The tenth day pressed at the limit of his endurance.
Noctis had traveled farther than planned—through glowing valleys, over crimson rivers that whispered of unseen life, past fields where the grass vibrated under his boots. The forest, once a maelstrom of chaos, had thinned into something more deliberate, as if the land itself were settling into patterns carved by time.
The sun was sinking behind spiraling trees when he saw it.
At first, it appeared only as warped shapes caught in mist, twisted by heat-haze. But as he advanced, the veil of air lifted, and the sight sharpened into something that stopped him cold.
Ahead lay the remnants of a village—ancient, vast, untouched by any living hand for centuries.
The architecture was unlike anything he knew.
Towers of metal and glass pierced the sky, their lines too precise, too refined to match the human structures in his fading memories. Some of them had slumped into the earth, half-swallowed by soil and root, as if the world had spent decades trying to drag them down. Their surfaces gleamed faintly under the pale sun, not with rust or decay, but with something stranger—an almost living sheen, as if the buildings themselves were breathing.
He stepped onto what had once been a main street.
Beneath his boots, the ground was inlaid with glowing patterns—symbols curling into circles and spirals, somewhere between circuitry and art. Each line pulsed slowly, like a buried heartbeat.
The village lay in utter quiet, save for the wind threading through hollow arches. Statues stood half-buried in dust near entrances—humanoid, elongated, their faces smooth and without features. Even broken, every curve of stone spoke of intention, as if this place had been sculpted more than simply built.
Noctis moved closer to one structure.
When he brushed its wall, the surface rippled under his hand. Solid, but strangely responsive—as if it were asleep rather than dead.
The Echoframe scanned automatically, data scrolling across his vision.
"Composition: Unknown alloy. Trace indicators—biometal. Structure Date Estimation: Approximately 500 years old."
Five centuries.
He let his hand fall. "Impossible," he breathed.
Nothing in his memory of humanity reached this level of refinement.
He passed through a fractured gateway into what felt like a central court. In the middle, a massive sphere hovered a few inches above the ground, cracked but still glowing faintly blue. It turned in silence, leaking thin strands of light that drifted away and faded.
Around it, shattered capsules lay scattered—glass shells just large enough to have held a person.
He knelt by one and examined the debris. "Containment units?" he muttered. Inside, he found remnants—small black rings, like restraints or interfaces. A faint hum vibrated from somewhere deep in the metal.
He moved on, stepping under a cracked archway carved with significance time hadn't erased.
Beyond it stretched a hall marked in spiraling engravings. Words wound upward across the walls in fluid script he could not read. As he stared, the Echoframe began stitching together fragments of translation.
"…the Singularity of Solitude… retreat of last ones…"
"…to dream past death…"
He frowned. "Retreat of the last ones?"
A cold shiver traced his spine. Overhead, the light flickered, then steadied.
He pressed further inside.
The ceiling above him shone like a night sky, reflecting starlight where no sky was visible. The whole structure hummed with a low, constant energy.
On a pedestal ahead rested a circular device embedded with countless dim points of light.
When he touched it, the room exhaled illumination.
Visions unfurled in the air—cities floating above golden seas, figures that looked human but more radiant, their eyes burning with light like living fire.
Then the image glitched, cracked, and disintegrated into static. Color drained from the device, leaving it dull and inert.
Noctis stood in the quiet that followed, ringed by relics of technology and art so advanced they bordered on sacred. His reflection shimmered on the mirror-like floor.
"This isn't human work," he said softly. "Or maybe… it's what humanity became."
The Echoframe did not answer. It only pulsed faintly, recording, watching.
Outside, the wind had changed. Silver-edged clouds rolled over the forest canopy, threads of energy flickering through them like lightning drawn toward the ruins.
As darkness thickened, Noctis looked a final time at the glowing heart of the abandoned village.
Awe and suspicion warred in his gaze.
"If they lived here once," he whispered, "then whatever erased them might still be watching."
The wind whistled softly through hollow towers, and the light within the hovering sphere pulsed again—faint but alive, as if acknowledging his presence.
The village felt suspended in time, a memory held mid-breath. Noctis moved deeper into its ribs of metal and glass until the path opened into a square flanked by dark glass spires and bands of living silver metal. At the center rose a final structure—taller than the rest, wrapped in vines that glimmered with faint bioluminescent veins: a library.
Its doors were not closed so much as torn apart, split down the middle as if time itself had pried them open. He hesitated once, then stepped inside.
The interior was quiet beyond silence. Dust hung motionless, yet faint lights woke in the floor with each step, as if the building still acknowledged the passage of something living. Shelves climbed to the ceiling, crowded with crystalline slabs, spheres, and codex-like constructs made from stone and light instead of paper. The rows marched into the distance until they blurred into shadow.
He slipped between the first columns, his reflection bending in the mirrored floor. At one shelf, he lifted a thin slab etched with runes that twisted like silver vines.
The writing glowed once, then faded.
"Readable material," he murmured, awakening the Echoframe.
Its projection flared, scanning the slab, data crossing his vision.
"Language detected: Pre-Extinction Hybrid Script. Partial cognate match at 43%. Translation interface engaged."
The runes shifted as he watched, soft rearrangements like metal melting into comprehension. Text bloomed across his display, still fractured but enough to form a title: The Chronicle of Solaris: Records of the Age of Light.
"Solaris…" he echoed, brow furrowing.
He sat on the cold steps, slab balanced in his hands, while the Echoframe worked line by line. The text unfolded into history.
"The Empire of Solaris—first civilization to unify the Heaven Cradle, builders of ascension towers, guardians of the Core Flame." They fused organic life with alloy and code, turning the sun itself into an engine. But when they reached too deep toward the Core, the world's balance broke.
"The Core retaliated."
The bridge between sky and ground collapsed. Gravity convulsed. Forests woke. Machines drew breath, beasts learned logic, and the cycle of Assimilation began.
As the words streamed past, the walls seemed to tremble, the hidden lights behind the stacks throbbing like a distant heart. He spread his fingers against a nearby column; it vibrated faintly, alive beneath ancient stone.
"The world fights what built it," he said under his breath.
He reached for another slab. This one was darker, edges scorched, its carvings jagged instead of fluid. The Echoframe hiccupped with static, then forced a translation through.
"The Last Ones. Those who remained when Solaris fell."
They dug sanctuaries beneath the forests—the Vaulted Sanctums—and sealed their knowledge into living structures.
Their final warning to whatever minds came after: Do not reach the Core. It breathes, and it remembers.
"Don't reach the Core," Noctis repeated quietly, eyes fixed on the line. The thought slotted neatly into the patterns he had already sensed. The forest, its beasts, even the air itself—all of it tied to something conscious beneath the ground.