The Silent Gallery was no longer the peaceful, stagnant museum it had been. Since Caspian had brought the marble-fused body of Lady Elara and the "Memory of a Fallen Island" into its halls, the space had begun to evolve.
The obsidian floor now hummed with a low, thrumming vibration—a phantom echo of the Great Pump. Faint, ghostly pipes of brass and bone began to sprout from the corners of the ceiling, exhaling a thin, silver mist that smelled of old rain and ozone.
Caspian Thorne stood before the statue of Elara. He was no longer wearing the bird-mask of Dr. Victor Voss; it had been lost in the fall. His face was pale, his features sharpened by the "Grave-Walker" advancement. His indigo eyes were cold, but they softened as he placed a hand on the cold marble of Elara's shoulder.
"I will bring you back," he whispered. "Whatever is at the bottom of that Rift, I will take it."
[NEW MISSION: The Restoration of the Weaver.] [OBJECTIVE: Locate the 'Athanor of Souls' in the Ruins of the Old World.]
Caspian turned toward the center of the Gallery. The Vellum of Souls was waiting, glowing with a new, complex diagram. It no longer showed just one pathway. It showed a map of the Great Rift.
To the world above, the Abyss was a toxic death-sentence. To the Vellum, it was the Foundation—the graveyard of the original Earth, where the "Old Gods" (our modern technology and civilizations) had been buried and mutated by the Great Extinguish.
"It's time to see what we are standing on," Caspian said.
The Descent into the Rift
Caspian stepped through the obsidian gateway, exiting the Gallery not back into the sky, but onto the floor of the Great Rift.
The transition was jarring. He landed on a surface that felt like cracked asphalt, but it was covered in a thick layer of grey ash that drifted like snow. There was no sky here—only a ceiling of swirling, toxic clouds a mile above, lit from within by the faint, bioluminescent glow of the "Void-Coral" that grew on the underside of the floating islands.
Caspian activated his Grave-Sight.
The world transformed. The darkness didn't vanish, but it became transparent. He saw the "skeletons" of skyscrapers—massive towers of rusted steel and shattered glass—rising out of the ash like the ribs of a giant. He saw the husks of "Metal-Chariots" (cars) piled in the streets, their rubber tires long ago turned to stone.
This was the Necropolis of the Ancestors.
[ACTING TASK: Traverse the 'City of the Silent' without making a sound.] [REWARD: Sequence 8 Sub-Ability — 'Phase-Step'.]
Caspian moved with the grace of a ghost. Every time his boot was about to crunch on the glass or ash, he used his Spectral Transit to let his foot pass through the physical matter. He was a shadow moving through a world of dust.
As he moved deeper into the ruins of what might have once been London or New York, he realized he wasn't alone.
The "Hollowed" here were different from the ones in the sky. They were older, their bodies almost entirely composed of grey ash and translucent glass. They wandered the streets in aimless patterns, repeating the final actions of their lives: one was trying to "sell" a handful of dust to a lamp-post; another was "reading" a newspaper made of charred bone.
Caspian ignored them. He was looking for the Source of the Thrumming.
The Meeting in the Ash
He reached a massive, domed structure that looked like a cathedral, but its "cross" was a jagged, three-pronged antenna. This was the Athanor of Souls, a facility from the Old World that had once experimented with "Soul-Wireless Transmission"—the precursor to the Aether-technology of the sky.
Standing in front of the rusted entrance was a figure that didn't fit the landscape.
It was a small girl, perhaps ten years old, wearing a clean, white sundress that seemed to repel the ash. She was sitting on a pile of rubble, playing with a small, mechanical bird that chirped with a tinny, artificial sound.
Caspian froze. In the Abyss, anything that looked "clean" was a Tier-1 threat.
"You're not a ghost," the girl said, without looking up. Her voice was crystal clear, devoid of the distortion common in the Rift. "You smell like the Grey Fog. You're from the Gallery."
Caspian's Tongue of the Silent King began to hiss in his throat. DANGER. ANOMALY. THE CHILD IS A MIRROR.
"Who are you?" Caspian asked, his hand hovering over his medical bag, where he kept a vial of "Void-Acid."
"My name is Clarity," the girl said, finally looking up. Her eyes weren't indigo or gold. They were a flat, perfect white. "I am the 'Operating System' of this sector. And you, Curator, are trespassing in the Archives of the Dead."
She stood up, and the mechanical bird on her shoulder turned its head 180 degrees to look at Caspian. Its eyes were tiny, whirring lenses—just like Julian Vane's monocle.
"You want to fix the Weaver," Clarity said, her voice echoing through the ruins. "But to fix a thread, you have to understand the Loom. And the Loom is currently being guarded by the Ghost of a King."
Behind her, the doors of the Athanor groaned open. A wave of heat erupted from the interior—the heat of a forge that had been burning for five centuries.
"The Governor was a fool," Clarity continued, her smile thin and mechanical. "He tried to suture himself to the Heart. But the King... the King wants to suture the entire world to the Void. If you enter, you either advance to Sequence 7, or you become part of the fuel."
Caspian felt the weight of the Vellum in his mind. This was it. The "Weak to Strong" transition point. He could turn back and try to find another way to save Elara, or he could walk into the fire.
"I've already fallen from the sky," Caspian said, stepping past the girl. "A little fire won't stop me."
Clarity giggled, a sound that sent shivers down Caspian's spine. "Good luck, Curator. Try not to let the King eat your voice. He hasn't had a new one in a long, long time."