The pine-scented air of the camp settled over them like a lullaby. A frozen lake lay just beyond the circle of tents, its surface so smooth it mirrored the aurora dancing above. LUX’s shield nestled into low hum, casting gentle gold-blue glow through the camp, but everything else seemed calm, almost comforting.Inside Samuel’s tent, candles flickered. Aria rearranged sleep packs while Sarah and Joey rested nearby, exhausted from their emotional battle. LUX sat perched like a quiet guardian. It was almost midnight.SAMUEL sat on the edge of his cot, boots unlaced, reflections of candlelight in his spiraled rune. Aria crouched beside him, folding his coat with care.She spoke softly, voice wavering:“You can lie down… we don’t have to—”He interrupted gently:“No.” He looked at her, earnest. “I want to stay awake with you—just until sleep arrives.”Aria’s breath caught. She bit her lip, nodding. Tent’s warm air shimmered as she slid closer. She brushed his hand. “Okay.”Their faces hove

Snow swept violently across the high-altitude cliffs, but the cold wasn’t what made the air hard to breathe—it was the unseen force that pulsed beneath the soil, resonating like a buried heart. The winds carried more than ice; they carried whispers, echoes of ancient languages that hadn’t been spoken aloud in centuries. Words of warning. Words of power.The Vanguard stood at the foot of the sealed valley—an ancient pass choked with spiraling runes and floating shards of obsidian rock. At the edge of that broken terrain stood a shimmering wall of translucent blue. The barrier shimmered with symbols from the Orion Codex, flickering between dimensions like a heartbeat syncing with an alien mind.“No one crosses this threshold,” said the monk who had guided them, his voice tight with finality. “This path only opens to the bloodline of the First Light. To force it… is to invite a breach between realms.”Samuel stared at the shimmering seal with clenched fists. The mark of Orion pulsed fain

Samuel and Sarah had just stepped away from the fractured illusion realm, their bodies aching from the weight of confronting their own darkness. Now, within this enormous subterranean dome, the atmosphere had shifted again—this time to something older, colder, and profoundly sentient.The walls glowed faintly with runes that pulsed like veins of a living being. Each symbol hummed in rhythm with Sarah’s heartbeat. At the center of the dome stood the Artifact: a monolith of obsidian and crystal, floating inches above a silver dais. It spun slowly, like a planet suspended in a gravity well. Fragments of memory—voices, cries, laughter—whispered in the air around it, too fragmented to understand.Aria stood already before it, her coat torn at the shoulder, eyes wide and glimmering. Her fingers hovered inches from the monolith, trembling slightly—not with fear, but with recognition.“This is it,” she said, her voice low, almost reverent. “The heart of the Gate... the core from which all psy

Sarah had always known the danger would come for him first.Samuel had been the center of the storm from the beginning—born of secrets, haunted by forces no one could name, and forged in a crucible of shadow and light. But as she knelt beside him now, his chest barely rising, veins burning gold beneath his skin, she understood something far more terrifying.The Artifact hadn’t just reacted to his power.It had tried to consume him.His body trembled in her arms, too hot to hold. His fingers spasmed in silence. His pulse raced and then slowed, staggered, faltered.He was dying.“He’s rejecting the core resonance,” Aria said, frantically scanning the runes that still pulsed weakly along the floor. “His cells are over-saturated. His body can’t hold what it awakened. He’s collapsing at the molecular level.”Sarah didn’t respond. Her eyes were on his.They were still open—but vacant. Glowing, pulsing, dimming.“No,” she whispered, brushing his soaked hair from his forehead. “No, you’re not

Dimly. Slowly. Like a dying heart refusing to surrender its final beat.In the cold depths of the Temple of Origin, its obsidian form loomed above the center chamber—half-sealed, half-awake. Though the first lock had already been broken, the remaining two held fast, their glyphs still dormant. The ancient patterns no longer screamed with light as they had during Sarah’s collapse—but they shimmered faintly now, responding to a presence that should not yet exist.Samuel stood at the threshold once more.His breath misted in the thin, frigid air. Behind him, the Vanguard team had taken up cautious positions along the perimeter of the chamber, weapons holstered, ready to intervene but terrified of interfering. No one understood the Artifact—not truly. Not Aria with all her stolen research, nor Joey with his endless optimism. And certainly not Samuel, who felt the weight of it humming against his skin like a curse made flesh.But he knew one thing.Something inside had started watching.Th