19:18 UTC — North Pacific, 400 km West of Clipperton Fracture
Aiden's boots clicked onto the deck of the Ishtar, a chartered research cutter listing gently on black-glass water. Thin ribbons of green aurora fluttered far overhead—an equatorial miracle conjured by the Dawn-Core's new wavelengths.
Maya secured the final resonance buoy over the side. "Scalar flux at .997 ppm.""Close enough," Aiden answered, hefting the Dawn-Core in its shock cradle. The crystal throbbed like a restrained sunrise.
Lin Xi knelt on wet plating, painting lotus-ink runes around a hatch the crew thought was "storm sensor access." In truth it covered a coaxial umbra shaft that Maya had carved out of Dreamspace: their plunge gate to the Silent Archive—one of the loom's long-forgotten anchor vaults.
Nephis ghosted aft, his re-forged cloak soaking moonlight. "No surface tails."Cassie flicked her upgraded lantern lens, which now projected faint triangulation lines across the sky. "Then let's not give them time to appear."
Slip-Entry
At 19:29 UTC, Lin Xi finished the circle, murmuring a Qi chord. The hatch iris dissolved, revealing a vertical tunnel of twinkling teal code descending beneath the waves. A low hum rose as ocean skin and Dreamspace aligned atom by atom.
"Five-minute window," Maya said. "Archive signature intermittent."
Aiden led, stepping into the well. Gravity inverted; seawater parted like curtains of mercury. Dawn-Core light painted spiral runes across his visor as he slid faster than falling—but felt as if gliding through warm twilight.
Cassie followed, lantern beam measuring velocity. Lin Xi descended last, sealing the portal; the Ishtar alarms would register nothing but slight barometric hiccups.
Seconds stretched. When equilibrium snapped, the Guardians spilled onto a smooth basalt platform ringed by broken obelisks. Overhead hung a vault of silent water, frozen mid-ripple—the ocean held outside a translucent membrane. Ahead, colossal bronze doors half-submerged in silt marked the Silent Archive.
The Bronze Doors
Maya scanned. "No active security code—only dormant library hash.""Dormant seldom means harmless," Nephis muttered, pulling shadows tight.
Lin Xi placed a hand on the metal—cool yet faintly thrumming. "It sings the Loom's pre-Council dialect."
Aiden pressed Dawn-Core to a keyway indentation; lines flared across the doors. With a grunt of ancient gears, they parted inward, exhaling a breath older than continents.
Inside stretched stacked galleries of luminous scrolls, suspended in zero-G stasis. Each scroll bore a unique color band; some flickered, others lay dark. In the centre, a crystalline monolith flickered—heartbeat weak, like a server on low power.
Cassie swept her lantern: "If knowledge has a scent, this is incense and ozone."
Disturbance Log — Unknown Entity
As they floated toward the monolith, a ripple passed through the gallery—scrolls jostled, snapping open in mid-air to reveal lines of corrupted sigil.
Maya: "Archive woke to Dawn-Core ping. Something else woke too."
A triangular shard—black, edge-glinting—peered around a shelf stack, then vanished. Nephis gave chase; his cloak snagged empty air. Whir of motion sensors triggered: holo-labels flashed red—ACCESS CONTESTED.
A flood of scroll canisters launched, swirling like hornets. Aiden slashed one open—inside, Council echo-code hissed, trying to latch onto his visor feed. He crushed it before infection.
Lin Xi unleashed a Qi pulse, freezing the swarm mid-flight. Maya injected a disinfectant routine via Mirror-Gauntlet, purging the hostile layer. Scrolls collapsed, inert.
But the triangular shard re-appeared atop the monolith, unfolding into a spidery drone. It projected a hologram: Council Recon-Process 601: "Herald of Resumption." A cold synthetic voice intoned:
"Unauthorized Dawn-Core detected. Silent Archive to be requisitioned for Protocol Re-Genesis."
Aiden's heart sank. "They plan to reboot the Council with our own Loom power."
Cliffhanger: Battle for the Index Key
The drone's legs spiked into the monolith. File trees cascaded—whole civilizations' records re-encrypting under Council cipher. Alarms deep-throbbed; bronze doors slammed shut behind them.
Maya hissed. "If it finishes, every Archive node could flip hostile."
Cassie lifted the lantern. "How long?""Minutes—maybe."
Aiden met the team's eyes. "We pull that drone, we secure the Archive index key, and we block Protocol Re-Genesis before it seeds."
Lights in the gallery dimmed to blood orange. Hiss of decompressing seals echoed as hidden armatures slid free—ancient but lethal.
The Silent Archive was about to get very loud.