The sky over Athon shimmered with unfamiliar stars.

  In the wreckage of a fallen Mechanist satellite dish, Vara stood with her hand raised, Codex Core glowing. The signal she had unknowingly triggered in Telthar’s ruined temple now echoed upward—and had been answered.

  Above them, a long-dead orbital relay called The Liminal Eye blinked back to life.

  “What is it scanning for?” Auren asked, shielding his eyes as blue beams flickered between the clouds.

  Ayara tightened her grip on her blade. “Not what. Who.”

  Vara’s Codex glowed violently, projecting a map none of them had seen before: a rotating celestial sphere, dotted with orbital stations, long-forgotten satellites, and—at its center—a single node pulsing in crimson.

  The Crimson Vault.

  A prison. A lab. A grave.

  Whatever it was, the Codex fragments yearned for it.

  “Is that where the rest of the Echoes are?” Vara asked.

  “No,” whispered Ayara. “That’s where they were made.”

  Suddenly, the ground trembled. Nanodust lifted like mist, and out of the scorched dirt emerged a creature that should not exist—a fusion of machine and void, all jagged limbs and whispering mouths. A Dreadwrought Construct.

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  “Move!” Auren shouted.

  They fought in unison. Vara’s Codex arm extended into an arc-blade of light; Ayara danced between the construct’s limbs; Auren lobbed burst-grenades laced with magnetic disruptors. Still, the thing was learning—adapting.

  “Core Seed,” Auren shouted. “Use it!”

  Vara hesitated—Telthar’s temptation still fresh in her mind.

  But she didn’t use his seed.

  Instead, she reached deep into the Codex itself and called upon the fragments she had earned. The lattice around her heart ignited.

  Sovereign Override initiated.

  Resonance Level: Tier One unlocked.

  A burst of radiant energy erupted from her chest, singing in a language lost to time. The construct screamed—then disintegrated into glowing sand.

  The silence afterward was deafening.

  Ayara turned to her, eyes wide. “You… unlocked a Sovereign Layer?”

  “I didn’t know I could,” Vara said softly, shaking.

  Auren scanned the ruins. “That wasn't a random attack. Something up there sent it. Whatever watches us from orbit—it’s awake now.”

  They looked to the sky.

  And far above, aboard the Liminal Eye, a shadow moved. Something no longer fully human. Something that remembered the Codex. Its face was covered by a glass helm filled with fluid, and its voice rasped into a console:

  “Subject Vara located. Sovereign signal confirmed.

  Commence retrieval. Activate the Crimson Gate.”

  The world trembled again.

  And across the surface of Athon, ancient gates began to open.