Three days after Brael's second arrival, the summons came.
Not from command.
From the ruins.
Riley felt it first—a ripple in the Soul Link, like an itch behind her eyes, like a whisper across the bones of her wrist where the golden Chosen mark still shimmered faintly beneath her skin.
She jolted awake mid-dream, her sheets tangled around her legs, the sound of a word she didn't know still echoing in her mind:
Kaeliraeth.
She didn't know what it meant.
But she knew where to find it.
The old research district lay beyond the blast line—past the west perimeter wall where fallen buildings leaned like drunken titans and street lights flickered without power.
The area had been abandoned a decade ago after the Skuldrith first breached Outpost Theta. Most of the base considered it a dead zone. Nothing left but ash and bad memories.
But Evan—Daphne, now—knew better.
"There were vaults there," she told Riley, scanning an old topographic map in their lab. "Places older than the Divide. Leftovers from the pre-Split world. Buried in the infrastructure before Kaelira first touched the serum."
"And you think this... pull is coming from one of them?"
"I don't think so." Daphne looked at her. "I know."
They left before sunrise.
The ruins greeted them with silence.
No drones.
No guards.
No patrols.
Just dust and stone, and the occasional flicker of heat signatures buried far below. Daphne moved with careful precision, bypassing collapsed corridors and avoiding pressure plates still wired to ancient security wards.
"I didn't know tech this old still held charge," Riley whispered as they passed a broken stairwell glowing faintly at the seams.
"It doesn't," Daphne said. "Not unless something woke it up."
Riley swallowed. "Something like us?"
They found the vault in what used to be the foundation of a civilian med-lab—just a hollow shell now, walls half-melted, floors littered with burned data spools and long-dead monitors.
But beneath the central lift shaft, hidden behind a half-collapsed emergency panel, was a doorway that shouldn't have been there.
Triangular.
Obsidian-lined.
Etched with a symbol that wasn't on any command database.
A double helix, ringed in fire.
Daphne reached out and pressed her palm to the center.
Nothing happened.
Riley stepped forward.
She didn't touch it.
She just existed near it.
And the door opened.
Inside was a chamber unlike anything Riley had ever seen.
Not tech.
Not a temple.
Something between.
The walls glowed with slow, pulsing light. Symbols drifted across the surface—not drawn or etched, but alive, like the air itself was dreaming in language.
And at the far end stood a ring.
Seven feet tall.
Perfectly round.
Suspended off the ground by threads of light.
Daphne's breath caught.
"I thought it was a myth," she whispered. "The Echo Gate."
"What is it?"
"Kaelira's first tether. The interface used to open the initial breach across the Divide."
Riley stepped toward it, drawn without knowing why.
"Don't touch it," Daphne warned.
But the gate flared—not at her approach, but at her presence.
Light erupted from the base, forming a veil of glowing lines that crackled and spun, resolving into an image—
A memory?
A vision?
Both?
They saw a woman.
Fire-haired.
Eyes molten gold.
Her armor was bone and flame. Her hands were wrapped in light.
Kaelira.
But she was not alone.
Beside her stood a man cloaked in shadows, face hidden behind a silver mask.
Velrax.
Not a monster.
Not yet.
The two figures reached toward the Echo Gate, and between them, something began to form—
A third presence.
Twisting.
Becoming.
Until it broke apart in a blast of energy that shattered the vision into a thousand shards.
Riley staggered backward.
The chamber dimmed.
The gate dimmed with it.
"What was that?" Riley asked, gasping.
Daphne stared at the dim ring, her voice low and unsteady.
"That wasn't just a memory," she said. "That was... warning."
They made it back before full patrol began, slipping through a cargo chute and triggering a false fire report that rerouted the observation deck guards for exactly twelve minutes.
Back in the lab, Daphne slammed the door shut and activated every silence field she had.
Then she turned to Riley.
"This changes everything."
"You think the command knows about it?"
"I think they built this whole base on top of it."
Riley sat slowly on the edge of the counter. "So what do we do now?"
Daphne didn't answer right away.
She just stared at Riley—at the lingering golden mark on her wrist, and the way the air still seemed to sing around her like a tuning fork left humming.
"Whatever they made us into," Daphne said at last, "I think the Echo Gate was meant to find us."
"And Brael?"
Daphne's expression darkened.
"If he sees that vision—if he learns what we saw—he'll know what we are. And what we might become."
"Then we hide it."
"We try."
But even as she said it, she knew.
Secrets only stay buried when the world has stopped digging.
And Brael was already standing at the edge with a shovel in his hand.