The journey beyond Velhym Station began under a bruised sky. Clouds loomed like the battered sails of an ancient ship, heavy with dust and static. Kael marched at the head of the group, his coat snapping in the wind, eyes fixed on the distant ridge where the scarred lands of Silerath began. With each step, the air thickened, infused with the residue of forgotten technology and ancestral power.
They left the rusted silhouettes of Velhym behind, heading into the Dust Reaches—a stretch of terrain where nothing grew and where the sand whispered secrets to those foolish enough to listen. The ground crackled with fractured energy. Occasionally, the sand would rise in low pulses, like breath. Aren kept muttering under his breath, noting strange readings from his scanner.
"It's alive," he finally said aloud, eyes wide. "Not the sand. The earth. There's something under us."
Drex grunted. "I've heard stories. Old machines buried here. Maybe bio-systems. Maybe worse."
Kael didn't respond. His Core was humming faintly—a warning, or an invitation. He couldn't tell.
---
By midday, the wind shifted. The fog that once clung to Velhym had thinned into translucent veils, revealing long stretches of derelict structures half-swallowed by the sand. Towering spires lay broken across the dunes, their surfaces etched with runes and strange skeletal motifs. They passed what looked like a church, but its altar was a metallic pod, and the stained glass windows were made of glowing data screens.
Lira pointed toward a collapsed dome. "That wasn't built by any post-Collapse faction. These ruins predate the Collapse. Maybe even the Synthesis Age."
Kael paused, hand on a rusting pillar. "I feel something. It's like the Core recognizes this place."
"It would," said Aren. "These might be the first labs. The ones that studied the origins of talents. Not just how they work, but what they are."
The group approached one of the dome remnants. Inside, strange equipment hung from the ceiling like vines—wires braided with bone and crystal. As Kael stepped inside, a pulse surged from the walls. The interior shimmered. For a moment, the broken room was whole again.
They all froze.
"Kael," Lira said sharply. "What did you do?"
Kael didn't answer. He saw them—figures of light moving through the reformed room, silent as ghosts. Scientists in long robes with glowing circuitry embedded in their skin. A woman with four eyes adjusting a crystal chamber. A child floating in a vat of blue gel. Symbols glowed around Kael's feet.
Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the vision collapsed.
The room returned to decay. The silence after was loud.
Kael stumbled back, sweat beading his brow. "I didn't do that on purpose."
"It was a memory field," Aren said. "Residual imprint. But I've never seen one so... intense."
Lira was already scanning the chamber. "We need data. Something tangible. If these were the first Talent Engineers, they might have left logs."
---
Further inside the ruins, they discovered what looked like a sarcophagus. Drex and Aren lifted the lid, revealing not a corpse, but a crystalline tablet pulsing with faint light. Kael reached out and the tablet lit up, words scrolling across its surface in a language that shouldn't have been comprehensible—yet Kael understood every word.
"The Talent Spiral is not a gift. It is a reflection. Each bearer a mirror. Each core a question. Unlock one answer and another follows."
He read it aloud.
"That's not science," Drex muttered. "That's prophecy."
"Or philosophy," Lira said. "Which, in this world, is often the same thing."
Kael tucked the tablet into his satchel. He knew it was important, though he didn't know why. Yet.
---
That night, they camped near a fallen monolith with carvings resembling constellations and neurons interwoven. Kael sat apart from the group, staring into the shifting sands, the Core inside him whispering fragments of sentences he couldn't fully parse.
Lira approached, her silhouette lit by the fire. "You okay?"
He hesitated. "No. But I think... this place is waking something up."
"In you or in the world?"
"Both."
She nodded and sat beside him. "Velhym changed you. That encounter with the Storm's Chosen wasn't just a fight. It was a trigger."
Kael clenched his fists. "I don't want to become something I can't control."
Lira looked at him then, really looked. "Then we help you. Together."
In the darkness, the earth shifted again. A low groan echoed through the sand. Something beneath them stirred.
Far off in the distance, a red beacon blinked three times, then went dark.
Kael stood.
"Tomorrow, we move toward it. Whatever's waiting... I think it's the next piece of the puzzle."
---
As the fire crackled and sleep claimed the camp one by one, Kael sat awake, staring into the infinite silence. The desert whispered to him. The Core whispered back.
And between those whispers, something ancient listened.