command. "Welcome to the world of the impossible. We are now a partnership. Do not fail me."
Elias looked at the black classification tag in his hand and felt the weight of the city, the Authority, and now, the mysterious organization that had survived the end of the world.
"Failure is an inefficient outcome, Director Sara," Elias replied, a flicker of cold determination in his eyes. "I calculate an 87.3% chance of success, provided I receive immediate, unrestricted data access to the Authority's internal Mana-distribution schematics."