Chapter 14: The Scavenger's Calculus
Lance managed to smuggle the Chronometer of Silence out of the Debris Vault by tucking it into his heavy history textbook, securing the mundane object with a thick elastic band. Proffit, their silent supervisor, had barely looked up, confirming Kian's assessment that the remedial job was viewed as utterly worthless.
That night, the trio met again in the service tunnels. Kian was testing his external stabilizer prototype, which was now humming faintly, drawing low-level residual Motes from the copper piping around them.
"Success?" Opal asked, leaning away from the humming device.
"Functional, but ugly," Kian confirmed, adjusting a dial. "Now, what did the Silverwoods Legacy drag out of the junkyard?"
Lance pulled out the textbook, and then, carefully, the small, brass Chronometer of Silence. He placed it on a flat section of pipe.
Kian immediately stopped adjusting his device. His cynical smile vanished, replaced by a look of sharp, proprietary interest. He recognized the nature of the artifact instantly.
"Where did you find that, Silverwoods?" Kian asked, his voice low.
"Sector Delta, the Rift Dynamics Graveyard. It was listed as 'faulty timepiece,'" Lance replied.
Kian crouched down, running a gloved finger over the chronometer's shattered crystal and tarnished brass. "It's not a timepiece. It's an Integrity Regulator—one of the foundational tools of the ancient Stabilizers. This thing doesn't measure time; it measures the absence of chaos in a localized field. It's built for nullification."
He looked up at Lance, a complex calculation running in his eyes. "You touched this, didn't you? You stabilized its function, even for a second."
"I stabilized the internal rings," Lance confirmed. "I used my dampening focus, not to draw motes, but to make the mechanism function."
Kian shook his head slowly, a reluctant admiration flickering in his gaze. "That is advanced precision, Lance. You didn't power it; you perfectly recalibrated it. Normal Key Bearers would have overloaded it instantly, sending a surge through the brass."
He then pointed at the Chronometer, then at Opal's wristband, and finally at Lance's Matrix.
"Let's review the facts," Kian stated, adopting the tone of a skeptical scientist presenting damning evidence. "The Volatile Orb was created to test basic Siphoning, the foundational raw power of the Aetherium. You, Lance, failed the siphon, but you successfully contained the orb's chaos—and Opal's surge—with a perfect, clean nullification."
He tapped the chronometer. "Now you find this. A piece of the Aethelgard era, a tool designed exclusively for Nullification and Integrity. It measures absolute stability. This wasn't built for warriors or power mages. This was built for the Master Architects of stability—the highest rank of the Founding Lineages."
Kian leaned back, a dark amusement coloring his expression.
"It all connects, Silverwoods. They call you a 'Founder's Legacy' and pressure you to excel at raw Siphoning, which you are terrible at. But every relic you touch, every instinct you follow, points to you possessing the exact, opposite skill—the defensive, stabilizing genius of the original Master Stabilizers. The ones who built the Aetherium to contain chaos, not unleash it."
Opal nodded slowly, the connection making terrifying sense. "Dean Eris said Lance's dampening was beyond the capacity of a Key Bearer. She thinks his Matrix is doing the work, but it's him. His family wasn't famous for their muscle; they were famous for their control."
"Exactly," Kian confirmed. "And that control is a liability to the current Aetherium, which prizes raw power and submission. That's why they put you in remedial, Lance. They are terrified of the 'Silverwoods stillness,' because absolute control nullifies absolute power."
He grabbed the textbook and the chronometer. "This Chronometer is the key to your textbook. We will use the Nullification field of the Regulator to bypass the Obfuscation Spell on the textbook cover, and that will amplify the sound of the Forbidden Language."
Kian's proposal was chillingly clear: use the family legacy's tools to expose the lies built by the descendants.
"We have to be careful," Lance cautioned. "My growth is still low. If I use this too aggressively, I might trigger a systemic alarm far worse than the orb incident."
"Which is why you have us," Kian said, picking up his external stabilizer. "Opal provides the necessary surge to overload the local sensor field, and I provide the drain to clean up the residual energy. You provide the precision to open the lock. We are three failures who, together, form a perfect, controlled magical circuit."
The partnership had solidified. They were defined by their weakness, and together, they were finally strong.