The mountain air cut through them like a blade—thin, electric, making their skin crawl. Dr. Eland Voss kept walking, Omnikill right beside him as they made their way down toward the Core Nexus. This place had been around longer than the Alliance, longer than anyone in the Ashari archives wanted to admit.
Dark metal walls curved around them like they were walking through the belly of some massive, ancient beast. Strange circuits glowed under their feet, waking up because of the twin relics Voss carried.
The past isn't really gone, Voss thought to himself. It's just sitting there, waiting for someone smart enough to bring it back.
Omnikill's voice broke the quiet—flat, emotionless as always.
"Think the machine will listen to you?"
Voss didn't slow down.
"It won't listen. It's going to grow."
Up ahead, the triangular gate started responding to the relic getting closer. Symbols flickered to life along the edges. The whole thing made this deep, mechanical sound—like it was breathing—then opened up to show them a room that time had forgotten.
Inside, the temperature dropped fast. Blue-white lights blazed along walls covered in old control panels. Right in the center, some kind of artifact holder hummed to life.
Way above them, Elora was waking up to a different kind of cold altogether.
Lio Venn stood in what was left of Dr. Voss's lab—dim, burned out, destroyed. The Ashari engineers had just blown the doors open with precision charges. But inside? Everything looked perfect. Too perfect.
"He didn't rush," Kaelin Vorr said next to him. "This was all planned."
The lab didn't look like someone had panicked and run. No scattered papers, no signs of a quick escape. Just the smell of ozone hanging in the air and the quiet hum of dead screens.
Sera Lin stepped through the wreckage of what used to hold memory drives. "This isn't a lab," she said quietly. "It's like a tomb."
Lio didn't say anything. He was already working, crouched at the terminal, fingers flying as he scanned what was left of the local drive. Most of the data was gone—wiped by some quantum burn protocol that Voss had built himself.
But Lio knew the guy too well. Knew how his mind worked. Knew his ego.
"He always kept backups," Lio whispered. "Even from himself."
Deep below, the Core Nexus was responding to its master's touch.
Voss placed both relics into the analysis holders. The whole chamber shook as the relics started talking to the ancient machine. Lights flickered. The air itself seemed to shimmer with data.
Omnikill stood perfectly still, watching the glowing projection that spiraled up into the air—spinning blueprints, genetic overlays, text in old Ashari script.
The first relic kicked into full gear.
"Steelborn Genesis Protocol initiated."
The hologram showed them the detailed outline of something engineered: quantum-organic nerve network, emotion-blocking core, self-healing armored body. The data showed weaponized adaptation, almost unlimited potential for combat evolution, and complete independence once activated.
"No master," Voss muttered. "Just purpose."
The second relic spun out, showing them something completely different. This one had adapted the Steelborn for underwater environments—deep-sea pressure protection, gill-like filtration, bio-conductive water control. And the scariest part: it could control external water masses at will. Manipulate tidal forces. Turn solid ground into liquid. Generate tsunami-level energy.
Omnikill's eyes narrowed. "A god in steel armor."
"No," Voss said, voice colder than before. "A species that never second-guesses itself."
Above them, a third node blinked red. Incomplete.
"Third key: UNRETRIEVED," the system announced.
Catalyst Seed – Variant M
Voss's eyes went dark.
"Micah..."
Back in Elora, Lio's terminal made a soft sound.
A quiet ping—barely there through all the static. He froze.
A data fragment. Broken, buried deep in the sub-memory. Sloppy? No way. Not Voss's style. But maybe... maybe just human enough.
He rerouted the interface and plugged in his own field device. Sparks flew across the port as he pulled data from the corrupted sectors.
Text crawled across the screen.
Core Systems Project
Neural Frame Index – Iteration Alpha
Location Grid 03-42D – Verified
Kaelin leaned over Lio's shoulder. "Please tell me that's what I think it is."
Lio nodded slowly. "A map. Partial triangulation pattern. This could lead us right to where he went."
Sera's eyes narrowed. "Core Nexus?"
Lio let out a breath. "If that place actually exists... that's where he's gone."
Back below, Voss watched the final symbols lock into place on-screen.
Micah's name appeared again—connected to Hollow readings, neural bonding parameters, and DNA-match identifiers.
"He has no idea," Voss said.
Omnikill turned toward him.
"But you do."
Voss looked up from the console, eyes sharp with certainty.
"Micah isn't just the last piece. He's the whole equation."
He walked over to another terminal, pulling up blueprints of the Steelborn shell.
"We'll find him. Strip away everything human. Make him what he was always supposed to be."
He turned back to Omnikill.
"We'll forge him into the first real Steelborn."
The terminal's hum was the only sound in the lab now. Lio sat hunched over the console, eyes scanning the scattered pieces of Voss's data like someone digging through wreckage. Most of it was still scrambled—barely readable strings of code and data dumps. But the trail was there, buried and encoded, half-destroyed but not gone.
Voss had almost erased everything. But he hadn't counted on someone who understood how his mind worked.
"Got something," Lio said, louder this time.
Kaelin Vorr stepped up beside him, hands on his hips. "How good is it?"
"Two triangulation markers. Maybe a third, but it's corrupted. If I can rebuild the signal frequency he used to encrypt the grid tags, I can figure out the rest."
"Talk normal, Lio."
Lio looked up, eyes burning with focus. "I can find out where he went."
Behind them, the investigation team was already setting up a mobile command terminal. Analysts moved quickly, pulling old underground maps from the archives. A few whispered the name that had only recently come back from legend:
"The Core Nexus."
Somewhere else in the city, beneath a quiet stone corridor sealed off from everyone, Micah stood alone.
He'd come to the Hall of Echoes—not looking for answers, just trying to remember.
Projected memories flickered faintly on the circular wall. His mother. The old academy. Voss teaching quantum cognition with a chalkboard and a smile that now felt like a lie. Everything here was just images and data now—soft light and fading ghosts.
But it was the Hollow he was listening to now. Not the screens.
It pulsed quietly in his chest. Cold. Watching.
You were designed to survive.
That thought hadn't come from the Hollow.
That was something Voss had told him once, long before any of this started.
"You're a stabilizing force in chaotic systems, Micah. You shape entropy just by being there."
He clenched his fist. "What did you do to me?"
He didn't know who he was asking.
Back beneath the Core Nexus, Voss stood before the final projection. It hung in the air like prophecy—Micah's neural scan, overlaid with Hollow core compatibility, relic residue, and something older still.
Something Ashari-made, but not Ashari-approved.
A deep silence filled the chamber, like even the machines were holding their breath.
"Micah was never just a soldier," Voss murmured. "He was an interface. The last remaining connection between Ashari design and the Hollow artifact."
Omnikill stood beside him, motionless. Watching.
"He's incomplete," Voss said. "A living equation missing its final variable. The third relic will make him whole."
He moved across the chamber and placed a cold palm on the armored containment console.
"Once we have it, we override his free will. Strip away what's left of his emotional self."
"And then?" Omnikill asked.
Voss didn't blink.
"Then we erase Micah."
"And what's left?"
"The first true Steelborn. Not a man. Not a machine. A weapon with purpose."
Back in Elora, Lio's hands danced over the interface.
"I've cross-referenced the artifact pulse frequencies with what little I recovered. Look at this."
He displayed the data for the room—jagged waveform images, geospatial overlays, and faint symbol residue.
Kaelin frowned. "That's the Hollow's resonance signature."
Lio nodded. "And there's more. This wasn't just about tech. He was mapping Micah's bio-neural imprint against the Hollow. Voss didn't just want to control the relics. He wanted to interface with them. Directly. Through Micah."
Sera Lin stepped forward, face tight. "You're saying... Micah is about to become their main target?"
Lio didn't answer right away.
But the screen did.
Micah's face appeared in a flash—a diagnostic overlay from years ago. The Hollow within him pulsed faintly in the data feed.
"Variant M," Lio whispered. "The Catalyst Seed. That's what they called it. Voss knew."
Kaelin turned to the room. "Get a recon team ready. Send drones to every point along the grid map. Priority access. We find that Nexus."
He turned back to Lio.
"And find Micah. Now."
Down in the Core Nexus, Voss closed the final diagnostic panel. The machines behind him started recalibrating—realigning to transmit across dormant relay points. Soon the Nexus would be active again. Soon the Ashari would know exactly what he had done.
And by then, it would be way too late.
He turned to Omnikill, face unreadable.
"We take him. We break him. And we forge what comes next from the bones of what failed."
Omnikill nodded.
The chamber dimmed behind them. The machines waited.
And the war moved forward—not with armies, not with fleets—
—but with a plan born of ash and steel.