The smell of ozone lingered in the air when the first descent team reached the ruins. The elevator shaft had collapsed, leaving only a narrow passage reinforced with steel frames and ropes. Floodlights pulsed along the cavern walls, showing streaks of burned metal and crystallized sand. Somewhere below, the hum of damaged machines echoed like distant breathing.
Cael Veyne, after finishing his mission on negotiation with the Southern Council, stood near the edge, watching the survey drones vanish into the dark. He had seen many sites touched by Dimensional Concept Formation accidents before, but this one felt different. The silence was too structured, as if the collapse itself obeyed a pattern only the dead could understand.
With a deprecating smile, he joked, "A mission after another mission? For God's sake, I'm an investigator, not a machine! I've got paperwork piling up at the Academy!"
He laughed, though the sound carried a weary sigh beneath it.
'Though, sending another personnel to the Southern Continent might attract attention, especially since this incident is no small one, the military might even be involved!'
With no chance to even relax with his trip to the Southern Continent, he's left with no choice but to hurry up and take this mission seriously.
"Radiation minimal," one of the soldiers called. "Void residue remnants still active."
Cael adjusted the filter on his mask. His breath came slow, deliberate. The emblem of Great Ophis Academy rested on his shoulder plate, a silver serpent encircling a mirror. Across from him, the United Military's insignia glinted under the floodlights. Both parties had been briefed to cooperate, though that word never meant the same thing to either side.
Day one began with descent and retrieval. The goal was simple: locate survivors, secure data, and measure the scope of the Dimensional Concept Formation(DCFs) that had destroyed the research complex. Simple on paper, until the reality of it pressed in.
They moved through corridors warped by heat and psychic backlash. Glass had melted into waves; walls carried faint impressions of human silhouettes, as if burned into the surface by memory itself. The deeper they went, the colder the air became.
"Echo field still unstable," Cael muttered, scanning a wall with his Resometer. The readings shimmered and twitched. "The concentration of Void Residue is still high. We can't stay for too long."
One soldier quickly got his guard up and hasten his duty. Another asked if the echoes could harm them. Cael didn't answer. Sometimes harm wasn't physical. Sometimes it meant your sense of self began to question its boundaries, leading to mental breakdown, and ultimately, death.
After hours of searching, the team reached the lowest chamber. The blast doors had folded inward like paper. Inside, they found the remains of the primary observation hall, rows of cracked monitors, overturned consoles, and a line of containment pods fused into the floor. Only two emitted a faint glow.
"Vitals present," the medic announced. "Two subjects, both minors."
Cael approached. A girl was lying unconscious on the cold and barren floor field with rubbled, eyes half open but unfocused. The second held a boy, similar in age. Their tags read 00-1 and 00-2. No third pod responded to the search. Readings shows critical signs of Void Affliction, to the point that both the children can mutate into grotesque monsters at any time! After seeing the scene, the medics following at the back in protected suits immediately rushed in to contain the two and treat Void Affliction through cognitive therapy.
He said with a commanding and somewhat irritated tone, "Treat them according to the Ophis's Void Phenomena Investigation's Protocol, not that of the military, understood?"
The medics exclaimed in unison, "Yes, Chief!"
---
When the medics reached the surface and confirmed their safety,
He proceded to recorde the data silently. The file logs and observation report identified a third child, 00-0, but only fragments of telemetry remained before it vanished at the onset of the incident. The timestamp was precise: 04:32 hours. A void followed, an absence the system couldn't interpret.
When they finally emerged, dusk had already fallen. The surface base buzzed with static reports and hurried voices. Cael removed his mask, feeling the dust cling to his skin. The wind carried the dry scent of scorched soil.
He shouted inwardly, 'This.... This fuckers is finally making a move! And they are collaborating with the military! How dare they participate in this investigation when they are one of the mastermind! Does the Southern Council knows of this?! Or are they also involved?!'
Filled with multiple conclusions, but no definitive answers and evidence, he didn't include it in his report and kept it to himself. His deep seeted hate to the Southern Council further darkened.
---
The second day began with analysis. A temporary command center had been erected beside the excavation site. Screens flickered with distorted feeds, recovered from deep storage drives pulled from the debris. Technicians filtered through corrupted footage, each frame a small victory against the noise.
Cael stood before one of the monitors as the footage played. A man's voice could be heard, soft and almost melodic, telling a story to unseen listeners. "Once upon a time, the Great Mind dreamed reality as it fell asleep…" The words carried through the static like a lullaby meant for no one.
The camera panned slightly, revealing the childrens, three of them is in the front as if leading the a pack wolves, seated at a table. Their expressions were still, attentive. The man's face was never shown, but his tone carried warmth that had no place in a laboratory. Then the light trembled, and the recording fractured into white noise.
"That's all we recovered," said a technician, his tone weary. "The feed terminates 9 hours before the collapse. The recordings and files in the innermost part where they kept the childrens has been utterly destroyed with no hopes of restoration of relative data."
Cael studied the final frame, the blurred outline of the storyteller's hand resting on the table. "Archive it under file designation A-9," he said quietly. "Restricted to Ophis supervision."
Across the tent, the military observers exchanged glances. "You don't have jurisdiction yet," one of them muttered.
"By the Accord of 710," Cael replied without turning, "all DCF incidents exceeding Rank 3 fall under Ophis custody. That agreement remains in effect."
The room fell silent. The military preferred to handle things that bled, not things that thought.
Later that afternoon, the specialists compiled the biological readings of the two surviving children. Their neural patterns were unlike anything recorded in the archives. The activity shifted in peaks and troughs without rhythm, as though the brain were trapped mid-dream, searching for a sequence it could never complete.
Cael scrolled through the graphs on his tablet. "They're stabilizing," he murmured, half to himself. "But not regressing. It's as if their consciousness is folding inward, reorganizing itself."
One of the researchers nodded. "Could be post-affliction trauma. The kind of collapse that forces the mind to overload, but..."
Cael didn't reply. He knew the signs of trauma. This wasn't that. Something else pulsed in the readings, subtle but deliberate, a trace of resonance, a resonance found only in Resonance Holders! A kind of rhythm that should've been impossible to see in an unmatured mana meridians, much less, the Harmony of body soul!
Surprised with what he's witnessing, he inwardly thought, 'this... They are not even adults yet! How have they formed their Resonance echoes?! Is this what the military is aiming for to overtake the the Southern Warring States? So being under an autocratic banner was true all along!'
Outside, the wind scraped over the barren surface. The landscape stretched endless, gray under the pall of dust clouds. The only motion came from the workers moving in and out of tents, carrying drives, tools, and crates of decontamination gear.
Cael left the command center and walked toward the edge of the excavation. Floodlights had been set around the crater's rim, their pale glow slicing the darkness below. The ruins seemed to breathe under the light, shifting faintly as if some memory deep within the metal refused to rest.
He closed his eyes for a moment. The image of the recording lingered behind his eyelids, the children, the story, the voice that had sounded almost kind. The Great Mind dreamed reality as it fell asleep. A phrase so simple, yet filled with something unsettling.
With wind blowing, he said, "This sentence... It's the Oracle spread by the Noosphere, these bunch of lunatics who worships the great mind, they have been collaborating with the military to research on Forced harmonization of body and soul?!" As an experienced investigator and professor on the Great Ophis Academy, he has his fair share of thesis works and collaboration with other Deans and professors, this research was none other than one of his fellow professors that was expelled by the Academy years ago!
"This research... He defected to the Noosphere?! I called it, the Academy should've imprisoned and killed him for conducting such experiments on his daughter! Hasn't he learned?! His daughter died due to his action!"
A sudden tremor rippled underfoot. Cael opened his eyes, instantly alert, but the vibration faded quickly. The seismic sensors confirmed no tectonic activity. Just another aftershock of the DFC event, or perhaps a delayed reaction from the ruins below.
He stayed there until the wind began to cut through his coat. The lights flickered once before stabilizing again.
Back in his tent, he reviewed his preliminary report. Most of it was procedural: casualty counts, facility structure, containment status. But at the bottom of the document, his fingers hesitated over the line for personal observations.
He typed: Residual patterns suggest an unaccounted anomaly during manifestation. Unknown third subject missing from logs.
Then he stopped. After a long pause, he deleted the sentence, saved the file, and sent it to central command.
When he looked outside again, the horizon was lit by the dim glow of the generators. The night felt heavier, as if the earth itself was trying to remember what it had lost.
(Part 3 — The Third Day)
A new day began under a pale, uneven sky. Dust still drifted from the crater, rising in slow spirals before the wind pulled it apart. The temporary camp had the dull rhythm of exhaustion. Drones carried data cores to waiting transports, soldiers disassembled power arrays, and the last medical units ran their final scans and treatments on the survivors.
At the center of the hurriedly built base camp, the conference dome stood half-buried in gray soil. Its thin walls shimmered faintly with insulation fields to keep out residue from the ruins. Inside, the light was clean and white, too sterile for comfort.
Cael arrived with his data tablet pressed to his side. He hadn't slept much, though no one in the team really had. The air tasted of static. Around the long table, representatives from both the Great Ophis Academy and the United Military Command gathered in a silence that had already begun to sour.
"Let's proceed," said Halden, the military's appointed lead. His voice was clipped, efficient. "All remaining personnel from the lower sectors and other test subjects have been confirmed deceased numbering in thousands, the exact numbers is still being identified because there is no trace of little existence. Structural damage renders recovery operations unfeasible. We'll initiate sterilization by midnight."
Cael glanced at the holographic display hovering above the table. It showed the underground blueprint of the destroyed complex, sectioned into fragments. The red zones pulsed faintly, like wounds still bleeding light.
"The void residue is contained," Cael said. "Sterilization isn't necessary. The readings have dropped below interference thresholds."
Halden frowned. "You call this contained? We still don't understand how the manifestation reached Rank 4. You saw what it did to the outer sectors. If we leave any trace of it, the same instability could resurface."
"The instability came from the researchers, not the anomaly," Cael replied evenly. "You're mistaking consequence for origin."
The room grew quiet. Several officers exchanged looks, but no one spoke. Behind them, a technician adjusted the temperature field.
Cael continued, "What matters now are the two survivors. They're evidence, yes, but more than that, they may hold the cognitive blueprint that defines this class of manifestation. Destroying the site without studying them properly would be short-sighted."
"Short-sighted," Halden repeated, almost as if testing the word. "And what would you have us do, Investigator? Bring them to your academy, raise them like students? These are children whose minds have been rewritten by experiments that turned this facility into a grave."
He also added, "Come to think of it, how did the kids even manage to survive? DCFs are unforgiving dimensions, even if the Lumen Institute Laboratory has many Resonance Holders, they were limited in strength because large movement of personnel will attract eyes.
He jokingly said, "Were all of them sucked into the DCF?!"
"That should be not possible, DCFs are alive, it seeks hosts to compel itself from within, but does not have the ability to forcibly suck people." Cael said simply.
"That doesn't make sense, how then did these two only survive."
Cael met his gaze without flinching. "That I cannot explain, this world is mysterious and eerie that's why Ophis seeks to understand this world for everyone."
The silence afterward carried the weight of unspoken history. The Ophis Academy and the United Military had worked together for centuries, but that partnership was never balanced. Ophis studied; the military contained. Both believed they were preventing another awakening of the world's DCFs disasters, yet each saw the other as the cause of them.
An aide from the academy stepped forward and slid a small holographic tablet across the table. "Clause Nine," he said. "The treaty of Accord of 710. It grants Ophis jurisdiction over all anomalous entities of Rank 3 and above and children's below 15 to be sent to the Great Ophis Academy at all cost."
Halden didn't touch the device. "That treaty is outdated."
"It's binding," Cael said quietly. "And recognized by the Southern Council."
The colonel's jaw tightened. For a moment, the hum of the dome's filtration system was the only sound.
Halden exhaled through his nose. "Very well. You'll have your custody. But understand this, Investigator: if those children show even a hint of instability outside controlled conditions, the military will intervene without your permission."
Cael nodded. "Noted."
The rest of the meeting dragged through procedure. Dates, signatures, verification codes. Beneath the language of bureaucracy, there was the pulse of something unspoken, fear, duty, perhaps the faintest echo of guilt.
By evening, the decision had been finalized. The two survivors, designated 00-1 and 00-2, would be transferred to Ophis Academy for extended medical and cognitive supervision. They would be raised within a controlled residential facility, given education and rehabilitation, their progress monitored until age fifteen. Officially, they were classified as Children of Cognitive Instability. Unofficially, they were considered Potential Resonants.
Outside, the transports were being prepared. The pods were carried from the med bay under layers of shielding cloth. The suspension fields shimmered faintly with soft blue light as they were loaded into containment carriers.
Cael observed from a distance. His face remained unreadable, though his fingers tapped against his tablet in a slow, rhythmic pattern. The recordings, the story, the silence of the ruins, they all pressed against his thoughts, fragments that refused to align.
He walked along the perimeter of the camp as the engines of the transport crafts began to hum. The evening light turned everything to copper. The ruins below glowed faintly under the residual field, like an afterimage burned into the ground.
A junior officer approached him with a report. "Sir, the sterilization teams are ready for the final sweep once the carriers depart."
"Understood," Cael said. He looked back toward the crater one last time. Somewhere in that vast hollow, the echoes of the incident still lingered, shards of sound, fragments of thought. The kind that clung to the air long after the people who made them were gone.
The transports lifted, scattering dust in spiraling clouds. Cael watched until they became nothing more than distant specks against the dim horizon. Then he turned and walked toward the communications tent.
The day had grown quiet. Even the wind had softened, carrying only the faint vibration of the engines fading beyond sight. For the first time since their arrival, the ruins lay still.
No one mentioned the third child. The missing entry in the registry remained buried under corrupted code, a gap that no one was willing to acknowledge aloud.
Cael paused once more near the crater's edge, the howling wind above and sound of the aircraft carrier tugged at his coat. Above him, the sky was colorless, blank and unmoving.
He drew in a slow breath and turned away from the ruins, and depressingly said, "The Southern Continent will soon be in chaos.."
---
By nightfall, the base would be gone. The records sealed. The world would move on. Yet beneath the layers of silence and stone, something unseen continued to breathe, something that had dreamed once, and perhaps had not yet awakened.