1. Echoes of the Dead Zone
The Skimmer limped through the gray haze, its damaged hull rattling with every shift of air. Roy sat strapped in, eyes half-closed, feeling the SS-rank Fluxite core in his chest pulse in slow, exhausted waves. The memory of The Wretch disintegrating replayed behind his eyelids—light, ash, and silence.
Jean watched him from across the narrow cabin, arms folded, Pyrrion aura tightly suppressed. "Stay awake, Umbryon. We still have choices as long as you're conscious."
Taro's voice broke in. "We won't make it to Vergo with this flight profile. And after that resonance spike, every major scanner grid between here and the capital is probably sweeping this sector."
Kira checked the cracked navigation console. "We need a waypoint. Somewhere off the books, close enough to Vergo, but not tied to the Academy."
Lyra snapped her fingers. "Then we go to the one person who's already broken every travel rule the Academy ever wrote—Dr. Dreik."
2. The Forgotten Researcher
They found Dreik where all disgraced geniuses eventually seemed to end up: buried in a cluttered, isolated outpost on the fringe of the Dead Zone, surrounded by half-functional scanners and towers of data slates.
The Skimmer settled on the cracked landing pad with a protesting whine. As the ramp descended, the air was thick with the hum of old Flux machinery and the faint, metallic sting of exposed Pulsarite wiring.
The door to the main lab slid open after Jean sent a secured Selvan code. A thin, sharp-eyed man in a stained coat peered out, hair unkempt, Flux goggles hanging around his neck.
"Jean Selvan," he said, voice rough from disuse. "You brought a walking catastrophe to my doorstep, didn't you?"
Roy stepped forward, the suppression gauntlets cracked and charred. "Roy Umbryon. SS-rank catastrophe, apparently."
Dreik's gaze flicked to Roy's chest, pupils dilating for a moment as he *felt* the pressure of the core. "2.5 stabilized… but scorched resonance trail. You punched a hole in the continent's readings."
Taro raised a hand. "We need your help, Doctor. Lord Arcel mentioned you once reached the Vergo Region. We're headed to the Faelis."
At the word, Dreik's expression shifted. The usual academic sarcasm faded, replaced by something like distant reverence—and a hint of fear.
"The Faelis," he murmured. "You're about to walk into the only civilization that ever made me feel like the stupid one in the room."
3. Dreik's Flight and Fall
Dreik didn't invite them deeper into the lab so much as he shuffled out of their way, letting them follow. The interior was a jungle of holo-maps, resonance charts, and half-disassembled Flux stabilizers.
He activated an old projection table with a swipe. A planetary schematic flickered to life, Puls energy flows drawn as glowing lines across the crust.
"I was researching deep-core Fluxite behavior," Dreik began, fingers dancing over the map. "Trying to understand how the planet's heart regulates Puls emissions. My theory was that if I could track the natural flow, I could build a universal stabilizer—something that made Neutron corruption mathematically impossible."
Lyra whistled softly. "Sounds like something the Vanes would absolutely love to steal."
"They did more than love it," Dreik said dryly. "They came for it."
The map shifted, zooming in on a region of distorted lines and jagged interference. Dreik tapped a cluster of red spirals—Vanes sigils overlaid on stolen data.
"They infiltrated my research station. Took partial schematics, tried to corner me in the sub-level labs." His jaw tightened at the memory. "I triggered an emergency misjump in my transport array—uncalibrated, untested. It was either that or gift the Vanes a path straight to the planet's core."
Jean leaned on the table, eyes narrowed. "You jumped blind."
"I *fell* blind," Dreik corrected. "Three months. That's how long the records say I wandered at the edge of Vergo and the Dead Zone. No stable landmarks. No clean Puls signatures. Vanes scouting parties at my back, environmental decay in front of me. My rations ran out in the second month. After that… I was walking on desperation and spite."
Kira's hand unconsciously tightened on her shield strap. "How did you survive that long without a core?"
Dreik's lips twisted. "Badly. When I finally collapsed, I was half-dead. The scanners in my suit recorded the last image I saw before I blacked out—eyes. Gold, vertical slit pupils. Watching me from the trees."
He tapped the console, and a blurry image appeared: a pair of catlike, luminous eyes in the dark, framed by the suggestion of humanoid features and tall, furred ears.
"When I woke up," Dreik said softly, "I wasn't in the Dead Zone anymore."
4. Among the Faelis
He changed the projection. The harsh interference lines of the Dead Zone faded into rich, flowing currents of Puls energy. A new map appeared—lush, overgrown, pulsing with life.
"The Vergo Region," Taro breathed.
"No," Dreik corrected. "This is how *they* see it."
The projection wasn't a normal topographic map. It was an intricate mesh of resonance fields, ambient Flux currents, and pulsing nodes of stable energy. Pathways weren't roads; they were frequency corridors, harmonic safe zones between deadly flux storms.
"The Faelis found me," Dreik said. "Dragged me out of a poisoned ravine, stabilized what was left of my body, and spent an entire year making sure I didn't accidentally tear a hole in their ecosystem with my tech."
Lyra tilted her head. "Friendly cat people who rescue lost scientists. That tracks."
"They are not 'cat people'," Dreik snapped, then caught himself. "They are a civilization that decided to harmonize with Puls instead of conquering it. Their best tuners can feel a core spike by the way the leaves stop moving."
Roy listened in silence, the core in his chest thrumming faintly in response to the projected currents. Something about the Vergo field pattern resonated with him—a sense of deep, patient balance that his SS-rank flux had never known.
"What did they teach you?" Roy asked.
"More than the Academy ever wanted to hear," Dreik replied. "I arrived with stabilizer equations and containment prototypes. I left with the realization that all our 'control' is brute force compared to their tuning."
He flicked to another holo—angular symbols mixed with graceful, looping notations. "We traded knowledge. I showed them how humans quantify resonance, how we measure thresholds. They showed me how to *listen* to a core. How to nudge its song instead of strangling it."
Jean leaned closer to the diagrams. "And the location?"
5. The Hidden Path to Vergo
Dreik hesitated, gaze shifting to Roy again. "The Faelis did not want their home turned into a destination on Academy maps. They remember hunters and collectors. They remember Neutrons. They agreed to let me leave on three conditions: I never bring a war to their gates, I never sell their coordinates, and I only send those who *need* their help, not those who want their power."
Roy met his eyes steadily. "I don't want their power. I want to stop this from becoming a planetary problem."
"The Vanes won't stop hunting him," Kira added. "If he loses control, cities burn. If the Vanes get him, the core becomes a weapon."
"And the Academy's solution is to cage or cut it out," Jean said quietly. "We're out of options that don't end in disaster."
Silence settled for a moment, broken only by the hum of Dreik's old generators.
Finally, Dreik sighed. "I knew this would happen eventually. An SS-rank anomaly, pushed beyond human control. Arcel was right to send you."
He keyed in a sequence. The holo-map zoomed, diving under conventional navigation layers, revealing a web of faint, shifting paths through the Dead Zone's interference field.
"The Faelis don't mark their borders with walls," Dreik explained. "They mark them with *tuning*. These are the approach corridors—the only routes where a high-resonance core like yours won't trigger their defensive fields or destabilize the local ecosystem."
Taro studied the pattern, eyes wide. "These are… resonance-safe bands. If we stray outside them—"
"Your SS-rank core will scream through Vergo like a flare," Dreik said. "Best case, the Faelis vanish before you arrive. Worst case, you collapse half their stabilizing lattice. Or draw every Vanes sensor in a thousand-kilometer radius."
He transferred the data to Taro's console, then placed a small, worn device in Roy's hand. It was a narrow band of metal and fiber, fitted with delicate, catlike etchings and a single, faintly glowing node.
"They gave me this when I left," Dreik said. "A tuning band. It syncs with their ambient field. As you approach Vergo, wear it. If your resonance begins to spike, it will *sting*. That is your warning. You keep the output low, or you turn around."
Roy closed his fingers around the band. "Will they accept me?"
Dreik looked at him for a long moment. "They saved a broken scientist who fell into their forest on accident and tried to heal the damage he caused. They might accept a walking storm who arrives with intent to learn and protect." He paused. "They will not accept a weapon."
Roy nodded slowly. The core thrummed in agreement—or protest; it was hard to tell.
6. Departure
Back at the Skimmer, patched and rebalanced with Dreik's reluctant help, the team prepared to depart. The Dead Zone's sky boiled dimly overhead.
Jean tightened the strap of Roy's new tuning band around his wrist, just under the ruined remnants of Arcel's gauntlet. The metal was cool at first, then warmed, matching his pulse.
"Remember," she said. "If it stings, you *listen*."
Lyra grinned, trying to cut through the tension. "Look at it this way, Roy. You're about to be judged by an entire tribe of elite, stealthy cat people. Try not to blow up their trees."
Kira gave a short nod. "We move as a unit. No heroics. Vergo is unknown territory."
Taro secured the navigation feed, Dreik's hidden paths now layered over their crude map. "Course plotted. If we follow these bands, we reach the Faelis border undetected. If we don't—"
"We will," Roy said.
He stepped to the ramp's edge and looked out at the Dead Zone. For the first time since the SS-rank awakening, the path forward wasn't just about getting stronger. It was about getting *quieter*.
The core pulsed once, deep and low. The tuning band vibrated, then settled, as if acknowledging the route ahead.
"We go to Vergo," Roy repeated, voice steady. "Not as hunters. Not as weapons. As students."
The Skimmer lifted, angling toward the invisible, narrow corridors that led to the Faelis' hidden world—where a walking catastrophe might finally learn how to stop being one.