The storm hadn’t let up in two days. Wind screamed against the Shack’s thermobarrier, snow piling in angled drifts that half-buried the automated drone paths by morning. Inside, it was warm. Too warm.

  Kenji stood in front of the primary systems display, chewing slowly on a strip of dried meat. He wasn't dressed for anything serious—no armor, just thermals and slippers—but his eyes tracked the shifting graphs with increasing annoyance.

  The Shack’s internal temperature had dropped by four degrees in the last hour, despite no change in power draw. Subroutines were fluctuating. Passive scan nodes at the edge of Sector Z-41 were pinging… something.

  “Lira,” he said without turning. “Ping Flank. I want a recon team ready in five.”

  Behind him, Lira’s voice came from the corner. “On it.”

  Kenji nodded, muttering, “Smart girl.”

  He tapped into the tactical overlay. A red dot pulsed in the western quadrant.

  [Signal Origin: Sector Z-41] — Vault site anomaly detected

  [Recommendation: Investigate | Risk: Moderate]

  The signal felt familiar. He’d seen something like it before—when they first unearthed the shard.

  He grimaced. “Looks like that thing woke up something else.”

  Kenji pressed the command panel.

  “Flanksteak, take Recon Unit Nine. Heavy loadout. Secure the Vault site. Full sweep. You move first.”

  [Recon Deployment Confirmed – Route: Active]

  Outside, through the Shack’s narrow viewport, the lights of a single crawler blinked through the storm as it rumbled out of the gate. Four Astarions, each armed and sealed in their cold-rated suits, accompanied by drones. No talking. No ceremony. Just motion.

  Kenji turned to his left console.

  “Seiko. Elyra. You’re following them. Scavenger detail. You’ll take SCV-12 and SCV-14. Bring ten combat drones and ten scavengers. If the Vault’s ripe, we’re peeling it clean.”

  Seiko’s voice chirped in through the speaker. “That sounds like overtime, boss.”

  “Then bring me something worth the hours.”

  The crawler’s treads hissed through snow-crusted ice, grinding across jagged terrain toward the signal’s source. Inside, Flanksteak stood unmoving, flanked by three other Astarions—Stonewall, Brisket, and Vex. The vehicle was nearly silent, insulated and engineered for hostile traversal. Even the drones were quiet.

  The Vault wasn’t a vault. Not in the traditional sense. It was a scar. A ruptured slab of semi-buried alloy, partially melted structures poking from under frost like ancient bones. The heat signatures pulsing below the ice weren’t natural.

  The moment the crawler halted, the rear hatch dropped. Drones deployed in formation. Astarions followed, motionless but alert. They didn’t ask questions.

  [Scanning Terrain…] — No current hostiles detected

  [Residual Energy Detected] — Source: Subsurface | Depth: 2.9m

  Flanksteak approached the signal zone, a hand raised. Two drones hovered low, drilling sensor needles into the frost.

  [Uncatalogued Object Found] — Shape: Crystalline | Status: Dormant but reactive

  They’d found it.

  The object pulsed faintly, casting violet reflections onto the snow. Roughly the size of a fist, encased in semi-opaque hexglass. The same signature as the first shard—but subtly different. Angrier.

  Flanksteak didn’t speak. He pinged the Shack directly.

  [Vault Site Secured. Object Tagged. Awaiting Extraction Team.]

  The crawler’s treads hissed through snow-crusted ice, grinding across jagged terrain toward the signal’s source. Inside, Flanksteak stood unmoving, flanked by three other Astarions—Stonewall, Brisket, and Vex. The vehicle was nearly silent, insulated and engineered for hostile traversal. Even the drones were quiet.

  The Vault wasn’t a vault. Not in the traditional sense. It was a scar. A ruptured slab of semi-buried alloy, partially melted structures poking from under frost like ancient bones. The heat signatures pulsing below the ice weren’t natural.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  The moment the crawler halted, the rear hatch dropped. Drones deployed in formation. Astarions followed, motionless but alert. They didn’t ask questions.

  [Scanning Terrain…] — No current hostiles detected

  [Residual Energy Detected] — Source: Subsurface | Depth: 2.9m

  Flanksteak approached the signal zone, a hand raised. Two drones hovered low, drilling sensor needles into the frost.

  [Uncatalogued Object Found] — Shape: Crystalline | Status: Dormant but reactive

  They’d found it.

  The object pulsed faintly, casting violet reflections onto the snow. Roughly the size of a fist, encased in semi-opaque hexglass. The same signature as the first shard—but subtly different. Angrier.

  Flanksteak didn’t speak. He pinged the Shack directly.

  [Vault Site Secured. Object Tagged. Awaiting Extraction Team.]

  The scavenger crawlers rolled out twenty minutes after the recon team signaled secure status. Seiko rode in the lead unit, lounging in the passenger side with her boots on the dash. Elyra, crouched in the back, adjusted her thermal gear and double-checked the drone sync.

  Outside, a curtain of snow swept sideways. Visibility was minimal, but the crawler's sensors painted the path in ghost-blue overlays.

  “Got eyes on the Astarions yet?” Elyra asked.

  “Three minutes out,” Seiko replied, not looking up. “Try not to get shot. I just cleaned this rig.”

  The recon team was waiting at the site. The shard had been isolated and secured in a magnetic crate. Nearby, the drones had unearthed deposits of Aetherite—veins of strange metal laced through the fractured floor of the Vault. The material shimmered faintly, shifting color with every pulse of the shard nearby. Samples taken by the drones confirmed its dual nature: solid like titanium when cooled, flexible like fiber when processed.

  Rough estimate: nearly three metric tons were visible and accessible without deep excavation. It would take multiple trips to extract it all.

  [Material Identified: Aetherite] — Properties: Self-conductive | High energy retention | Adaptive morphology

  Aetherite cores, strange alloys, and twisted plating filled the salvage clamps.

  [All Cargo Secured – Begin Return Sequence]

  The convoy turned back.

  They didn’t make it ten kilometers before the first contact.

  [Proximity Alert] — Movement Detected | Direction: East Flank | Speed: Fast

  Burrowers.

  The snow exploded around crawler SCV-14 as three twisted beasts erupted from beneath, all limbs and claws. Combat drones fired instantly—lasers slicing through frost and chitin. One drone lost a leg to a sudden pounce. Another beast slammed into the crawler, denting the panel.

  Seiko snapped upright. “Elyra, wake the payload!”

  Elyra was already moving, releasing the combat drones from their locked brackets. “Combat pattern Zeta. Full sweep!”

  The fight lasted less than a minute.

  Four beasts dead. One drone damaged. Crawler dented but moving. The Astarions hadn’t fired a shot.

  “Remind me to thank Kenji for overkill,” Seiko muttered.

  Elyra looked at the creature’s corpse twitching beside the crawler. “Think that was random?”

  Seiko frowned. “Nope. That thing wanted what we were hauling.”

  Back at the Shack, Kenji watched the feed with narrowed eyes.

  Kenji watched the feed in silence. The attack had been messy, but nothing serious—yet. He exhaled through his nose and turned to the side console.

  “Turn the defense grid on,” he muttered. “Just in case this turns into something worse.”

  The crawlers crossed the Shack’s outer sensor perimeter just before dusk. Turrets tracked them automatically—friendly tags confirmed—while the outer bay doors began cycling open. Heated plates melted snow off treads as they rolled into the staging garage.

  Inside, Mirelle met them with a datapad in one hand and a frown already on her face. “Two dents, one drone missing a limb, and what looks like acid scoring on panel four. You were gone three hours.”

  Seiko hopped off the crawler with a stretch. “Blame the snowworms. Or whatever those things were.”

  Elyra followed, holding up a sealed case. Inside pulsed the new shard.

  Kenji didn’t come to the bay.

  He met them halfway instead—only because he didn’t want the shard getting left in a hallway. He grabbed the container without a word, turned, and walked straight to the recycler chute.

  “Don’t tell the system,” he muttered, popping the hatch and tossing the hexglass pod inside. “Let’s see what happens.”

  [Material Inserted: Divine Core Fragment][Analyzing Energy Signature…][Archotech Residue Detected] — Warning: Unclassified Protocol Present*[Massive Energy Source Confirmed – Compatibility 87%]*[Crimson Core Override Request: Accepted]

  The recycler hummed—and then stopped.

  The entire Shack pulsed once, like it had taken a breath. Kenji looked up as lights dimmed and one of the walls flickered with scrolling glyphs.

  *[System Response Triggered – Evolution Pending]

  *[Tier 6 System Event Scheduled] — Initiating Core Adaptation Sequence*[Projected Completion Time: 72 Hours]

  Kenji blinked.

  “Well,” he said, cracking his neck, “guess we’re doing this.”

  The display didn't stop pulsing. Even after the countdown began, low-frequency vibrations hummed through the Shack's frame like the system was gearing up for something ancient and buried.

  Kenji leaned back in his chair, popped a vertebra, and muttered, “Yeah, that’s definitely not just a firmware update.”

  He glanced over at the console and tapped a few commands.

  [System Status – TIER 6 INITIATED][Warning: Unstable Core Reaction Forecast – External Aggression Likely]

  System instability exceeds baseline tolerance. External threats may be drawn to excessive power output.

  “Oh, great. Now it warns me.”

  Down the hall, drone bays began shifting. Some of the heavier units were rolling out of standby—turrets stretching as if waking from a nap. Defense routines were being compiled in the background, but slowly. Not automated. Not complete.

  Kenji rubbed his temples. “Godsdamn drama queen of a Shack,” he muttered. “You really have to flex every time you evolve? Let every beast on the continent hear you roar like, ‘Try to stop me bro, muwahaha’? Real subtle.”

  He pushed off the chair and stood.

  “Lira!”

  She poked her head in. “Yeah?”

  “Tell Seiko to double patrol rotations. I don’t care if it’s just frost-bats throwing snowballs—I want everything logged. If anything bigger than a snowflake moves out there, I want it tracked.”

  “Got it.”

  Kenji turned back to the interface. Symbols still flickered along the edge. Some looked familiar. Some didn’t. He squinted, but the Shack wasn’t explaining them—just showing them.

  He didn’t need an answer. He could feel it in his ribs.

  This wasn’t just a system upgrade.

  It was a flare shot into the sky.

  And Kenji had a feeling something was already looking back.

  ENd Of Chapter