The descent into the hollow earth was silent but for the rustle of cloth and the occasional clink of metal. The winding tunnel that had opened beneath Verix's workshop led them ever downward, the walls shifting from hewn stone to smooth, phosphorescent strata that pulsed faintly beneath their feet.
Jack could feel it—the hum of energy threaded through the earth itself, not unlike the circuits and magnetic lattices he had once designed back on Earth. Yet here, the sensation was primal, alive.
Verix led the way with unerring confidence, her delicate features lit from below by the glow of a polished crystal rod she carried. The faint shadows deepened the elven angularity of her face, a blend of ancient grace and enduring resolve.
Her gait was still slightly guarded, the practiced steps of someone who had spent too long hiding in another skin.
Gone was the illusion of the stoic male scholar she had once presented; now, as Verix, she moved with unapologetic poise.
"You've kept this place hidden for years?" Lyra asked, glancing at the carvings in the walls. Spirals and sigils older than any empire traced a path down into darkness.
"Longer," Verix replied. "This passage predates even the founding of the College."
"It was excavated by my ancestors before the Conclave rewrote our history. The Vexari were once stewards of the deep harmonics—the lifeblood of cultivation before it was bound and measured."
Jack absorbed the information as he walked, the pendant at his chest pulsing in steady rhythm with the glowing strata. Whatever energies lived here, the matrix recognized them. He could feel it syncing, adapting.
After an hour of descent, the tunnel opened into a vast chamber—a subterranean cathedral with a ceiling lost in mist and distance.
Towering crystal obelisks rose like frozen lightning from the floor, each humming with invisible resonance. Strange flora clung to the bases, curling inwards as the trio approached.
In the center of the chamber, a dais shaped like a sigil circle rose from the polished stone. Around it lay remnants of long-forgotten tools—half-melted crucibles, shattered lenses, and etched plates of a language Jack couldn't read.
"This is the Core Altar," Verix said, kneeling at its edge.
"Where the harmonic experiments first began—before they were corrupted by the Conclave's hunger for control. My mother brought me here when I was a child, taught me to feel the music in the stone."
Jack stepped closer, drawn by the sheer density of energy radiating from the altar. It wasn't chaotic like the raw cultivation fields he'd previously encountered—it was ordered, as though waiting for a conductor.
"This place—" Jack murmured, fingers brushing the smooth edge of the altar. "It's a nexus. A naturally balanced harmonic node."
Verix's eyes gleamed. "Exactly. A perfect site to synchronize our matrix. But there's more."
She stood and turned toward a monolithic crystal structure at the far end of the chamber. Embedded within its surface were a dozen smaller crystals, each dull but shaped with intricate sigils.
She extended her hand, and the pendant at her neck flared in response. One of the sigil-crystals pulsed briefly, then dimmed again.
"What are those?" Lyra asked.
"Memory-keys," Verix said. "Encoded with fragments of Jaro's research, my family's theories, and some… pieces you might call prophetic."
Jack's eyes narrowed. "Prophetic?"
Verix hesitated. "Not in the mystical sense. The Vexari once designed predictive constructs—matrix-based simulations built upon harmonic probabilities."
"They could glimpse the likely outcomes of events based on the state of the world's energies."
"Like quantum forecasting," Jack said, thinking back to neural prediction models in his old life.
Verix nodded slowly. "Yes. But with living energy."
She turned back toward the altar. "The matrix we are building—it's not just a power amplifier. It's an interface."
"A bridge between will and the world's underlying harmonic fabric. With three nodes already synced, we can begin the initialization process."
Lyra crossed her arms. "And what happens when it's fully synced?"
Verix's expression grew somber. "Then the world will begin to change."
...
...
The process of initialization required each of them to sit within a marked triangle at the altar's edges. Jack's pendant was placed in the center, where its light flared upward like a signal beacon.
The room responded. Crystals along the walls shifted in hue, their tones growing clearer, more melodic.
As Jack closed his eyes, he felt his consciousness brush against the others—Verix's mind like an ever-spinning lattice of concepts and symmetries, Lyra's like tempered steel and quiet pain. They formed a triad not just of skill, but of intention.
Then the harmonics surged.
Visions flooded Jack's mind—memories not his own, images from Verix's childhood, scenes of her mother weaving energy in quiet defiance of the Conclave. Lyra's experiences followed—military drills, loss, the sting of betrayal.
But then came something else.
A presence. Massive, indifferent, ancient.
It pressed at the edges of Jack's awareness like a thundercloud barely held at bay. He saw an ocean of glass, a sky lit by twin moons bleeding crimson, and a voice—not spoken, but resonant within the bones of the world.
Three awaken. One remains lost. The fourth must choose.
He gasped and broke contact, staggering back from the altar. Lyra and Verix looked equally shaken.
"Did you hear it?" he asked.
Verix nodded, sweat beading her brow. "The Fourth Node. We'll need it to stabilize the matrix. Without it… it will collapse under its own potential."
"Do we know who or where the fourth is?"
"No," Verix admitted. "Only that the matrix itself will begin seeking them. The resonance signature should grow stronger the closer we get."
Jack stared at the now-dark pendant in the center of the altar. It no longer pulsed.
It waited.
...
...
Their return to the surface was swift. The matrix had altered the pendant's properties—Jack could now feel distant pulses, faint signals, like sonar echoes calling to some other soul across the wilds. It wasn't a direction, not quite. More like… a beckoning.
Outside, the landscape had shifted. It was dusk, though only hours had passed. The skies above shimmered with strange light—the moons overlapping in a rare twin phase that bathed the world in pale lavender.
Verix studied the horizon. "We'll need to move east. Toward the Mistpine Reaches."
"Why there?" Lyra asked.
"Because the Conclave avoids it," Verix replied. "And if I were the fourth node—lost, hidden, waiting—I would choose to hide where even the gods hesitate."
They packed quickly, disguising the entrance to the sanctum with ancient wards Verix inscribed into the soil. As night fell and they slipped back into the caravan routes under false names, Jack couldn't help but look back once.
The world was changing. And deep beneath the stone, the harmonics had begun to stir.