Mynavon weakened at last.
The monster loomed above them, trembling on warped limbs of candy-glass, scorched metal, and ruined flesh. Its core flickered in broken pulses, each glow weaker than the last. Molten sugar dripped from its wounds, hissing against the stone floor.
It should have looked furious.
It should have looked hungry.
But its eyes said more than any roar could.
Please.
End it.
Celeste’s throat tightened.
For one awful second, she didn’t see a monster. She saw someone trapped inside a body that had stopped belonging to them. Someone awake in a nightmare with no way out.
Her paws tightened around her katanas.
“S-sorry…” Celeste whispered, voice shaking but steady.
Then she ran.
With both blades clenched tight, she dashed forward, leapt, and drove her katanas straight through the monster’s eye.
The light inside Mynavon fizzled.
The beast froze.
Its body quaked once.
Then it collapsed with a guttural screech. Its massive frame shattered into blocks of molten sugar, each piece pixelating, glitching, and breaking apart into motes of fading light.
A chime rang through the chamber.
+EXP!
A rare item shimmered on the floor where the monster had fallen, crystalline and pulsing with violet glow.
Radiant glyphs spiralled around the team, bathing them in golden light. Their weapons pulsed, their mana surged, and their wounds sealed.
+7000 EXP
LEVEL UP!
➤ Level 7 Achieved!
Ray grinned, hefting Heartbreaker onto her shoulder. “Knew it’d cough up something sweet.”
Arcade’s HUD blinked with new stat readouts. “Level seven—finally. About time the grind paid off.”
Plum blew the smoke from her gun barrel with entirely too much satisfaction. “I do enjoy being right from a safe distance.”
Mezzo slung the guitar-axe over his shoulder with a flourish. “And I, as always, was magnificent.”
From the side platform, Lumina bounced once despite herself. “Celeste did it!”
Skye let out a breath he had clearly been holding for minutes. “They all did.”
Celeste, still holding her blades, exhaled and let herself tremble. “We… we did it.”
The intercom crackled overhead.
“TRIAL COMPLETED. CONTAINMENT LIFTED. ACCESS GRANTED.”
The blast doors creaked open to the roar of distant cheers.
But in the glass tower above, Brassmane only watched, solemn and unreadable.
Beside him, Saff smirked faintly, arms folded.
Her eyes drifted once more toward Lumina before returning to Celeste.
Brassmane murmured, voice like steel wrapped in velvet, “No ordinary children… That girl will tip the scales.”
Saff said nothing.
She only turned toward a sealed iron box at the rear of the chamber.
Three cloaked mythics lingered near it: a stone-skinned centaur, a robed bird-woman, and a pale-furred boy with scars carved like script into his throat.
With deliberate care, Saff opened the box.
Inside, wrapped in velvet, lay a dagger black as obsidian, its blade rippling with oily light.
Her fingers touched the hilt.
The room dimmed.
No one spoke.
But something old, and dangerous, had begun to stir.
The vault’s heavy doors shuddered open, the sound echoing like thunder through the chamber. Cold air swept past the team, carrying the faint tang of iron, old stone, and sugar-burnt ash.
Inside, pale blue and gold runes crawled across the walls in lazy patterns, humming softly. At the chamber’s heart, suspended over a cradle of metal and stone, hovered a relic—a crystal that shimmered like liquid moonlight, each pulse rippling outward as though it breathed.
Celeste’s lips parted.
Her steps slowed, caught between fear and awe.
“She’s… she’s beautiful,” she whispered, voice fragile with wonder. “Like… like she’s alive.”
Arcade tilted his head, arms folded. “Beautiful, sure. But no defences? No traps? Please. That’s textbook bait.”
Celeste hesitated, one paw rising instinctively.
The crystal’s glow reached out to her.
Not light.
Not heat.
Recognition.
Her fingers trembled in the air, stopping just shy of its surface.
Then she froze.
Her brows knitted, and her voice came soft but firm. “No… they’ll know if it’s missing. We need their trust. If we take it, we lose everything.”
Slowly, reluctantly, she lowered her hand and stepped back.
The others relaxed slightly.
But behind them, in the edges where torchlight broke into shadow, Pitch lingered.
His gaze flicked to Celeste.
Then to the crystal.
His smirk was faint. Unreadable.
“Yeah,” he muttered under his breath. “No risks.”
A subtle flick of his wrist.
Just enough.
Shadows coiled, silent and smooth, lashing out like a serpent. The crystal shimmered once, then slipped beneath the surface of the dark.
Gone without a sound.
No one noticed.
Not Celeste, still staring in quiet longing.
Not Arcade, muttering calculations under his breath.
Only the shadows knew.
And Pitch, who stood very still, hands in his pockets, as if nothing at all had happened.
The vault chamber stretched out before them like a forgotten museum. Relics rested across stone pedestals and floated inside fields of shimmering magic. Crystals glowed faintly in cages of rune-carved iron, blades hummed with sleeping enchantments, and dusty tomes lined alcoves that had been sealed for centuries.
Celeste drifted forward, blue eyes wide, her voice barely a breath. “Oh… stars. It’s like walking into a storybook. They all feel so… old.”
Arcade crouched by a pedestal, fingers twitching as he traced the etched wards without touching them. His voice was sharp, reverent in its own way. “These things aren’t just old. They’re thousands of years old. Half this stuff should’ve turned to dust ages ago.”
C.H.I.P. buzzed and tilted his head, eye-lens flickering. “Thousands of years old, sure… and yet some of this junk is just Kymara tech gathering dust. Real cutting-edge stuff for a species that’s supposedly a myth.”
Arcade snapped his gaze over, narrowing his eyes. “Kymara are a myth. A bedtime story wrapped up in Luminarch propaganda. They don’t exist.”
“Right,” C.H.I.P. chirped dryly. “So explain why this ‘myth’ left behind a perfectly intact Wisdom Cube.”
He tapped the small, inert device floating on a nearby pedestal.
Arcade raised an eyebrow, suspicion battling curiosity. “If it’s real, prove it. Can you crack it?”
“Give me ten seconds,” C.H.I.P. said smugly.
He latched onto the cube, optic lenses flickering in rapid pulses.
Five seconds later, the vault lit up.
The cube unfolded into streams of glowing script and holographic glyphs. Arcane diagrams, battle records, forgotten equations, and impossible maps poured across Arcade’s Arcbracer, the device struggling to display the flood of information.
Arcade’s breath caught. “This is… incredible.”
The runes danced across his visor, revealing languages he didn’t know, yet somehow almost understood.
“How is this even possible?” he whispered. “The knowledge in here—I’ve never seen anything like it.”
C.H.I.P. detached smoothly, landing with a self-satisfied beep. He bowed dramatically, voice dripping with smug delight. “You’re welcome.”
Celeste blinked at the display, a soft gasp escaping her lips. “It’s like… like the past is speaking to us. But why now?”
Arcade didn’t answer.
His eyes were already lost in the flood of ancient secrets pouring across his screen.
The vault’s runes bathed them in pale light as the Wisdom Cube bloomed open, its holographic script flooding across Arcade’s Arcbracer. His quills flickered and twitched like live wires, sparking faint motes of static into the air.
Arcade muttered under his breath, voice sharp and focused. Almost reverent. “This isn’t just data… it’s imprinting. Stars above, it’s writing itself into my head.”
Celeste stiffened.
She could feel it too.
A faint tug in the back of her mind. Thoughts not her own brushed against her: symbols, fragments of words, the soft hum of equations. She blinked, steadying her breath.
It was subtle.
Almost imperceptible.
But it was there.
Ray leaned on her hammer, eyes narrowing. “Great. We came here to kill a monster, and now we’ve accidentally signed Hedgehog Boy up for brain surgery via disco rock.”
Pitch folded his arms, a smirk tugging at his muzzle. “At least he looks happy about it. Usually he’s only that excited when insulting me.”
Arcade didn’t even look up, his voice tightening as the streams of light raced faster across his screen. “You don’t understand—this isn’t random junk. This is architecture. Systems. Maps of mana flow I’ve never seen before. If this is Kymara tech, they weren’t just real… they were advanced beyond anything the Doctrine preaches.”
Hughes grunted, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Aye, and maybe they buried it for a reason. Old magic like this doesn’t come free. Play with it long enough, you’ll end up like the thing we just fought.”
Celeste hugged her arms to her chest, still feeling the ghost of those foreign thoughts bleeding through Arcade into her.
She spoke softly, almost apologetically. “But… what if it’s not dangerous? What if it’s… knowledge we’re meant to remember?”
Mezzo rolled his eyes. “Or it’s a trap wrapped in shiny paper.”
C.H.I.P. chirped smugly from his perch. “Trap or treasure, you’re welcome either way.”
Pitch shot him a dry look. “You’re way too proud of yourself.”
C.H.I.P.’s optics brightened. “Correct.”
The group’s laughter was short and uneasy, their eyes drifting back toward Arcade, whose quills still flickered faintly with every pulse of the cube.
Celeste’s hand twitched at her side.
She wasn’t sure if the warmth pooling in her chest was excitement or fear.
Only that whatever they had uncovered here, it was already changing them.
Hughes leaned back against the pedestal, arms folded tight across his chest. His voice rumbled low, heavy with warning.
“Kymara are long dead. Or made up. Depends who you ask. But either way, you lot shouldn’t be messing with things that don’t belong to you. Old relics like this—they’re buried for a reason.”
Arcade barely looked up, quills still flickering with every surge of light across his bracer. “Yeah, sure, grandpa. Knowledge is dangerous, fire burns, water’s wet. Heard it all before.”
He tilted his wrist toward C.H.I.P. “Scan for more of these cubes. If there’s one, there’s got to be others.”
C.H.I.P.’s optics glowed with a mocking lilt. “Oh, of course. I’ll just casually sweep the whole continent while you’re off playing hero. Anything else? Maybe pick up some milk on the way back?”
“Do it,” Arcade snapped, though a crooked grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Before C.H.I.P. could volley another sarcastic remark, a sudden echo thundered through the foundry above.
Shouts.
Hurried footsteps.
The clang of metal.
Everyone froze.
Plum tightened her grip on her gun. “That doesn’t sound like applause.”
Hughes was already moving toward the lift, crook in hand, his voice sharp as command steel. “Stay here, Celeste. Whatever’s brewing, we’ll handle it.”
Celeste opened her mouth to protest, but the look he gave her—steady, paternal, uncompromising—made her hesitate.
She nodded reluctantly, hugging her sleeves close.
The others filed out, boots clanging against the catwalk as the sound of commotion grew louder in the distance.
And then—
Silence.
Celeste turned back toward the cube.
Its light pulsed faintly, as if breathing.
She reached out, fingertips hovering just shy of its surface.
A voice rippled through her mind.
Not sound.
Not quite words.
Yet they landed heavy in her chest.
Ancient.
Worn.
Welsh, but older than the hymns Bonbon had taught her.
“...Mae’r seren yn cofio… mae’r gwaed yn rhwymo…”
The star remembers… the blood binds…
Her breath caught.
She couldn’t translate it all.
But she didn’t need to.
The meaning thrummed through her bones, through her very core, like the cube was speaking to something inside her that had always been waiting.
She clutched her hoodie tighter, heart pounding.
This wasn’t just knowledge.
It was calling her.
Celeste stood frozen for a long moment, the runes from the cube painting her face in pale, living light. Her ears twitched at every distant clang of boots above. She knew she should leave it alone.
She knew Hughes would scold her raw if he even guessed at the thought.
But her fingers itched.
Her heart pulled.
“...Just a peek,” she whispered, half to herself, half to the quiet that lingered in the chamber.
She scanned the room quickly, then snatched up a crooked stick from the floor—nothing more than a snapped bit of scaffolding.
With exaggerated care, she slid the stick beneath the cube and tipped it toward her open satchel.
The relic fell inside with a muffled thump.
The bag glowed faintly for a heartbeat before settling.
Celeste winced, clutching the strap like it might burn her.
Then she reached into the bag, pulled free a well-creased manga volume, and laid it gently where the cube had hovered.
It looked almost comically small and bright on the ancient pedestal.
“There,” she muttered, voice shaky. “I’ll… I’ll bring it back. I promise.”
The whispering voices had gone silent the instant she hid the cube away.
But the silence was heavier somehow.
Like a breath held too long.
She hugged her satchel close, her eyes lingering on the manga book—its colourful cover utterly out of place among molten stone, old wards, and sleeping relics.
“What… what just happened?” she breathed.
Her tail curled tight around her legs.
The cube had spoken.
To her.
And whatever it was, it felt less like discovery and more like destiny.
The air crackled.
Celeste yelped as a shimmering wall of blue light surged up around her in a sudden arc, sealing her inside the chamber.
She stumbled back, clutching her satchel to her chest. The hum of the mana barrier was low but thrumming, like the inside of a great bell.
When she pressed her palm against it, it was solid.
Smooth as glass.
Cold as ice.
“No, no, no…” she whispered, panic threading through her voice.
She pushed.
Then pounded.
Then clawed at the surface.
It didn’t budge.
“Oh stars, I—I can’t get through!”
Outside, muffled but clear, she heard raised voices. Shouting. The clang of weapons. The sharp, erratic whine of spellfire lancing across steel.
Her heart hammered.
“Not now,” she breathed, eyes wide, ears flat against her head. “Please, not now…”
The barrier pulsed once, and she swore she felt it respond to her heartbeat, almost like it knew her secret.
The cube in her bag shifted faintly, pressing against the fabric as though it wanted out.
Celeste hugged the satchel tighter, trembling. Her tail coiled around her legs as she crouched low, fighting the urge to cry.
The argument outside sharpened.
She could pick out Hughes barking orders, Ray’s voice snapping like fire, Arcade’s clipped tone cutting through with technical jargon, and somewhere beyond…
Another voice.
Unfamiliar.
Sharp as broken glass.
Something ugly was about to happen.
And she was trapped, powerless, forced to listen.
