The sterile white walls of the Velarian Spire's medical annex felt like a cage after the desolate rawness of Xylos. Vaeron stood behind a one-way observation window, his amethyst gaze fixed on Hren. The miner sat hunched in a diagnostic chair, sensors dotting his temples, his eyes hollow. A neural specialist spoke softly, her voice amplified in Vaeron's earpiece: "...Significant psychic trauma. Residual foreign resonance embedded in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Coherent thought is fragmented. He keeps repeating the words 'unmake' and 'return'... and 'cold'."
Lyra's report replayed in Vaeron's mind: Predatory. Breach point. Sentient. Captain Lyra stood beside him, her usual contained energy replaced by a grim stillness. Her gauntlets were inert, but a faint tension lingered around her eyes, a residue of the cold pressure she'd described.
"It tried to speak through him," Lyra said quietly. "Or through the rock. The void… it wasn't empty. Something looked back."
Vaeron didn't reply immediately. He watched Hren flinch as a harmless light stimulus pulsed. The miner's terror was a raw, human counterpoint to the abstract horror of the anomaly. This was the cost. Not just political fracture, but the unraveling of minds, the violation of reality itself.
He turned from the window. "Your findings are undeniable, Captain. The Conclave cannot dismiss this." His voice was calm, but a cold fury simmered beneath the surface, directed not at Lyra, but at the unseen enemy that dared scar his world.
"With respect, Sovereign," Lyra countered, her crimson eyes meeting his, "Torvin's faction will call it mass hysteria or experimental tech malfunction. Draven's might see it as a weapon… possibly ours. Showing them sensor logs and a traumatized miner won't bridge the gap. They need to see it. To feel that cold."
Vaeron knew she was right. Proof needed to be irrefutable, visceral. But how do you capture a shadow that eats light?
He gestured for Lyra to follow, leaving the medical wing. They descended deep into the Spire's foundations, below even the Harmonic Chamber, to a vault sealed behind layers of resonance-dampening alloy and genetic locks. Inside, bathed in soft archival light, lay the Velarian Legacy Repository. Not treasures of wealth, but artifacts of knowledge and lineage.
He stopped before a pedestal. On it rested two objects: a simple, worn data slate etched with the Velarian crest, and a smooth, palm-sized stone of deep obsidian that seemed to drink the light – the Resonance Focus Stone. This was all Karell Velarian had left behind besides the cryptic warning.
"Father spent his final years obsessed with anomalies," Vaeron said, his voice echoing slightly in the vault. "Subtle energy fluctuations, historical records of localized 'madnesses,' places where technology failed inexplicably. He called them 'Fray Points.' He believed they were symptoms of a deeper instability in the fabric of existence."
He picked up the Focus Stone. It was cool, heavier than it looked. "This attunes to subtle resonances. He used it to map Fray Points. The data slate holds his logs… encrypted. I've never accessed them fully. The key…" He touched his temple. "...lies here. In the synthesis."
He placed the stone against his forehead, closing his amethyst eyes. He reached inward, not with pure intellect or raw will, but with the unique confluence that defined him – the Velarian harmony. He focused on the cold discordance Lyra described, the feeling of the void, Hren's shattered words.
The Focus Stone grew warm. Images, sensations, fragmented data streams flooded Vaeron's mind, not from the slate, but resonating with his intent and the stone's attunement:
A star chart, ancient, highlighting regions near Origin's terminator.
Spectral analysis of energy signatures chillingly similar to the Xylos Tremor.
Historical reports: A village on the Helios continent descending into self-destructive frenzy, recorded as "plague-induced madness"… coinciding with a massive solar flare Karell annotated as "Resonance Spike."
A geological survey of Xylos, highlighting unusual stress fractures in the bedrock Karell labeled "Potential Shear Zones."
And finally, a single, stark entry dated days before Karell's disappearance: "Fray Point intensifying near Seraph Station. Resonance suggests… sentience? Pattern recognition. Adaptive. Must investigate. Fear… not for self. For Origin. The Velarian purpose calls."
Vaeron gasped, pulling the stone away. His knuckles were white. The cold resonance from Xylos seemed to echo in his bones, amplified by his father's fear. "The Velarian purpose calls." What purpose? Guardianship? Containment?
He looked at the still-locked data slate. The full logs were there, the key tantalizingly close. But the partial resonance had confirmed the worst: the Tremor was sentient, adaptive, and had been active for longer than anyone knew. His father hadn't just vanished; he'd walked into the heart of a Fray Point.
"We need to go to Seraph Station," Vaeron stated, his voice stripped bare of its usual calm, revealing the steel beneath. "It's abandoned, deep in the equatorial belt. Father's last known location. If there's a Fray Point there… if there are answers…"
Lyra saw the resolve hardening in his amethyst eyes, the weight of generations settling on his shoulders. "It'll be heavily decayed. Possibly dangerous beyond the Tremor."
"Then we go prepared," Vaeron said, his gaze falling back on the Resonance Focus Stone. "We find what my father found. And we learn how to seal the tear before it swallows us all."
The pinnacle felt fragile. The path forward led down, into the dark places where the Tremor whispered. Vaeron Velarian was no longer just a Sovereign seeking unity. He was a son stepping into his father's unfinished war.