Chương 32: The Revelations Painted in Ink

Lance stepped through the entrance of the Ruther Institute, only to find his path blocked by a group of armed men. The cobalt-blue plumes on their helmets snapped in the gusts of the midday wind. The haze made it hard to make them out, but fortunately, he managed to approach without drawing attention. Their vests bore clusters of golden stars, two on some, three on others.

The metal across their chests caught the light each time they turned to speak with the towering figure draped in a thick red cloak, one that strained to cover his enormous, vein-laced arms, seemingly immune to the capital's bitter cold. His grey suit was layered with heavy metal plating and pouches stuffed with Taumite capsules and spare parts for the rifle slung beneath his cloak.

"Maliard… We've got a problem." He called to his companion, ducking from the suspicious gaze of the guards. He pressed himself against one of the gate's brick pillars, leaning his head out just enough, waiting for a reply.

"As usual, then…" Maliard sighed from the other end of the line, followed by a long breath. Lance braced himself, expecting another lecture.

"There's a huge guy in red with a bunch of guards, and I can't get past." He explained, clearly unsettled by the situation he'd found himself in. It was the last day of the operation to help Grayson before Maliard would step in.

"Heavily armed, with red stars?" Maliard asked, fiddling with the massive tangle of electronics in his room. Despite the cold, he wore a tight greenish tank top, almost certainly borrowed from Lance's luggage.

"Not that it looks bad on me, but it's really not my style." He thought, glancing at his own arms and shoulders, while Lance kept whispering in his ear, waiting for an answer.

"Eight golden stars with red borders, and a red ribbon tied to the shoulder." He confirmed Maliard's guess, who immediately sent every relevant detail through to Lance's watch. He scanned Maliard's file, caught somewhere between disappointment and surprise.

"Maliard… Is that thing a cop?" He murmured with a sigh, lingering on the man's massive frame. The brute surrounded by guards was a member of the "Red Drapes," one of Andimica's military specializations alongside the "Siege Forces" and the "White Coats."

"The Drapes had been founded after the war to keep crime in the capital under control, though this act of political classism had let crime erode the poorer districts instead."

"An agent of the Drapes is almost on par with a noble, given how much weight the role carries. They're Bayork's protectors, and they only get deployed for serious cases." Maliard immediately began searching for anything that had happened in the area over the last few days, while Lance nodded and stepped out of his cover.

"Why do they only operate here?" He wondered, straightening his clothes and putting on a mask of confidence.

"If they worked in Sector I and Sector 0 too, they'd save a lot more lives." The thought that only the capital's residents got to benefit from that kind of protection left him faintly nauseated, especially remembering his own youth in the slums, where he'd had to survive on his own.

"For as long as I lived there, Cael was quiet enough. But I'd guess every city bordering the Dedalus is far worse off." He recalled the stories old sailors and traveling merchants used to tell him about the Dedalus. A wretched place, where the tide ate away at the poorest buildings and crime and disease moved hand in hand among its people. The Dedalus stretched across an area almost as large as five of Bayork's Boulevards, sitting on the opposite side of the archipel, facing the continent of Turgnevet.

The entire city was built on grim slabs of black stone, worn down by Taumite, and its whole population crowded into unsettling, filthy shantytowns. Pushing those thoughts aside, Lance Klint presented himself to the Red Drape officer, holding up his ID, forged to perfection by Monica and Maliard.

"Now that I think about it, when I met Monica, she had an ID just like this." He smiled weakly, only to be met with the soldier's sharp glare, the man having sized him up the moment he'd stepped out from behind the pillar. Now that he was closer, he could appreciate the man's sheer bulk. Even Noel would have looked "normal" standing next to this armored soldier.

"How long have you worked here?" The colossus asked, condensation hissing from the vents of his mask with every syllable. Lance swallowed, hesitating for a moment.

"Since September!" He answered, snapping into the military salute of Andimica's army. Both hands clasped behind his back, chest held high with rigid discipline, despite the genuine anxiety churning inside him. The guard looked over his pathetic attempt to make an impression and gave an irritated nod, taking another look at the ID before tucking it back into his pocket.

"Where were you today, at the zenith?" The guard asked, his hand drifting toward the rifle with deliberate slowness. Lance went still, confused by the man's phrasing.

"What in the world is a 'zenith'? Some kind of festival?" He wondered, dazed, partly out of ignorance and partly because the mental image he'd built of this man had just collapsed entirely.

"Lance… He means noon." A low voice cut in through his earpiece. He understood what the soldier meant, but even knowing the answer, he stayed silent, letting himself be scrutinized with growing impatience.

"I can't exactly tell him I was busy resting after fighting off robots and some depressed guy who controls shadows!" He thought, scratching his head. His mission on the second day had been cut short by the unexpected turn of events involving the underground cavity.

"I wouldn't have lost that much time if Monica had decided to be gentler!" He nervously massaged his temples.

"I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY!" Monica begged, slamming her head against the floor again and again, under Maliard's drowsy, deeply unimpressed stare. Remarkably, the floor came out worse than her forehead.

"It's fine…" Lance replied, trying to free himself from the bed, tangled in Jeanne's bandages, which had nearly turned the thick, heavy, rough blankets into a prison. Lance thrashed about and only managed to fall to the floor, wrapped up like a mummy.

"That's not the time to think about that..." He gulped, watching the man straight in the eyes.

"I was stuck in my apartment because the lock broke."

"Any important contacts at the Institute?" The man asked, not even bothering to question the alibi Lance had just handed him. He thought it over for a second before naming the only two people he had any real relationship with.

"Grayson Dirac and Lug Well. Ask them." He answered, finally pulling himself out of that awkward stance. He adjusted his wrist and kept eye contact with the man as best as he could.

"You seem to be in order… Unfortunately, the Institute is closed today for emergency reasons." He stated solemnly, turning his back and walking toward the group on his left.

"What happened, if I may ask?" He blurted out, almost reaching a hand toward the man's back. Without turning around, the guard stopped and answered in his flat, formal tone.

"Since you have ties to the Director, I'll tell you. Lug Well was attacked, and she's now in critical condition at the Alis Clinic." He concluded, finally rejoining his subordinates to discuss the investigation. Lance stood there, staring at the empty plaza and the trees swaying in the freezing wind. His clothes did nothing against the cold, nor the wind, but he was too distracted to notice the shivers running through him.

He wandered through every possible cause and consequence of what he'd just heard, lost in thought for several minutes.

"How could this have happened? Did nobody see anything? Did Grayson not even show up?" The questions clouded his thoughts until something through the trees caught his eye. A faint white glimmer flickered between the branches. He made his way through the leaves, a sudden, painful jolt of cold racing through him.

"Why is this anomaly here?" He saw the Frequency hovering around him, taking the form of colorful threads, strands twisting and weaving together with the world around them.

"Has Verghen reacted? Something's changed the Frequency here." He murmured, sweeping his hands through the bush from which the glint had come. Among the damp leaves and rough wood, his fingers finally brushed against something smooth and cold. He pulled his arm back, eyes widening in horror. In his hand, he held a bloodied ID card, identical to his own. Through the wet soil and crusted blood, he could just make out a name. He read it aloud, slowly, in a quiet voice.

"Grayson… Dirac." He read the name over and over, even scraping at the thin card with his nails, hoping he'd misread it. A sharp pain hit him square in the stomach, making him stagger.

"Damn it!" He slammed his fist into the ground, sending clumps of dirt and pebbles flying. He got back up, wiping his hand clean, but as he turned, his eyes caught something even more unsettling.

"Malcolm's Frequency?" His whole body shuddered at the sight of those faint discrepancies between the Frequency and the surrounding environment, identical to the ones he'd seen in the warehouse and the cave.

"Grayson… Did he run into that monster?" His breathing grew heavy, his heart pounding in his chest, and for a moment his head felt light and empty. He pressed one hand to his burning chest, the other against his forehead to steady himself. He started to shake, fighting with everything he had to push away the horrible thoughts forming in his mind.

"I left him… This is my fault." He muttered between breaths, swaying until he leaned against the cold, frost-covered iron bars of the gate. Damp, freezing patches spread across his back, but they did nothing to pull him from his spiraling thoughts.

"Lance, calm down!" A voice yanked him back to reality, breaking through the panic. Maliard pressed the microphone close to his lips, enunciating every word.

"We don't know anything yet. I've been tracking Dirac's movements over the last few weeks. He should live in a cheap apartment building near the Institute." Maliard's fingers flew across the slim, Lambdite-powered keyboard buttons, redirecting the connection to Lance's watch. His wrist buzzed, the screen showing an interesting violet marker not far from where he stood. Lance nodded and bolted from the gate. He hurried down the streets of Ruther Avenue, where the Institute stood.

The streetlamps had been off that morning, but with the fog and clouds, they'd decided to leave them lit until the weather improved. The parks lay buried under heavy drops of water and ice. Through the blanket of haze, the branches of the trees swayed in silence. The windows of every building had been carefully and tightly shut, with nothing left out on the balconies of every shape and size. In that fog, Bayork had taken on an almost ghostly, silent appearance, broken only by the distant laughter of children.

A woman in a long coat passed him by, smiling and murmuring some kind of greeting. No vehicle, no spark dared to cut through that blanket of mist. As he walked, he found himself wading through scraps of paper and old newspapers, carried along by the breeze. Condensation escaped his lips with every breath, fogging up his glasses. He blew on his hands and kept walking, lighting his way with the coordinates on his watch.

"Almost there… Please, Grayson." He pulled his coat tighter around himself, picking up his pace until he reached the entrance to the apartment building. The front door had been left open. The dark, jagged wood was poorly maintained, covered in cuts and chips, with some sections missing entirely. The hinges had a faint golden tint, or at least that was what Lance guessed from the few spots not eaten away by rust and grime.

He stepped over the threshold, finding himself in a dreary entrance hall, full of unpleasant drafts. The doorman's booth had filthy glass windows, behind which he could make out various scraps of food and even a rat's tail.

"Why does Dirac live here? With the fame and money he has, he could move to Alis." He wondered, trying to keep a foul, faintly sulfurous smell out of his nose. He set foot on the stairs, making the entire structure creak. Dust slid off the faintly polished railing as he climbed to the upper floors. The moment his forehead cleared the step blocking his view, he found himself drawn toward one of the doors on the right. The doormat had been kicked violently out of place, and no one had bothered to put it back.

The door was made of a lighter wood, covered in damp stains. Lance approached the door, grabbed the handle, and tried to turn it, without success.

"Sorry for the intrusion…" He whispered, glancing around before pulling Gladiolus from his pocket. The blade hummed in the air, dancing between his hands before being gently slid through the thin wood of the door. He carved through the door, cutting out a cube barely larger than his hand. He reached his arm through the gap until his fingers brushed against something metallic, vaguely cylindrical.

"The key's inside?" He murmured, puzzled, gripping it with his fingertips and turning it inside the lock. The door finally opened, revealing the inside of the room.

"What happened here?" His eyes widened at the horrific state of the apartment: torn pages scattered across the floor, a fountain pen driven straight into the wood of the desk, a deep crack running across the only window, ink dripping down the wall, and a long smear of blood and white fragments splattered across the right side of the room. Lance covered his mouth with his sleeve, breathing slowly to avoid inhaling that terrible mix of smells.

He closed the door behind him and began carefully examining the pages on the floor. At a glance, they looked like ordinary yellowed pages, but the bloody fingerprints smeared across them gave them a deeply ominous feel. He stepped on one, crouching to pick it up. It was strangely damp, though he didn't stop to wonder why.

"The song has come back, and I finally understand it. The architect, the table, the crime. I've managed to understand all of it. Nothing matters anymore. The Demiurge will return to working order, and I'll finally be able to accept death. The choir is calling for me! It wants me to join them. In the sea that holds my life, where every particle dances in the brackish damp, I can make out a shadow drawing me toward it, and yet I can hear it crying. I don't know why it's crying. Why are you crying? Please, tell me."

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. He read that page, stained with blood and what looked like tears, or maybe saliva. Lance stayed frozen, lingering on that unsettling description of the sea and the figure.

"The same thing… I saw at Arden Ring." The colossal gate wrapped in tentacles, the white sludge, the three celestial bodies, and that figure draped in white.

"This can't all be a coincidence…" He bent down to gather the remains of what he believed was a diary. Even the blood hadn't managed to wash away the images pressed into the ink. Lance stared at them as if his life depended on it, head bowed, unable to look away from anything else. The drawings depicted a sea wrapped in black, where depth seemed to mean nothing at all. The sky was completely dark, with a few lighter streaks, maybe meant to be those dancing shadows.

Another sketch showed a burning silhouette in the sky, a massive complex of tubular shapes, surrounded by spear-wielding figures.

"This…" It took everything he had not to lose his mind at the sight of the last figure in the drawings. A woman, adorned with dozens of chains and jewels, was completely wrapped in a long, flowing gown. In the portrait, her face was obscured by a writhing mass of slick tentacles, and she held her own head with thin, delicate arms. Lance threw the page to the floor, stomping on it again and again until it tore apart.

"That thing… He must have seen it too." Lance finally remembered their first meeting: the panic, the urgency, the anxiety painted across the man's face. Lance's grip tightened around Gladiolus, making it tremble. He shook his head and finally made his way to the desk. It was a pitiful sight from every angle: blood mixed with dark smears of ink, the remains of a pen cap furiously driven into the wood, and pages soaked through with red, too saturated to take in any more.

The window was cracked, likely from something thrown against it with force. On the floor, dozens of fragments of paper, dirty and illegible, except for four pages still intact, untouched by the blood. Lance snatched them up at once, stacking them in his hand and beginning to read.

"Erika had the brilliant idea today of dragging me into her plan to restore some old project by a man named Lucas Hoppenheimer. I don't know him, and I haven't bothered looking into him, but that girl's smile is more than enough payment. Now that I think about it, I've been withdrawn ever since my mother died and my father was arrested. These words I'm writing had stopped meaning anything to me until I met the Well sisters. The warmth and presence of those two reach something deep in me, and they're sharp, too!

They remind me a little of my mother. Today I'm happy. It's been years since I last felt something like this, and I'm grateful I haven't forgotten how — 6 June, 592 P. E." Lance blinked back the sting in his eyes, carefully setting the page down on the chair, doing everything he could not to stain it. He picked up the second page and pulled it taut, smoothing out the creases that made it hard to read.

"Months have passed since the accident, but I still can't make sense of any of it. I keep looking back, hoping to find some flaw in the system, something that would wash away my own incompetence, but I can't find it, and it hurts. The fault is mine. Mine alone. It wasn't a malfunction, it wasn't fate. I abandoned her. I can't look Lug in the eye anymore. Her eyes are ruined, and still she keeps pushing herself for my sake. I feel sick looking at myself in the mirror.

When I sleep, I hear a song, a constant choir, begging me to follow the Architect, and then I wake up after watching the same painful scenes from my past play out again and again. I'm slowly starting to lose myself, and that music never stops — 3 July, 602 P. E."

"All of this happened while I was in a coma… So much, in so little time." He let out a slow breath before taking the page, folding it, and stacking it with the others. Now he turned his attention to the filthiest of the four pages. It smelled of gunpowder and fresh blood. Sure enough, his fingers came away stained the moment he touched it. He shook his arm hard, trying to get the color off, with little success.

"If anyone finds this note, please burn it and don't come looking for me. I'm a monster now. I tried to convince myself it wasn't real, but it is. As I write this, I can feel blood dripping down behind me and the smell of gunpowder. To my left, pieces of my own skull are scattered across the wall, but I'm still alive. I'm certain I felt the bullet go through my brain, but after a few minutes of nothing, I came back to find myself still here, still living. The gun is in my pocket, still smoking.

As I write this, the hole in my head is regenerating, if that's even the right word, and while it does, I keep hearing that music. It hurts. It's seeping into my veins, begging to be written down. I think these are the last moments of sanity Grayson Dirac has left. Please, I beg you, run, and never come looking for me again. I don't know if what you'll find will still be me, or some twisted tangle of flesh and data."

"The Awakening…" Lance, horrified, realized exactly what had happened in that room, rushing to read the last scrap of paper in his hand. The small torn fragment had been written in a hurry, the handwriting messy and at times unreadable. From the structure of the lines, he understood it wasn't a diary entry. It was a song.

"The table is set… O Architect, when will you lay a feast for us?"

"Great master, successor of Eneook, when will you lay a feast for us?"

"Sorcerer of the earthly world, the hour of the Construction has come."

"O Architect, at this table of sins, how much will you manage to eat? The hour of the Construction has come." The rest of the note was unreadable, smeared with drops of black and red. This time, Lance dropped it to the floor, staring at the obscene ruin of the desk for a few moments.

"I'm sorry, Grayson… Maybe it would've been better if you died here." He murmured, before trying to reach Maliard, but the radio only let out a garbled, irritating whine before cutting off entirely. He moved to rush for the door, but a jolt at his wrist warned him that Lambda Radiation was interfering with the signal.

"A singularity, now of all times?!" He exclaimed, turning toward the handle to grab it, only to find his hand reaching out into a bright white horizon, where the clouds reflected off the surface of shallow water. In the sky, a massive burning sphere of lava, the color of snow. From that heavenly beacon, heavy drops of molten rock fell endlessly into the void. Part of Lance felt strangely light, while the rest of him sank into panic.

"Here again?" He muttered, reaching into his pockets for his weapons. His fingers came back empty, and a wave of panic washed over him. He started walking across the endless mirror of water, drawing closer to the sphere, or so he thought, as he walked. A sob, then a hiss, accompanied his steps, growing louder each time his sole cracked the still surface of the water. It was weak, thin, and at times almost desperate.

It echoed through the entire space, pulling at Lance's senses as he tried to trace it back to its source. Before him, the source of the crying finally revealed itself: the figure wrapped in white, hands pressed against the darkness of her hood, where her eyes should have been, sobbing. Her body shook with each sob, but He couldn't hear her breathing, nor did he see any tears slip through her fingers. She sat atop a pedestal of twisted black rock, so strange that Lance had to wonder if any of this was even real.

"Why? I didn't want this…" She suddenly managed to speak through her tears, raising her arms and wrapping them around herself. Lance took a slow step forward.

"I don't want this suffering. Why did you accept it? Umbra, Mars, Dyer, Lance... Why did you abandon me? Did I do something wrong? Maybe I never understood you." He now stood beneath her, listening closely to her lament. A single tear ran down his cheek, mixing with the sea below.

"Why are you crying?" He asked. He could have asked her dozens of other questions, but in that moment, all he wanted to understand was why this figure was sobbing so bitterly.

"Don't you remember me?" The figure roused from her crying just enough to ask him another question Lance had no answer for. He lowered his head and shook it.

"You're not him anymore. You're different, but you smell the same." The woman descended, pulling the boy close against her, though he felt nothing hostile in the gesture.

"Pathetic human… Don't forget me again. Don't leave me again…" Before she could finish, Lance found himself back in the suffocating emptiness of Grayson's room, his back to the door. His head felt heavy, his stomach completely turned over, his mind trembling with rage and despair. He marched straight to the desk, raising his fist over his shoulder.

"DAMN IT ALL!" He smashed his fist into the desk, shattering it into a hundred pieces. The pen flew off, still wedged into the wood. A few drops of Grayson's blood landed on his face. His knuckles were bleeding, splinters driven into the skin.

"I can't take this anymore. Why is it always questions, and never answers?" He wiped himself off with his coat, throwing it onto the bed. He leaned against the wall, now clear of furniture.

"Why all this? Did I make a mistake, helping everyone else? If I'd ignored anyone I could've helped, would I have helped myself first? If I'd turned down that delivery, would I be here?" He spoke under his breath, leaning out of the window. The fog had grown worse, and at this height, even the street below had vanished from sight.

"Grayson… I'll find you, I'll help you, and I'll finally get some answers." He opened the window, sending a few shards of glass to the floor, where they mixed with the wood and blood. He cast one last glance over the room, then leaned out into Bayork's freezing air. He closed his eyes and jumped. He soared through the fog beneath him, searching for somewhere he could get a clear view of the city. He caught the edge of a balcony on the opposite side.

As the boy's grip closed around it, flecks of paint and plaster crumbled away. Lance looked around and spotted an old tower in the distance, likely dating back to the end of the war. It was an immensely tall structure, though it didn't quite reach the height of the Cathedral on Bayork's Fourth Boulevard, which loomed behind him even through the thick fog. The tower's pristine white seemed to glow with its own light, and the gentle sound of bells echoed all the way to the bay.

"If Grayson is going through the Awakening, he should be leaving traces behind." He swung himself toward another building. This time, he had to dig his fingers into the brick and mortar to climb it. The moment he reached the rooftop, he broke into a run toward the city center, vaulting chimneys and sliding across tiles He finally reached one of the buildings near the tall tower. The walls were ancient, riddled with cracks that, somehow, didn't seem to threaten the structure's stability.

Heavy beams of dark, weathered wood jutted out from the mortar, almost like exposed bones. Lance made sure the fog kept him hidden and looked down at the haze swallowing the street below. He took a breath and threw himself into the open air. He gripped the end of a beam with both hands, hanging with his legs swinging freely beneath him.

"This is going to take a while…" Lance realized, eyeing the top of the tower. He took a breath and leapt from beam to beam, occasionally catching hold of jutting bricks. Some of them broke loose and fell away, leaving him swinging in a precarious position.

"If I fall, that's definitely going to hurt." Taking a deep breath to steady the dizziness, he resumed climbing with even more force and speed. Finally, his hand found a new handhold. The rough texture of jagged bricks and roof tiles told him he'd reached the top. Before climbing onto the spire itself, he decided to swing over to the watchtower platform. It was empty, and the trapdoor leading inside had been sealed shut with padlocks and chains.

The entire tower was nothing more than a monument with no purpose, a relic of a past nearly a century gone. Lance leaned out over one of the gaps, gripping the edge of the spire with all his strength, and hauled himself up onto the top. He found a bird nesting there, its feathers a brilliant yellow and white, its beak a fiery red. He smiled, only to be attacked seconds later by the bird.

"ENOUGH!" He tried to swat it away with his free hand, only succeeding after taking a dozen pecks to the forehead. He grabbed the tip of the tower and took in the view. All of Bayork spread out before him, wrapped in a sea of grey fog, stirred by the freezing wind. From the dark port, the lights of ships and the distant glow of Alis echoed back, still untouched by the haze. He turned toward the massive forest covering the largest island of the Archipel.

Sector II was the largest of all, and it was also where the war's biggest battles had been fought. Far off, the fog thinned, giving way to the darkness of the trees. From this distance, he thought he could make out smoke and lights, maybe Arden Ring. His eyes began scanning for any shift in the Frequency, starting from the city and reaching all the way to the horizon, where the trees took over.

"It's no use…" Lance realized it was impossible to analyze a landscape this vast. The filaments dissolved into the fog, and he had no way to study them in any detail. It was just exhausting. His vision went fuzzy, and his foot slipped on one of the roof tiles. As he fell, he saw the fog rise to meet him, but his fall was stopped before it could go any further. A hand had grabbed his arm with a firm grip, keeping him from falling.

"Need a hand?" The man asked, dressed in an extremely long white coat marked with yellowish lines. His entire coat fluttered in the wind, but Lance recognized him by the unsettling mask he wore.

"Lucas?!" He asked, surprised, letting himself be pulled back to safety on the spire. Lucas stood there, perfectly still on the roof, not bothering to look for anything to hold onto.

"How did you get up here?" Lance hadn't sensed anything at all. The man had simply appeared at the top to help him.

"My ability has plenty of uses. Teleporting myself is the most convenient one." He answered between breaths, polishing his mask with the sleeve of his coat. Underneath, he wore a simple dark jacket with a small folded paper tucked into the breast pocket.

"You're looking for Grayson Dirac, I'd guess?" Before Lance could even speak to him, Lucas looked straight at him through the glass of his combat mask. He nodded quickly, rubbing at his eye more than once.

"I've been following you ever since I found out what happened in the Institute's basement, also because I found out the Demiurge is involved." Lucas studied the view as he spoke, white clouds of vapor escaping from the filter of his mask.

"Dirac's Demiurge... Is that Lucas's work?" He stayed silent, waiting for the scientist to keep talking.

"I know you want to understand, but I need your help." He turned back toward him, placing his hand over Lance's, forcing him to meet his gaze through the visor.

"Dirac absolutely cannot bring that machine back to function. If he does, the entire nation could vanish off the map." His fingers tightened around Lance's as he spoke, his tone cold and severe, completely unlike the man he thought he knew.

"That creation was one of the reasons the war turned into such a disaster. That machine let humans get close to a domain they were never meant to touch." He let go, leaning out over the edge.

"Lucas… What is the Demiurge?" Lance forced himself to ask, grabbing the man's sleeve and pulling him closer. Lucas kept his gaze fixed on the horizon before answering, his voice low.

"The Demiurge is what's left of a relic from the Lost Epoch. Nikola Ruther's research covered an incomplete version of it, and I was part of the team that brought it online. In simple terms, it's a reactor capable of opening a portal to the Hel." Lucas explained, pulling away from him to let out a sigh into the freezing emptiness of the sky.

"To Hel? That thing can transport people into Hel?!" Lance shouted from the top of the tower, stunned, aware that no one could hear him up here.

"No. The Demiurge creates a controlled singularity to observe the Hel. It's impossible to send a human being through it and expect them to come out alive, or intact." Lucas adjusted his coat, taking Lance by the hand. He understood immediately what he meant by that last word.

"I take it you've already seen what's sealed away in the Institute's basement?" He asked, tilting his head. Lance's silence was answer enough, and Lucas nodded.

"I'll tell you everything I know about your file, but you have to stop Grayson. I don't care how." He let go of the boy, sending him stumbling backward toward the edge of the tower.

"Lucas Hoppenheimer…" Lance murmured his name, the sound somehow carrying through the gusts of wind tugging at their clothes beneath the darkened sky.

"What game are you playing?" He asked, his voice taking on a sharp, interrogative edge, one he'd clearly picked up from Maliard. Lucas let out an unnatural laugh, perhaps distorted by the filter over his mouth.

"No game, Lance. I'm tired of being the only one with answers and not being able to share them." He answered, gently resting his hand on Lance's shoulder.

"I'm a scientist before I'm a man. I hate not being able to share what I've worked so hard to discover. I've already paid for that, more times than I'd like." His grip weakened, his voice growing more tired, heavy with something like regret. He felt the shift in the air around him and tightened his hand over Lucas's, still resting on his shoulder.

"I think you are more than suitable for my knowledge."

"Alright, Lucas. I'll help you. But I want the truth." The scientist nodded, pulling a tablet from his pocket and pressing it against Lance's wrist. Suddenly, the watch buzzed to life, displaying a map of Sector II with a red marker on it.

"That's where the Demiurge is. Before I let you go, I'll tell you everything you need to know about the reactor." He traced a shape in the air, then snapped his knuckles. A blue light began spinning around his fingers, spreading until it covered his palm. He pressed it against his chest, then did the same with his other hand.

"This might feel strange." Lucas whispered as the light worked its way into Lance's flesh. He didn't have time to say anything before he found himself flying through Bayork's sky. At full speed, he crashed straight through Dirac's window, covered in dust and broken glass.

"It's been a while since I've made someone land like that." Lucas answered from behind him, offering a hand to help him up from the ridiculous cross-legged heap he'd landed in. Lancetook his hand, and a chill ran from his wrist down to his heels.

"This… Is his Frequency?!" He swallowed hard, panic rising as he stared at the enormous, filament-wrapped spheres swaying within the sea of threads that made up Lucas's aura. Dozens of those many-colored globes orbited him like atoms, trailed by sporadic bursts of fire and electricity.

"Just who are you, Lucas Hoppenheimer?" He thought, pulling himself up off the floor with Lucas's help, trying not to let the anxiety show on his face.

"Go ahead and sit down. This is a long story." Lucas picked up one of the pieces of the broken desk, reshaping it with bursts of electricity along with the debris around it, molding two identical chairs out of a mix of materials. Lance recognized the golden metal of the fountain pen, the glass of the window, and the wood of the furniture. Lucas sat down, crossing his legs, and gestured toward the other seat. Lance sat down on that strange amalgam of materials, waiting for Lucas to speak.