The revelation from the ice left the Council in a state of strategic paralysis. They were fighting a shadow war against an unknown traitor on a dying planet, all while waiting for a cosmic horror to return and harvest the ashes. Jack's simulations proved their technology was a peashooter against a battleship. Lin Feng's own power plateau proved that their evolution had hit a ceiling. They were strong, but not strong enough.
"We are missing a piece of the puzzle," Amira Khan said, her voice a quiet anchor in the storm of their despair. "The being in the ice spoke of a cycle. This has happened before. The civilization that lived on this planet thousands of years ago... they must have known. They must have fought."
"And they lost, Amira," Jack countered, his voice grim. "They're dust and memories. What can they teach us?"
"Everything," Amira replied, her eyes fixed on the floor, as if looking down through the stone to the ancient tomb below. "Prophecies and warnings are for the fearful. But knowledge... knowledge is for the desperate. The High Priest's mind is a library of a lost world. I am not going back to ask for another warning. I am going back to find their answer."
The risk was immense. A deep-link of the kind she proposed was not a conversation; it was a psychic excavation, an act of utter spiritual immersion. To dive that deep into a mind that ancient was to risk being lost in its depths forever, her own consciousness a single drop of rain in a forgotten ocean.
She stood once more in the Oracle Chamber, the golden conduits humming with a power that now felt like a familiar friend. The other six members of the Council stood with her, not as leaders, but as a silent, protective guard, their combined presence a shield for her vulnerable mind.
"If I am not back in one hour," she said, her voice calm, "pull me out. No matter what."
She closed her eyes and plunged into the abyss.
The mind of the High Priest was not a collection of neat memories. It was a swirling, chaotic universe of sensations and forgotten knowledge. She saw a world lit by two moons. She saw pyramids of floating obsidian that drew power from the stars. She saw a people who did not just wield energy; they were made of it.
Then, she felt their terror. A psychic scream that echoed across millennia. She saw the sky burn as the first Star-Eaters descended, a plague of silent, hungry shadows. She witnessed their desperate, hopeless war.
But as their civilization crumbled, she saw their final, desperate gambit. A last act of defiance. Not an attack, but an exodus. A small fleet of crystalline ships, leaving their dying world not in a panicked flight, but on a guided, purposeful pilgrimage. They were not running away. They were seeking a new kind of power.
Amira focused her entire will on their destination, pushing past the chaos, searching for the blueprint. And she found it.
It was not a place. It was a concept. In the Priest's mind, it had a name that translated to "The Furnace of the Gods." It was a place where mortals were tested, broken, and reforged into something more. A crucible designed to accelerate evolution. A place of ascension. A proving ground. A Stellar Proving Ground.
And with the name, she found a map. A fragment. A chart of star constellations that were utterly alien, impossible to see from their solar system.
Amira's eyes snapped open, a gasp tearing from her lungs. She stumbled back, caught by Lin Feng's steadying hand. She was pale, her body trembling, but her eyes burned with a fierce, triumphant light.
She did not need to speak. She projected the star chart from her own mind onto the central holographic display. A swirl of unknown stars and alien constellations glowed in the center of the room.
"They did not accept their extinction," she said, her voice a raw, breathless whisper. "They sent their best warriors on a final quest. To a place that could make them strong enough to fight back."
She looked at the faces of her friends, her comrades, the last hope of a world on the brink. "Our technology has reached its limit. Our evolution has stalled. We are not strong enough. But the ancients... they left us a path. A blueprint for a miracle."
It was a myth from a dead civilization. A map to a place that might not even exist anymore, in a galaxy they could not see. It was a desperate, insane, and impossible long shot.
It was the only hope they had left.