The Citadel was awake.
Not in the way cities wake—with movement and light and industry.
It was aware.
Somewhere beneath its skeletal architecture and humming lifelines, something stirred. Something old. Watching.
---
Sira woke before dawn.
She'd barely slept, and when she had, the shard had filled her dreams with static-laced memories. A burning sky. A voice screaming through time. A machine that bled.
Kael was already up, crouched near the edge of the broken tower, watching the skyline through a cracked scope.
"They're scanning," he said. "Three Warden units, two surveillance drones. Not the usual patrols."
"They know."
He nodded. "Time to move."
Sira gripped the shard tight and followed him down the rusted spine of the tower into the tangled gut of the Slums.
---
Sub-Nexus 17 – Abandoned Core Access Tunnel
They descended into the forgotten veins of Caeluma—deep, pressurized tunnels carved decades ago for maintenance crews and now long abandoned. The lights flickered but still functioned, dimly. The deeper they went, the more the hum of the city surrounded them—like being inside a living creature.
"This place is pre-Surge," Kael said. "Before the neural override net. No biometric locks, no Overseer monitoring."
Sira glanced at him. "How do you know that?"
Kael smiled, unzipping a side pouch and pulling out a small data rod with an embossed spiral.
"My mother used to be an echo-archivist. Taught me to read the old signs."
Sira didn't smile. "Mine taught me to stay quiet and run fast."
"Both useful," Kael said. "But we'll need more than that if we're getting to the Core."
---
They reached the service lift—an ancient piston model powered by its own fusion cell. Kael rewired it quickly, and the floor lurched downward with a groan.
As they descended, the walls changed.
No longer rusted and makeshift.
Now smooth. Black. Reflective.
And humming.
The Core was near.
The shard pulsed again.
Sira heard the voice—not loud, not urgent, but present.
> "Closer... you are close..."
---
The Core Observation Ring
The lift doors opened into a vast circular chamber.
Sira stepped out, blinking.
The room was enormous, domed, and utterly silent. The Core hung suspended in the center—an orb of pure light, caged in magnetic fields, cables, and machinery. It didn't rotate. It breathed.
Light flared with every beat.
Kael whistled. "I never thought it was real."
The shard grew warm in Sira's hand.
Suddenly, the entire room lit up.
Panels on the walls activated, lines of data streaming past. Holograms appeared—architectural blueprints, DNA strands, geological maps of Earth.
Then came the voice.
> "IDENTITY CONFIRMED: Vey, Sira. Legacy link: Ilyas, Vorn. Initiating secure broadcast."
Kael looked stunned. "Did it just say... you're related to him?"
Sira's lips parted, but no sound came.
The shard flared bright white.
---
The Memory Sequence
Reality vanished again.
Sira stood inside the Core—not physically, but within its mind.
A vision.
The world was green.
Forests. Rivers. Cities built around nature, not over it.
She saw the Heart—a structure buried in the earth, shaped like a lotus, pulsing with gentle energy.
> "We made Terra to restore the planet," said the voice—Vorn Ilyas, her ancestor. "When the Sky Cities rose, we never meant to stay forever. They were meant to be temporary. A chance to heal."
> "But power changed everything."
The image fractured.
She saw the war. The rise of the Citadel elite. The Technocrats seizing control. Memory shards hidden. The Heart buried.
> "Only those with the link could awaken it again."
> "And now, only you remain."
Sira fell to her knees.
"I didn't ask for this."
> "Neither did I."
And then she was back.
---
Kael was shaking her. "Sira. You were gone—your eyes went blank. I thought—"
"I saw it," she said, her voice rough. "The real world. Before the cities. Before the lie."
The Core dimmed slightly. The shard cooled.
Kael helped her up. "Then we know what we're looking for."
She nodded. "We need to find the other shards. Before they do."
---
High Citadel – Black Labyrinth Division
Varn Ilex stood in the center of the Labyrinth, flanked by glass tubes filled with neural dampening fluid. Inside floated Echo Drones—twisted fusions of Warden tech and harvested brain matter.
One opened its eyes as he passed.
"Send it," Varn commanded.
"Where?" asked Yara Lin, her voice hesitant.
"The Core," he replied. "They've already reached it. We respond now—or the entire structure collapses."
The Overseer's voice filled the room.
> "RELEASING WARDEN PRIME."
The doors at the far end hissed open.
And something terrible stepped out.
---