The Nomad shuttle sliced through the void, running darker and quieter than a quantum whisper. Inside the cockpit, the tension was a palpable, third presence, coiled tight in the space Kairo should have occupied. The small vessel was navigating the volatile boundary between the Abyss (Realm 3) and the outer rim of the Relic Realm (Realm 2), the transition zone a swirling tapestry of unstable energy and decommissioned orbital defenses.
Elara Voss was a study in controlled intensity, her obsidian eyes glued to the console. The raw shock of Orrin's betrayal and the sheer terror of being a targeted catalyst for the Convergence were being ruthlessly suppressed, channeled into the frantic, necessary calculus of survival. Her enhanced Equation Weaving speed was being pushed to its limit, her mind processing data from the Chronos Chamber to calculate the jump.
Lira sat opposite her, quiet. She was methodically sorting through the shuttle's defensive logs, but the stillness of her hands betrayed the struggle to contain her grief and worry for Kairo. Her light-shadow filaments subtly traced the console edges, a nervous tic that spoke of the immense, untapped power of her dominion's bite.
"The coordinates you pulled from the Chronos Chamber are not spatial, Reckoner. They're Relativistic," Lira finally said, breaking the silence. Her voice was low, devoid of humor. "We're using a Realm 4 power signature to navigate a jump from Realm 3 to Realm 1. We're asking the shuttle to break three distinct laws of cultivated physics simultaneously. It's impossible, even for this Nomad tech."
Elara didn't look up. "The Helix built this solar system on a lie, Lira. The laws aren't rigid; they're cultivated proofs. The Foundation Realm is defined by Newtonian harmony—the simplicity of E=mc². But the Great Pyramid, the target, is the First Anchor. It has a temporal echo. It predates the Aetherforge and, therefore, is an anomaly. We don't need the shuttle to obey the laws; we need to trick the Pyramid's anomaly into pulling us in."
She brought up the central equation on the holo-display: a hideous knot of Lorentz transformations spliced with the corrupted Sovereign Petal-Code frequency.
"I am weaving a temporary Temporal Sling using the Pyramid's echo as the anchor point," Elara explained, her fingers flying over the interface. "We need to hit the entry point with absolute precision—a window of less than a picosecond—or the Foundation Realm's defenses will shred the shuttle, collapsing us into raw elemental qi. My Unfurl Reckoner is fast enough now, but I need pure, uncorrupted input."
Thorne, the elder Nomad, watched them from the rear, his frost-veined beard trembling slightly. "This audacity… only the reckless logic of the Abyss would attempt a triple-Realm jump. Elara, the Foundation Realm is protected by the Earth-Wards. They are basic, but absolute—designed to prevent contamination from higher-Realm physics. Your temporal sling will be recognized as a violation."
"That's where you come in, Thorne," Elara said, finally meeting his gaze. "The Anachronist will be running high-level string theory proofs to track us. Their tracking signature will be elegant, but slow. I need your Nomad Sagas—the ancient rune-chants—to create a chaotic, noisy static field around the temporal sling. Lira and I will provide the power; you provide the lies."
Thorne smiled faintly, the gruff Nomad recognizing the elegant logic in her desperate plan. "We warp their mathematics with our magic. A worthy task. We will give the Anachronist a theorem so ugly it will crash his brain."
As Thorne and Sira began their low, resonant chant, fusing their Nomad energy with the shuttle's cloaking field, Lira's console suddenly blared red.
"Contact," Lira stated, her voice sharp and steady. "Not a ship. It's an Anachronist Proxy-Probe—a dedicated, semi-sentient drone. It's running a perfect, continuous trajectory loop to predict our future coordinates. It's testing our cloaking. It's a direct response to Kairo's chaos—they want to re-establish predictability."
Elara glanced at the time remaining before the sling window opened: T-minus 30 seconds.
"I can't divert energy to defense," Elara said, sweat beading on her temples as she channeled Prime energy into the weaving proof. "If I break the concentration, the sling fails. Lira, it's yours. Use the dominion's bite to poison its logic. It has to believe we're headed anywhere but Earth."
Lira nodded, the thief's instinct flooding her mind. This was her element: not brute force, but calculated deception. She didn't use the shuttle's outdated defense cannons. Instead, she initiated a subtle, focused feedback pulse from her retracted binders, weaving a thin, focused beam of light-shadow into the Probe's signal.
Attack the integrity of the data. The Probe was running a Helix-perfect logic proof: If (Target Visible) then (Eliminate/Track).
Lira used her dominion's bite to subtly inject a contradictory narrative into the Probe's system. She forced the Probe's perception to believe it was tracking two mutually exclusive realities simultaneously: Elara's ship accelerating toward Realm 8, and a massive, unrelated explosion happening in their current position.
The Proxy-Probe, running on deterministic Helix logic, stalled. It couldn't accept the contradiction. It ran an internal debug sequence, desperately trying to eliminate the impossible narrative Lira had woven.
T-minus 10 seconds.
"The Nomad sagas are folding the external field, Reckoner! Now!" Thorne roared, his chants peaking as the space around the shuttle shimmered with chaotic, noisy runes.
Elara poured the entirety of her being into the final calculation. The void bite scar on her arm pulsed fiercely, but her upgraded speed was dominant. She seized the Temporal Sling equation, locking the final variables in place.
T-minus 3 seconds.
The shuttle groaned. Outside, the Probe, unable to resolve Lira's lie, didn't crash—it began to divide, splitting into two identical drones that immediately flew in opposite directions, each tracking a different, false reality. Lira had broken the logic, not the hardware.
"Sling engaged!" Elara screamed, collapsing against the controls.
The shuttle was ripped from the void. The sensation was immediate and violent: a crushing reversal of physics. The high-level quantum flux of the Abyss was instantly replaced by the raw, predictable weight of the Foundation Realm. They hurtled through a tunnel where gravitational fields twisted and stretched, and light obeyed the harsh, unforgiving rules of simple, visible spectrums.
The descent was brutal. They slammed through the Earth-Wards—ancient, powerful defenses that screamed Realm Violation—but the Nomads' chaotic counter-proofs masked their high-Realm energy, registering only as a burst of localized, self-contained error.
With a final, sickening lurch, the shuttle stabilized.
Elara forced herself to look out the viewport. The sky was the familiar blue of Old Earth, but the landscape was anything but: a vast, shifting desert where sand dunes were fused with skyscrapers, and the air crackled with ambient, low-level qi.
Dominating the horizon was their destination: the Great Pyramid of Giza. It wasn't stone anymore. It was a fusion of ancient geometry and alien, glowing circuits—the First Anchor itself.
But they weren't alone. Below them, a vortex of swirling sand and dust resolved into a group of figures. They were heavily armored, their movements driven by raw, brutal Newtonian force, carrying weapons that sparked with simple, dangerous kinetic energy.
"Welcome to the Foundation Realm, Reckoner," Lira said, the thief's excitement back in her voice, replacing the grief. "The defense systems are already here. Looks like the Helix planted more than just a Chronos Anchor in the ruins of Earth."
Elara adjusted her grip on the controls, her mind already calculating the velocity vectors needed for an evasive maneuver. "Good. We need to be loud if we're going to draw out Orrin. Let's make a spectacular entrance at the Anchor."