The first tremor came at dusk.
Not an earthquake.
Not a collapse.
Just a low vibration beneath the floorboards—subtle enough that only Ace reacted.
His ears flattened.
The threads lining the rafters shivered.
Pipkin looked up from his ledger. "Tell me that's atmospheric pressure and not destiny."
Ace stepped to the center of the room.
He pressed one paw against the wood.
The vibration wasn't physical.
It was resonance.
Old.
Buried.
Calling.
He saw it immediately—
Stone corridors beneath the city.
Runic pylons carved into foundation blocks.
A lattice older than the Guild.
And something resting at its center.
Not moving.
But awake.
Ace jerked his paw back.
The image snapped away.
Pipkin had gone pale. "You saw something."
Ace nodded once.
A second tremor rolled through the air—this time strong enough to rattle a shelf.
Outside, a distant murmur of startled voices rose.
Pipkin rushed to the window.
"No visible damage," he reported quickly. "But that hum—"
He stopped.
Across the street, a lamppost flickered.
The enchantment inside it sputtered, flared, then stabilized.
One by one, along the road—
Streetlamps flickered in sequence.
Like a pulse traveling underground.
Ace's tail went rigid.
It wasn't random.
It was following a pattern.
Toward them.
A sharp knock struck the door.
Pipkin nearly leapt out of his fur.
When he opened it, a familiar Guild official stood there—the tall one from inspection.
Her composure was intact.
Barely.
"You felt that," she said.
Ace met her gaze.
"Yes," Pipkin answered for him. "We felt that."
She stepped inside without waiting for invitation.
"There's a disturbance in the lower wards," she said briskly. "Several old reinforcement pylons activated simultaneously. We don't know why."
Ace hopped onto the table and pressed his paw down again.
This time he did not resist.
The underground lattice unfolded before him more clearly.
Massive anchor stones etched with sigils.
Threadlines binding them together.
And at the heart—
A fracture.
Hairline.
But spreading.
Something ancient was bound beneath the city.
Not a creature.
Not exactly.
A core.
A sealed memory construct.
He saw flashes—
Hands carving sigils.
A council arguing in torchlight.
A decision made in fear.
Then darkness.
The official stepped closer.
"What do you see?"
Ace withdrew his paw slowly.
He reached for parchment instead.
With swift strokes, he sketched the lattice pattern he had glimpsed.
The official's breath caught.
"That's the original foundation grid," she whispered. "Pre-Guild."
Pipkin adjusted his glasses.
"You built your city on top of someone else's containment."
She didn't argue.
A third tremor struck.
This one stronger.
A faint crack echoed somewhere far beneath.
The official's jaw tightened.
"The lower wards report mana backflow. Enchantments are destabilizing."
Ace leapt from the table and ran to the back shelf.
He dragged down an old, dust-covered map of the district.
He spread it flat and placed his paw at the center.
The hum beneath his claws grew louder.
There.
Directly beneath the studio's quadrant.
The fracture point.
The official saw it too.
"No," she breathed.
"Yes," Pipkin said quietly. "Yes, very much yes."
The floorboards creaked faintly.
Not from weight.
From tension.
Ace felt it clearly now.
The thing beneath the stone wasn't waking in anger.
It was straining.
Like a memory trying to surface after centuries.
He closed his eyes.
Carefully—very carefully—he reached again.
This time, the vision did not snap violently.
It flowed.
A city under construction.
Arcane engineers arguing.
A volatile relic unearthed during excavation.
They had sealed it instead of destroying it.
Bound it into the foundation lattice.
Used its stabilizing properties to reinforce the city's enchantments.
But relics were not meant to be infrastructure.
Time had weakened the sigils.
The fracture was widening.
The official grabbed a sending crystal from her belt.
"Emergency council assembly," she ordered into it. "District Twelve substructure breach risk. Potential relic core destabilization."
She lowered the crystal and looked at Ace.
"You interfaced with battlefield artifacts without collapse," she said. "Can you stabilize this?"
Ace stared at the map.
This wasn't a helm.
This wasn't a gauntlet.
This was the city.
Pipkin swallowed.
"Strategic Asset status just escalated to Urban Structural Necessity."
A sharp crack echoed from beneath the floor.
Dust drifted from the ceiling beams.
Outside, another lamppost went dark.
Ace's heart pounded.
The underground core pulsed again.
Not violently.
Desperately.
It wasn't trying to break free.
It was trying to hold itself together.
Ace understood that feeling.
He stepped to the center of the studio.
He placed both paws on the floor.
Closed his eyes.
And dove.
The world inverted.
Stone surrounded him—not physically, but in memory.
He saw the relic core clearly now.
A sphere of compressed emotional energy—centuries of fear, ambition, and civic pride fused together.
It wasn't evil.
It was overburdened.
Used for too long.
Its containment threads were fraying.
Ace extended his awareness like a needle.
He did not try to erase.
He did not try to absorb.
He threaded.
Carefully.
He found the fracture line and began weaving reinforcement—not replacing the old sigils, but supporting them.
Layering new stability over ancient fear.
The core pulsed.
Resisted.
Then… slowed.
Above ground, the tremors lessened.
In the studio, Pipkin watched as faint silver lines shimmered briefly along the floorboards beneath Ace's paws.
The Guild official stared, stunned.
The lampposts outside steadied.
The hum softened.
Deep below, the fracture sealed—not permanently.
But for now.
Ace withdrew slowly.
His legs trembled when he stood.
The weight in his chest was immense.
Not like the helm.
This was vast.
Heavy.
The official caught him before he stumbled.
The floor went still.
Silence filled the studio.
After a long moment, she whispered, "It's stable."
Her sending crystal flickered with incoming messages.
"Lower wards report mana levels normalizing," a distant voice said faintly.
Pipkin exhaled shakily.
Ace looked down at his paws.
He could feel the core still.
Not screaming.
Not straining.
Resting.
But it had felt him.
And in that brief connection—
Something had shifted.
Far beneath the stone, where ancient sigils glowed faintly once more—
The relic core pulsed gently.
Aware.
Not of danger.
But of recognition.
And for the first time in centuries—
It was not alone.