With a base secured, Echo turned his attention to the black rose. He placed it on a table in their new common room. Under the Sanctuary's pure light, it seemed even darker, a tear of nothingness in reality.
"Activate it," Ryn urged, her tech-enthusiast curiosity overriding caution. "Let's see what key it is."
Echo reached out with his Life-Thread Perception. To his new senses, the rose wasn't inert. It was a knot—a tight, complex snarl of void-threads, pulsing with a slow, patient rhythm. He poured a trickle of his bloodline energy into it.
The rose bloomed.
Not into a flower, but into a three-dimensional star map, projected in shades of deep purple and black. It highlighted a specific coordinate within the Gloom—a dense cluster of wreckage labeled in shadow-script: "The Cathedral of Scorn."
"A Shadow Court cache," Leyla growled. "A trap."
"Or a library," Mira countered, studying the elegant, cruel architecture of the highlighted wreck. "They deal in secrets. They may have left something there they think we need."
"We're not ready to dance with them," Ryn said pragmatically. "We need to be stronger. Your Core is only half-formed, Echo. Our bond is strong, but we've never faced a coordinated attack from something as clever as the Court."
Echo agreed. But the map also showed something else. Faint, golden threads—life-threads—emanating from the same location. Not many. A handful. But they were bright, complex, and untainted.
"There are prisoners there," Echo realized. "Living beings, not Corrupted. The Shadow Court has a facility there, and they're keeping… guests."
The moral calculus shifted. It wasn't just about curiosity or power now.
"We scout," Echo decided. "We go in quiet, we see what's there. If we can free those prisoners without starting a war with the Court, we do it. We gather intelligence. But we don't engage unless we have to."
It was a risk. But the glimmer of those trapped life-threads couldn't be ignored. His sovereignty was about commanding life, and that included protecting it.