Something in his script unlocks a major secret.
Ace wasn't built for magic. He didn't glow or shape-shift or make the sky sing like Blair just did. What he had was logic, caffeine, and a laptop that somehow still worked in a world where tech usually short-circuited the moment you sneezed on it.
But Keitha was different now. Ever since Blair's verse literally remixed the city's atmosphere, everything tech-related had started glitching in patterns. Predictable patterns. And that meant something could be solved.
He sat in the Archive of Souls, surrounded by ghost-echoes of explorers who'd been here before them—people who had failed to escape. Failed to decode. Their whispers made the air feel heavy, but his mind was laser-focused.
Lines of data streamed across his screen like falling stars:
csharp
[CORE LOCKED] [ACCESS DENIED] [EMOTION INDEX: 72.3%] [SIGNAL: UNSTABLE]
"Emotion index?" he muttered, fingers flying. "You're telling me this whole city is run like a sentient AI crossed with a poet?"
The screen suddenly blinked and displayed a strange combination of glyphs and English:
scss
Echo.Rhythm.Bind(Blair) Thread.Stitch(Athena) Pulse.Bend(Asher) Logic.Trigger(Ace)
Wait. Wait wait wait. That last line.
"Logic... Trigger?" he whispered, heartbeat accelerating. "I'm not just the guy decoding this. I'm a key."
The moment he said it aloud, his laptop buzzed violently—and an ancient stone pillar nearby cracked open like a jaw yawning. A hidden chamber unfolded from the shadows behind it, glowing with gold circuitry laced through obsidian walls.
He stumbled to his feet, heart pounding like a bass drop.
Nova's voice crackled through the comm crystal: "Uh, Ace? Keitha's storm clouds are forming a giant eye again—whatever you're doing? Keep doing it."
"Copy that," he replied. "Also... I found a door. Or it found me."
He stepped into the chamber. As he did, the walls lit up with scrolling runes and code, syncing with the rhythm of his breath. Then the final lock appeared—etched like a command line:
pgsql>> INPUT: True Name of the City
Ace froze.
The true name?
Keitha... wasn't the full name?
He thought back—fragments of stories, clues from Sylvia's sketches, Enzo's journal, even the sound patterns Blair used.
Then something clicked. Keitha wasn't just a city. It was a fragment of something bigger.
He pulled out his notebook and wrote one line:
"KEITHA = KEY + THA."
"Tha..." he whispered. "That's old tech-speak for The Heart Algorithm. Enzo mentioned it once."
Then it hit him—Keitha wasn't the whole system.
The name of the entire ancient network? It wasn't a city. It was a codebase. A command center hidden in layers.
His fingers typed the answer.
arduino
>> INPUT: KAI'THA.EXE
The chamber lit up like a sunrise on steroids.
Suddenly, the code around him formed into a holographic map—one showing Keitha's full underground structure: multiple sectors, forgotten escape routes, and—boom—a glowing red core pulsing beneath the city like a buried heart.
"Guys," Ace said through the comm. "Keitha is just the surface. Below it is something called Kai'tha—short for Heart Algorithm Interface Terminal for Harmonic Alignment."
Blair's voice: "Okay that is the nerdiest acronym I've ever heard, and I'm obsessed with it."
Athena chimed in: "So what now?"
Ace's fingers flew. "Now I unlock the terminal and see what Keitha's really protecting."
The map shifted—zooming in on the center of the city, where a massive tree made of silver branches touched both the sky and the deep underground. The root system blinked with multiple paths.
The screen displayed:
sqlFINAL PATHWAY LOCATED ALL USER KEYS REQUIRED AWAITING FINAL HARMONIC SYNC...
Ace leaned back, breathless. "We're not just part of this world. We're the code that unlocks it."
And just like that, he knew—every one of them was a piece of the system. Keitha was never meant to be escaped. It was meant to be understood. Activated. Changed.
Nova's voice whispered, barely audible: "Then let's finish the song."