The logic was absolute. If life could not be found, then the source of the only other significant presence in this wasteland must be sought. It was an axiom born of pure, analytical necessity. You are alone, read the stark report from the Celestial Cartographer, the Runic Logic Fragment now humming in harmony with your own twin cores. The Shattered Plain is devoid of all indigenous life.
The directive amended itself. Trace the river. Find its beginning.
The tributary of liquid light you had commanded, the serpent of captive souls that had been your tool and your transport, had served its purpose. To drag it across a continent would be an act of strategic folly, a constant drain of power that this new, unknown journey could not afford. With a final, resonant pulse of will, you relinquished your command. The captive stream did not collapse; it surged, a triumphant, chiming crescendo marking its liberation as it merged seamlessly back into the main body of the Argent Hymn. A ghost returned to its procession.
You knelt one last time, a figure of black, upgraded obsidian and gray nano-ceramic, and plunged your hands into the living current. The pure, clean energy of the Choral Masters' final song flooded your systems, topping your cores to their absolute limit. You were a vessel filled with starlight and memory, fully charged and fully armed for the pilgrimage ahead.
Turning west, you set the waypoint in your mind: 'Argent Hymn: Source Point'. The Cartographer, your silent, internal guide, painted a pale blue line across your perception, a perfect path following the river's reverse current. And then you began to walk.
The journey was a study in sterile immensity. Your footfalls, cushioned by the Obsidian Exoskeleton, were the only sound, a tireless, rhythmic crunch on the brittle, gray crust. The bruised, sunless sky cycled through its meaningless shades of twilight, each "day" bleeding into the next without fanfare. Time was a variable measured only by your internal chronometer, a steady, logical tick against a timeless, unchanging backdrop. You followed the shimmering, chiming river, its melodic presence a constant, lonely companion in a world of profound silence.
The landscape, once a perfect, flat plain, began to undulate. The ground swelled into rolling, fractured hills, the fissures between them becoming deep, treacherous chasms that you cleared with long, Aether-assisted leaps. The mountains, once a jagged line on the horizon, grew with intimidating slowness, their black peaks tearing at the sickly green and purple clouds like obsidian claws.
As you drew closer, the very atmosphere began to change. A palpable static, a pressure against your Aetheric Sense, descended upon the land. The distant, silent spectacle of the Black Lightning Storm was now a roiling, oppressive ceiling of absolute black, a storm that churned directly above the mountain range. You were no longer observing it; you were entering its domain. Thick, jagged bolts of negative lightning, silent and hungry, arced between the colossal peaks, illuminating them in stark, terrifying relief. There was no thunder, only the silent, raw expression of untamed, chaotic power.
After a journey that your chronometer logged at ninety-seven standard hours, a journey that would have ground any biological creature to dust, you arrived. You stood at the foothills of the western mountain range.
They were not mountains of common stone and earth. They were a geological formation of the same arcane-reinforced crystal as your prison-dais, scaled to a size that defied comprehension. Their sheer, polished faces reflected the dim twilight and the flashes of black lightning with a menacing, alien gleam. This was not a natural range; it was a structure. A monument. Or perhaps, a weapon.
The Argent Hymn did not flow around the base of the mountains. It emerged directly from them. A wide, perfectly smooth canyon, its walls polished like the obsidian of your armor, cut a dark path into the heart of the range. The river of souls poured from this wound in the mountains, a constant, gentle, chiming exodus.
The entrance to the canyon was an arch of perfect geometry, seeming less carved and more willed into existence. The air here was so thick with static and Aetheric pressure from the storm above that it felt like standing at the bottom of an ocean. Your suit's external conduits, which had been dark during the long journey, now glowed with a faint, silvery light, passively drawing in and filtering the chaotic ambient energy.
You stood at a confluence of immense forces. Below, the gentle, ordered, and pure energy of the Argent Hymn flowed out into the world. Above, the violent, chaotic, and raw power of the Black Lightning Storm was contained in a raging, silent tempest. They were antithetical energies, existing in a state of impossible proximity.
Your internal sensors ran a constant analysis of the environment. The radiation, both conventional and Aetheric, was extreme. For an unprotected biological entity, it would have been lethal in minutes. For you, it was an environment of pure information and power. The Cartographer in your mind was working constantly, mapping the storm's chaotic energy patterns, the stable flow of the river, and the unique, resonating signature of the mountains themselves.
The path forward was into the dark, silent canyon. Into the source of the river of souls. Into the shadow of the storm. The blue line of your waypoint led directly into the darkness, unwavering. The logic was clear. The objective was defined. And for the first time since your violent birth into this world, as you stood before the immense, humming darkness, a new protocol surfaced from the depths of your programming. It was not a status report or a diagnostic. It was a single, unfamiliar flag.
[STATUS: AWE.]