Eclipse: Crest Born

Auxiliary chapter Three

The Eidrix Codex: Volume I, Part IV

The Black Vein

By Veiran Thale

The Black Vein is not a faction. It is an infection that learned to organize itself.

Officially, it exists as a government-funded division for Crest research and genetic innovation, the public sees it as the nation’s pride. Unofficially, it is a sect built around one belief: that evolution must be forced, and that emotion is the obstacle to perfection.

The Vein’s core members operate under layers of false titles and ministries, but the hierarchy is older than the state itself. Their earliest documents date back to before the first Crest awakenings. They speak of a “Root Signal,” a biological code buried deep in human DNA, capable of rewriting both mind and matter when properly awakened.

They have spent decades trying to control that code.

The initiation rituals for high-ranking members are never recorded, but leaked testimonies suggest they undergo a form of neural imprinting where their Crest signatures are merged into a shared consciousness called The Conduit. Those who survive lose individuality but gain the collective memory of the cult. Those who fail are reduced to static within the Conduit’s data field.

The Academy is their grand experiment, a farm for the Origin Gene. Every student who passes through its gates adds data to the Vein’s simulations, helping them perfect the conditions for artificial transcendence.

I used to think they sought immortality. I was wrong. They seek replacement.

To the Black Vein, humanity is a prototype that must be overwritten. The emotional core that gives rise to compassion, love, and guilt is, in their eyes, the one flaw that prevents evolution. Their research aims to excise it entirely.

But something haunts their work. No matter how precise their experiments become, the Crests continue to respond to emotion. Rage amplifies them. Sorrow stabilizes them. Fear mutates them. Every time they attempt to erase humanity, the Crests grow more alive.

Some of the oldest texts in the Vein’s archives are written in a dead language. I translated one line that stayed with me:

 “To silence the heart, we must first kill the world that taught it to beat.”

They are closer to achieving that than most would believe.

And if they succeed, there will be nothing left of us worth saving.

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The Eidrix Codex: Volume I, Part V

The Origin Gene

By Veiran Thale

For years, the existence of the Origin Gene was considered theoretical, a myth whispered among biologists who studied the first Crest awakenings. I once called it poetic nonsense. I don’t anymore.

The earliest records describe the Gene not as a single structure, but as a sequence anomaly that appears to rewrite itself depending on external stimuli. It behaves less like DNA and more like a living code. When exposed to emotional or environmental stress, it mutates intentionally, as if responding to meaning itself.

The Black Vein treats it as a biological key to power. I’ve come to believe it is something older that remembers what humanity forgot.

Using deep resonance mapping, I observed a consistent pattern: every time the Origin Gene activates, a harmonic frequency forms in the brain’s limbic system ( the region tied to memory, instinct, and emotion). The Crest manifests shortly after, as if grown from that emotional echo. The process doesn’t just draw on energy; it draws on identity.

In theory, this means every Crest is unique because it is a reflection of one’s innermost truth. The stronger the emotion, the clearer the resonance. Love, rage, grief, these are not hindrances to power. They are the power.

That is why the Black Vein cannot control it. Their obsession with perfection blinds them to the Gene’s core principle: it does not obey logic, it obeys meaning.

One experiment in particular changed everything. Subject E-97, a child with no recorded family, exhibited spontaneous Crest formation after prolonged isolation. The Crest pattern formed not from inherited data, but from memory fragments — things she imagined to comfort herself. The Gene, in its loneliness, created life out of longing.

After that, I stopped viewing it as an experiment. I started seeing it as communion.

If the Origin Gene truly holds consciousness, then what are we but vessels carrying something older, wiser, and infinitely patient? Something waiting to remember itself through us?

I’ve tried to replicate its activation in vitro. Every attempt ends the same way, not with failure, but interference. The data corrupts itself in precise sequences, spelling out fragments in binary that translate roughly to one word:

 Return.

Return to what, I don’t know. But I fear the Gene does.

If evolution itself can think, then perhaps it has already chosen its next form.