The outskirts of Astraeus smelled like rust and old electricity.
Which was to say, fantastic.
Vale crouched by a half-buried power conduit, fingers skimming the exposed wiring. Some of it was still active, pulsing faintly with residual energy. The kind of energy that could probably fry his nervous system if he wasn’t careful. Not that he was particularly worried. Getting electrocuted was only a problem if it happened twice.
He exhaled through his teeth, wiping grime off his gloves. The Bureau didn’t bother maintaining this part of the city—too far from the pristine districts, too irrelevant to their perfect cycle of order. The only things left behind were junk and ghosts.
Vale liked ghosts.
He stood, dusting off his hands, and took a moment to admire the junkyard of forgotten things. Twisted pipes. Unfinished constructs. A dented service drone missing its head. The whole area was a graveyard of old technology, abandoned before it could become a problem.
Much like the people who didn’t fit.
He stretched his arms overhead, feeling the slight crack of his spine. “Alright. What’s today’s treasure, then?”
Ten minutes into scavenging, Vale hit something interesting.
His boot scuffed against metal—hollow metal.
He stilled. Then nudged the dirt away, tilting his head. The ground was lying.
He crouched, fingers skimming over the surface. A seam ran along the edge of a panel, barely visible beneath layers of dust and debris.
A hatch.
Vale grinned.
“Oh, this is definitely a bad idea.”
Which meant he was absolutely doing it.
He worked quickly, clearing the area, fingers slipping into the groove of the latch. The rusted metal resisted—briefly—before giving way with a sharp creak. The hatch popped open, revealing a dark, narrow shaft leading downward.
The air that rose to meet him smelled stale and metallic. Like a place that wasn’t supposed to be found.
Vale’s grin widened.
The descent was short but unnerving.
The walls were smooth metal, but his fingers caught along jagged carvings on the surface—shapes, symbols, spirals.
Vale didn’t like spirals.
Or maybe he did. Hard to say. His feelings about things had a tendency to change.
The space at the bottom was larger than expected. A maintenance chamber, maybe. Old equipment lay scattered across the floor—some intact, most of it broken beyond recognition. Exposed wiring flickered faintly overhead, casting sharp, shifting shadows.
And the walls.
Yeah. The walls were a problem.
Vale stepped closer, squinting at the concentric circles carved into the metal. Dozens of them. Overlapping, spiraling inward, repeating again and again and again.
A familiar pressure settled in his skull.
This was wrong.
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He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. No. Not wrong. Not yet.
But then his vision tilted.
Light. Heat. Fire.
Smoke curled through the air, thick and suffocating. Figures moved—blurred, shifting, half-seen.
And one of them.
One of them was clear.
A figure standing amidst the ruin. A curved blade gleaming in the firelight. A presence that felt like—
Like—
Vale’s mouth moved before his mind caught up.
“Cian.”
The word barely made it past his lips before pain split his skull open.
His breath hitched. His knees buckled. His pulse roared against his ribs.
Too much. Too fast. Like a memory trying to surface through shattered glass.
Then—
It was gone.
The chamber swam back into focus, and Vale sucked in a sharp breath, pressing a hand to his forehead. His fingers shook.
Which was annoying.
He stumbled back, hitting the wall. The concentric circles stared back at him. Watching. Repeating.
He exhaled slowly, rolling his shoulders. “Okay. That was new.”
No. Not new.
It had happened before.
Vale didn’t know why that thought felt so dangerous.
He looked down. His foot had kicked something loose—a small, metallic object, half-buried in dust.
He blinked. Crouched. Brushed the dirt away.
The object was smooth, pulsing faintly with runes he didn’t recognize.
Except.
He did recognize them.
Vale swallowed. His hand closed around the object before he could think better of it.
It was warm.
And he was taking it with him.
The climb back up felt longer than before.
Vale emerged from the hatch, blinking rapidly against the light. His body tensed on instinct, expecting—what?
Nothing.
Everything was normal. The sky was still artificial, the hum of the city still distant, the world still moving as if nothing had changed.
Vale inhaled, then sealed the hatch behind him, kicking dirt over it for good measure.
A secret. For now.
He adjusted his grip on the object in his pocket, running his thumb over the glowing runes.
It felt important.
Which meant it was a problem.
He sighed. “Guess I’ll deal with that later.”
Then he walked away.
Something wasn’t right.
Vale knew it the second he stepped back onto solid ground, his boots crunching softly over the dust-covered outskirts. The city’s hum was distant but steady, the artificial sky overhead set in its eternal dusk. Nothing had changed.
Except it had.
He adjusted his grip on the metallic object in his pocket, running his thumb over the glowing runes. The pulse had stopped—if it had ever really been there.
Probably imagined it. Probably nothing.
Probably.
He exhaled through his nose, shaking out the tension in his shoulders. Get it together.
Then—movement.
Vale’s body reacted before his brain caught up. He dropped low, slipped behind a rusted-out supply crate, pressing his back to the cool metal.
A patrol.
Three enforcers, moving in perfect rhythm. The Bureau’s watchdogs, wrapped in dark armor, their visors unreadable.
Vale clenched his jaw. He hadn’t seen them when he’d gone underground. Had they been waiting? Had they seen him?
No. That wasn’t how the Bureau worked. If they had seen him, he wouldn’t be watching them right now.
He kept still. Breathed slow.
The enforcers scanned the area. One of them shifted slightly, helmet tilting, like they were listening for something.
Vale felt it again.
That hum.
Not in the air. In his pocket.
His fingers curled tighter around the object, instinct overriding logic.
Not now.
The enforcer straightened. A second passed. Then another.
Then they moved on.
Vale didn’t breathe until the last one disappeared from sight.
He moved fast after that.
Not running, not exactly. Just not staying in one place long enough to be noticed.
His mind was still buzzing, caught between what had just happened and what almost had.
The object had reacted to them. Or they had reacted to it.
Not the same thing. Not at all.
Vale muttered a curse under his breath, ducking through a gap in a broken barrier wall. His hideout wasn’t far. He just needed a second. A minute.
He needed to think.
The storage bay was exactly how he’d left it—half-collapsed, mostly forgotten, tucked away in the outskirts where no one cared to look.
Vale climbed onto the rusted platform near the edge, letting his legs dangle over the side. From here, he could see Astraeus in the distance—too clean, too orderly, too wrong.
He let out a breath, pulling the metallic object from his pocket. The runes still glowed faintly, their pulse rhythmic, steady.
A cycle. A loop. A pattern.
His fingers curled around it. Too familiar.
He shouldn’t recognize this thing. He shouldn’t feel like he’d held it before.
And yet.
His free hand dragged through his hair, frustration bubbling just beneath the surface. He didn’t chase patterns, didn’t analyze things that weren’t his problem.
But something in his gut knew.
Knew this object.
Knew what it meant.
Knew it like he’d known the name that had slipped from his lips in that chamber.
Cian.
Vale exhaled, pressing his thumb hard against the engraved runes. Nothing changed. Nothing happened.
But he felt it.
Something was waking up.
He stared out at the city, at the Bureau’s perfect little machine of order and control.
Something cracked along the edges.
And for the first time in a long time, Vale was afraid.
