The air in the maintenance tunnels of Aethelgard smelled of ozone and ancient dust. While the rest of the Academy slept, bathed in the soft, artificial glow of the Gold Wing's lunar-cycle lamps, Ken Vaelstron was a shadow moving through the iron guts of the fortress.
He had left his dorm room in Block 99 through the ventilation shaft, a route he had mapped out using the schematics Selene had "acquired" from the High Architect's personal server. He wasn't the slouching, stuttering prince now. He moved with a predatory grace, his boots making no sound on the vibrating metal grating.
"Eye of Truth: Full Spectrum," he whispered.
The three silver rings in his right eye didn't just glow; they spun, expanding his vision until the walls became transparent. He could see the pulse of the Academy's mana-veins—thick, glowing cables of blue energy that powered the floating island. He followed the flow, descending deeper into the structural foundations where the gravity felt heavier and the temperature dropped to near freezing.
He reached the primary security bulkhead for Sub-Level 4. This was the "Dead Zone," a place where the Academy stored artifacts deemed too volatile for study. The door was a three-meter-thick slab of star-metal, etched with high-tier warding seals that would vaporize anyone without a Master-Rank signature.
Ken knelt before the lock. He didn't use a physical tool. He touched the metal with his bare palm and let the Null-Core breathe.
The wards didn't shatter; they didn't even flare. They simply ceased to exist as Ken's void-energy touched them. He wasn't breaking the code; he was deleting the lines of the spell as they ran. To the security mainframe, it looked like a routine system update.
The massive doors hissed open, revealing a long corridor of glass-walled containment units. In the very center of the room, resting on a pedestal of white marble that looked out of place in the industrial gloom, was the Void-Coded Key. It was a jagged shard of obsidian that seemed to swallow the light around it.
Ken walked toward it, his eyes narrowing. He could feel the relic's resonance. It wasn't mana. It was the same hollow, hungry frequency as his own core. It was a fragment of the Old World, a piece of the architecture that the Empress had spent decades trying to erase.
One of seven, Ken thought. The first piece of the rewrite.
Suddenly, the red lights of the vault flared. A low, rhythmic hum filled the air as a localized gravity field activated, threatening to crush Ken into the floor.
"Manual override detected," a cold, synthetic voice echoed. "Architectural Signature: Unknown. Protocol 9-9-9 engaged. Eliminating anomaly."
From the ceiling, four automated combat drones descended, their rail-gun barrels spinning up. These weren't the rusty drones of the Bronze Wing; these were the Architect's personal hounds, designed to hunt down intruders with surgical precision.
Ken didn't run. He didn't even draw a weapon. He stood in the center of the vault, his slouch returning for a split second before his aura exploded. A wave of pure black energy radiated from his body, turning the air into a viscous soup.
"You're looking for an anomaly?" Ken's voice was cold enough to frost the glass. "Look closer."
As the drones fired, Ken moved. He wasn't fast; he was instant. He stepped through the trajectories of the bullets, his body flickering in and out of the physical plane. He reached the first drone and placed a single finger on its chassis.
De-frag.
The drone didn't explode. It simply disassembled, its components falling to the floor in a shower of perfectly organized screws and plates. He moved to the second, his hand passing through its armor as if it were water, ripping out its mana-core before it could even register his presence.
In less than ten seconds, the vault was silent again. The drones were piles of scrap metal.
Ken reached the pedestal and grabbed the Void-Coded Key. The moment his skin touched the obsidian, a jolt of raw data flooded his mind. He saw flashes of the Empress, the Great Fire, and the screaming face of the man who had designed his Null-core.
"Ken! Get out of there!" Selene's voice crackled through his internal comms-link, her tone uncharacteristically frantic. "The Architect just bypassed the manual lockout. He's heading for Sub-Level 4. He's going to catch you in the vault!"
Ken shoved the shard into a pocket of his inner lining. He looked at the shattered drones and the open bulkhead. If he ran now, the Architect would track his thermal trail. He needed a distraction. He needed to look like the victim, not the thief.
He looked at the security camera in the corner. He knew exactly what the footage needed to show.
He used his void-energy to blast himself backward into a wall, coughing up a small spray of blood for effect. He bruised his own ribs and tore his uniform, then slumped against the containment unit, making sure his face was visible to the lens—wide-eyed, terrified, and "clueless."
The bulkhead doors slammed open.
A man stepped in, silhouetted by the harsh white light of the corridor. He wore a long, charcoal-grey coat and carried a cane tipped with a sensor-crystal. This was The Architect, the man who had built the very walls of Aethelgard.
He surveyed the room, his eyes landing on the destroyed drones and then on the bleeding boy on the floor. He walked over to Ken, the tip of his cane stopping inches from Ken's throat.
"Vaelstron," the Architect said, his voice like grinding stones. "What are you doing in my basement?"
Ken looked up, his lip trembling. "I... I got lost. I was looking for the kitchens. The drones... they just started attacking..."
The Architect looked at the empty pedestal. He looked at the scrap metal. Then he leaned down, his eyes boring into Ken's dull, blue ones.
"You got lost through three levels of star-metal locks?" the Architect whispered. "You are either the luckiest idiot in the Dominion, or you are the ghost I've been waiting for."
Ken let out a pathetic, shivering sob. "Please... I just want to go back to my room."
The Architect stared at him for a long, agonizing minute. Then, he straightened up and tapped his cane twice. "Proctor! Take this royal waste back to the Bronze Wing. And tell the Empress her son has developed a habit of sleepwalking into high-security zones."
As the guards dragged Ken away, the Architect knelt by the pile of disassembled drone parts. He picked up a screw, his eyes narrowing as he realized it hadn't been broken—it had been undone.
"He's good," the Architect muttered to the empty room. "But no one is invisible forever."
End of Chapter 5.