Chapter 240: Meeting (6)
She frowned. "It’s never done that before."
"Maybe it was waiting for the right resonance."
Her eyes narrowed. "Meaning?"
Merlin met her gaze evenly. "Meaning it knows how to listen."
Regina didn’t respond. Not right away. Then, finally, she looked at the cube again. "If that’s true, then it just recognized you."
He exhaled slowly, his pulse still racing. "That’s... not comforting."
"No," she agreed. "It isn’t."
The cube pulsed again, faint, like a breath through glass.
And somewhere deep inside, Merlin could feel it. Watching.
By the time he left the R&D floor, the city above was drenched in sunlight.
But to Merlin, everything felt colder.
He’d walked into that tower as a shareholder. He was leaving it as something else entirely, someone marked by a secret no one else could feel.
He knew what this meant. He’d read enough stories to recognize the pattern: the artifact, the awakening, the shift in fate.
Except this time, he wasn’t reading it.
He was standing in it.
And the cube, whatever it was, had looked back.
—
The hum of the city pressed faintly against the glass as Merlin leaned back in the cab.
Invoke Tower was shrinking behind him, its mirrored surface catching the sun and scattering it like broken light. His reflection stared back at him from the window, composed, still, but his pulse hadn’t slowed since the moment the cube reacted.
’That thing... it knew me.’
The thought wouldn’t leave. It crawled under his skin, replaying that instant, the pulse, the flicker, the feeling of being watched by something vast and awake.
[Unregistered resonance detected.]
The message flashed briefly before fading from his vision. His system, dormant since the labyrinth, had stirred for a moment. And then gone quiet again, as if uncertain whether it was allowed to exist here.
He exhaled slowly. "Guess even you don’t know what that was, huh?"
The cab didn’t answer. The traffic murmured on.
By the time he reached the apartment, Victoria had already left. A note was stuck to the fridge:
Meeting a friend for lunch! Don’t burn the kitchen again. – Vic
He snorted, tossing the note aside. The quiet of the apartment felt heavier than usual.
He poured a glass of water, sat on the couch, and stared out the window, the city bustling below, unaware of the pulse still echoing faintly through his chest.
He needed air.
An hour later, Merlin found himself walking through the park near the academy district.
The grass shimmered faintly under the afternoon light. Children ran near the fountain, chasing small light orbs cast by street vendors. It was peaceful, almost painfully so.
He sat on a bench, pulled out his phone, and scrolled through unread messages. Dozens of notifications from Invoke Systems. Financial updates. Project memos. Meeting requests.
One message, though, sat at the very top, unmarked, no sender ID.
"Enjoyed your visit, Mr. Everhart?"
Merlin’s fingers stilled. He opened it.
A second later, a voice called through the small device, filtered, modulated, but unmistakably smooth.
"Don’t bother tracing this. You won’t find me."
"Damien," Merlin said quietly.
The voice chuckled. "You catch on fast."
"You sent me that file."
"Sable Nexus. Yes. You were bound to stumble on it eventually. I thought I’d save us both some time."
Merlin’s gaze swept across the park, scanning faces. No one looked at him. No one even seemed aware. "What exactly do you want?"
"Want?" Damien’s tone softened, amused. "That depends on what you’re ready to see."
"Cut the cryptic garbage. You clearly know what that thing in R&D is."
"Of course I do. I was one of the few who found it."
Merlin froze. "You—?"
"Yes. Long before you bought your little eight percent, Invoke wasn’t just building weapons. We were looking for something buried beneath the northern ice fields. A ruin. We didn’t know what it was at the time, until we unearthed the cube."
"And you brought it here."
Damien laughed quietly. "You say that like we had a choice."
Merlin frowned. "Meaning?"
"That artifact, the ’cube,’ as you call it, is alive, Mr. Everhart. It doesn’t sit. It chooses. It followed the first team back here. Systems failed. Records erased. It reappeared in our labs days later, as if it wanted to be there. And when we tried to destroy it—"
The line went silent for a second. Then:
"—it destroyed the people who tried."
Merlin’s grip on the phone tightened. "And you kept it anyway."
"Of course. You don’t bury a god’s heart when you find it."
The air seemed to chill. "A god’s... heart?"
"That’s one way to put it,"
Damien said, almost idly. "Our instruments couldn’t measure it. But its energy signature, its pattern, matches the readings from ancient relics tied to the so-called Pantheon of Architects. The same ones your labyrinth friends liked to worship." Merlin’s breath caught. The gods.
The ones who had trapped him in that endless cycle of death and illusion.
The ones who had watched and laughed.
"So what does Invoke plan to do with it?" he asked.
Damien’s tone turned quieter, darker. "What we always do, weaponize what we don’t understand."
"And you’re okay with that?"
A low chuckle. "I didn’t say I was okay with it. I said I’m profiting from it."
Merlin closed his eyes, fighting the urge to hurl the phone into the grass. "You’re insane."
"No, Mr. Everhart. I’m realistic. The only difference between gods and men is how much power they can afford to waste."
The line crackled.
"And you," Damien said softly, "you might just have the key to spending theirs."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
The message deleted itself seconds later as the line hanged up.
He sat there for a long time, phone still in hand, the hum of the city fading into static.
’A god’s heart...’
The words echoed in his head, like a whisper looping endlessly.
[Resonance stabilized.]
[Foreign signature linked: Unknown origin.]
[Warning: synchronization exceeds safe thresholds.]
His system flickered again, faint, unstable, before going dark.
Merlin exhaled through clenched teeth. "Great."
He looked up. The clouds were gathering now, slow and heavy.
’If that thing is connected to the gods... then Damien’s right. It’s alive.’
And if it was alive, and if it had recognized him, then it meant something was already in motion.
Something bigger than Invoke. Bigger than the city.
He rose from the bench, slipping his phone into his pocket, and began walking back.
The park seemed quieter than before. Every passerby, every motion, every shadow, all felt slightly delayed, like the world was breathing in before a storm.
—
Back at the apartment, Victoria was home again. She looked up from the couch as he stepped in.
"Hey," she said, smiling faintly. "You look like you’ve seen a ghost."
"Something like that," he muttered, dropping his jacket.
She studied him for a moment. "Merlin. Are you okay?"
He forced a thin smile. "Yeah. Just... business stuff."
"Right," she said, unconvinced, but let it go.
He disappeared into his room, shut the door, and sat on the edge of the bed.
For a long time, he just listened, to the sound of the city outside, to Victoria moving in the other room, to the faint pulse still echoing under his skin.
It wasn’t just in his head. He could feel it.
The cube had linked to him somehow.
And now, whatever power had been sleeping beneath Invoke Tower, whatever heart the gods had left behind, was awake.
And it was listening.
—
The morning after Damien’s cryptic call came too early.
Merlin hadn’t really slept. His mind was still racing, the cube, the resonance, the faint flickers of his system that shouldn’t even exist in this world.
When the sun began cutting through the blinds, he gave up on trying to rest and just sat there, staring at the faint line of gold crawling across the floor.
Then, his phone buzzed.
Incoming message, Invoke Systems Internal
Chairman Kael requests your presence at the tower. 09:00 sharp. New project review. Mandatory for all shareholders above 5%.
Merlin sighed. "Of course."
He rose, washed his face, straightened his hair, and slipped on the same charcoal suit he’d bought days earlier. He hesitated for a moment before grabbing the sleek black watch he hadn’t worn since before the labyrinth, a reminder of who he’d been before gods, before death, before any of this madness.
’Let’s see what game they’re playing now.’
Invoke Tower was alive when he arrived.
Elevators whispered up and down. Security drones hovered silently across the glass lobby, their lenses tracking every motion. The receptionist from before offered a faint, practiced smile as she scanned his ID and waved him through.
This time, when the elevator opened, Chairman Kael himself was waiting at the top floor.
"Mr. Everhart," Kael greeted, voice smooth as ever. "You’re punctual. Good."
"Habit," Merlin replied evenly.
Kael gestured for him to follow. "Then let’s make good use of it."
The boardroom wasn’t where they went. Instead, Kael led him down a separate corridor, deeper into the tower, one lined with reinforced glass and humming energy conduits. The faint blue glow of mana-tech ran beneath the floors like veins of light.
They stopped before a heavy black door marked with silver insignias:
R&D — Restricted Access. Authorized Personnel Only.
Kael placed his hand against the scanner. The door hissed open, revealing a chamber bathed in white light.
Inside were several figures in lab coats, technicians moving between floating holoscreens, calibration tables, and suspended weapon frames that gleamed with etched runes.
Regina Hale was there, as composed as ever. Her hair tied neatly back, her glasses reflecting the soft blue glow.
"Chairman," she said, nodding once. "Everything is ready."
Kael stepped aside, motioning Merlin forward. "Mr. Everhart. I thought you should see where your investment truly lies."
Merlin’s eyes swept across the room. Unlike the sterile labs of the past, this one thrummed, the air charged with a faint static hum that crawled across his skin.
And then he saw it.
Suspended in the center of the room, held in a stasis field of pale energy, floated a weapon.
A blade, sleek, silver, and impossibly thin, with faint circuit-like patterns running down its length. At its center pulsed a faint light, identical to the one that had flared from the cube.
Regina’s voice cut through the silence. "We call it Project Seraph."
Merlin stepped closer. "...Seraph."
"The cube’s energy reacts to metallic conduction and mana-infused alloys," Regina explained, her tone calm, clinical. "When we tested small traces, the results were... unstable. But with the correct lattice structure and containment fields—"
Kael finished for her, his tone almost reverent. "—we found a way to give that energy form."