A week. Seven days that stretched like eternity and simultaneously vanished into the sterile hum of the lab's ventilation. Outside, global panic, once a cacophony of fear and speculation, had begun its slow descent into uneasy quiet. The massive black-metal pillars, including the one silhouetted against the city skyline, remained inert, silent, immovable. No monsters emerged. No holographic broadcasts tore the sky apart. Society, eager to return to its rhythms, had settled into a new, tense normal. People went back to work. News channels found less existentially threatening stories. The Pillars, once harbingers of apocalypse, became an accepted, unsettling part of the urban landscape—a "background threat," as Harold had termed it. This shift mirrored the "Illusion of Stability" that had long permeated the world, where humanity believed it had mastered magic and no further world-shaking events were coming.
Inside the contamination lab, there was no illusion of stability for Leo Cross. The relentless hum of the containment pod reminded him constantly of the alien anomaly that defied every known law of physics and magical theory. For Leo, this was not a time for complacency; it was a period of intense, obsessive frustration. He had spent the entire week in the lab, driven by curiosity about magic's true origin and his inherent distrust of humanity's perceived mastery over the arcane. Nights blurred into days, fueled by stale coffee and unyielding intellectual drive. The other scientists had long retreated, their initial excitement replaced by the resignation of repeated failure. They lacked his razor-sharp mind and his willingness to push questions far beyond conventional limits.
He had tried everything the lab's sophisticated equipment allowed, then everything his own reconfigured devices could manage. Unconventional tests: acoustic resonance pushed beyond the human spectrum, searching for sympathetic vibrations that might reveal hidden structure; delicate projections of mana-wave patterns, surgical in precision, probing the shard for a resonant frequency. He approached it from every angle, blending engineering, quantum physics, and magical theory. He scribbled formulas, intertwining quantum diagrams with mystical runes on the lab's transparent walls, seeking patterns, deviations, anything comprehensible. But the fragment remained stubborn, infuriatingly inert. Its density was impossibly high. Its temperature far below freezing, yet no frost formed. No known tool could scratch it. A perfect, unyielding enigma.
The constant failures gnawed at him. Leo valued reason over brute force, and here, reason itself seemed to fracture. He despised pretension, especially from those who believed Awakened powers made them superior. Yet this fragment, devoid of any discernible magic, was the ultimate pretender, defying all established principles. He was disillusioned with society and the scientific community, still obsessed with status over merit. They had dismissed his theories on the Manastructure Energy Field as abstract—until the Pillars arrived—and now they were lost.
One late night, the lab silent save for the hum of machinery and the soft click of his prosthetic right hand adjusting haptic feedback, he stared at the shard, eyes narrowed in concentration. Hours had passed. His thoughts fragmented from exhaustion. Then he heard it.
A sound so faint it might have been the building settling, or a trick of sleep deprivation. A whispering. Barely audible, like sand sifting over glass or dry leaves rustling on an impossible wind. He rubbed his organic left hand over his face. Hallucination, he scowled internally. He had pushed himself too far.
He rose from his console and paced slowly around the containment pod, measured steps. The sound seemed to follow him, intensifying as he approached the shard. He stopped, face inches from the thick glass. The whispering deepened, a faint melodic hum vibrating through the air and resonating within him. Unsettling. Originating from nothing discernible, yet unmistakable.
His gaze fell on his prosthetic hand. Sleek, matte metal, modular parts—a testament to his engineering skills, continuously upgraded. He remembered the faint hum it had emitted when he passed the main pillar at the university perimeter, and the louder resonance when pressed against this shard just days ago. It had not been a hallucination. Could it be… a similar phenomenon?
Slowly, deliberately, he raised his prosthetic hand toward the glass. As his metal palm neared the barrier, the whispers surged, no longer faint but a tangible thrumming running through the circuits of his prosthetic, traveling up his arm and into the neural interface. It was not a conventional whisper, not spoken words, but a rapid, complex stream of data, a non-verbal communication somehow translated into a primal auditory sensation.
Startled, he pulled his hand back. The whispers receded into the lab's background hum. He pressed forward again. They returned, rapid, anxious, emanating directly from the shard. This was no fatigue. This was a response. The shard was interacting with his prosthetic, uniquely among all tools and sensors.
A dangerous thought sparked in his mind. He studied the shard. Its alien geometry, the smooth curvature, seemed deliberate. His gaze dropped to his prosthetic palm. Calculations ran through his mind, visual overlays of dimensions and tolerances. The shard's curvature fit perfectly into the palm core of his prosthetic. Not coincidence. It was as if his hand had been waiting for this piece. The whispers were not just response—they were an invitation.
A thrill, equal parts terror and exhilaration, surged through him. This was first contact with the true nature of the Pillars. He looked around the empty lab, then back at the pulsing shard. A silent pact formed between man and alien artifact. The scientists, the Awakened elites, the Arcane Bureau—all believed magic was understood, controlled. Legnus had always believed the universe was waiting for something, and that magic had a deeper source. Now he was about to discover what that something was. And he would do it alone.