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My legs barely supported me. The cold stone floor scraped against my bare feet as they half-dragged me down the corridor—ancient stone defaced by crude human technology. Generations of my clan had guarded these ruins, kept their secrets safe from those who would misuse them.

Hammond waited in the laboratory, the room reeking of corruption: human chemicals, discharged energy, the wrongness of misused technology. The guards forced me onto the cold metal table; salvaged restraints strained against my larger frame.

Hammond spoke, his words meaningless without the translator stone. Today, he seemed uninterested in answers—only in what he could extract from my lifelines. I stared at the ceiling, refusing him the satisfaction of a response. Echo Clan stories warned of humans like this, greedy for power they couldn’t comprehend.

Phillips, Hammond’s assistant I recognized from previous sessions, approached with interface probes—salvaged neural sensors modified with crystal components. His hands shook slightly. They attached the probes to my primary lifeline junctions: throat, chest, wrists, where the golden patterns converged.

Each contact point burned like ice. Hammond activated the corrupted shard. Agony lanced through me, my lifelines burning like acid. My back arched involuntarily against the restraints. Through clenched teeth, I suppressed a scream.

Hammond’s voice cut through the pain, his excitement needing no translation as the shard’s glow intensified, feeding on my stolen energy. Vision blurred; dark spots danced. Time dissolved.

Through the agony, fragments of their conversation reached me—terms Hammond had used in translated sessions. “Nexus.” “Circuit.” Names. The human female—Zara—was part of their plans.

The Nexus. They knew of the most ancient, dangerous technology beneath Arenix. My clan had guarded its western access point for generations. How had Hammond learned of it?

Suddenly, power surged through the system, uncontrolled, unexpected. Alarms blared. Hammond cursed, shouting orders at Phillips. An overload, a feedback loop—something destabilizing the ruins’ own power grid.

The shard’s glow intensified to blinding brilliance. My lifelines responded involuntarily. Pain transcended into vast awareness, a connection to dormant systems awakening to the energy channeled through me. Ancient knowledge flooded my consciousness: the Nexus, the planetary network, the cataclysm of the Great Division.

The restraints heated, then failed, metal warping. I rolled free, collapsing as the shard’s connection severed. The suddenabsence of pain was almost as shocking as its presence. My lifelines pulsed with heightened energy, though still damaged, disrupted.

Chaos erupted. Hammond shouted, guards rushed to secure me, Phillips fought to stabilize the equipment.

When they finally released me, I could barely stand. Two guards hauled me back to the cell, my feet scraping uselessly. They dumped me onto the cold stone. I curled inward, tail wrapping instinctively around my leg—a futile protection.

Through the fog of pain, I sensed movement. Zara approached cautiously, kneeling beside me. Her expression was unreadable in my blurred vision, but the markings on her arms seemed to sense my distress.

Something cool touched my lips—the canteen. Instinct took over; I drank greedily, the liquid soothing my parched throat. Pride demanded I reject help from a marked outsider. Clan teachings echoed—warnings of the silver-marked. But my body betrayed me, too weak, too desperate.

She tore a strip from her clothing, dampened it, and gently bathed the burns along my lifelines. Her touch was careful, clinical, avoiding direct contact with the golden patterns. The cloth brought temporary relief; my breathing eased slightly. She moved to a burn at my throat, a complex nexus point.

Then—resonance. Where her fingers brushed near my lifelines, the connection flared unexpectedly. Not pain. I flinched away, but she had felt it too, pulling back sharply, staring at her hand where her markings had briefly reacted.

Horror grew within me. What my clan feared most was manifesting. The outsider was a key, I the unwilling lock. Hammond’s crude experiments were accelerating what should never be. The ancient texts spoke of this: silver and gold resonating, awakening dormant systems, potential catastropheif the Nexus reactivated improperly. Trapped, weakened, I faced the very threat we had sworn to contain.

Worse—I felt my lifelines responding to her presence, seeking connection despite my resistance.

Consciousness returned gradually, fractured. Emergency lighting bathed the cell in spectral blue. Zara sat across from me, watching intently.

Something was wrong with the ruins. Hammond’s experiments had destabilized the ancient power systems. Tremors ran through the structure: three short, one long. A warning pattern. A failsafe.

I tried to sit up, pain flaring through damaged lifelines. Zara moved to help, then stopped. She hesitated, then pulled her hand back—too aware of how close they’d just come to something that wasn’t survival, but something far more dangerous. I managed it alone, leaning against the wall, conserving strength.

The resonance lingered, a subtle awareness. I could sense her markings now, even without contact. Their pattern, chaotic by Nyxari standards, felt familiar—like designs in the oldest parts of the Shadow Canyon temple.

She gestured: walking, pointing to the door. Escape?

I shook my head, indicating my lifelines. Too depleted.

Another tremor, stronger. The emergency lights flickered, then failed. Darkness fell, broken only by the silver light of her markings and the fainter gold of mine.

Then, the dread solidified. Glyphs on the stone wall began to glow blue—ancient activation sequences responding to the energy fluctuations. Horror gripped me. The wall bore Nexus access sigils, dormant for centuries, now awakening.

Zara’s markings responded instantly, silver patterns shifting, realigning to the blue pulsations. She moved toward the wall,drawn by a connection she couldn’t understand, her expression holding wonder, not fear.

I moved with desperate speed, grabbing her wrist, pulling it from the glowing sigils.

Contact sent another surge of resonance, stronger. This time, I directed it, channeled it through Shadow Canyon disciplines. Her eyes widened—surprise, then understanding. No words needed.