The tunnels beneath Central no longer slept.
They shifted. Breathed. Groaned under the weight of something growing restless.
Aeon moved quietly through the dark, lantern light flickering against the stone. He had not spoken in hours. Words felt too loud here—like they might crack the silence open and let something in that wasn't meant to wake.
His feet traced a different path now—not just through architecture, but through memory. Ancient corridors bled together with newer constructs. He passed support beams reinforced with steel beside crumbling murals painted in a language the world had forgotten. The past had been buried down here—literally. And something had unearthed it.
Not just the Shadow.
But himself.
The spire still pulsed behind him, far down in the anchor chamber, fractured but defiant. Its shard pressed against his ribs inside the cloth wrap, still warm. Not in temperature, but in pressure. Like it was aware.
And that frightened him more than he let show.
It had fought back when he touched it. Not with malice—but with fear.
The Shadow, whatever else it was, did not want to die alone.
He passed through a narrow crawlspace and emerged into a deeper service tunnel. The air changed. No longer stale—now warm and thick, humming with the vibration of alchemical heat. Steam hissed from pipes overhead. Somewhere beyond these halls, furnaces burned day and night. Central's lower layers were built on hidden fire.
He slowed at a crossroads. One tunnel led toward the central pillar—Father's hidden throne, Aeon knew that much now. Another led toward auxiliary chambers: storage, shielding chambers, chambers for experimentation. Testing. Breaking.
He turned toward the latter.
Not because he had a plan.
Because something called to him.
In the upper corridors, Lieutenant Maria Ross gripped her rifle tighter.
"Did you feel that?" she asked.
Breda, beside her, glanced at the ceiling. "Yeah. Another tremor."
"Third one tonight."
They stood watch in one of the lower military wings, a forgotten assignment. Security detail for a region no one admitted existed. But whispers had reached even them—of movement beneath Central, of sealed doors no one opened anymore.
"Something's down there," Ross murmured. "Something big."
"Let's just hope it stays down there," Breda muttered.
In the lower labs, the Homunculi stirred.
Gluttony whimpered, pressing his hands against his face. "It hurts…"
Lust stood over him, arms crossed. "It's spreading."
"What is?" Envy snapped, leaning in the doorway, eyes red-rimmed and twitching.
"The disruption," Lust answered quietly. "The pulse from below."
Wrath had gone silent. He watched the others from the edge of the room, one hand resting loosely on the hilt of his sword.
None of them spoke the name aloud.
But they all felt him.
The stranger. The one who should not be here.
Aeon entered the side chamber.
The door was old—wood rotted at the base, iron hinges rusted half-through. It resisted him with a long, slow creak, as if begging to stay closed. Inside, the chamber opened into a dome with chains bolted to the walls and a metal examination table stained black by decades of blood and time.
Aeon didn't recoil.
He had seen things like this before.
But the feeling here was different.
A residue clung to the walls—something like regret, like memory scorched into stone. His fingers hovered above one of the chains. They were thick. Heavy. Reinforced not with strength, but with symbols. Glyphs of suppression. Of restraint. Not to stop a body.
To stop a soul.
He knelt.
The floor still bore a circle—drawn in old blood, flaking now but readable. He read it silently, eyes scanning every stroke.
This wasn't for human transmutation.
This was containment.
A prison for something born of alchemy.
Someone.
He stood again, the weight in his chest returning.
This place had been used to silence something.
To erase it.
He turned—and froze.
Someone was standing at the entrance.
"Didn't expect to see anyone down here," the figure said. Calm voice. Slight rasp.
Aeon took in the lean frame. The black leather. The gold eyes.
Greed.
But something was different this time.
There was no bravado in his posture. No swagger.
Just… stillness.
The two stood facing each other across the dark room.
"I've been watching you," Greed said after a pause. "Not stalking. Just… keeping an eye out."
Aeon didn't respond.
Greed stepped closer, slowly. "You've been moving through these tunnels like someone who belongs. Like someone who knows what to look for."
"I'm looking for what's broken," Aeon said quietly.
Greed huffed a half-laugh. "Then you've come to the right kingdom."
Another silence.
Then: "You know what this room is?" Greed asked.
Aeon nodded. "A place for binding what's feared."
Greed looked away. "Yeah. I was bound here once. Not this exact room. But one like it. After I ran. After I decided I wanted more than Father was offering."
He paused.
"I don't think I was the only one."
Aeon watched him. "You remember it."
"I remember everything." Greed said, voice low now. "Even the parts Father tried to scrape clean. And you know what sticks? Not the pain. Not the punishment."
He looked up.
"It's the silence. The way no one looked for me after. Like I was never there."
Aeon didn't speak.
Because he understood.
He had lived silence too.
Greed sat on the edge of the metal table, kicking one boot absently.
"You've stirred something down here. I don't know what your goal is. But the others—my siblings—they're nervous. Envy's losing their mind. Wrath doesn't blink anymore. Even Father's gone quiet. And when he goes quiet…"
Greed trailed off.
"It means something's changing."
Aeon approached slowly, stopping just outside the faded containment circle.
"It already has."
Greed's eyes narrowed. "What do you want?"
Aeon didn't answer right away.
He reached into his coat and unwrapped the shard—the one from the anchor chamber.
Its glow was faint now, flickering like the last light of a dying star.
"I want to know what this is," Aeon said. "Not what it was made for. What it became."
Greed looked at the shard for a long time.
Then his expression shifted—just slightly.
"Where did you find that?"
"Below the gate. In the deepest place this city forgot."
Greed exhaled. "You're lucky it didn't kill you."
"Maybe it did," Aeon said. "I'm still figuring that out."
Greed cracked a smile at that. Not wide. But real.
A tremor shook the chamber. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Greed stood.
"You broke something, didn't you?"
"I exposed it."
"Same thing, down here."
They both turned toward the echo.
From somewhere above—far above—screams began to rise.
Elsewhere, near the surface, an alchemical array flared violently beneath the feet of an unsuspecting technician. He screamed as the symbol latched onto his soul, branding him from the inside.
He dropped to the floor, convulsing.
A moment later, he stood up.
But his eyes were no longer his.
And the voice that came from his mouth was not his own.
"Found you," it said.
Back in the chamber, Aeon closed the cloth over the shard.
Greed cracked his knuckles. "Looks like the party's starting."
"I didn't come to fight," Aeon said.
"No," Greed replied. "But you might have to finish one."
Aeon looked at him. "And you?"
Greed's grin returned.
"I've got a few things to settle."
Above them, the Shadow stretched.
It no longer slept.
And its voice, soft and low, began to crawl through the cracks in the world.
"You think I fled," it whispered. "But I was waiting."
"For you."