The skyline of LUX-SEVEN was nothing short of surreal—crystalline towers twisted upward like frozen symphonies, their surfaces refracting the last violet rays of sunset into radiant spectrums. From the high terrace of the Indigo Solarium, Elias Vayne stood motionless, a shadow cast by a man once known only as myth. The obsidian fabric of his overcoat fluttered softly in the engineered wind, its hem traced in luminescent thread that shimmered with motion. Underneath, he wore a tailored slate-gray vest, its lining traced with microcircuit runes, paired with jet-black combat slacks reinforced with invisible armor.
The air was sweet with synth-basil and wind-grown lavender, filtered through a biospheric lattice that surrounded the entire terrace. The Indigo Solarium—once a private observatory for the LUX founders—had been dormant for decades. Elias had reactivated it using coordinates hidden in the dual-prism sequence. He was not alone.
Mireille stood beside him, dressed in a sculpted navy bodycoat split at the thighs, revealing high-booted legs wrapped in cerulean tactical silk. Her hair was now free-flowing, gold strands shimmering beneath the solarium's soft twilight.
"This is where it begins to unravel," she said, folding her arms.
Elias didn't look at her. "It was never a thread. It's a web. And the center isn't me—it's Valen."
She glanced toward the projection shimmering above the center table. The merged prism had released a flood of encrypted files—memories, maps, warnings.
But it was File Echelon-01 that haunted them.
Inside was a fragmentary recording. A younger Valen, hands bloodied, dragging a crystal body through a corridor scorched with arcane fire. He looked directly into the recording node.
"They thought the Riftborn were gods. But they were parasites. They steal timelines. Rewrite them. I tried to close the breach, but I failed. The others—locked away. I sealed them in fragments. This prism... it's not a beacon. It's a lock."
The message ended with a pulse: a signature coordinate buried under the city—The Throne of Glass Roots.
They descended the next morning.
Below the surface of LUX-SEVEN was a long-forgotten district, rumored to predate even the floating city's construction. They called it The Sub-Glow—a metropolis entombed by engineered stone, its architecture swallowed by vines of light crystal and time-corroded machinery.
The streets beneath smelled of ozone and old power, like storm-baked circuitry. The path to the throne was lined with guardian statues—each one a fusion of angel and construct, their eyes alight with passive scans. Mireille stepped carefully, her every move silently tracked.
At last, they reached the chamber.
The Throne of Glass Roots was not a seat in the literal sense. It was a convergence—a crystalline spire erupting from the heart of a subterranean garden, its surface etched with circuits that mirrored the structure of living neurons.
As Elias approached, the spire responded.
A wave of heat pushed outward, followed by a ripple in gravity. Mireille braced herself as the walls of the chamber unfolded, revealing looping memories—Valen's experiments, the Rift's birth, and something else: an unearthly presence, sealed in seven pieces. The prism trembled.
Then the spire cracked.
From within, a voice whispered not in words but in sensations—memories Elias never lived. War. Exile. Betrayal.
He fell to his knees.
Meanwhile, Zaire Garel stood inside a mirrored sanctum aboard his personal citadel, The Apex Vault. A thousand holoscreens flickered before him, each tuned to a different LUX frequency.
"The Throne has activated," said his assistant, the man with lens-eyes.
Zaire smiled, adjusting his wine glass. "Then it's time for phase two. Leak the footage. Let the world see Vayne communing with ghosts. It's time the public starts to question who their phantom CEO really is."
"But sir... if he unseals the third core first?"
Zaire turned, eyes glinting like cut sapphire. "Then we burn the city to the cloudline."
In the chamber, Mireille lifted Elias.
He was pale, breath shallow, but alive.
"The third key is inside me," he gasped. "Valen put a fragment in my mind when I was a child. That's why I dream of the Rift. It's not memory—it's inheritance."
Mireille looked at the now-silent spire.
"Then we'll find the next core," she said. "Before Zaire does. Before this whole world tears apart."
Elias nodded faintly. "To the edge of time, then."