The air in the observation room was as sterile as a memory wipe. Polished chrome and black glass reflected the holographic replay, turning the raw, chaotic violence of the factory fight into a clean, detached art form. A figure, Kael, moved through the data-ghosts of the battle, a whisper of impossible physics.
Zane watched, and the hate in his soul was a cold, hard, perfectly stable thing. It was the only part of his Aethel Frame that still worked as intended. He stood in the shadows, a ghost in a different kind of tomb, and observed the man he once was—a senior handler from House Thorne, a woman whose name he didn't know and didn't care to—dissect the performance of the boy who had broken him.
"The ricochet of the concussive force is not the interesting part," the handler murmured, her voice a dry rustle of old data-slates. She gestured with a long, elegant finger, and the hologram paused, freezing Kael mid-leap. "That's just clever application. A parlor trick. The kind of thing a desperate User stumbles upon once." She zoomed in, the image resolving into the fine, shimmering weave of Kael's Aethel signature. "This… this is the anomaly. The enhancement to the [Shard Armor]. He didn't add a new Echo. He rewrote the existing synthesis."
Zane said nothing. He felt the phantom ache in his own scarred pathways, the memory of the Weaver's Echo tearing through his Frame like a virus. He had tried to swallow a star. Kael was learning to build them.
"Valerius sees a new sword for his collection," the handler continued, her eyes never leaving the hologram. "He'll try to acquire it. He'll offer power, protection, a gilded cage. If the asset refuses, he'll try to break it. Both are… inefficient."
"He will refuse," Zane said, the words grinding out from the ruin of his pride. He knew Kael. Not the way Thorne's spies knew him, with their networks and data points. He knew the stubborn set of his jaw, the quiet defiance of a scavenger who had survived things he had no right to survive.
"We concur," the handler said, without looking at him. "Which is why a direct approach is insufficient. We require more data. The Gauntlet was a controlled environment. The factory was a reactive one. We need to see him in a proactive, high-stress scenario. We need to see him build. We need to see him break."
She turned from the hologram, her gaze finally falling on Zane. It was not a human look. It was the gaze of a technician diagnosing a faulty component, wondering if it could be repurposed.
"The Nomads," she stated, "are a pragmatic faction. They value results, but they are limited by resources. They are constantly searching for an edge, a forgotten piece of tech, a stable power source for their hideouts."
A new schematic appeared in the air between them. Not a battle replay. A map. A deep ravine scarring a desolate stretch of the wastes. At its heart, a single, massive structure.
"The Sunken Cathedral," the handler said. "Pre-Fall. Ecclesiastical structure. Our deep archives note it was built over a geological anomaly that generates a weak but exceptionally stable Aethel-field. Useless for military application, but for a group running on scavenged power cells…"
"It would be a holy grail," Zane finished, the logic cold and perfect. He saw the shape of the trap. He hated how much he admired it.
"The archives also note the site's territorial guardian. A Tier-3. Something… unique." A bestial outline flickered on the schematic, its details deliberately corrupted. "The intel we leak to the Nomads' network will, of course, understate this detail. It will present a high-value, low-risk opportunity. A prize too tempting for the ambitious Anya to ignore."
The plan settled in the sterile air. A lie, wrapped in a truth, baited with hope. They would send Kael and his friends into a meat grinder, not to kill them, but to watch. To learn.
"Your role," the handler said, her voice dropping, becoming a synthesized whisper of conspiracy, "is to be our eyes. You know the subject. You understand his methods. You will take up a concealed position, and you will observe. You will record everything. Every technique. Every hesitation. Every failure. You are not to engage. You are an instrument of observation. Nothing more."
Instrument. The word didn't sting anymore. It was just a fact. He was a broken hammer, being handed a new job as a lens. He looked at the hologram of Kael, the boy who fought like a technician, the boy who was becoming a god, and the cold, stable hate in his soul gave him his answer. He would watch. He would learn. And when he had learned enough, he would find a way to smash the thing that Kael was building.
"I understand," Zane said.
***
The information came not as a formal communique, but as a ghost. A whisper on a scrambled channel, a data-burst from a known broker in the digital souk of Enclave 3's underbelly—a source whose information was usually fifty percent rumor, fifty percent lies, and one hundred percent dangerous.
Anya let the data resolve on her personal slate, her face a mask in the dim light of the Nomad safe house. Kael sat on his cot, feeling the oppressive hum of the city through the concrete, a constant, grinding reminder of their cage. He was trying to meditate, to find the quiet center of the new, complex harmony in his soul, but the city was too loud. The ghosts were restless.
"I've got something," Anya said, her voice cutting through his concentration. It wasn't her usual tone of brisk, professional confidence. There was a different note in it. Avarice.
Kael looked over. "Good something or bad something?"
"Maybe both." She turned the slate toward them. A grainy, low-resolution schematic of a massive, Gothic-style structure dominated the screen. Text scrolled beside it, compiled from a dozen fragmented sources. "It's called the Sunken Cathedral. Pre-Fall site, deep in an unpatrolled sector of the wastes. The broker who sent this claims it's untouched."
"Untouched things in the wastes are usually untouched for a reason," Maya said from her corner, her voice a quiet note of caution. She was running a diagnostic on her light-weaving gauntlet, the silvery energy a stark contrast to the room's grimy reality.
"Usually," Anya agreed. "But this is different. The broker's data, and some fragments I've cross-referenced from our own archives, suggest the place is shielded. Not by a barrier, but by its own Aethel-field. Something in the ground beneath it. Makes standard Chimera senses go haywire. They avoid it."
Kael felt a flicker of interest from the technician in his soul. A natural dampening field? That was a new kind of physics. "What's the prize?"
Anya zoomed in on a specific section of the schematic, a sub-level deep beneath the main structure. A single, elegant piece of Ancient hardware was highlighted. "An Aethel-Core Stabilizer. Dormant, but the initial scans suggest it's intact. If we could get that thing running…" She didn't need to finish. A stable, self-sustaining power source. It would be more than a tactical advantage for the Nomads. It would be a home. A real one.
"It's a trap," Kael said, the words tasting like ash. The Stalker in his soul saw the pattern instantly. It's too perfect. An answer to a question we have been asking too loudly.
"I know," Anya said, her grey eyes meeting his. He saw the conflict there, the pragmatist warring with the leader. "The source is a known liar. The data is incomplete. The risk is off the charts." She looked around their cramped, miserable room. "But we're already in a trap, Kael. This one is just bigger. The Houses are watching us. Valerius is a patient man, but he's a predator. Sooner or later, he'll move to either cage you or kill you. Thorne will do the same, just more quietly. Staying here, doing nothing? That's not survival. That's just choosing the method of our own execution."
She stood up, pacing the small space. She was a caged wolf, and someone had just offered her a key to a different forest, one that was probably full of bigger wolves.
"This is a gamble," she said, stopping and looking at them both. "A real Nomad's gamble. The kind our whole faction was built on. We go in, we go in quiet. We assess. If it's a bust, or if it feels wrong, we pull out. No prize is worth our lives. But if it's real…"
The promise hung in the air. Freedom. A future.
Kael looked at Maya. She had put down her gauntlet. Her face was pale, but her eyes were clear. She was looking at him, not for an answer, but for a decision. She trusted the technician. She trusted the zookeeper.
He thought of the gilded cage Lord Valerius had offered. He thought of the black-clad shadows of House Thorne. He thought of this small, grimy room, another cage, its walls the certainty of a slow, inevitable end.
"When do we leave?" Kael asked.
Anya's smile was a small, dangerous thing. "Yesterday."