Five years had passed. Occasionally ash continued to descend a gray snow that persisted in reminding the world of the Cataclysm. Cassiathon Abysswalker traversed the remains of the area once labeled Sector Seven on the maps his breath forming mist, in the radioactive cold. The atmosphere carried the flavor of rust and ozone a blend of hopelessness.
The expressions of his parents captured in the moment of the Phoenix Fire were imprinted behind his eyelids. Each day carried the recollection. That memory was the ember stoking the blaze within his heart.
This bunker, named "Veridian Hive" in the records he'd recovered from a deceased Archivist's lair was intended to be the pinnacle of Voneste's secret investigations. The ultimate repository. He planned to incinerate it erasing the echoes of the Queen's desire.
He located the chamber not through a map but through intuition. The atmosphere became dense vibrating with an energy that caused his teeth to throb.. There at the heart of a room filled with broken monitors and broken glass stood a solitary undamaged stasis tube.
It radiated a greenish light brightening the shape inside.
Cassiathon halted abruptly his fingers clenching the handle of his pulse-blade. It wasn't a data-core. It wasn't a creature.
It was a girl.
She seemed to be in her teens immersed in amniotic fluid, pale like moonlight. Dark hair drifted around a face of otherworldly beauty.. Wires attached to ports, along her spine and temples. A label was inscribed on the base of the tube: SYRINX – PROTOCOL: ASCENDANCY.
His mind furnished the weapon, detached and precise. A living amalgamation. Vernia Vouw's spirit encased in form.
Fury, intense and blazing surged from, within him. This marked the peak of the horror that had destroyed his world. His parents. He lifted the blade its energy aura sparking into existence throwing blue silhouettes onto the walls. One blow. Break the glass stab the heart. Wipe away this dreadful error.
When the sound of his firearm hit its point her eyes suddenly flew open.
Those were no eyes. The irises resembled a glowing gold, akin, to tiny suns trapped within a grid of obsidian. They locked onto him immediately free of hesitation or dread. Deep, timeless consciousness.
The stasis fluid started to leak out with a hiss. The tubes pulled away retreating into the device. The glass tube cracked lengthwise with a sound of pressure letting go.
Cassiathon remained frozen his weapon still poised. She made a step ahead bare and shining then dropped onto her knees on the chilly ground. She shook intensely not due, to cold. From overwhelming sensations. Her eyes roamed over the lab, the dust, the remnants of technology before settling back on him.
Her mouth opened slightly. A breathy noise, followed by an crisply articulated sound.
"Cass-i-a-thon."
His blood ran cold. In what way?
She rose with difficulty, her motions clumsy but with a subtle elegance beneath. She advanced a step, in his direction another her gold-black eyes fixed intently on his expression.
"Anchor," she breathed, the word full of wonder and desperate relief. "You are my Anchor."