Nomad Log: 74-Gamma. Subject: The Catalyst. Designate: Anya.
The great Houses of the enclaves are like ancient, petrified trees. Strong, rooted in history, but incapable of bending. They hoard power, passing down the same Echoes, the same feuds, the same arrogance from one generation to the next. My Nomads, we are the grass that grows in the cracks between their stones. We survive because we are flexible, because we value skill over bloodlines, and because we know that information is a sharper weapon than any Tier-3 Echo.
Then the Catalyst arrived in Enclave 3. A boy from a backwater fort, trailing whispers of impossible abilities. I offered him an alliance, a partnership. The Houses offer only chains, gilded or otherwise. He chose wisely.
The mission to the old factory was a test. I wanted to see his power firsthand. What I saw was more than a new ability; it was a new philosophy of combat. But the true test came when the Valerius lions ambushed us. I have fought my share of Chimera beasts. Fighting other humans is a different kind of sickness. Their movements are predictable, their tactics copied from the same dusty manuals. Kael didn't just fight them; he dismantled them. His use of kinetic force, his spatial awareness—it wasn't a technique. It was an art form. We won, but the victory confirmed a grim truth: Kael's greatest threat would not be the monsters outside the walls, but the ones who rule within them.
We had to run. Enclave 3 was no longer a refuge; it was a cage with two rival predators, Valerius and Thorne, circling it. We fled to the Frontier, to Terminus, the heart of my network. Here, in this chaotic city of scavengers and survivors, Kael finally had access to what he truly needed: unfiltered information. He dove into our archives, piecing together the fragments of a puzzle a century old. He found a name, "The Director," and a destination, "Site Zero." He gave our hunt a purpose beyond mere survival.
But the old world's ghosts have long shadows. House Thorne sent their own monster after him. Not a Chimera, but a broken boy fueled by envy and a piece of forbidden Ancient tech. Zane. I saw the footage from the Sunken Cathedral; I knew what he was. But the thing that hunted us in the wastes was something else entirely. It was a rabid dog, given just enough power to tear apart everything it once coveted.
The duel was a tragedy written in lightning and stone. Zane fought with the force of a meteor strike, all destructive rage and self-immolating power. Kael fought like a surgeon. He weathered the storm, his synthesized armor absorbing and redirecting blows that should have shattered him. He used his abilities not to overpower, but to outwit. He didn't just defeat Zane; he dissected his rage, turning the Berserker Module's own power against it until it consumed its host.
I look at the smoking remnants of that module now. It is the perfect symbol of the Houses: a promise of great power that ultimately burns the user to ash. Kael, on the other hand, creates. He builds. He synthesizes. He is not just a User; he is an architect of the Aethel Frame itself.
We have the coordinates for Site Zero. We have a new enemy, one born of human ambition. And we have the Catalyst, a boy who is dragging the world, kicking and screaming, toward a truth it is not ready for. The age of the Houses is ending. I can feel it. A new age is beginning, and it will be forged in the fires of his discoveries.
End Log.