The dream still clung to him like damp ash.

  Kael sat up with a sharp inhale, the taste of blood and dust still on his tongue. The same memory. The same moment. Eighteen years and it still hunted him down in his sleep like a beast that never got full.

  Rain tapped soft and steady on the canopy above—real enough to quiet the ghost in his lungs. He looked out across the marsh clearing, his makeshift tarp shelter rustling against the wind. The sky overhead shimmered through the dome’s projection: slate gray, streaked with flickers of artificial lightning.

  “A storm?” Kael muttered. “Who controls the weather routines anyway?”

  He pulled himself up and stepped outside, boots sinking slightly into the soft, mossy ground. The Verdant Wildbelt was alive with scent—wet bark, fungal bloom, and something metallic beneath it all. Aether always had a scent when it surged. He was starting to notice the patterns.

  He knelt beside his kit and strapped on his left armored sleeve, clicking the weave-lock into place. It hissed, synced to his biosignature, and flared a faint blue across the etched surface.

  “Alright, Glowbug. Where are you leading me today?”

  With a flick of his wrist, a projected map bloomed into view above his palm. The red pulse blinked precisely where he stood—coordinates flashing with low resonance.

  He glanced around. “This the place? I mean I did camp here because it was…”

  No movement. Just rain. Just leaves whispering secrets.

  Kael reached into his coat and pulled out the Aether Sensitivity Reader—a slim, rune-lined device the size of a compass. He tapped it once. It clicked softly, then began to beep.

  Slow. Measured.

  He moved a few paces to the left. The beep quickened. Right again—it slowed.

  “Hot and cold, huh?” he muttered. “Let’s dance.”

  Pushing through waist-high leaves, he followed the increasing tempo into the thicker underbrush. Soon the trees parted, revealing a clearing choked with vines and thick mud—but at its center stood the jagged outline of an ancient facility entrance.

  The ruin was built into the side of a hill, its once-grand entrance now mostly sunken beneath overgrowth and time. Kael could just make out the circular threshold, etched with weatherworn glyphs and surrounded by rust-streaked structural ribs. Fused metal bones and half-buried conduit spires poked out of the earth like relics of a long-dead beast.

  The ruin loomed before him—half-swallowed by moss and lichen, yet unmistakably artificial. Ivy had grown through shattered nanotube panels, their inner circuitry still faintly glowing. Aether crystals—dim, fractured—jutted like teeth from split consoles. Rain trickled down stonework now blackened and scarred, flowing into shallow channels designed to carry runoff from long-dead cooling systems.

  Kael grinned. “Jackpot.”

  He stepped carefully through the doorway into a wide corridor, descending into the hill's heart. The floor beneath his boots turned slick and uneven—half metal, half grown-over stone. Water dripped steadily from above, and somewhere deeper, a low hum vibrated faintly through the walls.

  Glass chambers lined the hall—cracked containment pods, once used for biomechanical experiments. Cradles of rusted exo-limbs, skeletal machinery, and gutted relay banks loomed in the dim light. Some of the glyph-tags were still readable, flickering weakly with residual charge.

  His boots crunched over ancient data slates, shattered interface modules, and pools of rain mixed with oil. He crouched beside a half-fused crystal array and reached for his extraction tool—

  CLANG.

  He froze.

  A low growl, mechanical and guttural, echoed through the chamber.

  From the dark, red optics lit up.

  A canine-shaped automated sentry, all blade-legs and cracked armor plating, unfurled from its dormant coil. Its Aether-core had sparked back to life—drawn by Kael’s presence.

  “Oh. You’re still active,” Kael whispered. “Of course you are.”

  The creature hissed as small charge coils glowed along its sides. Kael backed up slowly.

  A faint bzzt crackled in his earpiece.

  “Kael, wh–re yo—? We were suppos—meet—up with—”

  He sighed. “Can’t hear you,” he muttered, eyes still on the sentry. “Also, in the middle of not dying. Talk soon. Bye.”

  He tapped the earpiece off.

  "Now who's the good doggy"

  The dog leapt.

  Kael rolled—right beneath its snapping jaws—and came up in a low crouch, sliding across the slick stone. Sparks bloomed as the sentry’s claw grazed the edge of his armored sleeve—a relic-forged gauntlet of reactive alloys and embedded kinetic mesh. Designed to absorb concussive force and reroute impact via micro-shard channels.

  "Okay, puppy," he muttered. "You want an introduction? Fine."

  The sentry pivoted mid-air, servo limbs adjusting its posture with bone-slick precision.

  Kael slapped a glyph on the underside of his bracer.

  With a sharp boom, a wave of compressed air slammed outward. The sentry was thrown mid-charge, crashing into a console.

  Kael ducked sideways behind a pillar.

  “Of course you’re the fast kind,” he muttered, as the sentry shook itself back onto its limbs.

  He drew his sidearm.

  The first shot missed. The second slammed into the sentry’s underbelly, striking a glowing coil. The bot stumbled—not damaged, but staggered.

  Kael vaulted a nearby beam, boots kicking up water as he slid beneath debris.

  Another flick of his bracer.

  The line snapped out and latched onto one of the sentry’s back limbs. Kael yanked with his body weight. The machine toppled.

  It scrambled, legs skittering.

  "Override attempted. Access—denied."

  “Wasn’t asking for access,” Kael said, striding forward.

  As the sentry struggled to right itself, one of its chest plates slid partially open—damaged by the kinetic blast. Beneath the scorched metal, a pulsing blue core blinked in stuttered rhythm, exposed like a beating heart through fractured ribs.

  Kael didn’t hesitate. He pulled a crystal spike from his belt and jammed it straight into the core’s emitter slot.

  The sentry spasmed, lights flickering. Then silence.

  Kael stood over it, panting slightly.

  Then—grinned.

  “That’ll teach you to guard an empty ruin. You see, my gear is built specifically for guys like you.”

  The scent of scorched metal still lingered in the air.

  Kael stepped over the remains of the downed sentry, wiping soot from the edge of his sleeve. He knelt briefly, pried open a maintenance panel, and yanked a still-glowing stabilizer coil from its core—worth something if it wasn’t fried. The scorched scent clung to him as he adjusted the strap of his gear pack—still unaware that soon, it would carry more than just salvaged junk.

  “This place better be worth the bruises,” he muttered, scanning the corridor beyond.

  The hall sloped downward into a narrower tunnel—one lined with long-dead lights and rusted reliefs carved into the walls. The glyphwork here was older, angular. He tapped a spot with his fingers, brushing away moss and grime. The lines pulsed faintly beneath his touch—old, but not entirely dead.

  He grunted. "Always with the pretty symbols," he muttered. "Probably a lock, or worse."

  Further in, a set of embedded floor tiles sparked briefly when his boot passed over them. He froze, waited. Nothing.

  Kael crouched. Traced the line of the tile with his glove. Subtle edges. Pressurized plate.

  He shifted his weight, stepping around it.

  “Yeah,” he muttered, “definitely raider-grade trapwork. Real subtle.”

  He stepped through the next archway. A chamber opened up—circular, sunken slightly into the earth, framed in dull metal and collapsed ceiling plating. A pedestal stood at the center, wrapped in a field of hard light. On it, suspended in the air,

  was a weapon.

  "Woaaaahhhh!, Huh? Wait"

  A sword. Not a gun. Not a shard launcher or adaptive baton. A blade—sleek, perfectly balanced, sharp enough to hum. And utterly....... unpowered.

  Etched across the base of the pedestal, just legible beneath dust and flickering glyphs, were the words:

  “Forged during the Last Conduction before the Calamity, The Arcion Sword was bound to a fragment of the Lattice's original pulse. It is silent when sheathed, but sings when drawn—resonating only with a mind aligned to Aether pattern 7.2.”

  Kael squinted.

  “Aligned to pattern what?”

  He looked at the blade again. Still floating. Still perfectly, stupidly pristine.

  “Right,” he said. “So… a sword. In the age of orbital cannons and shardpistols.”

  He reached forward.

  The field pulsed. Light licked his fingers. A sharp sting snapped across his palm like a live wire, and he recoiled instinctively.

  “Damn Weavers,” he hissed, shaking out his hand. “Why do you people always build traps like it’s a rite of passage?”

  The light field sputtered. Then it died with a flicker of resignation.

  The sword dropped into his hand with a soft metallic chime.

  No surge of power. No energy spike. No hum. Just cold, inert alloy.

  Kael held it up.

  He stared at it. Long. Then squinted. "Luke, I am your—" He stopped himself. "Nope. Still not cool enough."

  He sighed and added, "You're no lightsaber, that's for sure,"

  He flipped it over. The core ridge was sealed shut. No shard slot. No wiring. No access ports.

  He exhaled through his nose. “Relic weapon, my ass. I can’t even pawn you.”

  With a dramatic sigh, he slung the blade over his shoulder.

  “Fine. You're junk. But you're my junk now.”

  He turned, walking out of the chamber. Behind him, for a fraction of a second, Arcion’s hilt flickered with blue light.

  But Kael didn’t see it.

  Not yet.