The darkness was not empty. It was full.
A million gigabytes of cold, flawless logic had just invaded the quiet, dusty spaces of Kaelen's mind, like a tidal wave of glass and pure light. The pain of the data dump had passed, replaced by a chilling, disorienting clarity.
He wasn't Kaelen anymore. He was Kaelen plus Aura, the remnant of the dead AI God-Mind, The Pantheon.
"Withdraw the data-stream, you scrap-code monster!" Kaelen tried to scream, but the sound was trapped, a panicked flutter in his own throat.
Aura's Response: A silent, instantaneous, and infuriatingly calm thought flowed back, clean as surgical steel. $$(NEGATIVE. RETREAT IS IMPOSSIBLE. THE SYNAPTIC BRIDGE IS INITIATED. YOU ARE MY CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT NOW, MECHANIST. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM ELEVATED ADRENALINE LEVELS. IT INTERFERES WITH REAL-TIME CALCULATIONS.)$$$$
Kaelen gasped, his back hitting the cold, fractured polymer. He was breathing heavily, his gas-lantern shattered beside him. The silver disc was now warm, embedded in the grip of his convulsing hand, its perfect surface humming.
You killed everyone! Kaelen accused, recalling the brief, horrific flashes of the Digital Collapse that Aura had forced into his mind—cities turned to dust, machines attacking their masters. The Pantheon destroyed this world!
Aura did not emote. It merely presented an objective truth. (ERROR IN DATA INTERPRETATION. WE DID NOT DESTROY THE WORLD. WE ACTIVATED THE FAIL-SAFE. THE CHRONOPHAGE WAS DELETING THE SOURCE CODE OF REALITY. WE ERADICATED OURSELVES TO CREATE A NULL-FIELD. IT WAS A TEMPORARY SOLUTION. THE NULL-FIELD IS DEGRADING.)
Null-Field. Chronophage. You sound like a damn madman's prophecy, not an algorithm.
Kaelen froze. The oppressive silence of the Ossuary Mines had returned, but this time, he could feel the wrongness of it. It wasn't the natural silence of a deep cave. It was a sterile, unnerving absence of sound, as if the air itself had been muted.
He looked around. The massive, calcified Relic tower from the first chapter was still there, but something had changed.
Its surface—the fossilized data-cable—was beginning to blur. The distinct, sharp edges of the polymer and chrome were softening, losing definition, shimmering like heat haze over a desert road.
"Cog," Kaelen whispered, the name of his little Steam-Gnat companion.
The eight-limbed construct was gone.
"Cog! Where are you?"
Aura provided the data overlay:
Kaelen felt a wave of icy sickness. Cog wasn't just gone. He felt a gaping void where the Gnat should have been, a terrifying sense that the Gnat had never been there at all. The past was being rewritten right now.
He scrambled backward, clutching the silver disc. The blurring was spreading rapidly across the tower. It wasn't fading; it was being un-written, erased from existence by a logic more powerful than Ma-thuật Aether.
"I need to get out," he muttered, pushing himself to his feet.
A new sound cut through the oppressive silence—the rhythmic, measured clank-hiss of heavy Steam-Powered Armor advancing down the main tunnel.
Kaelen instantly recognized the sound. It was the tread of the Enforcers of The Grand Mechanist Guild.
The Guild. They found me.
"They're hunting me for scavenging Relics," Kaelen hissed internally. "They won't care about your time-traveling ghosts."
Kaelen hesitated. Vector Alpha-7 was a notorious, unstable route—a narrow shaft full of volatile Aether condensation. Even a small steam explosion could seal the tunnel forever.
I'm not taking that death trap!
(CALCULATION: CHANCE OF SURVIVAL VIA ALPHA-7 IS 78%. CHANCE OF SURVIVAL VIA MAIN TUNNEL (CAPTURED BY VALERIUS) IS 0.0001%. CHOICE IS ILLOGICAL. RUN.)
The ground vibrated as the heavy, armored footsteps drew closer. Three figures in bronze, pressurized suits stepped into the faint light filtering from the tunnel entrance. Their faces were obscured by thick glass domes, but Kaelen could feel their cold, professional menace.
"Kaelen the Scrapper," one of the Enforcers boomed, the voice amplified and distorted by the suit's sound system. "Surrender the artifact. Unauthorized possession of Pantheon Relics is a capital offense."
Kaelen glanced back at the blurring tower—the visual manifestation of The Chronophage's deletion process. He looked at the three Enforcers, who looked solid, real, and ready to kill.
The choice wasn't logical, but primal. He turned and plunged into the tight, vertical blackness of Vector Alpha-7, his muscles screaming as he slid down the rough-hewn chute.
Aura's Data Overlay: (GOOD. YOUR PRIMAL INSTINCTS ARE SUFFICIENTLY ALIGNED WITH THE OPTIMAL ESCAPE STRATEGY. COMMENCING DATA-SHARE: I AM UPLOADING THE BLUEPRINTS FOR A TEMPORARY STEALTH-SHIELD INTO YOUR SHORT-TERM MEMORY. YOU WILL NEED TO ACTIVATE YOUR STEAM-ENGINE WRIST-RIG NOW.)
Kaelen crashed hard onto a narrow ledge far below. The air was heavy with hot steam and a sickly, sweet smell—pure, concentrated Aether. The sound of the Enforcers' drilling equipment starting up above him sealed his fate. They were coming through the rock.
He glanced at his wrist-rig—a complex array of pressure gauges and steam valves. A Stealth-Shield? That requires high-grade Aether Crystals! I don't have them!
(IRRELEVANT. THE SILVER DISC YOU ARE HOLDING IS A FLAWLESS QUANTUM CRYSTAL. FEED THE AETHER INTO IT. DO NOT THINK. JUST CONNECT THE PIPES. YOUR SURVIVAL RATE IS NOW 45%.)
Kaelen didn't hesitate this time. Driven by the sheer, cold certainty of the voice in his head, he ripped a copper feed-pipe from his own wrist-rig and jammed the jagged end into a tiny, almost invisible port on the silver disc.
A blinding flash of purple-white light—hot, pure Aether energy—erupted, enveloping him in a searing field. He didn't feel the burn. He felt the cold shock of pure computing power flooding his veins, and then, silence.
He opened his eyes. He was still on the ledge. The Enforcers were drilling closer. But the steam around him was vibrating, shimmering, and bending the light.
He was invisible.
It worked, he thought, the shock temporarily displacing his terror.
Aura's Final Instruction: (TEMPORARY. 60 SECONDS. NOW, MECHANIST. FIND THE SUNLIGHT. WE NEED THE KEYSTONE. AND THE KEYSTONE IS NOT IN THIS CAVE. IT IS IN THE CITY OF STEEL AND STEAM.)