The journey deeper into Velhym Station was not just a physical descent through rusted halls and shattered staircases but a descent into knowledge that rewrote everything Kael thought he understood about the world before the collapse.
The path beyond the confrontation chamber—now sealed behind reinforced doors to prevent any of the Storm's Chosen from following—led them into a part of the station that hadn't seen daylight in centuries. Here, even the air was different. Dense, metallic. As though saturated with microscopic threads of old energy.
"This doesn't feel like any old ruin," Drex muttered, running a hand along a wall etched with shimmering patterns. "It's like the place is alive. Watching."
Kael felt it too. The Core inside him vibrated in harmony with the walls themselves, pulsing with quiet urgency. Something ahead was calling to it.
"We're close," he said. "To whatever they built here to house the Prime Strain."
Lira took point, silent and alert, her rifle sweeping through shadows with each careful step. Aren and Drex flanked the rear, while Kael stayed in the center, a beacon of power and uncertainty.
They reached a stairwell that spiraled downward into a shaft surrounded by transparent plating. Beyond the glass, vast hollow chambers blinked to life as they descended. They saw storage vaults, suspended bridges, and containment fields long powered down. But there was no decay here—no mold, no broken beams. This level had been sealed away from entropy.
"Still active," Aren whispered. "It's like it never shut down."
The lowest level ended in a corridor lined with a black alloy unlike anything Kael had seen. Every footstep was silent, absorbed by the matte-black floors. Symbols etched into the walls glowed faintly as they passed. Kael recognized a few from the interface that had activated earlier—schematics and equations related to talent amplification, gene sculpting, and adaptive cognition.
At the end of the corridor was a chamber. The doors were monumental—six meters high, divided down the middle by a glowing seam of blue-white light. There was no lock, no keypad.
Kael stepped forward. The Core inside him pulsed.
"Let me try."
He pressed his hand to the seam.
The doors responded instantly. Light flared. A deep, harmonic tone filled the corridor, vibrating in their bones. Then, the doors slid open with a grace that belied their size, revealing the chamber beyond.
They entered a cathedral of science.
A domed room two hundred meters wide, filled with suspended crystal arrays, data pylons, and floating neural spires. At the center, on a raised platform, was a containment cradle. Suspended within it was a glowing sphere of fluid light, pulsing in rhythm with Kael's Core.
"That's it," Lira said. "That's the Prime Strain."
Kael moved toward it, compelled not by curiosity, but by something deeper—resonance.
As he approached, the sphere reacted. Images flickered in the air around him—holographic memories. Scientists in pristine uniforms, conducting experiments. Subjects with talents so powerful, they collapsed entire rooms. Arguments. Betrayals. A scientist with a scar over his left eye shouting, "The Prime Strain isn't just a breakthrough—it's a weapon."
Another vision. Kael's mother.
She was younger. Dressed in a research coat. Standing before the Prime Strain, tears in her eyes.
"We can't keep doing this," she whispered. "He's just a child."
Kael stumbled back, breath stolen from his chest.
"You saw her," Lira said gently. "Didn't you?"
He nodded slowly. "My mother... she worked here. She was part of this."
Drex clenched his fists. "That means they knew about the Core inside you before you were even born. They planned this."
Kael looked back at the Prime Strain. "This is why they feared me. Why the Storm's Chosen wanted to stop us. If I bond with this... I won't just be a talent user. I'll be something else entirely."
Lira touched his arm. "Do you want that?"
Kael hesitated. Then nodded. "I need to control what's inside me. Before it controls me."
He stepped into the platform.
The Prime Strain pulsed, then unfolded. Filaments of liquid light extended outward, wrapping around Kael's body like threads of silk. Pain followed. Blinding. Endless. His blood screamed as it was rewritten.
Visions flooded his mind.
He saw the world before the collapse, cities powered by talent-reactors, skyships flying on winds of pure force, people building wonders from their gifts.
He saw the collapse—the wars, the corruption, the cataclysmic misuse of the Prime Strain that shattered the world.
He saw himself, standing at the center of a burning storm, holding back a wave of destruction.
Then darkness.
When Kael opened his eyes, the others were around him. He was on his knees, trembling.
"It's done," he whispered.
The Core inside him was no longer separate. It was him.
A voice, not his own, echoed in his mind: The Prime Strain accepts the Key. The evolution has begun.
Drex helped him up. "You good?"
Kael stood, taller somehow. Steadier. Eyes glowing faintly. "I'm ready."
Lira looked toward the chamber doors. "Then we need to get out. Now. The Storm's Chosen won't stay away forever."
Kael nodded. "Let them come. I have answers now. It's time we take the fight to them."
As they turned back through the corridor, lights flickered on ahead. More visions. More questions. And ahead of them—far beyond the station—Tasha Elen, the gene-scribe who could help Kael refine what he had become.
But first, they would have to survive what came next.
And what came next was war.