The small, cramped space of the maintenance conduit—their home—had become an unbearable crucible of psychic and emotional pressure. It smelled of stagnant moisture, metallic decay, and the faint, persistent scent of Elara's medicinal herb tea, a smell that had become synonymous with his failure to provide a better life.
Kaelen knelt, the stolen data-slate open beside him, projecting the chilling, factual details of Project CHRONOS. The data was clinical, precise, and utterly damning: the calculated, mass extermination schedule for the remaining population to fuel the Aspect-Assimilation.
He was alone, having ensured Elara was deeply asleep, exhausted by her fever and the lingering psychic shock from the Sector 3 Incursion.
His hands, usually steady and precise, trembled slightly as he ran them over the rough, worn metal of his forearm. The tremor was not from fear, but from the raw, volcanic surge of Resentment that his Echoing Shadow was continuously processing. It was demanding action, demanding violence, demanding a target for the betrayal he had discovered.
They planned this. They designated us fuel.
He forced his mind past the rage. Rage was inefficient. The Scar of Command—the cold, utilitarian authority he had assimilated—demanded a plan, not an outburst.
The plan was now clear: he had to execute the Aspect-Assimilation on his own terms. He had to become the sacrificial agent, but he had to ensure that the psychic wave created by the binding of the Eternal Dread would not simply be used to power the Seed-Vault escape, but to shield his sister.
To do this, he needed a profound increase in power—a jump from his current Sequence Two to a level where he could control the destination of the resulting cosmic energy. He needed to prepare a Perfect Infusion.
This required ingredients that were exponentially rarer and more dangerous than simple Component Dust. It required a piece of the enemy itself.
He focused on the data-slate, zooming in on a map detailing the remnants of the Soul-Harvester containment zone—the Dominion-Tier entity from the Sector 3 Incursion. The Adept Corps had merely bound the creature; they hadn't dissolved it.
The map showed a faint, contained energy signature beneath the rubble: the Core Fragment. A shard of the Harvester's solidified malice, which Rhys and the Corps were undoubtedly planning to recover and destroy in the coming hours.
I need that Core Fragment.
It was the most dangerous undertaking of his life. A direct confrontation with the remnants of a Dominion-Tier entity and the near-certainty of encountering Rhys again, who would be waiting for the slightest anomaly.
Kaelen pulled out his Trench Knife, testing the sharpness of the edge with his thumb. He had to be surgical. He had to be fast. He had to use the betrayal of the Citadel as the pure, unadulterated fuel for his next ascent.
He reached out with his Echoing Shadow. The Aspect was immensely stable now, an invisible, dense mass of shadow pressed against his soul. He didn't just sense the fear of the sector; he actively projected the Scar of Command authority, creating a bubble of convincing, low-level military routine around their conduit.
He meticulously packed his scavenged supplies: spare batteries, the remaining anti-septic salve for Elara, and most importantly, a complex arrangement of thin copper wire and residual psychic dampening paste—his improvised Suppressor Net. He had learned from Rhys's data that a Sequence Two Sovereign could momentarily dampen a Sequence Three, given the right tools.
Before leaving, he turned to look at Elara. She was sleeping peacefully, her hair spread out on the thin pillow, her slight chest rising and falling rhythmically. She was the anchor that kept the Eternal Dread fragment sealed and silent within his own mind. She was the one truth in a world of cosmic lies.
He leaned down, adjusting the blanket, his breath held.
I will not be their sacrifice. I will be yours.
He moved toward the exit shaft, feeling the profound shift in his identity. He was no longer a survivor of the Gloom. He was an architect of fate, planning an act of self-immolation that would shatter the cosmic hierarchy of his entire world.
He sealed the conduit entrance and began his calculated descent. The air grew immediately heavier, colder, permeated with the distant, low-frequency hum of the trapped Soul-Harvester Core Fragment.
He was moving not towards a battle, but towards an execution—an extraction that would make him strong enough to cheat the grand, cynical design of Project CHRONOS. The journey of the calculating Sovereign had just entered its final, most desperate phase. The clock was ticking, and Kaelen was the only one who knew the schedule.