The server room was quiet, but it wasn't empty of life. It was just empty of the system.
Kaelen sat with his back against the black pillar, his eyes closed. For the first time in weeks, the crushing headache of the System's pressure was gone. In its place was a low, steady hum that vibrated through the floor plates and into his bones.
It felt like sitting next to a sleeping giant.
"Kaelen," Renna's voice broke the silence. She was sitting on the other side of the pillar, dismantling her rifle to clean the grime from the receiver. "You said you heard footsteps."
"I did," Kaelen said, opening his eyes. The blue flare in his right eye was dim, resting.
"I don't hear anything now," Renna said, glancing at the barricaded door. Outside, the scratching of the Hollowed had ceased. They had lost interest, or they had found easier prey.
"Whatever it was, it's deep," Kaelen said. "Miles down. In the Roots."
He stood up, testing his ribs. They still ached, but the pain was distant and dull. The atmosphere in this room—this Unregistered Node—seemed to accelerate recovery. It wasn't healing magic; it was just that the air here wasn't trying to kill them.
He walked to the far end of the room. There was another door there, heavy blast steel, partially jammed open by a rusted forklift.
"We can't stay here forever," Renna said, reassembling her weapon with a sharp click. "We have no food. No water. And my leg needs a real doctor, not a splint made of scrap metal."
"We aren't staying," Kaelen said. He shone his light through the gap in the blast door. "We're prospecting."
He squeezed through the gap.
The corridor beyond was different. The walls weren't the tiled decay of the metro station. They were smooth, matte-black composite. This was military-grade infrastructure. Pre-Silence. Pre-Admin.
"What is this place?" Renna asked, limping after him.
"A fallback," Kaelen murmured, running his hand along the wall. "Before the System took over, humanity tried to build bunkers. Places where the digital logic couldn't reach."
He stopped at a junction. To the left, a collapsed tunnel. To the right, a heavy security gate.
The gate was locked. But there was no keypad. No card reader. Just a flat, black panel.
Kaelen looked at it. He felt a tug in his chest—the same resonance he had felt with the server pillar.
[ AUTHORITY CHECK ] [ SYSTEM: OFFLINE ] [ LOCAL PROTOCOL: DETECTED ]
He didn't have mana. But he realized he didn't need it. This wasn't a spell; it was a permission setting.
He placed his hand on the panel.
"Open," he whispered.
He didn't use the Voice of Command. He simply projected his intent.
The panel flickered. A faint white light—not blue—traced the outline of his hand.
[ USER RECOGNIZED: ADMIN (LEGACY) ] [ ACCESS: GRANTED ]
With a groan of hydraulic protest, the heavy gate slid upward.
Renna stared at him. "How did you do that?"
"I didn't use magic," Kaelen said, staring at his hand. "I just... logged in. The permissions down here are old. They don't recognize Valerius. They recognize humanity."
They stepped through the gate.
The room beyond was an armory.
Most of the racks were empty, looted centuries ago. But in the back, untouched by the rot, sat a row of heavy, sealed crates.
Kaelen pried the lid off the nearest one.
Inside, packed in distinct, molded foam, were kinetic rounds. Heavy, tungsten-tipped slugs designed for magnetic acceleration.
"Railgun ammo," Renna breathed, picking one up. It was heavy, cold, and perfect. "Hundreds of rounds. Kaelen, this is a gold mine."
"It's not a mine," Kaelen said, looking around the room. "It's a stash. Someone left this here."
He moved to the next crate. This one didn't hold ammo. It held gear. Tactical vests made of a weave that looked like dragon scales. Flares. Water filtration units.
And in the corner, leaning against a rack, was a weapon.
It wasn't a gun. It was a sword. But it wasn't metal. It was a single, jagged shard of black glass, wrapped in a leather hilt. The edge seemed to absorb the light from Kaelen's flashlight.
Kaelen picked it up. It hummed.
[ ITEM IDENTIFIED: OBSIDIAN EDGE ] [ PROPERTIES: NULL-FIELD GENERATOR ] [ EFFECT: SEVERS MAGIC ]
"This cuts code," Kaelen realized, testing the weight. It was impossibly light. "It's an Admin tool. Used for manual debugging."
He strapped the blade to his belt.
"Gear up," Kaelen ordered. "Take the ammo. Take the water filters. We leave the rest."
"Why?" Renna asked, stuffing tungsten slugs into her pack. "We could fortify this room."
"Because we're not the only ones down here," Kaelen said.
He pointed to the floor.
In the thick dust that coated the armory floor, there were footprints. They weren't human. They were massive, three-toed, and clawed. And they were fresh.
"Hollowed?" Renna asked, raising her rifle.
"No," Kaelen said. "Hollowed drag their feet. These... these are hunting tracks."
A low growl echoed from the corridor they had just left.
It wasn't the static shriek of the Glitched. It was a wet, guttural snarl. A biological sound.
Kaelen drew the Obsidian Edge. The black glass blade seemed to drink the shadows.
"Pack's full," Renna said, snapping the buckle shut. "We have company?"
"We have trespassers," Kaelen corrected.
He stepped out of the armory, back into the corridor.
Three shapes emerged from the shadows of the collapsed tunnel. They looked like wolves but were the size of bears. Their fur was matted wire and flesh, and their eyes glowed with a sick, yellow light.
[ TARGET: SCRAP-WOLVES ] [ CLASS: SCAVENGER / BIOLOGICAL ]
They weren't System errors. They were just monsters. Things that had evolved in the dark to eat whatever fell from the light.
The Alpha snarled, drool dripping from metal teeth. It tensed to spring.
Kaelen didn't retreat. He didn't look for a choke point.
He stepped toward the gate panel.
"Jurisdiction," he whispered.
He slammed his hand onto the control panel.
[ COMMAND: LOCKDOWN ]
The hydraulic gate screamed down.
But the Alpha was fast. It realized the trap a fraction of a second too early. It lunged, not at Kaelen, but at the gap.
CRUNCH.
The massive metal door slammed shut. It caught the Alpha by the hips, crushing its back legs and spine against the floorplates. The beast howled, thrashing wildly. Its front claws scrabbled for purchase, slashing the air inches from Renna's face.
Renna stumbled back, falling over a crate, her rifle skittering away.
The Alpha dragged itself forward, jaws snapping, drool spraying onto Renna's boots. It was paralyzed, dying, but still lethal.
Kaelen stepped over the thrashing body. He didn't look calm. He looked grim.
He raised the black glass sword.
"This isn't the wild," Kaelen growled.
He swung the Obsidian Edge. The blade sliced through the Alpha's neck with zero resistance, severing flesh, bone, and the metal collar alike. The head rolled across the floor, jaws still snapping.
The other two wolves skidded to a halt, terrified by the sudden, mechanical violence. They looked at the dead Alpha. They looked at the man standing in the blood.
They whimpered, turning tail and fleeing back into the dark.
Kaelen offered a hand to Renna. She took it, pulling herself up. She was shaking.
"Too close," she breathed, wiping wolf-spit from her boot.
"Control isn't the same as safety," Kaelen muttered, eyeing the dent the wolf's claws had left in the floor. "I need to be faster."
Renna retrieved her rifle. She looked at the wall near the gate mechanism. She shone her light on a patch of rust.
"Kaelen," she said, her voice dropping. "Look at this."
She pointed to a scratch on the metal frame. It wasn't random damage. It was a carving. A symbol scratched into the steel with a knife, jagged and desperate.
It was a circle with a line through it. The symbol of the Silencers. But there were words carved next to it.
[ CYCLE 492 ] [ DO NOT BUILD HERE. ]
"That date was five hundred years ago," Kaelen whispered, tracing the crude letters.
"Someone else found this place," Renna said, stepping back from the wall. "Someone else had admin access. And they were terrified."
"They tried to make a stand," Kaelen said grimly. "And they failed."
He looked east, down the long, dark tunnel that led toward the Anchor's roots. The silence of the hallway suddenly felt heavier. It felt less like an empty corridor and more like a throat waiting to swallow them.
"We need to move," Renna said. "If they failed... maybe they left because it wasn't safe."
Kaelen shook his head. He touched the hilt of the Obsidian Edge.
"No," he said quietly. "Places like this don't get abandoned, Renna."
He shone his light into the deep dark.
"They get buried."