**CHAPTER** **THIRTY - ONE** **Nightmares** The extraction took another three days.The site was a submerged cave system on the western coast of Palawan, accessible only by diving at low tide. Commander Cross had coordinated the operation with the precision of a woman who had spent her entire adult life in the Royal Marines.The security perimeter stretched a full kilometre inland. The //Valiant's// deck guns were trained on the treeline, their muzzles tracking slowly, never resting. No one was getting close.When the divers surfaced with the fragment, the entire deck fell silent.It was beautiful.The fragment was the size of a human pinky, jagged at the edges, glowing faintly from within. The light pulsed — slow, rhythmic, like a heartbeat. It was warm to the touch, even through the containment gloves. The water dripped from it in slow, deliberate drops, as if the fragment itself was breathing.Lyla stood at the edge of the crowd, and for a moment she forgot to breathe.She was t

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREEHunting The night did not end.Nadia had been sitting on the couch for hours, her eyes fixed on the pendant lying on the coffee table. The spiral within the circle stared back at her, silent, motionless, warm. She had not touched it since she dropped it. She had not taken her eyes off it since she sat down.The river moved beyond the window. The city hummed its distant, indifferent hum.At some point—she did not know when—she dozed off.The transition was seamless. One moment she was staring at the pendant, the next she was standing in a field of ash.The sky was black. Not night-black, but dead-black, as if the stars had been erased. The ground beneath her feet was grey and cracked, covered in a fine powder that rose in clouds with every step. The air smelled of smoke and copper and something else—something sweet and wrong that she could not place.She was not alone.A man stood a few metres in front of her.He was tall—not impossibly tall, but tall enough to

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVEThe UnboundThe HMS Valiant docked at Portsmouth in the grey light of early morning. The extraction had been a success—the fragment secure, no casualties nor contacts, minimal ice damage to the hull. A textbook operation by any measure.Nadia stood at the gangway, the lockbox under one arm, her face carefully blank. Inside her thermal suit, pressed against her ribs, were two items that did not belong to her: a bone pendant and a small carved stone tablet. She had hidden them in the lining of her coat before leaving the ice. No one had seen. No one had searched her.She had broken about seventeen regulations.And she did not know why she was risking it all.She walked down the gangway with the lockbox, her boots steady on the metal, her heart pounding in a rhythm she hoped no one could see. A transport vehicle was waiting to take her to Admiral Vael’s office. She climbed in without a word.The Admiral's office was as grey and oppressive as she remembered.Vael sat

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENRelease The flight from London to Caracas was long, cramped, and filled with Lyla's non-stop commentary.She sat by the window, the bone pendant wrapped in cloth and tucked safely in her carry-on, her laptop open on the tray table, covered in notes and maps and translations. She had not stopped talking since they boarded."Okay, so I've been cross-referencing the dialect from the second tablet with some pre-Columbian texts I found at the British Museum, and there's a remarkable similarity to the vocabulary used by the Wayuu people who live around Lake Maracaibo. It's possible that the bloodline of the healer had contact with them, or maybe even settled there at some point. The timelines match up if you account for—""Lyla…" Nadia said, rubbing her temples."—migration patterns around 3000 BCE, which would explain why the carvings mention a 'great water' and a 'storm that never sleeps.' The Catatumbo lightning has been documented for over a thousand years, but the

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINEAwakening 2Lyla's question hung in the air like a thunderclap that refused to fade.She was sitting up now, fully awake, her eyes wide and fixed on the scene before her. Her mouth opened and closed twice, as if she wanted to say something else but her brain had not yet caught up to the impossibility of what she was seeing.Nadia was still straddling him. She was acutely aware of it now—the warmth of his body beneath her, the way he had not moved or struggled or even tensed when she had thrown herself at him. He simply stood there, waiting, as if this was not the strangest morning of her life.She scrambled off him, backing away until her legs hit the edge of the coffee table. She nearly tripped over a stack of papers but caught herself, her eyes never leaving the man in her hoodie.Muri remained standing, cross-legged now, his hands folded and his massive frame leaning on the wall. He made no move. He made no move to threaten. He simply looked at her with those wh