[First Era – Year 6 of the Divinity War; Hopron, secret laboratory]

  

[Kapurn, command palaces]

  Saffrael’s heart skipped a beat as she opened her revenescent, and a chill ran down her spine. The air felt heavier, the temperature colder, and an eerie, unnatural presence slithered from the depths of her pocket universe. Then, she felt something dark and ominous brush past her, escaping into the wide universe.

  “What in the name of the stars…?” Saffrael whispered, stepping back instinctively. It was as if something … wrong had come through.

  Before she could fully comprehend what was happening, Moraithe appeared at her side, his brow furrowed in concern. “What is it, Saffrael?” His voice carried a sense of urgency, and she grabbed his arm, pulling him into her revenescent, pervaded with the scent of winterblossoms, toward the source of the disturbance. Together, they hurried into its deeper recesses to check their trap.

  What they found was a mangled wreck. Inside, the prison they had so carefully crafted was in ruins. The walls, once reinforced by layers of entanglements, were shredded. Ripped open as if by some unseen force, the cell meant to hold their captive was now nothing more than a pile of broken scrap and fractured entanglements. The thought was impossible—how could this have happened?

  “No. We were meticulous with this,” Moraithe murmured, kneeling to inspect the destruction. “We installed countermeasures against the entanglement breaker. Nothing should have gotten through this.”

  Saffrael joined him, her eyes scanning the damage. “And yet, something did.”

  A glint of light caught Saffrael’s eye, drawing her attention to something lying on the ground amidst the wreckage. She reached down and picked up an entropy crystal, its facets swirling with chaos. Her breath felt heavy.

  Moraithe took it from her, examining it. “Where did this come from?” he asked, turning it over in his hand.

  “This is one of the experimental crystals from the lab—the ones from before they had begun production. How did it end up here?”

  “Wait,” Moraithe said, his face paling as he rushed from the cell and scoured the revenescent. “Where is he? Where’s our captive? He can’t have escaped your revenescent. He should still be here.”

  Saffrael’s heart raced as she scanned the area again, but her world remained silent, empty. “He’s … gone. But this—” she held up the entropy crystal “—this crystal shouldn’t be here.”

  “Perhaps he used it to break out?” Moraithe suggested, his eyes narrowing. “This and the entanglement breaker, it might have been enough. It must have been.”

  They exchanged a tense glance, realizing the grim implications. The countermeasures in place should have been more than enough to hold anyone. And yet, here they were, standing in the remnants of a failed containment, their prisoner nowhere to be found.

  “But how did he escape your revenescent?”

  Saffrael’s eyes bulged as she came to a realization. “The rev crystals. He could be there, in the warehouse. Hurry, we need to check.”

  As soon as they approached the case of rev crystals, she knew something was wrong. The case was open, its locks broken. And worst of all, one of the crystals was missing.

  Together they took a crystal, opened the doorway into that shared warehouse, and rushed inside. But no one was there. It was entirely silent, devoid of life. And what was more, nothing had been taken. It was all here.

  Yet Saffrael immediately felt something was off. The defenses Karthiim had labored so long to create, they too had been broken. Bits of his traps and constructs lay strewn about in heaps of rubble. Beyond that, the air inside the warehouse felt … darker. Too heavy. Too chaotic. She traced the feeling. The large shelves that once held carefully labeled entropy crystals now seemed oddly cold.

  And then, with a sense of dread creeping up her spine, she noticed what was different. “The entropy crystals,” she whispered, voice tinged with disbelief. “They're all used up.”

  Moraithe stepped closer, running his fingers over the empty shelves. “What? All of them? There were thousands—tens of thousands of crystals here. What could have possibly—”

  She cut him off, her mind racing. “But how? Who—how many entanglements would it take to use up so much entropy? It would have to be the greatest attack ever performed.”

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  “I don’t know. But they left the rest of the stock untouched.”

  Her thoughts turned quickly, piecing together the disturbing puzzle. The expended entropy crystals, this wasn’t just an inconvenience—it was a catastrophe in the making. The entropy crystals had been the key to their latest military advantage, plans relying upon them were already being carried out, and without them …

  Saffrael gripped his arm, her eyes wide with horror. “What if—what if our betrayer used them all at once?” Her voice trembled. “What kind of entanglement could use every single one of them? It would have to be something unimaginable—an entanglement of such magnitude that it—”

  Moraithe’s expression darkened. “He couldn't have. That much energy would tear through space itself. He'd have to be insane to attempt something like that.”

  But they both knew that some of the researchers had never been particularly sane. They had always been unstable, unpredictable, it was a product of their genius. But with this, their betrayer had held a tool capable of unraveling half of the universe.

  Saffrael exchanged a look of disbelief with Moraithe, a sinking feeling settling in her stomach. How could such a disaster have occurred? They'd thought their plan so clever, but she'd put their betrayer in the same place as the rev crystals. There really hadn't been any other option, but it had clearly been a grave error.

  “I don’t know what happened here, but it’s worse than that. One of the crystals is missing. If he escaped with it …” Saffrael turned abruptly and fled the warehouse. “We need to warn Elithir. Now!”

  She took the rev crystal and they exited her revenescent.

  Moraithe pulled out a paper, something only for emergencies. He concentrated on it and triggered the entanglement. A door appeared, and they rushed through it, into Elithir’s stronghold, breathless, carrying one of the remaining rev crystals with them as a gateway.

  Elithir stood in the center of a vast chamber, his face grim as Saffrael and Moraithe entered.

  Saffrael handed him the rev crystal, and Elithir immediately examined it, his brow furrowing.

  “I don't understand what happened,” She said, voice tinged with worry. “The warehouse … it’s been breached. The entropy crystals are expended, and we don’t know who did it or what he has done to use them all up. We need to act fast.”

  Elithir remained silent for a moment, then nodded curtly. “We must clear it out immediately.”

  They entered, rushed down the path to the entropy crystals, and halted. Saffrael stared, confused. “The spent entropy crystals. They’re gone.”

  Elithir turned to them, his eyes curious and calculating. “Why take spent crystals? Strange that nothing else has been taken.”

  In an instant, everything in the warehouse vanished. Elithir turned to them and nodded. “At least now they can’t take anything else.”

  “What?” Saffrael exclaimed. “You cleared it out—just like that?” By this point, she should stop being surprised by anything he did.

  “They have access to this warehouse now, so we can’t take any more chances. I want you to find out which of your researchers is missing. I’d like to put a name to this traitor of ours.”

  “We will. But what do we do about this? What now?”

  Elithir sighed. “I can’t put it off any longer. If we are going to win this war we need every advantage we can get. We need to know the future.”

  Moraithe gasped. “So you’re going to go through with it?”

  “I don’t have much choice.”

  “What is this?” Saffrael asked.

  Elithir fixed her with a gaze like the weight of the universe. “I’m going to entangle myself across eternity. Only then can we know the future. Only then can we see what our enemy is planning. Only then can we win.”