Two weeks passed.
Shen Ye learned to live with the bond. It was strange at first—feeling another person's emotions at the edge of his awareness, sensing her location even when she was out of sight. But slowly, it became natural. A second heartbeat beneath his own.
Wei Mingxi proved to be more than just a partner. She was a hunter.
Her Null classification had hidden her true talents. Before the apocalypse, her family had been wilderness guides, trackers, hunters. The skills had been passed down through generations, and though the world had changed, the instincts remained.
"Most people think Nulls are useless," she said one evening, crouched in a maintenance shaft on Level 52, watching a patrol of Defense Corps soldiers pass below. "So they don't watch us. They don't notice us. We're invisible."
She pointed to a grate in the ceiling. "There's an old access route up there. Leads to the Council's archive levels. Unmonitored, because the Council doesn't think anyone would be stupid enough to try."
Shen Ye looked at the grate. "How do you know about it?"
"I was assigned to cleaning duty on Level 55 three months ago. The Nulls who work that level talk. They see everything, hear everything. The Council thinks we're furniture, but we're the ones who clean their rooms, empty their waste, repair their equipment." She smiled. "We know more about the spire than anyone."
That night, they climbed.
The access routes were narrow, dark, forgotten. They crawled through ducts designed for maintenance drones, past layers of dust that hadn't been disturbed in years. Shen Ye's scars tingled as they moved, his Vowkeeper senses picking up faint traces of something—danger? Opportunity? He couldn't tell.
They emerged in a storage room on Level 68, the administrative level. Wei Mingxi had a map in her head, a route she'd been planning for months. She led him through corridors that were empty at this hour, past locked doors whose security systems she'd disabled with codes she'd watched technicians use.
The archive was in the spire's core. A massive chamber filled with data crystals, paper files, old computer terminals—everything the Council had decided was worth keeping but not worth digitizing.
"We're looking for records from the Soul Binder War," Wei Mingxi whispered. "Thirty years ago. Anything about bonding classes, suppression orders, the last Soul Binder's death."
They split up, working in silence. Shen Ye found a terminal in the back corner, its screen flickering with age. He sat down and began searching.
The records were fragmented. The Council had done a thorough job of erasing history. But bits and pieces remained—memos, personal journals, logs from soldiers who had fought in the war.
He found the first piece an hour in.
Internal Council Memorandum
Date: 7.12.2119 (six months after the Soul Binder's death)
Classification: Level 5 (Council Eyes Only)
The threat posed by bonding-class individuals has been neutralized with the death of the last Soul Binder. However, the potential for future emergence remains.
Recommendation: All bonding-class abilities to be classified as Threat Level Orange. Any individual displaying bonding-class abilities is to be terminated immediately. Suppression protocols to be integrated into the Life Source awakening system to prevent detection of bonding-class potential.
Additional recommendation: Public records of the Soul Binder War to be expunged. Population to be educated that bonding-class abilities were a flaw in the early Oracle System, corrected in later updates. Any mention of bonding classes to be treated as misinformation.
Signed: Councilor Wei Zhen, Councilor Marcus Cole, Councilor Yuki Tanaka.
Shen Ye read it twice. Then he read it again.
Suppression protocols integrated into the Life Source. That was why his class had been hidden. The Council had rigged the system itself to hide people like him.
He kept searching.
The next piece was a journal entry, handwritten on paper so old it crumbled at the edges:
Day 147 of the Siege. The Soul Binder is dead. They say he chose it—gave his life to seal the Calamity King. But I was there. I saw what happened.
The Council didn't want him to seal the King. They wanted to capture it. Study it. Use it. They thought they could control it.
The Soul Binder knew they couldn't. He knew the only way to stop it was to bind it—to lock it away with his own soul as the key. He told them. Begged them to let him do it.
They said no. They ordered him to stand down. And when he refused, they—
The entry ended there. The rest of the page was torn away.
Shen Ye stared at the words. They ordered him to stand down. And when he refused, they—
"They what?" he whispered.
"We need to go."
Wei Mingxi's voice was urgent, low. He turned. She was standing at the entrance to the archive, her face pale in the dim light.
"Sensors," she said. "I tripped something. They're coming."
He grabbed the journal page, shoving it into his jacket. They ran.
The access route back was faster—they knew it now, moved through it with desperate speed. But behind them, they could hear the sounds of pursuit. Boots on metal. Voices shouting. The hum of security drones activating.
They reached Level 52. Shen Ye's lungs were burning, his legs screaming. The hollow feeling in his chest was back—his survival time had been dropping from the exertion, the system counting every minute of physical stress as time against his life.
Wei Mingxi grabbed his arm, pulling him into a side corridor. "This way. There's a maintenance shaft—"
The wall ahead of them exploded.
A security drone dropped through the ceiling, its chassis a sleek black cylinder studded with weapons. It scanned them, red light playing over their faces, their clothes, their hands.
[Threat detected: Two individuals, unauthorized access to Level 68. Force authorized: Non-lethal.]
The drone's weapons hummed, charging.
Shen Ye stepped forward, his scarred hand rising.
[Life Anchor can be applied to machines.]
[Cost: 1 day per 100 kg of machine mass. Current drone mass: 400 kg. Cost: 4 days.]
[Warning: Applying Life Anchor to a Council security drone will immediately trigger Threat Level: Orange alert. Council forces will be notified of your location and class.]
Four days of life. And the Council would know what he was.
He didn't hesitate. He reached for the drone—
A blade of ice slammed into the drone's side.
It wasn't Shen Ye's ability. The ice came from behind them, a spear of crystalline cold that punched through the drone's armor and froze its systems solid. The drone sparked, sputtered, and crashed to the floor.
Shen Ye turned.
A figure stood at the end of the corridor. Tall, lean, dressed in dark gray combat gear that blended with the shadows. A hood covered their face, but Shen Ye could see the faint glow of system notifications around them—active abilities, combat stats.
The figure pushed back their hood.
She was young—maybe twenty, maybe twenty-five. Her face was sharp, angular, with pale skin and dark eyes that held a cold fire. Her hair was white, not from age but from something else—a side effect of an ability, maybe, or something deeper.
And above her head, her class designation was visible:
[Jiang Beichen]
[Class: Frost Reaver]
[Rank: A]
[Status: Awakened. Combat-ready.]
She looked at Shen Ye, at his scarred hand still raised toward the dead drone, at the faint glow that was fading from his palm.
"A Vowkeeper," she said. Her voice was low, calm, with an edge of something that might have been recognition. "I thought the Council killed all of you."
"Who are you?" Shen Ye demanded.
She smiled. It was not a friendly smile. "Someone who's been looking for you for a very long time."
Behind them, more alarms began to sound. The Council knew about the breach now. In minutes, this level would be swarming with security forces.
Jiang Beichen turned, gesturing down the corridor. "This way. I know a route they won't find."
Shen Ye looked at Wei Mingxi. She shrugged, her face a mask of wariness. "She just saved us. That's more than most people would do."
He made a choice. Again.
They followed.