The wasteland outside the Anchor wasn't empty. It was crowded with the dead.
They moved through a canyon of twisted metal and grey rock, stepping over the fossilized remains of ancient machines. Titan-Walkers from the Pre-Silence era lay half-buried in the dust, their ceramic ribcages picked clean by scavengers.
The silence here was absolute. It pressed against their ears like deep water, muffling the sound of their own footsteps.
Kaelen took point, hand resting on the hilt of his black glass sword. His eye—the one that saw the Weave—ached with a dull, throbbing pressure. The blue signal of the Reliquary pulsed stronger now, a heartbeat in the dark, guiding him through the labyrinth of ruin.
"Close," Kaelen whispered, pausing to wipe grit from his face. "Another hundred meters. Around that bend."
Renna moved silently behind him, rifle shouldered, scanning the high ridges. She didn't look at the ruins. She looked for movement.
"The air pressure is dropping," she murmured, glancing at the sky. The grey clouds were churning, darkening into a bruised purple. "Barometer is bottoming out. Something is coming."
"The Wither," Kaelen said without turning. "We need to be inside before the wind hits."
Jax trailed in the rear, clutching his knife so hard his knuckles turned white. The boy flinched at every shadow, his eyes darting between the skeletal machines. To him, this wasn't history. It was a graveyard of giants.
They rounded the corner of a collapsed skyscraper that had fallen centuries ago. A natural tunnel formed by catastrophe.
There it was.
Embedded in the cliff face sat a massive circular door. Dull, seamless bronze, etched with glowing runes that had long since gone dormant. It looked less like a door and more like the vault of a bank built for gods.
But they weren't alone.
CLANG.
A metallic ringing sound echoed through the canyon, shattering the quiet.
CLANG. CLANG.
Someone was hitting the door.
Kaelen held up a fist. Renna dropped to one knee instantly, rifle leveled. Jax scrambled behind a piece of rubble, breathing hard.
In front of the massive vault, a figure was working.
Humanoid? Barely. The thing was hunched over, draped in heavy, oil-stained rags that were stiff with years of accumulated grime. Four mechanical arms—crude, rusted appendages bolted onto its back—were hammering at the bronze door with crowbars and chisels.
It moved with frantic, jerky motions. Sparks flew as the metal limbs struck the divine seal, but the bronze didn't even scratch.
"Open, you stubborn relic!" the figure hissed, voice scratchy like grinding gears. "I can smell the grain! I know it's in there! Open!"
One of the mechanical arms struck the door again with a sickening crunch. The chisel shattered.
"Damnation!" The figure kicked the bronze, hopping on one flesh leg while the four metal ones hissed with hydraulic frustration.
"He's noisy," Renna murmured, her eye pressed to the scope. "He's going to attract a Silencer. Or worse."
"He's desperate," Kaelen noted. He watched the creature's erratic movements. "And he has a cart."
Sitting a few feet away was a hand-pulled wagon piled high with scrap metal, wires, and odd artifacts. A treasure trove of junk. Useless if you were starving, but valuable if you survived.
Kaelen stood up. "Cover me."
"He has servo-limbs," Renna warned. "He might be fast."
"I'm faster."
Kaelen stepped out from the rubble. "You're going to break your tools before you break that door."
The figure spun around. The mechanical arms flared out like spider legs, clicking menacingly.
Underneath the hood, two glowing yellow lenses whirred, focusing on Kaelen. The creature's face was a mess of scarred flesh and brass plating. A scavenger cyborg. Low tier, but dangerous.
"Thief!" the creature snarled, backing up against the vault. The metal arms raised makeshift blades—screwdrivers and sharpened pipes. "Mine! I found it! I've been chipping at this seal for three cycles! Go find your own grave!"
Renna stepped out from the shadows, the barrel of her rifle pointed directly at the creature's brass forehead. She didn't speak. She just let the weapon do the talking.
The creature froze. The mechanical arms drooped instantly. The aggression evaporated, replaced by a pathetic trembling.
"Negotiation is possible," the creature squeaked. "I am Scrap. Humble trader. Honest businessman. Please don't shoot. My coolant lines are very fragile."
Kaelen walked forward calmly, ignoring the spider-arms. He stopped ten feet from the bronze door, sensing the immense power radiating from it.
"You can hit that door for a thousand years, Scrap. It won't open. It's sealed with a Divine Lock. It doesn't respond to force. It responds to Authority."
Scrap's lenses zoomed in on Kaelen. The aperture narrowed, scanning him. "Your thermal signature... it's wrong. It burns too hot. You radiate energy, not rot. You aren't a scavenger."
"I'm the one the door obeys," Kaelen said.
He gestured to the bronze vault.
"Here is the deal. I open it. We take the food. You take the artifacts. And we use your cart to haul it back to my territory."
Scrap hesitated. His mechanical arms twitched, calculating the profit margins. "Artifacts? All of them? Even the power cores? Even the Pre-Silence tech?"
"If it's not edible, it's yours," Kaelen lied smoothly. He would renegotiate later. Right now, he needed the door open before the storm hit.
"Deal!" Scrap rubbed his flesh hands together. "Open it! Hurry! Before the Wither brings the Wind-Walkers! I can feel the pressure dropping!"
Kaelen stepped up to the massive bronze surface.
Up close, the hum was deafening to his senses. The mana here was ancient. It didn't feel like the corrupted violet mana of Valerius. It felt like the sun. Warm. Structured. Golden.
It was dormant. Asleep. Waiting for a command that hadn't come in centuries.
He didn't use a lockpick. He didn't use a spell. He placed his palm flat against the cold metal and closed his eyes.
He reached into the void.
[ TARGET: RELIQUARY SEAL (TIER 2) ]
[ STATUS: LOCKED ]
[ SECURITY: SOLAR DYNASTY ENCRYPTION ]
[ AUTHORITY DETECTED: ADMIN (ANOMALY) ]
In the darkness of his mind, he saw the lock mechanism. It wasn't tumblers and pins. It was a complex knot of golden light, woven into the very atomic structure of the metal.
Valerius had built walls over this world, but he hadn't erased the foundation. The Old Code was still here, buried under the silence.
Kaelen didn't untie the knot. He simply told the knot it didn't exist.
"[ Open ]," Kaelen commanded.
The word wasn't spoken. It was pushed into the system.
THOOM.
The sound was deep, vibrating through the ground and shaking dust from the canyon walls.
The runes on the door flared to life. For a second, they burned a corrupted red—the System trying to reject the command—before turning a brilliant, electric blue to match Kaelen's Authority.
HISSSSSS.
Pressurized air from a thousand years ago blasted out, kicking up a cloud of white dust. The massive gears inside the wall groaned, grinding against centuries of rust and neglect.
"By the Weave..." Scrap whispered, cowering behind his cart.
Slowly, agonizingly, the bronze door split down the middle.
"Jackpot," Renna whispered, lowering her rifle.
Kaelen stepped back as the doors fully retracted into the rock.
Darkness lay inside. But it wasn't empty darkness. It was stagnant and dry, preserving everything within like a time capsule.
Rows of stasis pods lined the walls, flickering with faint amber light. Crates marked with the sigil of a dead Sun God were stacked to the ceiling.
"Load the cart," Kaelen ordered, his voice cutting through the awe. He stared into the blackness of the vault.
The Wither was howling outside now, the wind beginning to scream through the canyon rocks.
"We have ten minutes before the storm hits," Kaelen said. "And the Silence doesn't like it when you wake the dead."