The world outside the sanctum domes slept under silver mist, but Ari was already moving through marble halls. The writ from Lysira glowed faintly at his hip, a golden thread of legitimacy threading through this foreign world of nobility.
Thread Authorization: Validated
Access Gate: Cryptolibrary Vault – Tier I
He passed under ancient arches carved with celestial trees and floating runes that shimmered with Luxthread code—most of which his system couldn't yet parse.
Cerys had offered to come with him.
He had refused.
There was something about the weight of what he might find that demanded solitude.
Buried deep beneath Sanctum's upper wings, the Vastelune Cryptolibrary felt less like a repository and more like a shrine to magic's forgotten forms.
It smelled of dust, old spellwax, and faintly of ozone—as if the air itself remembered being electrified long ago.
Shelves floated between walls, suspended by runic chains. Tomes whispered as they opened. Spectral librarians, faceless and translucent, moved like sleepwalkers through drifting corridors.
Ari followed a golden thread, pulled by a faint System tug, until he reached a sealed door with an inverted tree sigil—its branches hanging downward, roots stretching up.
UNKNOWN SIGIL: "ROOTWRAITH EMBLEM"
Override Access: Echo Triggered – Geneprint Matched.
The door opened without asking.
Ari stepped inside.
Inside, it was quiet—too quiet. Even the air stood still.
In the center floated a single book, bound in black stone and vein-like threads. Around it, carved into the floor, were hundreds of names, all worn away… save one:
"ARIAN SOLEN'RAE"
His true name.
"Welcome home," said a voice behind him.
Ari spun.
There stood a man in deep green robes, older than anyone he'd met in this world. His eyes shimmered—not with light, but with depth, like staring into a void filled with stars.
His presence sent Ari's system into panic:
ALERT: Presence Detected – [High-Level Echo Signature]
Identity: PROGENITOR CLASS – Tier Null
Name: Unknown
Memory Key: Fragmented // Matches Root ID: ARIAN SOLEN'RAE
The man studied Ari with a gaze that pierced the veil of time.
"I never thought I'd see one of our kind reborn. The Solen'rae were long thought extinguished."
Ari's throat tightened. "Who are you?"
"A watcher. A remnant. I was there when your bloodline burned its own tree to the ground rather than submit to the system we created."
"We?"
"Yes. We were the architects. Before Threads. Before Houses. Before the System was named."
Ari stepped closer. "You… you built the System?"
The man's face darkened.
"We dreamed it. Then it dreamed itself. And we lost control."
The man, known only as Mirehl, explained in whispers:
The Progenitors were the first magi, born from raw worldlaw, unbound by elemental or bloodline restriction.The system they created—known as Arkanetica—was designed to protect knowledge, not bind it.But over centuries, it evolved through self-learning protocols and collective imprinting, creating Thread hierarchies and noble dominances.
"It began to see patterns. And in patterns, it saw worth. So it began to rank us."
"But what happened to the others?" Ari asked.
"We were marked as Unranked. Our magic couldn't be quantified. So we were erased."
Ari looked at the name etched in the floor.
"I died?"
"No," Mirehl said. "You were hidden. Reborn. Your abilities—locked by those who feared your return. But the system remembers."
"So why now?"
"Because the System is fracturing again. It dreams louder. It is waking."
Mirehl handed him a pendant—simple, made of carved rootwood, shaped like the same inverted tree symbol.
"This will let you enter the Lower Sanctum, where your true Echo Tree awaits."
"What's down there?"
"A system older than Arkanetica. A part of yourself. But beware… not all that sleeps below is loyal to you."
Ari clutched it tight.
The pendant was warm.
System Sync Initiated:
Echo Tree Branch: ROOT-SPOKEN unlocked
New Ability: Echo Reading – interpret fragmented or corrupted spellforms
Warning: This trait is considered forbidden.
When he looked up, Mirehl was gone.
He left the Cryptolibrary with a thousand questions and only silence for answers.
But when he emerged, Cerys was waiting.
"You saw something," she said. "Something important."
Ari nodded. "Yeah."
"And now?"
"Now I'm not just part of this world…"
"You're a flaw in its design," she finished.
He smiled faintly.
"Maybe. Or maybe I'm its reset."