In his sleep, Kai dreamed.
The dream was soundless.
Only thick, white, motionless fog and in the middle of it, a figure stood.
Black wings stretched wide on both sides, each feather looking as if it were carved from the darkest stone. Above its head, a crown of light glowed, radiating upward like frozen lightning in the air. Its hands gripped a long sword, the tip vanishing into the fog below.
Kai did not move. His feet felt planted into ground.
The figure didn't turn. Didn't move. It just stood there.
The fog slowly crept in, covering the base of the wings, then its back, then gradually swallowing the entire figure from the bottom up until all that remained was its crown of light. Glowing alone in the middle of the endless white.
The crown of light glowed alone amidst the boundless white, and then went out.
And in the darkness that followed, something opened its eyes.
Kai woke up, breathing faster than usual.
He stared at the workshop ceiling for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness of the room. Diogenes' lamp was still glowing dimly. At the workbench, Diogenes was already seated, his hands still busy.
"Nightmare?" Diogenes asked without turning around.
"I don't know," Kai answered honestly.
Diogenes set down his work and stood up, opening another cabinet in the corner of the room. He took out two bottles of drink and two pieces of hard bread with slightly crusty edges, then threw one set at Kai.
Kai caught it. The bread felt heavy and dense in his hands.
"How could you fall asleep while studying? It's already night," Diogenes said, already back in his chair with his own rations.
Kai ignored Diogenes' words and took a bite of his bread. The texture was like chewing on lightly salted cardboard. He opened his bottle and took a drink.
"You know what happens if you don't eat?" Diogenes said suddenly. "The rate of your stability drop doubles. Sometimes triples, depending on your body's condition."
Kai stopped chewing for a moment. "Why?"
"Because your body isn't just maintained by crystals. Data from the crystals locks your data structure, but biological processes still need energy to run. If your biological processes weaken, your data structure becomes unstable along with them. The crystals have to work harder to hold together what your body should be able to hold on its own." Diogenes took a bite of his bread calmly. "In short, eating isn't an option here. It's an obligation just as important as crystals."
Kai stared at the bottle in his hand, then continued drinking without comment.
They then continued eating in silence.
Later into the night, Kai picked up his tablet from the cot.
The screen lit up. The last page he opened was still there, the Sector 15 entry with its single short paragraph.
Still in Aeterna Public Knowledge, he scrolled down until he found an option that looked interesting.
Organizations of Aeterna
He then tapped it.
Note: This list only includes organizations officially recognized or documented in the public archives. Organizations operating outside official jurisdiction may not be listed or only partially listed.
The Covenant Immutable of Law
The oldest active organization in Aeterna. Founded by major families: House Graham, House Vael, and Clan Castien, three families that have held control over transmissions from Sector 0 since the inception of the sector system. After the foundation was established, other major families joined one by one, each bringing their own resources, networks, and agendas.
The Covenant is the sole interpreter of everything that comes from the World Tree—every transmission, every protocol, every change in law must pass through them before it can be disseminated to the lower layers. Without The Covenant's approval, no policy is legitimate, no high-quality Crystals can be legally traded, and there is no access to the main inter-sector transportation routes.
Its power encompasses the entire Upper Districts and Industrial Hubs.
Its members are called Immutables. Their positions cannot be revoked. Their decisions cannot be contested by any other institution.
Overseer Syndicate
The official executive body under The Covenant. If The Covenant makes the decisions, the Overseer Syndicate ensures those decisions are obeyed.
They oversee movement throughout the Upper Districts and Industrial Hubs—routine patrols, data identity checks, crackdowns on illegal Crystal trading, and the handling of data entities deemed unstable. Its members are called Overseers, recruited from middle-class citizens with a track record of loyalty to The Covenant.
The Meridian Traders
A coalition of merchants and data brokers that controls most of the flow of information and Crystals in Sector 3. Technically independent from The Covenant, but in practice, both need each other.The Covenant needs their distribution network, and the Traders needs legal protection from The Covenant to operate legally.
Starting to get bored, Kai quickly scrolled down. He also skimmed through other organizations like The Archivist, which recorded all the history and events occurring in Aeterna, Aeterna Bank, the Census Bureau, etc.
He kept scrolling until he found an interesting text.
Deep Web & Territories Outside Official Jurisdiction
Note: Information regarding the following organizations is sourced from third-party reports and cannot be fully verified by the archive team.
Shattered Image Cult
The largest cult currently active in the Deep Web. Its origins are unclear, some reports state they existed before the sector system was formed in its current state, while others claim they emerged no more than two generations ago.
What is known, they are led by someone calling themselves Grim. There are no visual records. There are no physical descriptions. Some sources say Grim is male, some say female, some say neither. Their true identity has never been confirmed.
The Shattered Image doctrine is difficult to summarize because it seems to change depending on who explains it. But the core belief is that identity is an illusion, that names are prisons, and that the only true freedom is to become something that cannot be categorized by any system.
The Observers
Unlike The Archivist, The Observers are not an academic group.
They are an organization that operates across sectors from the Deep Web. Built upon a single belief, Aeterna will end, and nothing can prevent it.
They do not desire destruction, instead, they document everything meticulously, believing that when the end comes, their records will be the only things that survive. Whoever controls the records controls what is remembered. And what is remembered is what will eventually shape the next world.
Their recruitment methods are unknown. Its members do not identify themselves openly.
The Hollow Crown
A cult that believes the High Archons have long been dead and Sector 0 is already empty. They do not want a revolution, because to them, this frees humanity from the obligation to obey anyone. Dangerous precisely because their ideas make sense.
The Recompiler
A bunch of lunatics who believe that death is not the end, but a process failure. They collect data fragments from "erased" people and attempt to reassemble their consciousness. They have never succeeded. But they keep trying.
Children of the Root
A cult that worships the World Tree not as a holy entity, but as a biological mother. They believe that all data in Aeterna are cells of the World Tree's body, and humans are cells that have forgotten where they came from. Their goal is not revolution, they want to return, to voluntarily meld back into Sector 0. Their methods have never worked, but the victims of their experiments are always found in the same condition: their body's data is perfectly pure, but their consciousness is completely empty.
Wow, for some reason these cults are way cooler than the official organizations, Kai scoffed inwardly.
After reading about a few more cults, Kai reached the end of the page.
Wormhole Plague
Not an organization. No leadership structure, no doctrine, no recruitment.
Wormhole Plague is the designation for virus colonies in Sector 15 that display coordinated behavior, not like individual viruses moving randomly, but like a system working toward a goal that cannot be identified from the outside. Whether that coordination comes from a central entity or some kind of collective intelligence, no one knows.
What makes them different from regular viruses, they don't just infect and destroy. They alter. Entities exposed in small doses don't immediately shatter, they transform into something else, in ways that available research has yet to explain.
No expedition to Sector 15 has returned with enough data to conclude anything.
…
That's a hell of a lot of information, Kai thought.
Kai then placed the tablet beside the cot and stared at the ceiling for a moment. In the corner of the room, Diogenes' breathing was steady and deep. The old man had fallen asleep in his work chair, his head bowed slightly, the lamp still glowing dimly beside him.
Kai rose slowly, trying not to make a sound on the rusty springs of the cot. He grabbed his robe, slipped his feet into his boots, and pushed the workshop door open quietly.
The night air of Sector 13 greeted him with a bone-chilling cold.
Kai stood in front of the door, inhaling the cold air, and looked ahead.
The piles of iron formed irregular, dark silhouettes. In the distance, the Great Wall could be seen poking out slightly between the mounds of trash.
He stood there for quite a while.
The wind blew gently, carrying the smell of rust and metal.
What am I going to do from now on? The question suddenly popped into his head. There's no way I'm going to keep being a scavenger and rot in Sector 13 with Diogenes.
"Heh, what a great start to life," Kai said sarcastically, smirking.
Finally, he turned back inside and closed the door behind him.