The rot around the beacon had changed.
Not diminished.
Just… quiet.
Focused.
As if the world had learned to listen when Elian stopped speaking.
The Seed hovered beside him, suspended in a slow spiral of rotlight — cracked and misshapen, but no longer unstable. It pulsed not like a heartbeat, but like a whisper you could only hear when everything else had gone still.
It whispered things.
Names.
Numbers.
Phrases in a broken language the system no longer used.
And one number returned again and again:
F7-12
Elian sat cross-legged at the base of the beacon, eyes closed.
He wasn't meditating.
He was decoding.
Every flicker in the Seed's rhythm became a thread he could feel, follow, and unravel.
It led to something buried.
Something still breathing.
[Memory Thread Resonance Detected]
[Location Match Found: Purifier Sector F7-12]
[Designation: Black Zone | Asset Storage Level 3]
[Subject Tag: Seedborne – Class D or Lower | Echo Loop Active]
[Potential Match: Archived Traitline – Echo Fragment: "Elian"]
He opened his eyes.
The girl stood nearby, arms folded, watching him like she expected fire to erupt from the earth.
Behind her, the Rotkin stood motionless — no formation, no rest, just still, awaiting corruption's will.
She spoke carefully.
"We're not going back to the vault."
"Where are we going?"
Elian rose without answering.
Instead, he dragged a claw across the ground. A trail of rotlight spread in a razor-thin arrow pointing northeast. The dirt curled away from it like it had been told the truth and couldn't handle it.
"Sector F7."
"A Purifier cage."
"Where they store what's broken."
She frowned.
"Why?"
He looked at the Seed.
Then at the beacon.
Then to the horizon.
"Because I want to know…"
"…how much of a soul you can carve away…"
"…before the body stops pretending to be alive."
They moved by nightfall.
The forest changed as they neared the sector. The rot dimmed. Threads straightened. Even the ground felt cleaner — unnaturally so. The system didn't purge this zone with force.
It suffocated it with sterile precision.
There were no monsters.
No rotflowers.
No birds.
Just long, jagged walls humming with thread-regulated containment.
Like a prison designed to hold memories until they forgot themselves.
[Zone Entered: Purifier Containment Sector – F7-12]
[Status: Black Zone | Echo Containment: Stable]
[Warning: Unregistered Traitline Detected – "Crownless" Proximity Alert]
A surveillance turret rotated atop the outer wall.
Its red lens blinked.
Scanning…
Threat Classification: Unknown
Signal Origin: Devil's Core Detected
Emergency Broadcast Engaged
Elian stared up at it.
The Seed beside him pulsed once.
Just once.
And the lens cracked.
The feed died.
[System Alert: Surveillance Node Offline – Reason: Undefined Corruption]
[Response Delay: 03:47:12]
He turned to the girl.
She looked between him and the wall.
"You're not going in to break them out."
"You're going in to see what's left."
He nodded once.
"I want to look them in the eyes…"
"…and find out if they still know they were ever human."
He stepped forward, palm brushing the cold stone perimeter.
The rotlight didn't spread.
It sank inward.
And the wall answered.
It began to open.