——When the State Becomes the Third Player
Rain hammered the armored convoy like artillery fire.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Each drop struck the steel hull with clinical precision.
Above, the sky twisted like a black ocean.
Lightning split the heavens—brief, violent, surgical.
For an instant, the jagged cliffs came alive in stark relief.
The convoy surged forward.
Tires carved through flooded asphalt, engines howling like cornered beasts.
It was less a journey, more an escape.
Inside the lead vehicle, Shawn sat shackled to a blackened steel chair.
The restraints glowed faintly—pulsing in sync with the Core in his chest.
CP-Hub suppression tech. Efficient. Merciless.
Across from him, Commander Lindsay Zhao sat motionless.
Her amber tactical visor flickered with data feeds.
She didn't blink. Didn't move.
Just watched.
The dim cabin lights painted her face in flickering shadows.
When she spoke, her voice cut clean through the storm.
"You'd be dead if we hadn't intervened," she said flatly.
"Quinn skins Core-bearers alive."
Shawn tugged at the restraints.
No give. Just pain.
"Why save me?" he rasped.
"CP-Hub wiped the Meta-Origin Sect off the map."
A flicker—almost a smile. Almost.
"We burned the cult."
She leaned forward. Her breath misted the visor.
"The Cores?"
A pause.
"State property."
Lightning flashed again—longer this time.
Outside, twenty Revolutionary Guard mechs strode into formation.
Electromagnetic cannons scanned the cliffs, twitching like insect eyes.
Lindsay's voice dropped to a near-whisper.
"And you… you're the key to the Rifts."
---
CRACK!
Thunder exploded overhead.
Then—
Boom!
Impact.
The vehicle jerked sideways, nearly flipping.
Red alarms screamed. Metal shrieked.
Screens blinked into chaos.
Rear monitors flared—
A winged Unmarked dropship descended through the rain, its hull bleeding black flame.
From its belly, soldiers spilled out—black-clad shadows with glowing rifles.
The storm wasn't over.
It was just beginning.
Shawn's breath caught in his throat.
His Core pulsed violently.
Not in pain.
In warning.
And deep inside, past the fear and fury—
something ancient stirred.
Something ready.
Gunfire erupted.
Tracer rounds sliced the darkness like fireflies from hell.
Shawn's jaw tightened. "Quinn's not letting go."
Lindsay slammed the comms panel.
"Evasive Pattern Delta! Protect Primary Cargo!"
The convoy swerved. Tires screeched.
Explosions rocked the valley as Unmarked forces engaged CP-Hub's mechanized units. Plasma bursts and kinetic rounds lit the night in a deadly dance.
The storm howled.
But beyond the chaos, Shawn felt it—something raw and ancient, clawing at the edges of reality.
---
The descent into Base 7-1 felt like being swallowed by the earth itself.
The convoy spiraled downward, swallowed by a subterranean highway. The walls hummed with suppressed energy.
Shawn exhaled, forcing his pulse to slow.
The battle above was beyond him now.
His reckoning waited below.
The transport slowed.
Reinforced blast doors yawned open, revealing an immense chamber bathed in cold artificial light.
The air carried the scent of ozone and aged bronze. Glyphs pulsed faintly along the walls.
The heart of CP-Hub's hidden citadel.
His restraints hissed open.
Blood rushed back into his fingertips—but his focus locked on the chamber ahead.
A vast cavern stretched before him, its walls carved with celestial trigrams.
At its heart, eight colossal cauldrons stood in a perfect circle around a central tripod, its surface etched with a Taiji symbol.
Each vessel pulsed with eerie, elemental force:
Mountain Core – Jagged jade shards floated in molten lead, shifting like tectonic plates.
Lake Core – Quicksilver churned within a glass sphere, forming ever-changing sigils.
Wind Core – A single feather hung suspended in a vacuum, twisting in unseen currents.
Fire Core – A lone ember burned blood-red, consuming nothing yet never fading.
Sky Core – A cracked diamond vibrated at an ultrasonic pitch, thrumming in Shawn's bones.
Earth Core – A spinning lodestone distorted the air with its powerful magnetism.
Water Core – A frozen droplet hovered midair, defying gravity itself.
Only two cauldron stood empty.
The Thunder Core.
So did the central tripod.
Shawn's breath hitched.
"What is this...?"
A voice answered from the shadows.
"A launch pad."
Marshal Gary stepped forward. His uniform's quantum-circuit embroidery flickered like distant starlight.
His gaze swept over Shawn like a predator studying prey.
"Eighty years ago, CP-Hub helped seal the Meta-Spirit Key. Now, without them, we alone can awaken it."
Shawn's Core pulsed—sharp, painful.
"You don't want to stop AGI-ST. You want to control the Primal Soul?"
Gary's smile is weird.
Then, a hologram flared to life.
Earth's continents veined with glowing leylines—converging at the central facility of Meta-Spirit Key.
Like a bleeding wound.
Lindsay stepped forward, handing Shawn a file.
Inside—a blueprint.
Project Heaven's Secret.
An orbital array of terrifying scale.
Gary's voice was calm. Almost casual.
"Your mission: retrieve the all Arcane Core. In return, your family lives."
Shawn's fists clenched.
"And if I refuse?"
The lights dimmed.
A containment pod hissed open.
Inside—a crystallized corpse.
Its mouth frozen in a silent scream.
Lindsay's voice was flat.
"The last resister."
---
They outfitted Shawn with a quantum comms implant.
As Lindsay led him toward the hangar, her fingers suddenly closed around his.
Something cold pressed into his palm—a bronze coin.
Its surface bore the Three-Eye Sigil of the M.O.S.
She whispered, "My grandmother was Sect."
Then—
Alarms blared.
AGI-ST breach detected—Sector 9.
Screens flickered.
On the monitors—Quinn.
He stood atop a ruined skyscraper.
The sky behind him was ripped open like a wound.
Black energy lashed down like serpents.
His voice boomed through the base:
"Shawn Carter! Your Core remembers what they did!"
A white-hot flash—
Memories surged.
Not his own.
A golden door splintering.
Revolutionary Guard soldiers in old uniforms, chanting as they tore something from a writhing figure.
A whisper: "They called it sealing. It was a slaughter."
Shawn gasped awake. His chest burned.
On-screen, Quinn smirked.
"Find me at the First Grave."
The transmission cut.
---
The hangar doors groaned open.
A stealth VTOL stood ready, its hull emblazoned with CP-Hub's dragon emblem.
Lindsay shoved him forward.
"Go. Before Gary changes his mind."
---
Shawn's boots hit the pavement.
Home.
Shawn exhaled, forcing his pulse to steady.
Beyond his window, a shadow flickered—too Fluid too Silent
to be human.
A sharp buzz rang in his skull. A message, clear as a whisper against bone:
Dorm wall. Buried Core.Now.
He hesitated. Then, moving on instinct, he shoved his bed's headboard aside.
There, embedded in the plaster, was a bronze coin.
One side bore the intricate etching of a dragon, its sinuous body wrapped around a mountain peak. The other—just a single character: 五(Five).
Shawn's Core pulsed, a slow, uneasy thrum.
Why five?
Not seven.
And why… burial?