Loop Nexus, Lakefront metropolis
Terra, Gaea Solar system
Neutral Free Zone
January 14th 2019
One thing Emily hated most was lying—especially to Leon. She held her breath, waiting for him to leave the room. When she could no longer sense his presence, Emily pulled out her Zodiak device. She switched it on and accessed the Starlight network. Emily had already sent Ginny images of the strange symbols on the tunnel wall, hoping she could decipher them. But now, she needed Ginny's help with something else. Memories she had pried from the Erlking's mind resurfaced. Searching through the corrupted mind of the Erlking hadn't taken much effort. Before, Emily had encountered minds damaged by Infernal energy, so delving into his psyche was familiar territory.
One memory had caught her attention—it stood out because she recognized it. It was a standard code used by the Starlight Order for geographical coordinates, written in Celestial runes. What the hell was a Starlight code doing in the mind of a Beastman? Especially one from Terra? Emily knew she should have told Leon about it. They were supposed to be in this together. But then again, there were things neither of them told each other. Ever since they had left Agartha and gone into exile in the Neutral Free Zone, Leon had become more agitated than usual. He tried to mask it, but Emily knew him—maybe better than she knew herself. They had pursued every clue they could find regarding the Fallen Star's whereabouts, yet they always came up short. Leon's obsession with tracking down members of the Fallen Star baffled Emily. She had asked herself the same question for the past eight years: Was it revenge? Was that what drove him to such extremes?
Emily wasn't sure about the coordinates she had extracted from the Erlking's mind, which was why she hadn't told Leon yet. If they were clues, she needed to be certain before involving him. She entered the codes into the location algorithm, using the holographic interface that allowed her to access the Zodiak Network. Emilly was impressed with the level of technology that the Hidden World of Terra possessed. It was not comparable to the Federation, but it was more advanced than the technology on the Mundane side. As she searched for her target, she came up empty. Something wasn't right.
"Ziron, contact Ginny," Emily commanded the tablet.
"Affirmative," the mechanical voice replied, its tone booming. A flash of light illuminated the room as a hologram of Ginny materialized. She was clad in a white coat, her goggles pushed up onto her forehead. Burn stains marred her face, and her blond hair was disheveled—likely the result of whatever experiment had consumed her attention. Despite her youthful appearance, which made her look like a bratty sixteen-year-old, Emily knew better than to underestimate her.
"Oh gods, it's you, Emily," Ginny said flatly, her tone lacking any trace of enthusiasm. Emily felt a twinge of disappointment at the girl's reaction. Ginny had probably assumed Leon was the one reaching out. Emily couldn't blame her—half their class at the Academy had been infatuated with Leon, and the other half had likely slept with him. Ginny had been no exception to his charms. Clearing her throat, Emily straightened her posture, making it clear she meant business.
"There's something I need you to check out," she said, her voice cold and detached. "I'm sending it to you now." Ginny shuddered slightly at Emily's icy tone as the data transferred from Emily's Zodiak to hers.
"Do you see it?" Emily asked.
"Yeah, some kind of code. A geographical code," Ginny replied impatiently. Her tone hinted that Emily had interrupted something important. "You know you could just use your precious Starlight Network to track this down, right?"
"I already tried that," Emily said curtly. "It looks similar to the coordinates we normally use, but the Network doesn't recognize it." Ginny squinted at the holographic projection of the code, her lips twisting in thought.
"Hmm, that's because these coordinates aren't in Starlight's database," she said matter-of-factly. Then, narrowing her eyes, she added, "Does this have anything to do with that unapproved mission you and Leon are on—or those strange symbols you sent me?" Emily's jaw tightened. She stared at the girl, a faint twitch at the corner of her lips betraying her growing annoyance.
"Yes, it's really important to Leon that we know where the coordinates lead," Emily said, her expression cool as she lied. She had no qualms about using Leon's name to manipulate Ginny into doing what she wanted.
"Hmm. Okay, but make sure you tell him I helped with his mission, alright?" Ginny replied. Emily gave a slight nod. Satisfied, Ginny smiled and turned her attention to the task. It took her about fifteen to twenty minutes before she finally spoke again.
"Wow. Whoever created this code was good," Ginny said, sounding impressed.
"But you cracked it?" Emily asked tentatively. Ginny mockingly raised her eyebrows.
"Duh. Of course I did," she said smugly. "It didn't take long to figure out the type of code it was. It's similar to the ones Starlight uses, but there's a slight difference. That's why the system couldn't break it. Whoever made this went to a lot of trouble to hide the location. I tracked it to somewhere in Chicago—not far from where you are. It looks like some kind of facility. I suppose it could be a Starlight outpost, but there's no record of it in the Starlight database. And that's weird. Federation law states that all Starlight Order bases in Neutral Free Zones must be registered. Where exactly did you get this?"
"I can't say right now," Emily replied, her voice guarded. She still couldn't believe that Ginny had managed to hack into the Starlight database system—a network located millions of light-years away.
"Well, whatever it is, it sounds dangerous," Ginny said, her tone shifting to one of caution. "I've sent you the coordinates. Tell Leon to be careful."
"Sure," Emily replied as she glanced at the coordinates. Ginny was right—the location was on this planet. Emily couldn't fathom how the Erlking had obtained this information or why Leon's source had pointed them toward it. "Thanks for your help."
"Sure, anything for Leon," Ginny said, and with that, she was gone. Emily sighed, turning her attention back to the coordinates. The location was at Promontory Point in Burnham Park. Whatever this was, she needed to check it out herself before involving Leon. She headed back upstairs to change into fresh gear. Fortunately, she had brought two sets of combat attire with her. She slipped into the clean one, leaving the sewer-stained outfit behind. Next, she retrieved the weapons box she had brought along on the mission.
Pressing the activation rune, the box opened with a faint hiss. Inside, an array of daggers of various sizes were meticulously arranged. Each blade was forged from adamant metal, which made them highly conductive to mana. Emily carefully selected as many weapons from the box as it could hold, stashing a few extras in the hidden compartments of her combat boots.
Finally, she took out a standard Seriphium blade—a short sword with double edges, an onyx guard, and a matching hilt. Its silver blade gleamed faintly, etched with runes that served as conduits for magical energy. The craftsmanship was flawless, and the weapon radiated power. Once Emily felt sufficiently armed, she activated her Exodus. In an instant, the magitech transported her directly to the location.
****
Atop the windswept meadow of Promontory Point stood a lone masonry field house, its jagged silhouette framed starkly against a sky strewn with dying stars. The night was unnervingly still, broken only by the distant lapping of the lake—an eerie rhythm that echoed faintly across the landscape. Emily could smell the brine and mineral-rich water from where she stood, cloaked within the shimmering folds of the Grey.
The Grey. A spectral veil unique to Terra. It separated the mundane from the mystic, an interstitial field that rendered her nearly invisible to the untrained eye. Even now, after years of exposure to different planetary atmospheres, Emily hadn't grown used to it. The Grey felt too alive—an ancient, coiled thing watching in silence. Terra was the only planet in the Neutral Free Zone that produced this peculiar field, and it was one of the many reasons she resented being here.
Nestled deep within the Grey's folds was the outpost—half-buried in history, its records erased from official logs. And yet it stood, stubborn against time. The moment Emily stepped through its threshold, an oppressive unease slithered into her chest. It wasn't merely the overwhelming scent of death and the acrid tang of decay; it was the absence of any defensive wards. Most Starlight installations—especially secret ones—were surrounded by protective barriers, etheric wards, or temporal cloaks. This facility had none. It was exposed. Vulnerable.
Abandoned.
Emily advanced toward the heavy front doors, careful to avoid stepping in the congealed streaks of gore that smeared the ground like grotesque brushstrokes. The lights inside flickered dimly, casting skeletal shadows along the blood-slicked floor. Her eyes adjusted rapidly, her breath steady, body alert. She slid two adamant daggers from her belt—blades forged to cut through both flesh and essence—and expanded her senses outward, sweeping the building in concentric waves of intent.
No signs of life.
Only the stench of death.
The air was thick—too thick. Saturated with pain. The structure itself seemed to remember. Cries of anguish, panic, and betrayal clung to the walls like invisible stains. Emily moved quietly down the corridor, lit by the faint pulsing glow of backup power further inside. Whatever had hit this place, it had hit hard—and fast.
As she passed the twisted bodies, she caught sight of something even more disturbing: shadows, seared into the walls. Not ordinary shadows—but soul imprints. Residues of the dead cling to the physical realm in their final moments. Each one whispered a different death rattle. She paused, involuntarily shivering as a wave of echoing despair coursed through her. Her hand rose to her chest and brushed against the charm around her neck—a carved obsidian pendant etched with protective runes. For a fleeting moment, she considered drawing it out and praying.
But she didn't. Prayer was a relic of a life she no longer believed in.
She hardened her gaze and continued forward.
This was a science facility—she could tell now by the sterile hallways, the pattern of labs, the kinds of equipment left abandoned in the bloodied wreckage. Most of the bodies wore white lab coats, though a few bore the markings of internal security. On a fractured wall near the entrance lobby, she spotted it: the etched sigil of the House of Aquarius. A spiraling water serpent enclosed in circuitry.
Of course.
The House of Aquarius controlled the Federation's technological backbone. Their genius had created half the biotech advancements the other Houses relied on. If this was their facility, it meant it belonged to the Starlight Order. That confirmed her suspicion—but deepened the mystery. Why the hell would the Order establish a facility here, on Terra? According to Ginny, and the Federation's own Constitution—specifically clause 10.2—Starlight Order bases in the Neutral Free Zone were forbidden from being planet-side. They were supposed to operate off-world, in orbiting labs or phased stations. This outpost was not only illegal. It was buried.
Buried for a reason.
She continued deeper into the ruined halls until she reached a chamber lined with containment pods. Most of them were shattered, their reinforced glass panels blown open from within. Cracks spiderwebbed across the flooring, and scorch marks stained the walls, evidence of a violent struggle—or an escape. Dozens of corpses littered the area, but one in particular drew her attention. The man wore a tactical exo-suit—definitely not Starlight standard issue. Federation, perhaps, but a division she didn't recognize.
Her mind raced. Someone else had been here. Maybe still was.
Emily scanned the far wall and spotted it: a Zodiak monitor, half-buried beneath debris but still intact. A faint green glow pulsed beneath the cracked screen. Jackpot.
She retrieved her tablet from the satchel at her waist and approached the monitor with calculated speed. Her fingers danced across the screen as she interfaced her device with the Zodiak's outdated but still responsive systems. She initiated a data link, running an override protocol designed specifically for Starlight encryption.
If she could access the logs—security feeds, research notes, command logs—maybe she'd understand what this facility was really for… and what had turned it into a slaughterhouse.
"Connect me to the main network, Ziron," Emily commanded, her voice sharp with urgency.
In response, her tablet flickered to life. An explosion of shifting sigils and cryptic symbols erupted from the screen—arcane data spiraling like a living thing, flickering in and out of visibility as if pulled from both the digital and metaphysical planes. The web of information was impossibly fast, moving in complex loops and spirals, evolving faster than her eyes could track. It wasn't just code—it was a living system, constantly rewriting itself.
"Password authentication required," came Ziron's voice—monotone, synthetic, and utterly devoid of empathy.
Emily winced, biting down a curse. This wasn't good. Not just because she didn't have the password, but because she knew what Starlight systems did to unauthorized users. One failed attempt and she could trigger a failsafe—a system wipe at best, an arcane self-destruct at worst.
She didn't have time to play guesswork with something this volatile.
"Contact Ginny. Now," she ordered.
The connection was instant. A soft chime sounded, and within seconds, a translucent hologram shimmered into view above the tablet's surface. Ginny's image flickered in real-time—perched in her cluttered garage-lab, surrounded by glowing tools, arcano-tech schematics, and the perpetual hum of magi-mechanical equipment. A pair of oversized goggles rested atop her messy pink hair like a crown, and in one hand she held a humming hacksaw still stained with glowing residue.
The expression on her face could curdle water.
"You again?" Ginny groaned, lips twisted in exaggerated annoyance. "What is this, our third holo-call in two days? You miss me or something?"
Emily tensed. The jab landed harder than she expected.
"You know I wouldn't bother you unless it was serious. I'm in a compromised Starlight facility on Terra—illegal, unbarriered, wiped clean. I need you to crack their mainframe. I sent you a link to the Zodiak relay."
Ginny arched an eyebrow and leaned in, her fingers already pulling the data. "Right, because you just happen to stumble across black-ops facilities in your spare time. You sure this isn't another 'save Leon' mission?"
Emily didn't answer. Her jaw tightened. Ginny rolled her eyes but said nothing more. She placed the hacksaw down and grabbed her console tablet, its interface flickering with a soft amber glow as she typed. Then her tone changed.
"Whoa."
That single syllable hit different—low, alert, stripped of sarcasm.
"What is it?" Emily asked, her voice tightening.
"I'm in the system," Ginny said slowly, her brow furrowed, eyes scanning streams of data as they flashed across her screen. "But this isn't standard Starlight encryption. Hell, it's not any kind of encryption I've ever seen. It's a hybrid system—part digital, part arcane. Someone layered this with recursive runic locks backed by quantum binding chains. It's stitched with counterseals that bite back if you poke them wrong. Whatever they were hiding here, it's locked under fortress-grade security. No joke, this stuff is lethal."
Emily's heart sank. "Can you crack it?"
Ginny didn't answer right away. She pushed her goggles down and began to type faster.
"Give me time," she muttered. "This isn't something I can brute force. I'll need to design a custom unraveling script—slow, precise, no missteps. A day minimum. Two if the failsafe's are as deep as they look. Worst case... maybe a week. But if I screw up even once, the entire system collapses—and probably takes half the building with it."
"Perfect," Emily muttered bitterly. "So no pressure."
"Exactly." Ginny offered a dry grin, her fingers already a blur. "But don't worry, I'm already downloading the data to my remote rig. Full access granted, just the way I like it."
Emily nodded. "Good. I'll stand by and secure the perimeter. Do whatever you need. Just… don't let it blow up in your face."
Ginny gave a lopsided smirk, her confidence slipping back into place. "Relax, blade-girl. You do the stabbing, I do the hacking. And this? This is going to be fun."
The hologram flickered once, then stabilized, the stream of data pulsing between their tablets like an arterial connection—bridging two minds in a web of secrets neither of them fully understood.
Without waiting for a response, Ginny's image flickered once—then dissolved into motes of light, leaving behind only silence and a lingering shimmer in the air. Emily exhaled slowly, staring at the now-vacant space where the hologram had hovered. The buzz of connection was gone, replaced by the heavy hum of uncertainty. She slid the tablet back into the inner pocket of her coat and turned, her gaze sweeping the dim chamber once more.
Something glinted.
Near one of the shattered containment pods, nestled in a puddle of black fluid, lay a smooth, spherical object. Emily stepped closer, crouched, and reached for it—then flinched as a jolt of searing pain tore through her palm the moment her skin made contact. She hissed and dropped it instinctively, the orb bouncing once and rolling lazily to a stop. A faint glow pulsed from within its surface—an eerie violet light with fractal patterns that shifted like trapped starlight.
And just like that, the energy vanished.
Curiosity prickled at the back of her mind. Gritting her teeth, she reached out again—this time, her fingers met a chilling, almost frostbitten surface. The temperature shift was staggering. The orb no longer burned—it was frozen, or something close to it. She narrowed her eyes. Not a weapon. Not tech. It felt... mineral. A concentrated essence? A dormant relic? Whatever it was, it didn't belong here. She tucked it carefully into a lined pouch on her weapons belt and rose, one hand lingering near her dagger.
The rest of the facility was no more illuminating. Every lab she entered bore the same signs—emptied pods, trashed equipment, desiccated bodies sprawled in twisted heaps. If the scientists had discovered something worth protecting, it was long gone now. Or worse—loose.
Her boots echoed faintly as she descended to the lower level, senses alert, drawn by a lingering pull in the air. The stairs were narrow, unlit, the deeper levels shrouded in murk.
That was when she felt it.
Movement.
Her body responded before her mind had time to catch up—dagger drawn in a flash of silver as she spun around. A figure lunged from the shadows, jaws unhinged, eyes void-black.
The vertical slash came swift and clean.
The creature's neck split open in a jet of thick, corrupted blood, and its head tumbled to the ground with a wet thud. Its body twitched once, then collapsed. But the kill was not the end.
It was the beginning.
A low hiss rippled through the darkness behind her—followed by dozens more.
Figures spilled from both ends of the stairwell, pale and mangled, twisted by some dark necromantic force. Their lab coats were tattered, skin gray and blotched with veinous curse-marks. These were no longer people—they were revenants, puppets animated by dark energy clinging to rotten flesh.
Emily's eyes narrowed. Her grip tightened around her blades.
Two more daggers sang into her hands as she moved.
Mana surged through her veins, illuminating the internal lattice of her circuits. Her reflexes sharpened, perception heightening as the world slowed. The first revenant lunged—Emily sidestepped, spun, and drove her dagger through its temple. The second she decapitated mid-stride with a clean upward slash. Blood sprayed the walls, thick and black as ink.
She became motion incarnate—darting, slicing, striking.
Fluid and lethal, her movements carved paths of destruction through the undead swarm. Limbs flew. Heads rolled. One revenant shrieked and hurled itself from the stair railing, but Emily cut it down mid-air in a single circular slash that split it from collarbone to hip.
Another grabbed at her leg—too slow.
She pivoted, severed the arm cleanly, then crushed the skull beneath her boot with a crack that echoed like a drumbeat of death.
The staircase became a massacre. A ballet of precision and fury. Each motion was fueled not by rage, but purpose. Economy of movement. Total control. Emily was surgical—cold, methodical, untouchable.
In less than a minute, it was over.
The final revenant gurgled as its head dropped, the necromantic light in its eyes flickering out.
The stairwell was now littered with the headless dead, black blood pooling at her feet like tar. Emily's daggers—all but ruined—dripped with cursed filth, their edges dulled and etched by the unholy ichor. The magic within them was breaking down, corroded by the same dark force animating the corpses.
She wiped her brow with the back of her glove, breath steady but watchful.
Then she felt it.
Below.
A pulse.
Her Internal senses snapped toward the base of the stairwell where a strange violet glow now emanated—less a light, more a haze, like mist woven from a star's dying breath. She reached with her senses—nothing. No mana signature. No heat. No movement. Just silence and cold.
Too silent.
She hesitated. Whatever lay beyond that glow wasn't just hidden—it was outside the natural flow.
Emily considered retreating. This was enough to justify calling Leon. Whatever secrets this place held, they were bound in death and secrecy. She turned slightly, preparing to exit through the left corridor—
And then the air shifted.
The Odyllic layer rippled.