The fence closed behind us with a soft metallic sigh.
Lina stopped walking.
"…Okay," she said. "Now I do feel it."
We stood in what looked like nothing—an empty lot choked with weeds and broken concrete. No doors. No hatches. No markings. Just ground that had been abandoned long enough for the world to forget why.
"This is it?" she asked.
"Yes."
She turned slowly, scanning. "I don't see anything."
"That's because you're looking," I said.
She frowned. "What does that even—"
I stepped forward and stopped exactly seven paces from the fence.
The alignment stirred.
Not warning.
Recognition.
Numbers surfaced in my mind. Not memories—coordinates. Sequences. Ratios. The same ones that had once shaped an entirely different space, under a different sky.
I turned slightly. Three steps east. Half a step back. Heel aligned with a crack in the ground that shouldn't have mattered—but did.
Lina watched me with narrowed eyes.
"…Are you inputting a password," she asked, "or casting a spell?"
"Neither."
I shifted my weight.
The ground responded.
Not by opening.
By remembering.
A faint vibration passed through the soles of my shoes. The air thickened, like pressure building before a storm that refused to arrive.
Lina's breath hitched. "Neo."
"Stay where you are," I said.
She didn't argue this time.
I closed my eyes.
The codes weren't words. They were assumptions. This place existed because once, I had decided it must. The domain hadn't been hidden—it had been dismissed by reality, filed under no longer relevant.
I reintroduced the premise.
The concrete sank.
Silently.
A perfect square lowered itself into the earth, edges too clean to be excavation, too deliberate to be collapse. Cold air rose from below, carrying the scent of metal, dust, and something older—sterile, preserved.
A staircase waited beneath.
Lina stared at it.
Then at me.
Then back at the hole in the ground where a hole absolutely should not have been.
"…You know," she said faintly, "most people would put a door."
"I didn't want visitors."
She swallowed. "Neo, who are you really?."
I knew I would have to fully come clean sooner or later, especially with someone as tenacious as Lina, but for now I just ignored her questions.
I allowed myself a breath.
The alignment pulsed again.
[Alchemy Domain access: partially restored.]
[Witness presence: modifying threshold conditions.]
I opened my eyes and looked at her.
"From here on," I said, "nothing you see is for you."
She met my gaze, fear and awe warring behind her composure.
"Story of my night," she muttered. "You just keep getting more mysterious."
I stepped onto the first stair.
It held.
I descended.
After one heartbeat—
She followed.
The opening above us sealed without sound, the surface smoothing back into broken concrete and weeds like it had never been disturbed.
Underground, lights ignited one by one—not bright, not welcoming. Functional. Ancient. Waiting.
Lina exhaled slowly.
"…So," she said, voice echoing faintly down the stairwell, "on a scale from 'illegal basement' to 'end of the world,' where are we?"
I didn't look back.
"Somewhere in the middle," I replied. "Closer to the end than you'd like."
She laughed. Nervous. Real.
"Good," she said. "I hate anticlimax."
Below us, the domain stirred.
Not awake.
But aware that its creator had finally come home.
The stairwell ended without ceremony.
No grand doors. No symbols flaring to life.
Just a flat, metallic floor that felt… attentive.
The moment my foot touched it, the air changed.
Not pressure. Not temperature.
Acknowledgment.
The alignment reacted too late.
[System conflict detected—]
[External framework overriding—]
[Identity confirmation in progress…]
The lights dimmed.
Then—shifted.
Not brighter. Sharper. As if the space itself had decided what mattered and cut away the rest.
Lina stopped beside me.
"…Neo," she said quietly. "Something just looked at you."
I nodded. "It's rude not to."
A sound rolled through the chamber. Not a voice. Not mechanical.
More like a breath taken by something that didn't need lungs.
The floor pulsed once.
Then lines appeared.
Thin. White. Precise.
They spread outward from where I stood, racing along the ground in geometric patterns that made no attempt to be decorative. Circles intersected. Angles folded into each other. Logic rendered visible.
Lina crouched instinctively, touching nothing.
"This isn't reacting to me," she whispered.
"No," I said. "It's verifying I still exist." I said the last part in a whisper to myself.
The lines reached my feet.
Paused.
For half a second, the domain hesitated.
The alignment held its breath.
Then—
Recognition.
The symbols shifted, reorganizing themselves into something older. Familiar. Not a name, but a designation.
[Primary authority confirmed.]
[Saint-level framework: WISDOM — legacy lock removed.]
[Alchemy system status: degraded… operational.]
The lights rose slightly.
Not welcoming.
Respectful.
Lina let out a breath she'd clearly been holding. "So… good news?"
"Yes."
"What's the bad news?"
I glanced at the nearest wall.
"It remembers me better than I remember it."
As if summoned by that admission, the space unfolded.
Not expanded.
Revealed.
Panels slid back soundlessly, exposing the first chamber.
Lina straightened slowly.
"Oh," she breathed. "Oh, this is worse than I thought."
The room was vast, but not tall. Built low, like it was never meant to impress anyone standing upright.
Shelves floated in precise rows, suspended without visible support. On them rested vials, tablets, crystalline matrices, half-finished constructs that looked one bad decision away from becoming alive.
At the center—
A circular worktable.
Metallic. Unscarred.
Waiting.
Above it hovered translucent panels, etched with equations that rewrote themselves every few seconds, correcting assumptions that no longer applied.
Lina turned in a slow circle.
"This isn't a lab," she said. "This is a… thought."
"Yes."
She pointed at a crystal pulsing faintly red. "Is that dangerous?"
"Extremely."
She pointed at another. "That one?"
"Also extremely."
"…Is anything here not dangerous?"
I considered it. "The chair."
She looked at it.
Then back at me. "That's comforting."
"Ok now you have to tell me Neo," for the time since coming to the alchemy domain with me Lina had a serious look.
"WHO REALLY ARE YOU?"
I sighed in defeat, accepting I don't have any choice but to finally tell her.
"…I'm classified as a Saint-level anomaly," I said casually.
Lina stiffened.
Her pupils shrank, breath hitching as if the world had suddenly tilted under her feet. She took a step back, heel scraping against stone.
"…That's not funny," she whispered.
"I'm not joking."
Her gaze locked onto me—searching, dissecting, almost pleading for the answer to be a lie. When she didn't find it, fear finally surfaced. Real fear.
"A Saint-level anomaly doesn't exist," she said quickly, voice trembling now. "They can't exist. Saints are dead. You're talking about legends that shattered continents and rewrote eras—"
"I remember fragments," I interrupted calmly. "Decisions I haven't made yet. Knowledge I shouldn't have. Methods that don't belong to this age."
Her breathing grew shallow.
"You… you're telling me," she said, swallowing hard, "that the person standing in front of me is someone who was once powerful enough to decide the fate of nations?"
"Among other things," I replied.
Silence.
For a moment, Lina looked like she might run. Or draw a weapon. Or do both.
Then she clenched her fists.
"…Okay," she said suddenly.
I blinked. "Okay?"
She exhaled sharply, forcing the fear down, eyes narrowing with determination instead of panic. "Okay. That explains everything. Your timing. Your instincts. Why nothing ever fully surprises you."
She looked at me again—really looked—and this time there was no terror in her eyes. Just resolve.
Her jaw tightened. "No one can know about this— does anyone know about this?"
"no absolutely no one, just you." I replied, keeping the fact the government knows away from her to not get her too involved.
Lina studied my face for another long second, then nodded once.
"…Then this stays between us," she said. "Saint of Wisdom or not, you're still Neo."
I gave a small shrug. "Good. Because I don't plan on being anything else."
As Lina recovered from what she just found out, I moved toward the table.
With each step, the domain responded. Adjusting light levels. Recalibrating spatial tolerances. Making room for me the way a tool adjusts to a familiar hand.
Lina noticed.
"You don't control this place," she said slowly.
"No," I replied. "I designed it to argue with me."
She blinked. "Why would you do that?"
"Because agreement breeds mistakes."
"That does not make any sense," she responded with an exasperated sigh.
I placed my hand on the table.
Warm.
Active.
The alignment surged—then stalled.
It couldn't see past the domain's rules.
For the first time in a long while, it wasn't in charge.
Lina stepped closer, stopping just short of the table's perimeter. The air shimmered faintly there, like a polite but firm boundary.
"So," she said, forcing lightness into her voice, "this is where you get stronger?"
I didn't answer immediately.
I watched the panels rearrange themselves, old formulas resurfacing. Incomplete. Hungry.
"This is where I stop pretending I'm harmless," I said at last.
The domain pulsed in agreement.
Somewhere deep beneath us, a sealed system unlocked fully for the first time in years.
And Lina Isla—civilian, observer, impossible variable—stood at the edge of a place the world had once agreed should never exist again.
"…Neo?" she said softly.
"Yes?"
"If this thing wakes up all the way," she asked, "does the world notice?"
I looked at the table.
At the formulas.
At the cost waiting patiently to be paid.
"It won't notice immediately," I said.
She swallowed.
"That's not what I asked."
I met her eyes.
"No," I said. "But it will remember."
And somewhere far above us, beyond concrete and jurisdiction, the balance of Saints shifted—
not because power had been used,
but because it had been reclaimed.