Location: Verge Ring Fringe – Searching for Sector H-19
Time: [Map Status: Glitching / Core Sync: 91%]
MAP STATUS:
The hologram flickered again — shuffling coordinates like playing cards held by someone with caffeine and no morals.
BLAZE (squinting at the display):
"Seriously? It just said H-19 was west. Now it says it's... left."
FROST (tapping the side of her visor):
"Nope, it says it's currently loading, which makes zero sense for a planet's geography."
REN (sighing):
"So... the location exists, but we can't see it until the map decides we deserve it?"
TIME (narrating with a fake announcer voice):
"Welcome to The Drift's Worst Scavenger Hunt, featuring:
Coordinates that lie! Cities that forget they exist! And a final boss made of misplaced trauma!"
REN:
"Great. What do we actually know?"
SPACE (pointing at a static zone in the map's corner):
"This right here — that noise-shaped patch? That's where Cradle Gorge is hiding.
It's not marked. It's suppressed. The Verge system doesn't want anyone seeing it."
SNARKSTEEL (grumbling):
"Of course. We've been searching for a place with a stealth setting."
REN:
"Can we get there?"
SPACE (grinning):
"With just the right amount of nonsense?
Absolutely."
Turns out, the Cradle Gorge isn't accessed from above or from coordinates. It's anchored between old battlefield layers — like a basement built inside a war's memory.
So they went where the old soldiers never came back from:
A collapsed trench district in the South Verge Rim, marked as Quarantine Sector: Do Not Enter. With fog that didn't rise, it hovered sideways. And sounds that didn't echo — they looped.
BLAZE (walking through debris):
"There's a lot of melted stone here."
FROST (checking faded runes on a fallen statue):
"This was a battlefield."
A shattered wall nearby still carried a nameplate:
CRADLE LINE — TRENCH GATE DELTA
(Defensive perimeter during the Rift Wars – 8th Planet Incursion)
REN (reading it aloud):
"This was one of the places that held back Threxil monsters…"
FROST:
"No wonder it doesn't want to be found. This whole zone's full of leftover trauma."
TIME (flickering into a ghostly general's form):
"Imagine a city so pissed it never got closure, it turned into a puzzle box made of guilt."
Welcome to the Puzzle-City of Cradle Gorge
The entry point finally opened when Ren stepped on a cracked glyph stone and muttered something accidentally poetic:
REN (grumbling):
"Wish we had a real path instead of this memory landfill."
The wind stopped.
The stones glowed.
A door opened in midair — framed by fractured weapons and names etched in flame.
SPACE (clapping):
"Congratulations! You insulted the trauma just enough to get in!"
They stepped into a half-buried city carved into the earth, its buildings shaped by war-magic, memory-echoes, and fractured history.
The signs were wrong. The stairs went sideways.
One building sang softly if you stared at it too long.
The puzzle-city had no straight paths — only choices.
AETHERIUM CORE:
pgsqlCopyEdit> LOCATION: CRADLE GORGE – INTERNAL LABYRINTH > SECURITY TYPE: TRAUMA-LOCKED > OBJECTIVE: FIND ECHO STAR COORDINATE
Every path shifted.
Some led in circles.
Some led to collapsed timelines.
One just took them back to the bar Ren ordered soup at two days ago (he still owed for that, apparently).
FROST (looking frustrated):
"We're not walking in circles. We're walking through refusals to forget."
BLAZE (lighting up her hand):
"Okay. Let's solve this memory maze... one burnt lie at a time."
Ren looked up.
At the core of the city, a massive, half-cracked obelisk pulsed with blue fire and broken stars.
This had to be the Echo Star.
He just had to reach it.
But before he could move—
the sky above the city turned black.
And something — someone — spoke in a voice that bent the stone.
UNKNOWN VOICE:
"You carry the anchor.
But you have not earned the truth.
Prove your identity… or leave your Core behind."
Ren's Core flickered.
His heartbeat jumped.
Whatever was guarding this city?
It just noticed him.