The pouch from Overseer Li felt heavier than its physical weight. Back in Berth 42, Kaelen emptied its contents onto his sleeping pad with reverent care. Three spirit-stable crystals the size of his thumb, humming with a deep, resonant potential that made the air taste of ozone and fresh rain. A small, translucent vial containing a thick, golden sap that pulsed with soft light, each throb in time with a heartbeat he couldn't hear. And a data-slate—not a chip, but an actual, sleek tablet of obsidian and jade—displaying a three-dimensional map of the Eastern Grove's ley-line network, lines of power glowing like subterranean rivers of light.
This wasn't payment. It was an investment. Li was arming him.
The Heartwood sap was the key. His tablet analyzed a single drop. [SUBSTANCE: HEARTWOOD ESSENCE (DILUTED). PROPERTIES: CONCENTRATED SPIRITUAL ENERGY IN STABLE MATRIX. COMPATIBILITY WITH TECHNOLOGICAL INTERFACE: UNKNOWN. CAUTION: VOLATILE IF MISHANDLED.]
Unknown compatibility. That was a challenge. But "volatile" was just another word for "potential energy source."
He spent the next cycle in a state of focused isolation, ignoring his routine duty assignment (a drone left a warning notice on his door, which he promptly recycled). Zyx, sensing his intensity, limited communication to essential data packets about security patrols.
Kaelen's goal was to build a Spiritual Power Cell. A device that could safely convert the Heartwood sap's raw spiritual energy into a stable electrical current to power his tech, or directly into shaped resonant frequencies for his sensors and tools.
He started with the highest-grade spirit-stable crystal. Using the laser-scalpel at its most precise setting, he hollowed it out, creating a tiny, perfect chamber. This would be the reaction vessel. He then used conductive gel to inscribe minute circuitry onto the crystal's exterior—a lattice of channels designed to bleed off and regulate energy.
The trick was the interface. The sap was spiritual; his circuits were electronic. He needed a translator. His inspiration came from the Tri-Channel Resonator and the way the pangalosome-tuned crystal had interacted with living energy. Resonance was the bridge.
He took one of the smaller spirit-stable crystals and tuned it to act as a "resonant bridge"—programmed to vibrate at the fundamental frequency of the Heartwood sap itself, a frequency he'd extracted from the scan data. This bridge-crystal he embedded at the base of the hollow chamber.
Finally, he crafted input and output ports using salvaged Versity-standard connectors, fused to the crystal with conductive gel.
The device looked like a fat, glowing bullet of crystal with metal caps on each end. It was absurdly small for what he hoped it could do.
Now for the moment of truth. Using a micro-dropper from his maintenance kit, he placed a single, shimmering drop of Heartwood sap into the hollow chamber.
The effect was immediate. The sap pooled in the chamber, glowing brighter. The bridge-crystal flared with light, humming at a high pitch. The inscribed circuitry on the exterior began to pulse with traveling waves of golden light. The device grew warm in his hand.
He connected the output port to his tablet via the interface filament.
His tablet screen erupted with a power reading. [EXTERNAL POWER SOURCE DETECTED. VOLTAGE: 47.3. CURRENT: STABLE. OUTPUT: 5.2 WATTS.]
Five watts. From a single drop of sap. It wasn't enough to power a city, but it was more than enough to run his tablet indefinitely, charge batteries, or power small devices. And it was clean—no heat, no radiation, just a gentle, resonant hum.
He had created a spiritual battery.
He named it the Core Cell.
The next step was integration. He upgraded his Tri-Channel Resonator, replacing its scavenged power cell with a Core Cell powered by two drops of sap. The device immediately became more sensitive, its range expanding. The pangalosome-tuned channel now picked up skittering signatures from three sub-levels away.
He also built a dedicated scanner based on the Diagnostic Resonator's design, but powered by a Core Cell and equipped with a directional antenna made from a curled spirit-stable filament. This Resonance Scanner could actively ping an area with a low-power spiritual pulse and read the echoes, building a topographic map of energy densities and resonant frequencies. It was sonar for the unseen world.
Armed with his new tools, he decided to map the Null Quarter in a way no one ever had—not by sight, but by resonance.
That night, under the cover of the sleep cycle, he slipped from his berth. His scanner was strapped to his forearm, its interface feeding data to his tablet held in his other hand. The Core Cell hummed softly, a comforting presence.
He started in his own corridor. The scanner's pulse washed out in a invisible wave. The return data painted a picture on his screen: the dull, low-energy signatures of sleeping nulls behind their doors; the bright, sharp lines of active power conduits in the walls; the faint, ghostly echoes of old spells and forgotten technologies embedded in the Quarter's patchwork construction.
He moved downward, level by level, a ghost mapping a graveyard. Sub-Basement 7, the Anomalous Materials Holding cell, glowed on his scanner like a cancerous tumor—a knot of wild, conflicting resonances barely contained by the silver stasis field. He gave it a wide berth.
Sub-Basement 8, his usual sorting pit, was a wasteland of dead frequencies, with occasional hot-spots where unstable materials had been improperly processed.
Then he reached Sub-Basement 9, the waste processing hub. The scanner went wild. The roaring machinery was a cacophony of chaotic energies, but beneath that, his scanner began to detect patterns. Faint, flowing lines of resonance that didn't belong to the machinery. They were like subterranean streams, running through the walls and floor, connecting seemingly random points.
Ley-lines. Or something like them. Residual spiritual pathways from the chunks of dead realities that had been used to build this place. The Null Quarter wasn't just a dumping ground for failed beings; it was a dumping ground for failed world-stuff, and that stuff remembered its old patterns.
One of these faint lines flowed directly through the wall near the hidden node's crawl space. Another intersected it at a junction under the primary grinder. And a third, surprisingly strong one, ran vertically through a structural pillar at the hub's center.
Following this third line upward with his scanner, he saw it didn't stop at the ceiling of Sub-Basement 9. It continued through the levels, all the way up… and beyond. Out of the Null Quarter entirely, toward the higher districts. It was a dormant spiritual artery, a remnant of something greater, now buried in junk.
As he tracked the line, his pangalosome channel chirped. A signature—close. Not the skittering passive signature, but something more focused. A cluster of them.
He ducked behind a silent filtration tank and watched his screen. Five small, warm signatures were moving together along one of the faint ley-lines, heading toward the central pillar. They moved with purpose.
He risked a glance. In the gloom, he saw them. Not pangalosomes. These were different. Larger, about the size of small dogs, with six multi-jointed legs and carapaces that looked like fused ceramic and bone. They had no visible eyes, but their heads were dominated by large, crystalline antennae that glowed with the same soft light as the ley-line they followed. They moved in single file, their steps perfectly synchronized, not making a sound.
[BIOSIGNATURE: UNKNOWN. CLASSIFICATION APPROXIMATION: GEOMANTIC BURROWER (RESONANCE-FEEDER SUB-TYPE). OBSERVED BEHAVIOR: LEY-LINE MAINTENANCE/EXTRACTION.]
Ley-line feeders. Creatures that lived on the residual spiritual energy in the Versity's bones. They were following the dormant line toward the central pillar.
Curiosity overrode caution. He followed at a distance, his scanner muted, relying on passive sensors. The burrowers reached the pillar—a massive column of composite material. One of them pressed its crystalline antenna against the pillar's surface. The antenna flared, and a section of the pillar's exterior, which had looked seamless, irised open, revealing a dark, vertical shaft. One by one, the burrowers slipped inside. The opening sealed behind them, leaving no trace.
An entrance. A secret passage within a structural pillar, used by native Versity fauna.
His mind raced. Where did it lead? Upward, following the ley-line. Possibly through the foundations of other districts. A backdoor network, used by creatures, unknown to the administrators.
He had to know.
He waited a full five minutes after the opening sealed. Then he approached the pillar. He scanned the area where the burrower had touched. The surface was cool, inert to normal senses. But his Resonance Scanner, tuned to the ley-line's specific frequency, revealed a hairline circular seam. A door.
Could he open it? The burrower had used a resonant key—a specific frequency from its antenna. He had a scanner that could emit frequencies. And a Core Cell to power it.
He set his scanner to emit a continuous pulse, matching the frequency of the ley-line itself. He pressed the scanner's emitter against the seam.
Nothing.
He then tried modulating the pulse, adding the subtle harmonic he'd seen in the burrower's antenna signature just before the door opened.
A soft, deep thrum vibrated through the pillar. The circular seam glowed with faint blue light, and with a sound of grinding stone, the section irised open again, revealing the dark shaft. A rush of cool, stale air flowed out, carrying the scent of damp stone and ozone.
It was a tight fit. The shaft was just wide enough for him to enter if he turned sideways. Inside, it wasn't a ladder, but a series of spiral grooves carved into the wall—footholds for creatures with more than two legs. A vertical tunnel.
He looked up. The shaft disappeared into darkness above. He looked down. It fell away into even deeper blackness.
He made a decision. Up.
He started climbing. The grooves were awkward for human limbs, but manageable. The climb was eerily silent. The walls of the shaft were smooth, worn by countless passages of unseen creatures. His scanner, now in passive mode, showed the ley-line as a bright thread running up the shaft's center—a guide wire of spiritual energy.
He climbed for what felt like twenty minutes, passing several closed side passages that branched off horizontally. He ignored them, following the main line upward.
Finally, the shaft ended at another sealed iris door. This one felt different. The material was smoother, newer. And his scanner picked up a new set of frequencies beyond it—structured, complex, and powerful. The hum of active, sophisticated technology. And beneath that, a deep, rhythmic thrumming he felt in his bones.
He was no longer under the Null Quarter.
He pressed his scanner against this new door, repeating the burrower's key frequency.
The door didn't open.
Instead, a soft, synthetic voice echoed in the confined shaft. [UNAUTHORIZED BIO-SIGNATURE. GEOMANTIC CONDUIT ACCESS DENIED. PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR SECTOR OF ORIGIN.]
Security. Different security. He was at the boundary of another district.
He quickly scanned the door's locking mechanism. It was a resonant lock like the first, but with a layered encryption—multiple frequencies required in sequence. The burrowers probably had a biological passkey he couldn't replicate.
But he wasn't a burrower. He was a hacker.
He set his scanner to analyze the lock's defensive field. It was emitting a constant "keep-out" frequency. To open it, he'd need to broadcast the correct counter-frequencies. A brute-force attack was impossible; the lock would likely trigger alarms.
But maybe he didn't need to open it. Maybe he just needed to listen.
He tuned his scanner to its most sensitive passive setting and pressed it against the door. The thick material dampened most signals, but the powerful, rhythmic thrumming from the other side was so strong it came through.
Thrum… thrum… thrum…
It was regular, mechanical, immense. Like the heartbeat of a continent-sized engine.
And superimposed on it were other sounds—the whine of high-energy fields, the buzz of data-streams, the distant, metallic clangs of construction.
He knew this place. He'd never been here, but he'd heard it described.
The Engine of Genesis. The district of techno-lords, reality-forgers, and civilization builders. The source of the thrumming was likely the Genesis Core—the primal matter-forge that was the Engine's heart.
He was in a service conduit that ran from the bowels of the Null Quarter up into the foundational infrastructure of the Engine of Genesis. A forgotten maintenance shaft for ley-line feeders, now his personal backdoor to one of the most powerful districts in the Versity.
He couldn't go through. Not yet. But he could listen. And what he heard was a symphony of creation, a torrent of data and power that made his Core Cell vibrate in sympathy.
He recorded several minutes of the resonant profile, the unique "sound" of the Engine's core processes. This was another sample for his library—the frequency of creation, as opposed to the Silence's frequency of unmaking.
Satisfied, and wary of triggering an alarm, he began his descent. As he climbed down, his mind worked. He now had three points of unauthorized access: the Hidden Node (Spire of Thaum), this Geomantic Conduit (Engine of Genesis), and by extension, the Celestial Peak through Li's patronage. He was building a web of backdoors into the great districts, using the forgotten pathways of the Versity itself.
He returned to the waste hub, sealed the pillar entrance behind him, and slipped back to his berth as the sleep cycle ended.
Zyx's message was waiting, glitching onto his tablet screen. [YOUR ABSENCE WAS NOTED. SECURITY SWEEP AT CYCLE'S END SHOWED ABNORMAL ENERGY FLUCTUATIONS IN SUB-9. MINOR ALERT. DISMISSED AS RESIDUAL STRESS-TEST ARTIFACT. SUGGEST GREATER STEALTH.]
He'd been lucky. He needed to be smarter.
He spent the rest of the cycle refining his tools. Using the Engine Core recording, he tuned a new spirit-stable crystal to the frequency of "structured creation." He then used a drop of Heartwood sap to create a second Core Cell, this one optimized for outputting shaped resonant bursts rather than steady power. He called it a Pulse Cell.
His arsenal was growing: scanners, sensors, power sources, and a growing library of cosmic frequencies.
He was no longer just surviving the Apex Versity.
He was reverse-engineering it, one resonant frequency at a time. And he was using the Versity's own forgotten creatures and buried ley-lines as his guides.
As he lay on his sleeping pad, the Pulse Cell glowing softly on his desk like a captured star, he realized something. He'd been labeled an Administrative Error. But errors were just unexpected inputs. And in any complex system, the right unexpected input in the right place could crash it… or unlock entirely new functions.
He was that input. And he was just getting started.