Chapter 29: Echoes in the North
The world’s surface bent to Mikhail’s will—but the north remained silent.
The Arctic, once deemed lifeless ice, had thawed into a new geopolitical theater. Beneath its melting crust lay forgotten secrets and long-buried scars.
Siberia’s permafrost released methane storms and unveiled relics: mammoth bones, ancient tombs—and data fragments encoded in glacial strata.
[Discovery: Proto-Technological Artifacts | Designation: ÆON-RUINS]
Russian lore had long whispered of the Hyperborean Vaults—pre-human architectures of impossible geometry. Dismissed as myth, they were now real.
Consortium exiles knew this. They had fled beneath the frost, fusing nanite colonies with biotic remnants of ancient creatures.
[Threat Level: Undefined | Biogenetic Hazard: ACTIVE]
Mikhail deployed the Arctic Doctrine Enclave, a hybrid force of climatologists, cyber-exorcists, and biomech marines.
Their base: POLARIS-1, a rotating fortress-cradle orbiting the magnetic pole.