The buried city of Skygrave wasn't a myth. It was worse than that. It was a truth no one wanted remembered.
Reven stood at the cliff's edge, staring down into the gorge where centuries ago, the city had collapsed inward during one of the final wars of the human collapse. Buildings were still visible, angled glass towers shattered and half-swallowed by stone, bridges hanging like the ribs of a dead god.
Lirien adjusted the frequency band on her wrist console. The wind howled over the edge, distorting the signal she'd pulled from the wiped terminal.
"There's a pattern under the static," she said. "It's old Skyborn code buried beneath a failsafe delay. But it's active."
Kaela stood nearby, arms crossed, her eyes scanning the canyon. "I thought this place was closed off for good. Sealed by the Supremes."
"Not sealed," Lirien said. "Silenced."
Reven lowered his hand toward the ravine, feeling the pulse beneath the soil.
The Vault shards didn't glow. But they stirred.
Quiet recognition.
"We're not the first to come back here," he said.
Kaela glanced at him. "We might be the last."
The descent was brutal.
Skygrave hadn't been built to collapse. The surviving infrastructure was bent, twisted, whole stairwells now led nowhere, floors angled into chasms, lift shafts buried beneath rubble and vines that had long since turned carnivorous.
Lirien led the way, moving with practiced care. Reven followed in silence. Kaela took the rear, her eyes catching every shadow, every echo.
The deeper they went, the less natural the light became. Not Riftlight. Not exactly. Something humbler. Artificial. Faint. Still functioning.
"City grid's still alive," Lirien said. "Emergency power cells."
"After five centuries?" Kaela muttered. "What were they protecting down here?"
Reven didn't answer. He already knew. At the base of the descent, they found the first doors. Smooth metal, unmarked. Not Skyborn. Not Supreme. Older. Human.
Reven stepped forward, laid his hand on the panel and the door opened like it had been waiting for him.
Inside, the chamber was silent. Rows of old-world machines stood dormant along the walls, lights flickering weakly, cables stretching into the dark like roots. A central pillar rose from the floor, topped with a console surrounded by hollow projection arrays.
Kaela approached slowly, hand on her weapon. "What is this?"
Reven circled the pillar. "An observation station. From before the fall."
Lirien accessed the console. "Security system's fragmented. But there's one file that's still active."
The room changed.
A projection shimmered into being, static at first, then clearing into the shape of a man. Older. Tall. Pale skin. His uniform bore the mark of the old human technocratic council. The voice that followed matched the one from the wiped terminal.
"Designation: Dr.Emarin Vale. Overseer of Project Veil."
Kaela stiffened. "That name was on the settlement files."
The projection continued.
"If you're seeing this, Skygrave has been breached. And he's still alive. The Wanderer."
Reven's chest tightened.
"He wasn't supposed to survive the Rift stabilization. His code was meant to destabilize when the vaults synced."
Lirien's voice was flat. "You were meant to fail."
"Project Veil was created to overwrite what the Rift could not delete. The memory keepers. The variables. The ones who remember the cost."
"That's what makes him dangerous."
"He remembers."
The room went dark.
Kaela stepped forward. "So the Curated Ones aren't just about order."
"No," Reven said.
"They're about erasure."
They left the observation station hours later, armed with data pulled from the console's decaying core. Lirien had only been able to recover fragments, but it was enough.
There were more stations.
Hidden. Buried. Controlled by a grid that ran beneath the entire continent.
Each one tuned to a single goal:
Rewrite the world in silence.
Kaela walked beside Reven as they climbed toward the surface.
"You saw it in the vault, didn't you?" she asked.
He nodded. "Not the system. The shape of it."
"And?"
"It's already winning."
That night, they camped at the edge of a ruined plaza where the bones of the old city met the edge of the new wilderness.
The stars above were clear. The Rift scar shimmered like a vein of silver in the sky.
Reven sat by the fire, the fragments of the vault pulsing faintly against his back.
He hadn't spoken in hours.
Kaela finally broke the silence.
"What happens if we don't stop this?"
Reven didn't look up.
"They won't need to erase anyone."
He reached into the firelight and pressed one of the recovered data cores between his hands.
"People will start erasing themselves."