When Arata reached the staging room, Lyra was already calibrating the scanners, her hair pulled back, her sleeves rolled high. Across from her, Tomas crouched over a dismantled spectrograph, his hands steady, a faint smear of oil marking his cheek.
Talking to Farworth stood one more person, someone who wasn't there last time. Nebula.
He hadn't seen her since the Academy gates — since that first duel where she'd challenged him. Seeing her now, framed by the tent's pale light and the hum of buried stone, felt almost surreal.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," she said.
"Maybe I have," Arata replied.
Her expression didn't change, but her tone softened. "Then I'm in good company."
Nebula stepped away from Farworth and closer to him, boots silent against the stone. Up close, she looked the same as ever, composed and alert but there was something new in her eyes.It was Recognition.
"You're going back down," she said. Not a question.
Arata nodded. "Looks like it."
Lyra glanced over from the scanners. "This isn't a sightseeing trip. The Choir is unstable."
Nebula smiled faintly. "Nowadays , everything seems to be."
Farworth cleared his throat. "Nebula volunteered."
"That's a generous phrasing," Lyra muttered.
Nebula ignored her "Last time we duelled, you bent the field without meaning to. I've been wondering ever since whether you knew why."
"I still don't," Arata said. "If that helps."
"At least you are honest." Nebula replied.
Tomas reassembled the spectrograph with a soft click and stood. "All instruments are reading within tolerance. For now."
"For now," Farworth echoed. "That's all we ever get. Come on. Let's go."
The descent was smoother this time, the lift humming with restrained life.
Arata rested a hand on the hilt of Resonance; the blade pulsed faintly, but not in warning—almost in curiosity.
Tomas carried the analyser, a thin coil of cables trailing behind like roots. The light on his wrist reflected against the metal, steady as a heartbeat.
"You don't talk much," Arata said after a while.
"I talk when something needs saying."
"That must make people like you."
Tomas glanced at him, a ghost of amusement in his eyes. "Not really. But it keeps me from lying."
When they stepped out, the air of the lower Vein chambers was cooler, gentler than before.
The Choir's main artery still glowed, but faintly,it's rhythm was no longer oppressive, just patient.
Farworth broke the silence between the unit "Today, we map what's left of the field interference. No experiments, no resonance triggers. We observe only."
Lyra muttered, "We said that last time."
He ignored it. "Keep all logs active. If the field speaks again, I want its first word."
Lyra adjusted the scanner's prism. "We're in the residual field. No active pulse yet."
Farworth nodded. "Perfect. Tomas, align the recorder. I want a trace pattern of this silence."
Tomas knelt, setting the equipment in place. The machine purred, its lenses turning to capture invisible spectra.
"Silence isn't empty," he murmured, almost to himself. "It's just full of things that haven't decided what to be."
Arata watched him for a moment. He wasn't sure if Tomas was being poetic or precise
"Amazing..." Nebula whispered to herself.
"You haven't be here before?" Arata asked her.
"Only the upper level, that also when I did Routine Maintenance."
Arata nodded. "It's different down here."
Nebula's eyes traced the slow-moving light beneath the crystal floor. "The upper levels still pretend this is infrastructure," she said. "This doesn't pretend."
"That's because it can't," Farworth replied. "Not anymore."
For hours they walked through the chambers, tracing every curve of the veins.
Lyra's voice was steady, noting readings; Farworth spoke rarely, his focus on the shifting hues underfoot.
Tomas worked quietly, tuning instruments, marking points in his journal.
Nebula waled taking in the tunnels, observing every minute detail.
It was uneventful and yet none of them could shake the feeling of being watched by the world itself.
Once, when Arata brushed his fingers against the wall, the hum under his skin rose in greeting. His right hand palm after a very long time glowed blue. HE quickly wore a glove to cover it up. He withdrew his hand. Resonance trembled faintly at his hip.
Lyra's voice remained steady as she called out readings, adjusting for drift and harmonic variance. Wanuy spoke rarely, his attention fixed on the shifting hues beneath their feet, watching patterns no one else seemed to notice. Tomas worked in near silence, tuning instruments, pausing only to mark observations in his journal with careful precision.
Nebula walked slightly apart from the others.
She didn't rush. She didn't linger. Her gaze tracked every fracture in the crystal, every fluctuation in light, every place where the Veins narrowed or widened. She observed the tunnels the way a hunter studies terrain—not for beauty, but for intent.
Nothing happened.
And yet none of them could shake the feeling of being noticed.
Not watched in the way eyes watch—but in the way a body becomes aware of pressure before pain.
At one point, Arata brushed his fingers against the wall.
The hum beneath his skin answered immediately.
Not louder but closer.
His breath caught as the resonance climbed his arm, familiar and unwelcome. For the first time in days, the veins in his right palm glowed blue.
He stilled.
Quietly, he pulled on a glove, covering the light before anyone else could notice. Then he withdrew his hand.
The glow faded.
Resonance trembled faintly at his hip, as if disappointed.
Arata exhaled slowly and stepped back into line with the others.
Above them, the Choir continued its low, patient song—
unchanged in volume, unchanged in rhythm,
but no longer indifferent.
It had felt him. And it remembered.
...
They stopped to rest near a fractured section of the corridor. The stone here was darker it was almost burnt, the veins branching in jagged lines like frozen lightning.
Tomas unpacked a small thermos and poured steaming liquid into tin cups.
"Tea," he said simply.
Lyra took hers with mild surprise. "You brought tea down here?"
"It travels well," he said, handing one to Arata.
The warmth felt alien after hours in the damp air. Arata took a sip it was sweet, faintly smoky. "You made this?"
"From the upper gardens," Tomas said. "Before the lockdown. They were going to burn the herbs anyway."
Nebula looked at him over the rim of her cup. "You raided the research plots for tea?"
He shrugged. "Better than being incense."
Farworth, passing by, actually let out a quiet chuckle. "A man after my own heart."
For a while, there was only the sound of sipping, the faint hum beneath their feet, and the low ticking of instruments recording invisible truths.
When they resumed walking, Arata felt something shift within him. Not power, not madness. Just the quiet, grounding presence of company.
Lyra's measured steps beside him. Tomas's steady rhythm behind. Nebula's Calm in the chaos.
For the first time, he realised how long it had been since he'd trusted anyone to walk near him in silence.
They reached a narrow passage branching off the main tunnel.
Farworth stopped at the threshold, his voice low.
"This one wasn't in the map."
Lyra glanced at her tablet. "No readings beyond twelve meters. It's a dead zone."
Tomas adjusted the scanner. "Not dead," he said softly. "Just dormant."
Farworthh turned to Arata. "Your call, Squadron Leader."
Arata looked into the dark beyond the archway.
The hum there was different it was not very loud, not heard by ears. Just older, Arata could feel it through his palm. Like an echo waiting for an answer.
"Let's see what it's waiting for," he said as he removed the glove from his right hand.
They stepped inside.
Light followed reluctantly, bending against the walls. The air grew warmer, thicker. The hum deepened until it felt almost like a heartbeat.
At the end of the corridor, they found a hollow—circular, silent, walls covered in smooth balck. A part in the heart of the tunnels with no veins, no glow
"It's a Black field," Lyra whispered. "Like a scar of cauterisation"
Arata's palm throbbed. There were no veins here, it was like the area was cut off from the rest of the world. There was no resonant energy here.
Tomas set down his case, running his fingers along the floor. "No energy signature. But the material covering the tunnels... it's not stone."
Farworth crouched beside him, eyes narrowing. "Then what is it?"
Tomas's expression softened with quiet wonder. "It's metal, the same metal with which squadron leaders sword is forged."
They all looked up at once. The chamber vibrated faintly under their feet.
Somewhere deep within the darkness, a sound stirred—distant and patient, like something vast turning in sleep.
The Vision of last time that Arata had seen came flooding back. The huge creature shifting around, with scales the size of continents, blood flowing in it's veins enough to drown the world.
Arata rested his hand on Resonance. The blade pulsed once.
Nebula noticed Arata's hand, it had stopped glowing the fain blue had now faded. Gray lines remained dormant.
They didn't run. Not yet.
"We should move from here." Nebula said as she unsheathed her sword.
Instead, Farworth whispered, "Mark this site. We'll call it the Echo Field."
Lyra began recording. Tomas stayed kneeling by the floor, his reflection shimmering faintly in the black surface. "Instead of emitting the usual hum of the veins, here it feels like they are listening," he said quietly.
Nebula looked toward the centre of the chamber, the hum building softly in his bones.
"To what?"
Tomas met his gaze. "To itself."
"How is that exactly?"
"I don't know i just interpret the readings, The rest is Lyra's job." Tomas replied.
"I have a thesis , but I hope it is not true." Lyra replied as she heard her name.
Farworth interjected, "We can discuss it later, right now let's find a place to camp."
...
By the time they reached the surface corridor, the artificial sunlamps had dimmed to dusk.
Farworth halted near a junction, marking a point on his map.
"We'll camp here," he said. "The field will stabilise by morning."
Nebula frowned. "We're staying underground?"
"You think the world above will be any quieter?"
His tone was patient, not mocking. "Let the earth listen while we rest. It might tell us something new."
They set up the portable dome near an alcove carved with old runes it was decorative once, now half-eaten by dust. The generator buzzed to life, bathing the tent's interior in soft white.
Tomas unpacked the ration packs and the kettle, assembling a small camp stove like he'd done it a thousand times.
"You really bring that everywhere?" Arata asked.
"It keeps the hands busy," Tomas replied. "And sometimes the air smells better for it."
Lyra muttered, "You sound like a poet pretending to be a technician."
He smiled faintly. "Maybe the job description changed when the world started singing its own poetry."