The hatch groaned open like a dying throat. Rust flaked into the air, mingling with ancient nanite spores that pulsed faintly blue. Vara stepped through first, the glow from her Codex Core pushing back the dark. Behind her, Ayara limped but insisted on going forward, one hand on the wall, the other still gripping her blade. Auren came last, sealing the hatch behind them.

  Vault-6 swallowed them in silence.

  Unlike the surface ruins, the vault had not been stripped or looted. The air was stale but breathable. Holographic emitters, long dormant, flickered to life at their presence. Pale green diagrams spiraled across the walls—anatomical breakdowns, Core schematics, and prayer-verse code from the Codex etched into steel.

  "This place isn’t just a vault," Auren muttered. "It’s a laboratory."

  And a grave.

  As they ventured deeper, they found the first of the failed Codex Prototypes—bodies left suspended in cryo-capsules, veins turned silver with raw nanite. Some had been children.

  Ayara turned away. “What kind of god builds this?”

  “Not a god,” Vara said softly. “A man who wanted to become one.”

  They reached the central node chamber, a vast spherical room lined with memory prisms. In its center floated the third Echo Fragment—untouched, radiant, humming with stored will.

  But they were not alone.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  From the shadows emerged a Librarian.

  Not the human kind. This one was fully transformed—its original body dissolved into a construct of living code and armor-bound logic. Its voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere.

  “You should not have come here, child of breach.”

  Vara stepped forward. “You’re a Seeker.”

  “I was. Now, I remember everything. And I protect what remains.”

  It attacked without warning.

  Ayara dashed to flank, but the Librarian moved like mist, teleporting between flickers of corrupted light. Auren tried to jam its neural field, only to have his device short out in his hand. Vara summoned her fragments—three now—and formed a Resonance Halo.

  Light collided with shadow.

  The Librarian shattered the ground beneath them with a pulse of gravity. Memory prisms screamed as they cracked open, releasing ghost-thoughts: echoes of dying engineers, broken oaths, a mother weeping over her augmented son. The room became a storm of past and present.

  Vara dove into the storm.

  And reached the Librarian.

  She saw him—not as a monster, but as a man. A Seeker once called Dalen Marr. He had tried to bind the Codex to his soul and lost his name to its verses. Now, a guardian made of regret.

  “Set me free,” he whispered as she drove her core into his.

  The Librarian dispersed into particles of silver dust.

  The Echo Fragment dropped into her hands.

  But the vault began to collapse.

  “Move!” Auren yelled.

  They ran—through breaking halls and rupturing walls—until the surface sky welcomed them again.

  Behind them, Vault-6 was buried forever.

  Above them, a storm was brewing. And in Vara’s mind, the Codex whispered:

  “Four fragments remain. The song must be whole before the world dies again.”