The metal of the spiral staircase groaned under Elias's weight as they descended into the vault's crypt. Behind them, above the thick shielding slab, the sounds of the struggle between Kaelen and the Specters grew muffled, turned into a dull vibration that shook the dust on the walls. Elias felt a pang in his heart; he knew that the silence to follow would not be that of victory, but of eternal stasis. Kaelen was burning his very essence to freeze time in the upper sector, turning himself into a living statue to grant them the few minutes necessary for their survival.
The crypt door opened with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a circular room of surgical white, isolated from the rest of the world by humming magnetic coils. At the center, suspended in a field of pure force, sat the Keystone. The object looked like nothing technological: it was a glass hourglass of black crystal whose sand, instead of falling, floated in complex spirals, following a geometry that defied human understanding. Here, far from the parasites emitted by the Citadel, Elias's vision returned with incredible violence. The clarity was such that he perceived not only the seconds to come, but an infinity of probabilities, a kaleidoscope of futures overlapping one another.
Lyra stepped forward unsteadily, her hand pressed against her shoulder. The violet corruption had spread, marking her neck with dark veins. She stared at the artifact with a fascination mixed with terror. Elias approached the control panel, but his hands were shaking. To release the Key, he had to synchronize his own brain waves with the artifact's frequency. He closed his eyes, seeking the rhythm of the floating sand. The moment their frequencies aligned, an explosion of white light flooded his mind. He saw Vane, not as a man, but as an entity seeking to devour time itself, and he understood that the Key was not just a power source, but a safety lock for reality.
Suddenly, the air in the center of the room twisted. A solid holographic projection, saturated with carbon particles, began to take shape. Vane's silhouette formed, imposing and icy, though his physical body remained miles away. The projection raised a hand, and the room's gravity instantly flipped. Elias was thrown against the ceiling, while Lyra, thanks to her affinity with the void, managed to anchor herself to the floor with shadow filaments. Vane did not speak; his mere presence was an unbearable pressure that sought to crush their lungs.
Lyra fired a burst of dark shards at the projection, but the projectiles passed through it as if it were mere mist. Vane countered by manipulating the crypt's magnetic fields, tearing metal plates from the walls to transform them into flying blades. Elias, floating in the absence of gravity, activated his precognition to anticipate the trajectories. He used the debris as footholds, leaping from one plate to another in a perilous acrobatic dance. He realized that to touch Vane, they had to use the Key itself as a prism.
In a desperate move, Elias lunged toward the artifact. Lyra, sensing his intent, lashed out with a shadow whip that caught Elias mid-air to propel him with greater force. The moment Elias touched the force field, he screamed in pain. Temporal energy surged through his nerves like liquid metal. He grabbed the Key, and at that exact moment, Lyra infused the object with her own void. The combination of pure precognition and nothingness created a shockwave of absolute reality. Vane's projection wavered, lost its solid consistency, and finally dissipated in a silent scream of electronic distortion.
Gravity returned abruptly. Elias and Lyra fell to the cold floor, gasping. The Keystone now glowed with a steady light in Elias's hands. Above, the din of battle had stopped. A heavy silence set in, a sign that Kaelen had activated his stasis bubble. They had only seconds left before the zone of frozen time reached the crypt. Without a word, Elias helped Lyra up. They slipped into the cooling vent, fleeing toward the unknown depths, carrying with them the only hope of breaking Vane's reign.