The woman's words hung in the thin mountain air, not as a greeting, but as a verdict. "You have come home." For Kaelen, who had no home left, the phrase was a mockery. The serene, pulsating beauty of the Chorus's enclave felt like the most beautiful cage imaginable.
Elara's hand tightened on her rifle, her knuckles white. "We're just passing through," she called back, her voice cutting through the psychic hum. "We have no quarrel with you."
The Chorus leader—Kaelen heard one of the others refer to her as Matriarch Iliana—did not even acknowledge Elara. Her luminous gaze remained fixed on Kaelen. "There is no 'passing through' the heart of the song. You have been drawn here, as the root is drawn to water. Your struggle is over, child. Let the World-Mind's embrace ease your pain."
As she spoke, Kaelen felt a wave of psychic pressure wash over him. It wasn't an attack. It was an invitation. A profound, soothing warmth that promised to quiet the agonizing storm in his arm, to make sense of the chaotic power screaming through his veins. It was a siren's song, and a part of him, a deep, terrified part, wanted nothing more than to surrender to it.
He took an involuntary step forward.
Elara's arm shot out, barring his path. "Don't," she hissed, her voice low and urgent. "That's not peace, it's assimilation. Look at their eyes."
He did. Behind the serene light in Matriarch Iliana's eyes, there was no individual spark, no flicker of independent thought. There was only the chorus. He saw the same in the others—a blissful, terrifying uniformity.
"The Captain is correct," Kael rasped, his optical device whirring as he scanned the organic structures. "Their bio-signatures are anomalous. Individual neural patterns are subsumed by a dominant, collective frequency. It is a hive mind."
"They have found unity," Lyra countered, her scientific curiosity battling with her fear. "Look at what they've built! This is a level of symbiosis we thought was theoretical. The energy efficiency, the structural integrity…"
"The loss of self," Kaelen finished for her, his voice trembling. He clenched his crystalline fist, the painful glow a stark rebellion against the Chorus's soothing harmony. "I won't become that."
For the first time, Matriarch Iliana's serene smile faltered, replaced by a flicker of what looked like pity. "The 'I' you cling to is the source of your suffering. It is a dam against a river. Let it go, and become the ocean." She gestured, and the gathered Chorus members parted, revealing the entrance to the resin-grown city. "Come. Let us show you your true potential. The others like you are so eager to meet you."
The words landed like a physical blow. Others like you.
Before Kaelen could process it, Elara made her choice. She was a creature of momentum, and this situation was a quagmire. "We're leaving. Now." She began backing away, pulling Kaelen with her, her rifle still trained on the Chorus.
Matriarch Iliana sighed, a sound like wind through leaves. "The un-synced will always fear the song. They are welcome to leave. But the Heart must stay. It is not a request."
The psychic pressure shifted. The invitation vanished, replaced by a wall of pure will. It wasn't directed at Elara, Jax, or Lyra. It was a spear aimed directly at Kaelen's mind.
LET GO.
BELONG.
BE STILL.
The command was immense, an ocean of consciousness trying to overwhelm the island of his self. He cried out, staggering, his hand flaring so brightly it cast their sharp, dancing shadows against the mountain wall. He felt his mental defenses, built over a lifetime in Spirehold and hardened by recent trauma, cracking like eggshells.
"Fight it, Kaelen!" Lyra shouted, grabbing his arm. Her touch was a tether, a point of real, individual connection in the psychic onslaught.
Jax didn't hesitate. He raised his crossbow and fired a chemical round that shattered at the Matriarch's feet, releasing a cloud of acrid, grey smoke. It was a distraction, a sensory attack in a battle of pure mind.
In that moment of disrupted focus, Elara acted. "The fissure! Go!"
They ran, not back the way they came, but towards a narrower, darker crack in the cliff face that Jax had noted. It was a desperate, dangerous route, but it was away from the Chorus.
The Chorus did not pursue them with weapons or shouts. They simply watched, their collective gaze a physical weight on Kaelen's back. The psychic pressure didn't lessen; it became a constant, dragging current, trying to pull him back into their tide.
The new fissure was a treacherous descent, a near-vertical chimney of loose rock and ice. They slid and scrambled, the sounds of their struggle swallowed by the vastness of the mountain. Kaelen was the weakest link, his coordination shot by the internal war he was fighting. Halfway down, his foot slipped on a patch of ice.
He fell, tumbling through the darkness, expecting to smash against rock.
Instead, he landed in something soft and cold. Deep, powdery snow. He had fallen through a concealed overhang into a hidden, high-altitude basin.
The others quickly followed, sliding down more carefully. They stood in a pristine snowfield, surrounded on all sides by sheer cliffs. The only exit was the way they had come, or a single, large tunnel at the far end—a tunnel that looked unnaturally smooth, and from which emanated a faint, artificial breeze and the dim glow of electric light.
And the psychic pressure from the Chorus was gone. Completely. It was as if this basin was shielded.
Elara scanned the cliffs, her face grim. "We're boxed in. That tunnel is our only way out." She looked at Kael, who was already scanning the smooth walls of the entrance.
"The architecture is pre-Cataclysm. Advanced," he rasped. "This is no natural cave. The atmosphere is filtered. This is a facility."
Lyra approached the entrance, her eyes wide. "The materials… they're resisting the Weep. Actively. There's no corrosion. No fungal growth." She placed a hand on the smooth, metallic-composite wall. "This is Aethelburg-level engineering."
Kaelen slowly got to his feet, the pain in his arm receding to a dull, manageable throb in the strange silence of this place. He looked from the smooth, technological tunnel ahead to the treacherous, natural fissure behind them that led back to the biological fanaticism of the Chorus.
They had escaped one cage only to find themselves in the antechamber of another. This one wasn't grown; it was forged. And it was just as silent, just as waiting.
Elara checked the charge on her rifle. "No choice. We move forward. Stay sharp."
As they stepped into the illuminated tunnel, leaving the snow and the open sky behind, Kaelen realized the horrible truth of his existence. He was a prize, and this world was full of collectors. The Rustwalkers wanted to use him, the Gleaners to dissect him, the Chorus to absorb him. And now, this hidden place… what would it want?
The tunnel sloped downward, deep into the heart of the mountain. The air grew warmer, drier. The light came from recessed panels in the ceiling, their glow steady and eternal.
After a hundred yards, the tunnel opened into a vast, cavernous space that made all of them stop dead.
It was a hangar. And in the center of the hangar, resting on a reinforced launch platform, was a ship. It was sleek, arrowhead-shaped, and built from the same non-corrosive material as the tunnel. It was pristine, untouched by time or the Weep. On its hull, faded but still legible, was a stenciled name: Aethelburg Prime.
They hadn't found a cage.
They had found an ark.