The silence beneath Central was unlike any Aeon had encountered.
It was not born of emptiness, but of something watching. Something vast and buried and angry. With every step he took into the subterranean tunnels, the air grew thicker, like he was walking into lungs that had not breathed for centuries.
The walls bled with alchemical residue—symbols carved long ago, forgotten languages etched over by newer, cruder ones. Each layer hummed with power repurposed, stolen, rewritten. This place was not merely beneath the city.
It was beneath truth itself.
And at its heart, the Shadow pulsed.
Not loudly, but insistently—like a memory returning in fragments. A scent. A feeling. A wound.
Aeon followed it deeper.
Meanwhile, above
The Homunculi gathered in the lower chamber of Father's domain.
Gluttony whimpered in the dark, crouched with his arms around his knees. Lust stood by the entry arch, her eyes narrowed. Wrath sat still in his chair, but one hand rested on his sword.
Envy paced like a caged animal.
"He touched the seal again," Envy muttered. "Twice now. That corridor hasn't been opened since the Northern Rebellion."
Lust spoke quietly. "Father says he won't interfere."
"Father isn't the one unraveling," Envy snapped.
They stopped pacing.
"The voices have returned," they whispered. "Not the ones we know. New ones. Old ones."
Lust's posture stiffened. "What kind of voices?"
Envy turned slowly.
"His," they said. "But broken. And full of grief."
Wrath rose from his chair.
"He's reaching further than he should."
Below
Aeon passed through a collapsed hallway, stepping over rusted grates and scorched bones. The tunnels here were older—untouched since the time of Xerxes. And here, the lattice of alchemy changed again.
It sang to him.
But the song was off.
One circle caught his attention—painted, not carved. Fresh. A trap, but not for intruders.
A tether.
Aeon knelt and pressed two fingers to the edge. The sigil flickered. Energy surged.
He was pulled sideways.
In the realm between
The stone vanished. The walls folded. He stood in a place of shadowed mirrors—reflections of himself staring back, fractured by emotion and choice.
And in the center: Envy.
But not as the Homunculus alone. As a vessel. Their form flickered—Envy's sneering face overlaid by rippling fragments of others. Victims. Souls. Pieces.
"You're the cause," Envy hissed.
Aeon stood still. "I am the scar."
"You split yourself," they snarled, stepping forward. "And left us behind. You threw your pain away like garbage. Like us."
"I did," Aeon said simply.
Envy trembled. "We remember everything you don't. The betrayal. The grief. The rage. We lived it. While you became this—a saint in silence."
He raised his hands—clawed, trembling.
"Do you know what it's like to be an emotion, with no body, no peace? Just loops of memory in a corpse of alchemy?"
Aeon lowered his gaze. "Yes."
For a moment, silence passed between them.
Then the realm snapped.
Back in the real world
Aeon staggered from the circle, his shoulder striking the wall. Dust fell around him. Blood—thin, golden—dripped from his palm. Not much. But enough.
The trap hadn't been to kill him.
It had been to awaken something.
And it had.
He wiped the blood away and moved on.
Elsewhere in the chamber
Envy screamed.
It wasn't a sound of pain—it was unraveling. He thrashed against the wall, shape flickering wildly. Faces bubbled across their skin, crying, laughing, dying.
Gluttony covered his ears.
Lust watched without blinking.
Wrath raised his hand. "Contain it."
Father's voice echoed from above.
"No. Let it finish."
Later — deeper still
Aeon reached the final gate.
It was carved in obsidian, rimmed with veins of red and silver. A perfect circle—older than Xerxes. Older than truth.
On the surface, the symbol of the Eye.
He placed his hand upon it.
And the wall breathed.
Behind it, something stirred.
The Shadow was here.
Watching.
And it knew he had arrived.
To be continued…