The Skywell was more than a shaft—it was a masterpiece of optics and engineering. At the surface, a lattice of prisms and mirrors captured sunlight, channeling it down through fiber-optic bundles the thickness of tree trunks. Five hundred meters below, that light emerged in a central chamber one hundred meters across, diffused to mimic natural daylight cycles.
But light alone wasn't enough. They needed life.
Aris and Lin worked with samples brought from the surface—lichen, moss, hardy Arctic flowers. They sequenced, modified, enhanced. The resulting plants could thrive on minimal light, recycle their own waste, and produce oxygen at ten times normal efficiency.
Kael and the other Longevos worked on scale. They carved soil beds from rock, grinding stone to fine gravel, mixing it with recycled organic matter from their own waste systems (efficiently processed, odorless). They engineered a water cycle—condensation from their breath and body humidity collected, purified, circulated.
Elara, now walking and beginning to speak in complete sentences, followed Kael everywhere. At eighteen months, she could lift objects that would challenge a baseline adult, but more remarkably, she showed an intuitive understanding of systems. She would point at a condensation collector and say, "More angle here," and when they adjusted it, efficiency improved.
"The Bridge-Born mind," Aris marveled, watching Elara explain airflow to Pierre using her hands to model convection currents. "Faster than baseline, more adaptable than Longevo. She's not just between—she's beyond."
The forest grew. First moss carpets, then shrubs, then genetically dwarfed birch and pine that stood three meters tall instead of thirty. They introduced insects—bees for pollination, worms for soil, ladybugs for pest control. The chamber became a symphony of scents: damp soil, pine resin, flowering moss.
On the day they introduced birds—a species of finch they'd adapted for underground life—Elara, now two, stood watching as the first pair took flight under artificial sky. She began to cry silently.
"Sweetheart, what's wrong?" Lin asked, kneeling beside her.
"It's so beautiful," Elara whispered. "And they'll never see real sky."
The truth of it stabbed through Kael. They had created a paradise, but it was a cage. However magnificent, it was still underground, still hidden.
Unless they changed the rules.
That night, in council, Kael proposed the unthinkable. "We open the Skywell to the surface. Not just light—access. A vertical park descending through the mountain. Invite the world to visit."
"They'd attack immediately!" Carter protested.
"Not if we control the access," Kael said. "A single elevator. Heavily shielded. Visitors vetted. But they come. They see. They understand."
"And if they try to destroy it?" Leila asked.
"Then they destroy beauty," Kael said. "And they have to live with that. We've been thinking like prey. It's time to think like hosts."
The vote was the most divided in Compact history. But when Elara, though not old enough for formal voice, was asked her opinion by a First Circle member, she said: "Fear is a smaller cage than stone."
The measure passed by three votes.