The council chamber was quiet.
Too quiet.
Eira sat at the long table, hands folded over a stack of reports. Sunlight filtered in through the tall glass walls, washing the room in soft gold. Around her, familiar faces from the Council sat in their usual seats, some leaning back, some hunched over slates. No one argued. No one interrupted.
It should have felt like a dream come true.
The main screen at the far end of the room displayed a map of the continent, studded with glowing markers. Oldkin territories. Citadel readings. Haven City locations. All the information that she could have ever asked for, was laid bare in front of her now. All the crucial knowledge that she had once asked the Council before, long before they set out on their journey.
"You finally decided to stop hiding things," she said, voice calm.
The man at the head of the table, the Council Chair, smiled kindly. "The world is ending slowly. Secrets are pointless now. You should have done this from the beginning."
His tone was right. His mannerisms were right. But his eyes never blinked once while he spoke.
Eira's fingers tightened.
"Then tell me," she said. "What really happened in Aiyra forty years ago. No, long before genesis, what was kept hidden in this city?"
The screen flickered. Instantly, another set of files opened. A research paper, with a very grand theme appeared before her. She let out a gasp of surprise.
'Integration of Human Consciousness with Neural Lattice Core to create a Super AI Guardian and further applications on Super Cities.'
The title alone explained all that she needed to know. Despite her previous doubts and guesses, learning it in such a manner still left her shocked.
Beside her, Korr flipped through his own set of projections. He was in another part of the same illusion, a lab attached to the chamber. Rows of patient charts floated around him, each with neat labels, tidy diagnoses, complete treatment histories. Another projection seemed to display living dead diagnoses.
"It all fits," he muttered. "The living dead condition is not a sudden outbreak or even a disease. It all makes sense now. This data is worth billions in the current world."
He was excited as he took out a digital notepad and started taking notes, afraid that all of this would disappear from in front of him.
Eira noticed his state and then stared back at the map. The Oldkin territories were lined up beautifully. Their emergence dates formed a pattern that could be graphed linearly. The Citadel readings had no gaps. The Council's decisions followed a clear, logical path.
Too logical.
It all felts too easy.
All this knowledge, all these revelations. Suddenly it felt they carried no weight.
Korr continued to take notes, his pen scribbling away faster with each passing moment. He needed to record all this. Wit these discoveries he could set the record straight. He would be the one guiding the world of science from this moment on. Once he left Aiyra, he would need to reach the closest Haven City as fast as he can-
'Leave Aiyra?'
The thought suddenly popped up in his mind.
But then a chart suddenly blinked in front of his eyes, and he was back to taking notes. He could think about what to do with all this knowledge later, right now the priority was to understand all of it and ensure nothing was missed.
Time passed for him. And slowly he started feeling wrong. A strange sensation was welling up in him and the more he wrote, more it felt wrong.
He looked up at the charts and started comparing them.
One by one he started from the earliest records and observed each one. And that was when it stuck him.
All these charts, all this data. And not a single outlier. Not a single mistake.
Medicine wasn't supposed to be perfect?
Yet here he was, facing an utterly perfect time series of observations?
'What utter bullshit'
His hands stopped. He moved his hands through the projection, watching it flicker. As it should. But the doubt was already placed in his mind. For the first time, he looked up from his table and noticed Eira in the room adjacent to his. There were numerous documents and maps displayed in front of her. But her mind was not on the knowledge shown to her. Instead she seemed to be in a serious debate with the Council of chairs around her. He slowly stood up and started making his way towards her.
But as he moved, another hologram of charts obstructed his way.
'This place is wrong'
The thought instantly occupied his mind, as bells of danger started ringing in his mind. His instincts were screaming at him to leave the place. But how? He couldn't remember how he had ended up here. He had to talk to Eira, she would know how to escape this illusion.
Loud voices greeted him, as he opened the room where Eira was stuck.
"..but we are scientists," she shouted. "We live in uncertainty. We argue. We fight over models. There is no way that there were no failures. I want you to tell me what went wrong with Aiyra."
The Chair's voice changed, growing slightly garbled.
"You wanted the truth from us," he said, layered and flat. "Here it is. Take it. There is nothing more regarding Aiyra. The Project was called off because a better approach was found. There was nothing left here"
Eira pushed her chair back and stood.
"If this was the truth," she said, "I would not have to ask twice."
She reached for the nearest screen and pulled. The projection resisted for a second, then tore like wet paper. Behind it, the council chamber peeled away, revealing cracked plaster and hanging wires. The long table shrank into a dusty slab. The Council members flared into static and vanished one by one.
Korr followed her actions and tore through his own charts, his motions growing more frantic. Each ripped model dissolved into dust, uncovering rusted equipment, broken monitors, the ruins of a lab. The clean sterility of the place bled out, replaced by stale air.
The Warden's voice hissed in the emptiness.
"You do not trust what you asked for."
Eira looked up at where the Chair had been. "I do not trust anything that agrees with me this easily," she said.
The last of the illusion broke.
They found themselves standing in a half-collapsed office overlooking a dead street. The screen was a shattered window now, wind pushing in through a jagged frame. Outside, Aiyra lay as it should have been, silent and broken.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Korr flinched, clutching at his temple. "Do you feel that?" he asked.
Eira did. A faint tug, like someone knocking on the inside of her skull. A pattern, soft but insistent. Not the Warden's smooth, rehearsed tone. Something more familiar, more human. Mira's artifact pinging like a flare.
"It is Mira," Eira said. "She is calling us."
Korr nodded, still shaken. "Where?"
She tilted her head, following the pull. "Center," she said. "The pillar."
"Of course," Korr muttered. "It has to be in that ominous place."
"Be grateful, if it wasn't for her message, it might have taken longer for us to spot the anomalies."
He did not disagree, although his expression said otherwise.
They did not linger further, rushing towards the center..
Stepping out of the ruined office, they moved through the illusion-city with more care now. The closer they got, the stronger Mira's signal became. And along with it, something else. A steady, disciplined presence, wrapped in chains. Kshaya. In this world of memories, both of them realized that they were more sensitive to human presence than in reality.
By the time they reached the last street before the plaza, the illusion-city was straining.
The city center was a battlefield. Or at least the illusion of one.
Taren and the sixth member stood in front of the pillar, weapons in hand, faces locked in grim focus. Both of them moved with ferocity, swinging their blades, cutting any approaching enemies. Nothing got past them.
But from Eira and Korr's perspective, they were swinging at empty air.
Each strike cut through nothing. Each shout went unanswered.
Looking at the scene, they instantly realized that their team mates were also trapped in an illusion. One that was powerful enough to completely confuse their senses.
Mira stood at the edge of the bubble, eyes narrowed, slate clutched to her chest. She looked up as Eira and Korr approached, relief flickering across her face for a breath before she shut it down. Beside her, Kshaya closely observed the duo fighting ghosts.
"You made it," she said.
"Barely," Korr replied. "The Warden really does not like us thinking for ourselves."
Eira's gaze stayed on the plaza. "What is the plan?" she asked.
Kshaya turned away from the bubble and answered.
"You three go through," he said. "I will keep them busy. They are currently locked in a hyper focused battle and I can't forcefully break the illusion from outside. It might affect them. I will take their attention and break the illusion from within. But it might take time, so hurry up to the lab below. Lume does not have long"
Mira's lips thinned. "The entrance beneath the pillar," she said quickly. "its not hidden like in reality. We can reach the lab as long as those two don't obstruct us. I can feel Lume's signal under it. He is not stable."
"How long does he have?" Korr asked.
She shook her head once. "Not long enough to argue."
The illusion around the defenders shimmered. To step inside was to step into their war. To stay outside was to be blocked from the only path down.
Eira looked between Kshaya and the pillar. "You will handle both of them alone?" she asked.
"I have done worse," he said. "And this time, I know which side is real."
His chains hissed as they moved, anchoring him to the stone beneath. Whatever ground the Warden tried to paint under his feet, the bindings dug into the actual plaza.
He stepped deeper into the bubble, letting it swallow him completely. From the outside, it looked like he vanished into a heat haze.
"Go," he repeated, voice fading as the illusion closed over him.
Mira did not hesitate. She moved along the edge, eyes following invisible lines only she could see. Eira and Korr stayed close, slipping through gaps in the false battle line. Where the illusion tried to drag them in, they kept their focus on the pillar and the pull beneath it.
Up close, the pillar was the same as ever.
But this time they did not have to activate it to reveal the passage beneath. It was laid bare before them, stairs leading underground.
Eira glanced back once.
He was holding his ground.
She swallowed whatever thought tried to surface and turned away. "We move," she said.
They descended.
The noise of the plaza faded with each step.
The stairwell opened into a wide underground chamber.
And at the center of it all, on a raised platform, sat Lume.
"Lume," Mira breathed.
He did not blink.
Eira took a step forward. "Lume," she said, louder this time. "Can you hear us?"
His head tilted in their direction. For a heartbeat, his expression flickered. Something like recognition tried to surface. Then his mouth opened.
The voice that came out was not his.
"You are late," it said, layered and metallic, carrying the echo of the city's inhabitants. "He came when I called. He stayed. You should not have interrupted."
Korr swallowed. "Warden," he whispered.
The voice almost sounded amused. "Finally," it said. "You call me by the name he gave me."