Kaelor Craftworld, Temple
The crime scene was silent. The way most truths are.
Cassian followed in Farron's footsteps through the ascending bridges and soft-walled spires of the temple district. The air grew denser with incense. Ornamental crystal fans rotated noiselessly on the ceilings, scattering light like underwater ripples. Every corridor felt alive humming.
"This place was meant for peace," Cassian muttered. "Not murder."
"That is the nature of sacred places," Farron said. "When one dies in a locus of calm, the trauma is amplified. Echoes linger longer. The data is richer."
Cassian shot him a look. "You mean that like a good thing."
"I do."
They reached the chamber. An inner sanctum where Eldar seers came to meditate, commune, release thought into the ether. It was a prayer room in the psychic sense a chamber built not for words, but for silence.
It was almost insultingly elegant. Oval in shape, entirely made of living bone and crystal. Thin slats in the walls channeled ambient Craftworld energy through the room in soft pulses barely visible, but ever present. Cassian could feel it.
Farron walked to the center, stopping just before the small dais ringed in sapphire studded bone. At the heart of it was the mark no larger than a dinner plate, but infinitely louder than the rest of the chamber. The floor was scorched.
Cassian stood beside him. "So this is where she meditated?"
Farron nodded. "And where she died."
He began unpacking his equipment again neatly. Spider limbs unfolded. Spheres lifted into the air. Small polyhedrons deployed lattice beams into mid air, forming a silent data grid that shimmered just beyond human vision.
"You've done this before, I never saw you use this amount of tech in the webway. When you were tinkering with Eldar Tech." Cassian said.
"I have invented this," Farron replied. "Resonance mapping was crude before me. Now it is an art."
Cassian crouched beside the mark. "What exactly are we looking for?"
"Psychic residue. Memory layers. The echo of soul disintegration. If her mind was attacked, it would have left traces in the chamber. Like fingerprints. Or bloodstains. But psychic."
"Lovely."
"Indeed."
A low whir kicked up, and Farron's drones began spinning around the prayer dais. Each one emitted a different tone one shrill, one deep, one fluttering like a bird trapped in glass. They harmonized briefly, then dropped to silence. The chamber dimmed.
The echo came.
Velae appeared.
Not her full body just the memory ghost. A translucent sketch of her final moment. She sat in the meditation pose, hands folded. Then she twitched violently. One hand clutched her chest. Her eyes widened. She turned, screamed, and then,
She was gone.
Cassian blinked. "Fuck."
Farron raised a small limb, freezing the projection. He rotated it mid air, freezing the frame where she twisted in fear. Then he zoomed. Off in the corner, by the crystal alcove a faint smear. Something dark. The shadow had no shape. Just distortion. Like static folded into fabric.
"There it is," Farron said. "The interference pattern."
Cassian exhaled. "That was the moment she died?"
"No. That was the moment she realized she was dying. The death came seconds later. The signature is incomplete. Tampered."
"Tampered?"
Farron nodded. "It was wiped. Not well. But deliberately. As if someone scrubbed part of the psychic footprint."
Cassian straightened. "So it wasn't just a freak occurrence. This was planned."
"Or practiced. Someone knew how to hide the weapon."
They stood together for a moment, watching the empty echo. The room felt colder than before.
Then Cassian said, "You know, this is starting to feel familiar."
"How so."
"Crime scene. Mysterious shadow figure. And me standing in the middle of it."
Farron turned. "Yes. It is a statistical pattern I am beginning to account for. You are a gravitational anomaly for supernatural activity."
"Should I take that as a compliment?"
"You should take it as a curse. But one I now share."
Cassian smirked. "What, so you're sticking with me now?"
"I have no choice. You attract singularities of causality. It is… fascinating."
"That's your way of saying you care."
Farron didn't respond. Just turned back to the shadow smear.
After a beat, he said, "We will extract the resonance fragment. Analyze it against known warp entities. Perhaps cross reference with soul death profiles in the Craftworld's archives."
"And if it's a match?"
"Then we track it. Then we isolate it. And then, Cassian…"
He turned to him.
"We kill it."
Cassian nodded, eyes still on the silent dais. "You ever get tired of being right in the middle of these things?"
Farron glanced around the prayer chamber, its once serene walls now haunted with death.
"No," he said. "I get tired of people pretending it surprises them."
They left the temple in silence.
Behind them, the echo faded.
—-
The air inside the Hall of Ancestry was still and solemn.
Faevelith stood alone beneath the great arch of bone and glass, dressed not in robes but the bare ceremonial mantle of her line. A single strand of soul-thread wrapped her shoulders. No jewelry. No mask.
The doors closed behind her with a hush.
It had been centuries since she last walked this path. But her feet remembered.
The Hall of Ancestry was not a place of comfort. It was not meant to be. It was the memory core of Kaelor, a living reliquary of blood and vow. The air shimmered with stored echoes ancestral proxies suspended in psycho reactive crystal, each containing a sliver of the Eldar dead, preserved by rites older than the Fall.
No one entered without cause.
And she was here to beg for permission for her own place.
A light shimmered along the curved path ahead. The walls were lined with crysalite busts ancient figures in meditative repose, their eyes closed, their spirits dormant. But not dead.
One by one, as she walked, the statues stirred.
Not with movement but with psychic presence. Echoes bleeding through crystal. Pressure mounting in her skull like a tide.
Her bare feet touched the central platform a polished disc of fused spirit glass, etched with the lineage of her house. She knelt.
The Rite began.
A column of light descended from the ceiling, encasing her in fire that gave no heat. Psychic. Clean. A scanning soul flame. It touched her thoughts. Her memories. Her motives.
She grit her teeth.
Above her, the statues opened their eyes.
One by one, the ancestral proxies awakened. Each voice struck her not with sound, but memory. Scenes. Sins. Sacrifices.
Her father Vaeryn his voice thunderous.
"You broke the chain, Faevelith. You ran into that Mon keigh's storm. They are beneath us. You defied the Seers. You polluted Kaelor's name with doubt."
Her mother silken, cold.
"Did you truly believe you could leave and come back unchanged even after facing your mentor?"
Her sister hollow, accusing.
"You abandoned me. I died screaming in the ship halls while you traitor whisper secrets to humans."
Faevelith held her breath. The flame inside her mind roared.
"I returned to my home," she said aloud.
Laughter.
Not cruel. Not kind. Just… disbelieving.
"You love him," came a whisper.
She flinched. It didn't say his name.
But it knew.
Cassian.
A swirl of old memory struck her a flash of his voice, calm in the dark. His hands, steady. His mind, foreign and terrifyingly clear. She remembered the long hours in the Webway, the moments of silence that felt heavier than speech. She remembered standing too close. The guilt.
The temptation.
"No," she said. "I don't love him."
"You would betray this Craftworld for him."
She did not answer.
The light grew hotter psychically, not physically. The ancestral echoes sharpened.
The Rite was reaching its peak.
She had one chance left.
Faevelith bowed low and pressed her forehead to the floor. Her soul thread flared. And she reached into the reservoir of memory her memory. Not the ancestors'. Hers.
And she called upon the Proxy of Ty'raelin her great grandmother, the last one to face exile and return.
A flicker.
A chill wind that existed only in the mind.
Then a form. A luminous echo stood before her on the dais. Tall. Severe. A face of mourning. Ty'raelin's spirit did not speak. She simply watched.
Faevelith met her gaze.
"I will not ask your forgiveness," she said. "I will not ask for your blessing. I only ask for you to witness."
Ty'raelin raised a single hand and extended it.
Faevelith stepped forward and took it.
Pain stabbed through her spine.
Not physical. Cognitive.
Every choice she'd made all of them spilled out of her and into the Proxy. The doubts. The plans. The nights she'd paced alone with forbidden books. The wars fought in corridors. The secrets Cassian still didn't know.
The Proxy did not recoil.
Instead she smiled.
A faint, bitter curve.
The echo leaned in close, and whispered, "Then stand, blood of mine. Stand, not as a child of Kaelor. But as someone who follows her own path."
The pain vanished.
The fire faded.
The statues closed their eyes.
And the Hall fell still.
Faevelith stood alone. Her name intact. Her soul thread rewoven. Her voice still hers.
But her breath trembled as she walked out.
Because she knew now,
The ancestors had accepted her.
If only barely.
—-
She did not rest after the Rite. There was no time for it. The hallways of Kaelor still tasted of judgment, and though her name had survived the echo rite, the air felt thinner now respect given not in warmth but in distance. She needed to get out of there.
Magos met her at the outer sanctum. He inclined his head just slightly, hands folded in the precise gesture of analytical approval. His optics blinked once green, then blue.
"I calculate a ninety eight percent probability you would succeed," he said. "But I'm still glad to see you intact. Your Craftworld's ancestor network is statistically speaking a trauma labyrinth."
"I missed you too, Magos," she muttered, brushing past.
Cassian was waiting near the convergence gate. He gave no words, only a look.
She nodded once. "Let's begin."
---
The chamber was a vault nested inside the upper atrium of the Infinity Matrix hollowed from crystal and lit from beneath by soul lights. It was not designed for the living. It was where echoes were interrogated.
The body of Valae was not here. They had already extracted every known particle, every sliver of resonance from the murder scene. But what remained was more elusive less tangible.
A second presence. Faint. Spliced.
The traces Farron had found in the meditation chamber were real. The psychic equivalent of fingerprint oil. Two souls had burned their mark into that room.
Valae's.
And one more.
Faevelith stepped into the triune circle, where the ancestral proxy of Ty'raelin hovered in stasis. Not alive. Not quite dead. Just awake enough.
The proxy opened its eyes.
"Request," it said in her mind.
"I seek memory recall," Faevelith said. Her voice was steady. Formal. The blood-rites gave her the right to ask, not the right to command. "Location imprint from the meditation chamber. Timestamped three cycles prior to death. Dual presence resonance. Unknown soulprint to be isolated."
The echo did not move. But its thoughts flared.
Consent required.
Cassian stepped forward. "Consent from the victim?"
"No," Faevelith said softly. "From me. As the conduit."
The Magos did not interrupt. He was already configuring a resonance spool on the side, running simulations, mapping probability arcs of what the extracted memory might contain. He paused only to mumble: "Let the record show, humans are rarely allowed in psychic recall zones. I feel honored, and also 2.6% concerned."
Cassian glanced at him. "That low?"
"I'm multitasking."
Faevelith lowered herself into the recall cradle. Soul thread glowing. Mind wide open.
The Proxy began.
Light poured through the room pure psychic weave. The air twisted. Time lost meaning. The echo plunged into the past, and Faevelith followed.
She saw
Not as memory.
As presence.
---
Valae sat cross-legged, spine straight, eyes half lidded. Meditation posture. Breath slow. Focused. She was waiting.
Then movement.
Not footsteps. Breath.
Someone else entered.
Faevelith felt the psychic pressure. The weight of a trained soul. Seer class and disciplined.
The presence never spoke. Never revealed a face. The image was fragmented. Echoes always were.
But the mood changed.
Tension. Regret. Power unspooling in silence.
The stranger leaned close. A whisper.
And then—
A flare.
A psychic tear. violent.
Valae's soul resisted. For a second.
Then folded inward.
And everything snapped black.
---
Faevelith gasped. Her back arched from the cradle. The echo collapsed.
The Proxy dimmed.
Cassian stepped forward, catching her before she hit the floor.
Farron's voice cut through the moment. "We have data."
He held out a shard of translucent crystal, glowing with compressed resonance. Inside it a shape moved. Not a full memory. A sliver of a soulprint.
Faevelith's breath was ragged. Her eyes bloodshot. "It's a Seer. One of ours. Not human."
"Native," Cassian said.
Farron nodded. "Or someone cloaked in its psychic dialect. But I'd wager logic cores it's internal."
"No name?" Faevelith asked.
"Not yet. But I can cross-reference pattern traits. This isn't the raw Weave it's shaped, focused. Almost like… signature speech." His optics narrowed. "Soul accent, if you will."
Cassian stepped back, face unreadable. "Then we start hunting from the inside."
Faevelith said nothing. She looked at the echo shard in Farron's hand, and sighing at her fate of trusting humans than her own species.
—-
Word count- 2240
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