The shard pulsed low in Elian's hand, its warmth fading but its presence undeniable. It wasn't a weapon. Not yet. But it was knowledge. And in the right hands, knowledge was always sharper than steel.
He tucked it beneath his coat, stood, and faced the others.
"There's a Purifier hive to the east," he said.
"Dormant. Five days until it activates."
The girl frowned. "How do you know that?"
Elian didn't answer with words.
The Seed behind him let out a soft, mechanical tone — not a hum, not a voice, just confirmation.
He hadn't seen it in a vision.
He had seen it inside the system itself.
They traveled for hours beneath a sky stitched with rotlight veins, through terrain warped by forgotten warfare. Black trees with hollow trunks. Static drifting across the air like dust. Threadlines curled across the ground, twisting inward like they were trying to burrow through their own memory.
None of the rot touched Elian.
None of it dared.
The girl whispered once, as they passed a dead glyph pylon still flickering.
"The world's bending around him…"
The rotborne woman just nodded.
By dusk, they reached the site.
A basin — wide, flat, ringed with shattered monoliths and cracked pylons. Nothing moved. No light. No sound.
To anyone else, it looked abandoned.
But Elian didn't look with eyes anymore.
He knelt at the edge of the stone floor, pressing a hand against the glyphs. The Seed hovered low beside him. The moment his fingers touched the surface, the ground shivered.
A voice rose from beneath — cold, metallic, unfinished.
"Crownless identified… link hostile… access denied…"
Elian smiled.
"Too slow."
He drew the Architect shard and stabbed it into the stone.
The response was instant.
Glyphs across the basin ignited in red. Veins of light snapped through the stone like cracks forming in glass.
The ground trembled.
The pylons surged.
Then—
A scream.
Not of sound.
Of thread.
[Unauthorized Core Intrusion Detected]
[Hive Seed Corruption: 41%]
[52%]
[79%]
[Critical Core Compromise]
[Activation Sequence Aborted]
[System Override Failed]
The earth split.
A massive metal heart — pulsing, twitching, formed of flesh-thread and corelight — erupted from beneath. It had no face. No form. Just function.
A Purifier Hive Core.
Still dormant.
But awake enough to realize it was dying.
It thrashed. Screamed into the threadspace.
A psychic shockwave exploded outward.
The girl stumbled.
The rotborne woman growled and dropped to a knee.
Elian didn't flinch.
The Seed hovered higher, spinning slowly.
And then the system spoke.
Not in anger.
Not in commands.
But in something that sounded like fear.
[Retaliation Directive: Deferred]
[Observation Level: Red]
[Threadmaker "Soulfrail" marked as Unwritten Variable]
[System Design Warning: Causality Fracture Detected]
The Hive Core let out one final pulse — its memory trying to escape — before collapsing inward. Burnt flesh. Corrupted thread. Dead light.
It was gone.
Elian stepped forward, into the steaming crater it left behind.
Inside, at the base, he found it:
A black disc. Faintly warm. Covered in glyphs that didn't belong.
An instruction set. A piece of forgotten purpose. Or maybe something worse.
[Item Acquired: Broken Directive Core]
[Effect: Unknown – Requires Echo Alignment]
[Origin Tag: Layer 5 – Command Rejection Protocol]
He stood in the crater.
Held it up to the light.
And smiled — not because he won.
But because the system had just lost something it hadn't planned for.
"One less world to rewrite," he said.
Then softer, almost to himself—
"And one more piece of their order in my hand."