Elias’s glow pulsed, slower now. Stronger. Sothing had clicked.
He floated in silence for a beat, then spoke again—this ti with a weight behind it.
"And slicing my shard in half... was your opportunity, is that right?"
His glow trembled as he asked, the words pulling sothing heavy from inside. The ache of Kikaru’s absence. The hollow throb of Dot’s stillness. It all pressed down on the edges of his soul.The godless crucifix tilted his head, silver eyes narrowing as he regarded Elias’s soul. The faint smile returned—not mocking, just quiet calculation behind ancient eyes. His voice ca low and resonant, the sa deep hum that always seed to twist the air as he spoke, bending the corridor around him with unseen pressure.
"Yes," he said, no hesitation behind the word. "No offense to you in particular... but I was more after the creature you call Dot’s—and the shard she was tied to."
The crimson mist curled tighter at his feet, coiling with purpose. The pale blue runes carved into the walls flickered in response, their glow jittering like breath held too long.
"Even half of her is useful. And half of the shard? That’s enough to begin testing... maybe even lay the groundwork for building counterasures against shard users."
He didn’t elaborate further. He didn’t need to.
Elias’s glow pulsed again, a soft flicker as confusion tangled with sothing colder. Frustration? No—sothing closer to realization.
"Uhhh... if I recall, counters to shard users were built pretty quickly," he said, the hesitation in his voice not from fear but from the absurdity of the idea. "You should know... a guy nad Silas created a gas to counteract shard users. It spread fast."
The crucifix didn’t stop walking, but his fingers flexed. Sothing in the air shifted—like a slow breath exhaled from the walls themselves. He gave a quiet nod, not dismissive, but acknowledging a rare truth from below his level.
"That will stop working once the current shard users evolve to get past poisons."
His tone didn’t shift. Calm. Steady. Matter-of-fact.
"I’m working on a biological phase now—sothing adaptive. Sothing... more permanent."
He glanced sideways, the corner of his mouth ticking upward again.
"But I will say—him and the team that developed that gas?" He paused just long enough for the mont to settle. "It was remarkable. The speed. The ingenuity. Your world has quite the geniuses."They walked into a vast room, and the air shifted—colder, denser, as if pressing inward with every step. The scent of ozone bit deeper here, sharper and tallic, curling into the back of Elias’s senses like smoke that never quite cleared. The godless crucifix’s cloak dragged faint tendrils of crimson mist behind him, but in this space, even that mist seed hesitant, clinging tighter to the floor as if wary of the chamber itself.
The walls curved inward into a perfect do, each surface built from interlocking shards of crystalline bone. They weren’t smooth—more like ribbed seams, veins of deep red soul-thread pulsing inside, the beat irregular and faint, like a dying heart still stubbornly refusing to stop.
A yawning opening lood at the room’s center, where no wall, glass, or barrier existed—just open space, looking out into the void. Not darkness, though. The stars outside burned impossibly bright, impossibly close, spinning in clusters and ribbons of cosmic color that made Elias feel both tiny and stretched thin at once. It wasn’t a view; it was exposure. Like the chamber hovered halfway into the fabric of existence itself.
And rising from the floor at a slight incline, set into a track of fused stone and black crystal, was a single structure—part weapon, part monunt, part mystery.
A telescope-like object—sleek, precise, obsidian in color—angled upward toward the stars. It narrowed into a needle point so fine it nearly disappeared where it aid, stopping just shy of piercing the cosmic curtain. The space around it shimred, not from heat, but spirit energy—a slow wave that rippled faintly from the tip and danced back down to its base. Crimson mist coiled around it like a tethered beast waiting to be released.
Elias hovered just behind, silent for a mont as he tried to process what he was looking at. The energy brushing against him felt foreign—neither hostile nor welcoming. Just... vast. A different kind of power. Older than Cube X, older than the system. Sothing that didn’t belong to any one world.
His glow pulsed, a soft flare of uncertainty and awe.
"What is this?" he asked, voice trembling as it slipped out, the words struggling beneath the weight of Kikaru’s absence, of Dot’s capture. The ache wasn’t dulled here—it was just quieter, like the Expanse itself refused to honor grief.
The godless crucifix ca to a stop beside the device, his silver eyes narrowing as he looked it over. His presence didn’t seem dwarfed by it—if anything, the scope felt like an extension of him.
"This is a sort of observatory I constructed with the help of others," he said, each word deliberate, his voice resonating through the chamber like a tuning fork pressed against bone. The walls pulsed faintly, reacting to his tone. "I might introduce you to them one day... but it’s unlikely. Regardless, it allows to watch and perceive events taking place around the universe without being detected. It has its limited uses... and I can even send out limited-ti drones to do a deep scan of areas, but they’ve been less fruitful than I would have liked." He turned toward Emma.
She was already in motion, adjusting her glasses with a small push of her knuckle as she stepped closer to the telescope. Her auburn braid swayed behind her, catching flickers of fractured starlight, while her expression stayed focused—clinical, maybe, but not cold. Her fingers moved across a recessed control panel near the base of the device, pale green and gold spirit energy flaring briefly around her knuckles as she worked.
"Emma, is everything ready to go?" the godless crucifix asked.
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