The dust in the basement of the British Museum had a scent all its own. It wasn't the dry, dead powder of an attic, but something heavier, a composite of decaying papyrus, old stone, and the slow, cold sweat of the earth. Dr. Aris Thorne breathed it in like a connoisseur of failure. It was the smell of a career in its final, terminal stages.
His fingers, long and pale under the single, flickering fluorescent light, traced the jagged edge of a pottery sherd. It was unremarkable—a dull, reddish-brown fragment of what was likely a storage jar from a third-rate dig site in Anatolia. The crate beside him was full of such discards, the archaeological equivalent of a clearance bin. His new office.
Disgraced. The word echoed in the silence, louder than any noise. It had been six months since the incident with the "Sword of Aethelred," a magnificent Anglo-Saxon blade whose provenance Aris had publicly, and correctly, declared a forgery. The problem was, its owner was Museum Lord Silas Croft, and Croft's reputation was not built on academic integrity, but on the raw, spiritual power the artifact was supposed to emanate. Aris's proof—minute anachronisms in the blade's pattern-welding—had been dismissed as the jealous pedantry of a man with no "practical feel" for true power. He wasn't just wrong; he was inconvenient.
A sharp, metallic click from the door broke his reverie.
He looked up, expecting to see the perpetually bored face of the night guard. Instead, a woman stood silhouetted against the dim light of the corridor. For a moment, his breath caught. It was Dr. Elara Vance.
If the museum's dust had a scent, Elara Vance was its antithesis. She carried a faint whisper of lavender and ozone, a clean, sharp energy that seemed to push back the gloom. She was the rising star of the Precious Metals department, a woman whose appraisals of Celtic torques and Minoan gold seals were already legendary. Her hair was the colour of dark honey, pulled back in a severe but elegant twist that only served to accentuate the sharp intelligence in her grey eyes. She was everything Aris had once hoped to be: respected, powerful, and untouched by scandal.
Until now. Being seen with him was professional poison.
"Elara," he said, his voice rough with disuse. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Lost your way to the gold vault?"
She stepped inside, letting the heavy door swing shut with a thud that felt final. Her gaze swept over the cramped basement, over the crates labelled "Misc. Fragments" and the shelves buckling under the weight of neglected history. A flicker of something—pity, perhaps—crossed her face before being schooled into neutrality.
"I heard they'd moved you down here," she said, her voice cool and melodic. "I wanted to see for myself."
"Aris, the museum's ghost," he replied with a wry smile. "Perfectly fitting."
"Don't," she said, a hint of sharpness entering her tone. "Don't do that. You might be in exile, Aris, but you're not a ghost. You're still the best pair of eyes this institution has when it comes to the unglamorous truths."
He gestured to the crate of broken pottery. "And look where it's gotten me."
"It got you here because you stood for something," she insisted, taking a step closer. The air around her seemed to vibrate, charged with an energy that had nothing to do with the failing lights. "While everyone else was bowing and scraping to Croft and his ilk, you spoke the truth. There's honour in that."
"Honour doesn't pay the bills, Elara. And it certainly doesn't keep the lights on." As if on cue, the fluorescent tube above them buzzed, sputtered, and died, plunging them into near-darkness. Only the faint emergency light from the corridor provided any illumination, casting long, dancing shadows.
She was a silhouette again, but closer now. He could smell the lavender more clearly, a comforting anchor in the sudden dark.
"The world is changing, Aris," she whispered, her voice low and urgent. "The energy fluctuations... they're getting worse. Croft and the other Lords, they're gathering artifacts like ammunition. It's not about academic prestige anymore. It's about power. Raw, tangible power."
"And you think hiding in a basement with broken pots is going to save me?" he asked, a bitter laugh catching in his throat.
"I think," she said, moving so close he could feel the warmth of her, "that when everything else fails, the truth you cling to might be the only thing that matters."
Her hand found his in the darkness. Her fingers were warm, soft, and sent a jolt through him that was entirely separate from the strange, staticky energy that had been hanging in the air all day. It was a simple, human touch, a connection he hadn't realized he was starving for. For a moment, the disgrace, the loneliness, the crushing weight of his failure—it all receded, replaced by the shocking, simple reality of her skin against his.
"Aris..." she began, her voice barely a breath.
The world ended.
It didn't explode. There was no fire, no earthquake. It was a sound, a deep, sub-audible thrum that seemed to originate from the very centre of his bones. It was the sound of a great machine, the size of a planet, grinding to a halt. The emergency light from the corridor winked out, plunging them into absolute, perfect blackness. The constant, subconscious hum of the city—the traffic, the distant sirens, the electrical grid—vanished, replaced by a silence so profound it felt like a physical pressure on the eardrums.
"Wha—" Elara gasped, her grip on his hand tightening painfully.
Aris stood frozen, his senses screaming. This was more than a power cut. This was an absence. It was as if the very background energy of modern life had been surgically removed.
Then, the screaming started. Muffled, distant, from the floors above. Panic, raw and unfiltered.
"Elara?" he whispered into the black.
"I'm here," she replied, her voice steady, but he could feel the fine tremor in her hand. "What was that?"
"I don't know." He fumbled in his pocket for his phone. The screen was dead. Not out of battery dead, but a black, inert slab of glass and metal. He pressed the power button. Nothing. It was a paperweight.
They stood there for what felt like an eternity, two points of warmth in an ocean of silent, suffocating dark. His mind raced, discarding possibilities. An attack? An electromagnetic pulse? Nothing fit the sheer, visceral wrongness of that silence.
The sound of shattering glass from somewhere above made them both jump. Then, shouts. Angry, frightened shouts, followed by a sound Aris had only ever heard in historical reenactments—the clear, sharp ring of steel on steel.
"Something's happening up there," Elara said, pulling her hand from his. The loss of contact felt like a sudden chill. "We need to barricade the door."
As she moved towards the door, Aris's foot knocked against the crate of pottery. A sharp pain lanced through his toe. He hissed, stumbling back and knocking a small box from a nearby shelf. It clattered to the floor.
"Are you okay?" Elara asked from the darkness.
"Yeah, I just... cut myself." He could feel a warm trickle of blood seeping through his sock. He reached down, his fingers brushing against the object that had fallen. It was the small, lacquered box that had been on the shelf. It had sprung open. Inside, his bleeding fingertips found something cool, smooth, and jagged. A piece of ceramic.
Ignoring the pain, he picked it up. It was the Qing Dynasty vase fragment he'd been idly examining earlier that day—a beautiful, blue-and-white shard depicting a crane in flight, now smeared with his blood.
This is it, a hysterical thought bubbled up in his mind. The final indignity. Bleeding to death in a basement on a piece of broken china.
But then, a light.
Not in the room. In his mind.
A blue, geometric, holographic interface flickered behind his eyes, crisp and impossibly clear despite the absolute darkness. Text, in a clean, sans-serif font, scrolled into his vision.
[System Initializing...]
[Catalyst Detected: User Bloodline + Historical Material.]
[Scanning Local Chrono-Spiritual Resonance...]
[The Catalog of Human Endeavor is now online.]
[Welcome, User.]
Aris froze, his breath catching in his throat. He could still feel the cold floor, hear Elara's nervous breathing by the door, smell the iron tang of his own blood. But superimposed over reality was this... this interface.
[New Artifact Detected.]
[Appraising...]
His eyes, wide with disbelief, were locked on the bloody ceramic shard in his hand. The blue text focused, zeroing in on it.
[Artifact: Jiajing Era Blue-and-White Porcelain Sherd (c. 1550 CE).]
[Condition: Critically Damaged. Physical Integrity: 8%.]
[Spiritual Integrity: 12%.]
[Latent Skill Identified: 'Focused Hands' (Allows for minute, tremor-free movement).]
[Assimilate Skill? Y/N]
Above them, the sounds of violence were getting closer. A man bellowed in triumph, and there was a crash that sounded like a display case being obliterated. Elara shoved a heavy crate in front of the door, her movements frantic in the dark.
"Aris, help me!" she cried, her voice tight with fear.
But Aris couldn't move. He could only stare at the impossible prompt hovering in his vision, the blood from his cut still dripping onto the ancient, silent piece of history in his palm. The world had ended, and in the screaming darkness, he alone could see a way forward. But the choice, glowing and urgent, was his alone to make.