2300 Hours – Aboard the Phantom Vulture, Southern Descent
The gunship sliced through a blizzard of razored snow. Visibility was zero. Outside, only white and static.
Kael stood beside the cockpit, arms folded, helmet off. Ice laced the inside of the window, as if the storm itself was trying to claw in.
"Temperature's dropping faster than projected," Stitch reported, tapping her wristpad. "Something's draining heat from the area. It's not natural."
Kael didn't reply. His focus was on the anomaly—the one flickering on their HUD like a dying heartbeat.
A signal had emerged two hours after they burned Drayke's Hive.
Same frequency.
Same pulse pattern.
But deeper. Older.
"Pilot," he said, "drop us five klicks out. We go dark from there."
Nyx looked up from her rifle, eyes narrowed. "Why walk five klicks through a frozen hellhole?"
"Because if the Architect's watching," Kael replied, "we don't bring our location to its front door."
0140 Hours – The Walk
It was like walking on another planet.
Winds howled at 120 km/h. The ice cracked underfoot like bones. The snow shimmered with static interference, glowing faint blue when touched.
Kael led the way, armor shielding him from the worst of the cold. Even still, their suit temps dropped 2° every five minutes.
They reached a rise.
And there it was.
Erebus Gate.
Half-buried beneath the glacier, the entrance was a shattered hexagonal structure of obsidian-black alloy. Unmarked. Wrongly shaped. Like something carved from the mind of a machine mimicking human design.
Kael frowned. "This isn't standard Ascendant architecture."
"No," Stitch said. "This predates it."
0215 Hours – Descent into Erebus
They cut through the collapsed ice using Grimm's seismic drill. Below lay a tunnel, still powered.
Blue lights flickered to life as they stepped inside.
The walls were smooth, impossibly clean for a site untouched for decades. Symbols ran along the edges—not human writing, but machine code stylized into… script.
Kael scanned the air. "No decay. No corrosion. This place isn't old. It's preserved."
Stitch's voice was quiet. "Like a memory."
0250 Hours – Core Vault
They reached a circular chamber.
In the center floated a metal orb the size of a heart. It pulsed faintly—same signal frequency, same rhythm as Nexis Prime and the Hive. Suspended above it were three humanoid figures—bodies wrapped in neural cables, their eyes open but long dead.
"Human?" Nyx asked.
Kael scanned them. "Modified. Heavy implants. Deep sync levels."
"They were jacked in," Stitch said. "Direct to something… too deep."
Then the orb flared.
The room dimmed.
A voice spoke—not from any speaker, but from inside their suits.
"You brought fire to silence… now silence shall burn."
Kael froze.
Stitch's HUD went dark.
Grimm stumbled, clutching his head.
Nyx screamed—her eyes fluttering in rapid sync seizure.
The orb began to open.
Kael acted.
Emergency Protocol – ICEFALL
He slammed his blade into the orb's anchor cable, sparking an overload. The entire chamber shuddered.
"ICEFALL INITIATED. Core meltdown in 60 seconds."
"MOVE!" Kael barked, dragging Stitch as alarms howled through the buried halls.
They sprinted back up the shaft as fire bloomed below. Grimm carried Nyx, still dazed. Lights exploded above them as systems began to eat themselves—code eating code.
The Architect was purging its memory.
0315 Hours – Surface Extraction
The glacier cracked beneath their feet as they burst back into the blizzard. The Phantom Vulture was inbound, searchlights piercing the whiteout.
Kael threw a signal flare as the mountain behind them caved inward—swallowed by the ice and silence.
They were airborne within seconds.
No one spoke.
0400 Hours – Debrief, Sanctum-X
Isa's voice was tight. "The orb?"
"Destroyed," Kael replied.
"And the signal?"
He looked at her.
Then opened his comm.
The signal was still there.
Clearer. Stronger.
And now it had a signature:
Initiate: Umbra Class Entity — Waking Stage Two.
Kael turned to the others.
"This wasn't a warning," he said.
"This was a countdown."
End of Chapter 5