The following day began like any other.
Sunlight filtered through the dome, glinting off the silver panels of Base City 5's outer wall. The hum of anti-grav traffic rose with the morning rush. But beneath the routine noise, a deeper pulse lingered — faint, rhythmic, buried under layers of earth and alloy.
Aiden felt it before he opened his eyes.
It was there in the silence between heartbeats — a low vibration that traveled through his bones like memory. He had felt it all night, humming faintly in his dreams.
The System's voice broke the stillness.
[Resonance field stable.][Link with Subterranean Core Node: active.]
He sat up, expression calm but eyes sharp. The phrase "active" wasn't one the System used lightly.
He got ready in silence, moving through his morning routine with mechanical precision. Shower. Breakfast. Uniform. Each motion grounded him in normalcy, though nothing felt normal anymore.
When he left the apartment, the world outside looked the same — people walking, drones delivering, vendors shouting. But he could feel the hidden lattice of energy beneath it all. The city wasn't just alive. It was breathing.
And something below was breathing with it.
At the same time, deep under the Martial Association's spire, three armored transports rolled into a restricted tunnel. Inside were elite operatives — Silver Division, the Association's reconnaissance corps. Each wore matte-gray combat suits lined with anti-energy mesh and carried plasma carbines built for use against both beasts and rogue cultivators.
The team's leader, a tall woman named Captain Nyra Voss, stared at the holographic map projected on the dashboard.
"Target zone," she said, tapping the image. "Substructure B-9. Depth: 2.3 kilometers. We've confirmed anomalous energy readings identical to last week's District 12 pulse."
One of her lieutenants frowned. "Could it be a malfunction?"
"Doubtful," Nyra said. "Those ruins haven't powered up in fifty years. Something woke them."
The transport shook as they descended into the lower levels. The walls changed from polished alloy to rusted concrete.As they passed the last checkpoint, static flickered through their comms.
"Signal interference?" one soldier muttered.
Nyra's brow furrowed. "Keep channels open. We're going in blind if it worsens."
The deeper they went, the more the air felt thick — heavy with metallic dust and old energy. The tunnels opened into a massive chamber, lit only by their helmet lamps.
And in the center, half-buried under layers of collapsed stone, was something impossible.
A black sphere, the size of a small house, lay silent but pulsing faintly with pale light. Its surface was smooth — no seams, no panels, just the faint hum of dormant power.
"Contact," Nyra said quietly. "Everyone, record scans. I want spectrographic and quantum signatures logged before—"
The floor shook.A low, sonorous pulse rolled through the chamber.
Every helmet display glitched. The readings spiked.
thump—thump… thump—thump…
The same rhythm that Aiden had heard.
Nyra's hand froze midair. "That's… a biological frequency?"
Before anyone could answer, the sphere lit up — just for a second. Lines of blue-white symbols flared across its surface, then vanished.
Up above, in the middle of class, Aiden stiffened.
The pen in his hand snapped cleanly in two.
He barely heard Ryan muttering beside him — his focus was elsewhere.The pulse in his mind surged — a rush of energy flooding his body, hot and electric. He could see the light beneath the ground, glowing through layers of metal and rock, calling to him.
[Warning: Resonance spike detected.][External link expanding. Energy draw increased by 13%.]
He closed his eyes and forced his breathing steady. The moment his breath aligned with the Primordial rhythm, the spike stabilized — as if the Core itself responded to him.
No one else in the classroom noticed a thing.
When he opened his eyes again, his hands were trembling.He exhaled slowly, hiding the motion under his desk.
Something had changed below.And somehow, he had felt it.
That night, he didn't train.He didn't need to. The energy was already moving on its own.
Instead, he sat cross-legged in his room, eyes closed, and let the connection open naturally.
For a moment, he was no longer in his room.
He stood within a massive cavern of glass and steel. Pillars of light rose from the floor, vanishing into the dark above. In the center, the black sphere floated — whole, radiant, alive.
And as he watched, symbols unfolded across its surface, forming intricate rings that rotated slowly, like a clock counting down.
A voice, faint and ancient, echoed from the void.
"Synchronization in progress… Entity recognized… Pattern match: 47%... adjusting…"
Aiden's eyes widened."Who are you?" he whispered.
No answer. Only the steady hum of power, pulsing like a heartbeat.
The vision began to collapse, and as it did, a single phrase burned itself into his mind:
"Find me… above the stars."
Then the world snapped back into focus.
He gasped, cold sweat beading down his neck. The System flickered wildly.
[Warning: Unauthorized signal intrusion detected.][Source: External dimension, classification unknown.][Countermeasure: Isolation protocol active.]
The room dimmed, and for a moment, the edges of reality blurred like static. Then everything stilled.
Aiden sat motionless, chest rising and falling, trying to make sense of what he'd seen.The Core wasn't just a ruin.It was a beacon.
And whatever it was calling to… wasn't from this world.
Far below, Captain Nyra and her team retreated from the glowing sphere, shaken but alive.
The readings on their instruments were still fluctuating — the frequency now perfectly synchronized with a human heartbeat.
But whose, none of them knew.