Chapter 24: The Collaborative Scavenge
Dean Eris, unable to punish Lance after the seamless resolution of the banquet incident, was forced to integrate the Logistics and Stabilization Trio into the Conclave's mandatory collaborative exercise. The exercise was titled "Archaeology of Foundation" and, to Lance's strategic delight, was held inside the Forgotten Debris Vault.
The goal was officially to "foster inter-academy cooperation" by having students catalog and stabilize volatile ancient relics. In reality, it was an opportunity for Lance's new allies to help him search for the next piece of the Ancient Puzzle.
The six students—Lance, Opal, Kian, Elara, Ren, and Lyra—were assigned to the largest, dustiest section: The Primary Containment Spoil.
"The Aetherium claims these are simply broken parts," Ren whispered, adjusting his technical glasses as they began to sort through the debris. "But my Collegium records indicate the foundational stabilization process involved massive energy throughput. The spoil should hold evidence of excessive, forced stability."
Elara, the elemental mage, was immediately invaluable. She used her high-output Motes to subtly trace the energy signatures on the discarded copper shells.
"Everything here is dead," Elara concluded, running her hand over a piece of tarnished conduit. "But it was killed with force. The motes were drained, then stabilized to the point of inertness. It's too extreme for natural decay."
Kian was using his Mote-Drain ability to sift through the dust, feeling for faint magnetic traces that would indicate hidden compartments. "If the Silverwoods were the architects of the prison, they wouldn't leave a trail of breadcrumbs. They'd leave a trail of decoy crumbs."
Lance focused on the structural elements. He recalled the blueprint from the second textbook, the Stabilization Grid.
"The grid requires anchors," Lance explained. "The stability needs to be grounded in the mundane world. We're looking for something that connects the magical energy to the physical structure of the Aetherium."
Lyra, the Rift Watch specialist, pointed to a series of stone blocks embedded in the floor. "These are local anchors, designed to pin the magical field to the bedrock. But they're all cracked."
"Cracks are where the lie is," Ren murmured, tapping his technical stylus against a fractured block. "The Aetherium teaches that the Founders' containment system was flawless. But the structural damage here proves the containment was under immense, continuous strain."
Lance applied his 10% precision—his refined sense of minute force—to the fractured stone block. He pushed a tiny, focused pulse of order into the crack, not to repair it, but to force the crystalline fracture to reveal its history.
The fracture didn't heal, but for a split second, the dust inside the crack glowed with a faint, residual blue. Lance immediately recognized the signal from the second textbook's schematic: the Containment Line Signal.
"There's a line," Lance whispered. "A buried Mote line running beneath the floor, not for power, but for structural feedback."
Elara immediately used her elemental power, pushing a high-frequency, non-damaging thermal scan into the floor. This was the specific insight Kian needed.
"The thermal scan is picking up a pattern," Elara reported, her eyes narrowed. "A metallic loop, not copper, running beneath the anchors. It's reacting to the heat."
"That's it!" Kian exclaimed. "The Decoy Grid. They built a superficial copper grid to monitor power, but the true feedback loop is something else, hidden in the bedrock!"
Using the combined data—Lance's precision to find the crack, Elara's thermal scan to track the metallic loop, and Kian's Mote-Drain to clear the surrounding debris—they unearthed a series of small, black iron boxes embedded beneath the cracked stone anchors.
Each box was sealed with an unfamiliar, ancient glyph—a symbol not of power, but of structural data.
"These are System Logging Modules," Ren identified, his hands trembling with excitement. "They don't hold Mote energy; they hold the raw, structural data of the Aetherium's stability field from the Founding Era. This is the unedited blueprint."
They had found the definitive proof of the conspiracy: the original data logs detailing the continuous, extreme effort required to maintain the Aetherium's structure.
"We need one of these," Lance said, knowing the modules would contain the final answer to the Aethelgard Puzzle.
Before they could select one, Proffit's voice boomed through the vault: "Time's up! All students, report to the Atrium for the evening's social event!"
Lance, using the distraction, managed to quickly conceal one of the small, black iron Logging Modules inside his heavy history textbook, the Mundane shield proving its value once again.
The stage was set. They had the final piece of the puzzle, and the next social event would provide the necessary cover to decode it.