Chapter 21
The city's bones were made of steel and silence.
Kiro passed through forgotten channels beneath Gaeth-9's slave district—tunnels once used for waste, now clogged with the ghosts of progress. Rusted scaffolding, corpse-littered corridors, and broken data consoles flickered like dying stars, feeding the growing unease in his blood.
He had left the others behind. For this, he needed solitude.
The System had pulsed once, subtly, pulling his attention underground—toward something deeper than Empire logistics, deeper than rebellion. A memory buried in metal.
And he had listened.
System Directive: Anomalous Echo Detected. Source: Pre-Imperial Origin.
Warning: Residual Void Contamination Present.
Blood Venom pulsed faintly in his hand, uneasy.
The deeper Kiro descended, the less alive the world became. Plants gave way to dust. Insects vanished. The air turned dry, then brittle, then almost... absent. Even the echoes felt starved.
Then he found it.
A vault, long sealed. Half-buried in collapsed plating. Old Imperial sigils, now cracked and painted over with a symbol he didn't recognize—a spiral devouring itself.