Location: Yxtrielle – Vault Theta-9, Stillzone Chamber
Time: [Core Breathline Sync – Stable Drift Reading @ 84%]
Riven was unconscious.
The air was quiet.
And for once, nobody was screaming, glitching, stabbing, or being yeeted into a wall by a genetically superior twin.
Which meant...
It was finally lore dump o'clock.
Lira sat on the vault platform, legs crossed, arms draped across her knees, her aura no longer flaring with unstable Warden power. Just still. Controlled.
Across from her, Ren sat slouched against a glyph stone, Snarksteel laid across his lap like a sleepy but dramatic cat.
REN (muttering):
"So.
The Caldrith Verge.
The Drift.
Me being apparently the 'chosen dumbass patch file' to fix all this.
Start anywhere you want."
LIRA (sighs softly):
"It started long before us. Before Kael. Before even the Warden Orders were fractured. The Verge was once a sealed construct — not a natural system."
FROST (quietly):
"...Wait. Sealed?"
LIRA:
"Yes. Designed. Built. A controlled loop of twenty planets orbiting a collapsed star core — the Ember Womb. Created by an extinct species we still don't understand."
SPACE (casually):
"Oh yeah. The Builders. Real bastards. Left all their stuff behind but no IKEA instructions."
LIRA:
"They created the Drift. Not magic. Not divine power. Just geometry strong enough to tell reality to shut up. And they built the Caldrith Verge to control it."
She raised her palm and summoned a soft projection — a holographic loop of twenty planetary orbits spiraling like a music box around a shattered core.
LIRA:
"But over time… the loop broke."
REN (frowning):
"How?"
LIRA:
"Some say interference. Others say one of the planets tried to escape its orbit, pull away from the Verge — Threxil maybe, or even Yxtrielle. No one knows.
But the system fractured. Time unraveled. Planets became… unanchored."
TIME (with a wink):
"They started freeballing through timelines. Kinda like you."
Lira continued, drawing a thin thread of light from the projection to highlight three specific planets.
LIRA:
"Three became critical.
Planet 8: Threxil — too wild. Biologically unstable.
Planet 10: Solmerea — too strict. Psychically oppressive.
And Planet 11… Ka'rath'Mar — too broken. A graveyard of systems, cultures, fragments."
She pointed at the 9th, still pulsing gently.
LIRA:
"And Yxtrielle?
It hid. It became the Silence — the place that remembers what the others forgot."
Ren blinked slowly.
Then sighed.
REN:
"Alright. So the Verge is broken, the planets are unbalanced, and I'm the... repair tool?"
LIRA (smirking at first):
"You're more than that.
You're a fragment bearer.
Someone chosen by the Aetherium Core to hold what the system itself can't."
Then—her expression changed.
The smirk slipped.
Her pupils dilated.
And her voice—
It didn't shift.
It reverberated.
As if something older, wiser, and way less interested in Ren's sarcasm hijacked her throat.
??? (speaking through Lira):
"No."
Ren sat up straighter.
The sword on his lap twitched.
??? (calm but deep, layered like a chorus of quiet thunder):
"You are not the repair tool.
You are the anchor shard.
The seed of recursion.
A contingency core burned into flesh."
The temperature dropped.
Not physically—existentially.
Even Blaze stopped breathing in Ren's head.
??? (still through Lira):
"To restore balance to the Caldrith Verge…
You must do more than survive.
You must unify."
REN (confused, whispering):
"Unify what…?"
??? (firm now, almost paternal):
"Yourself."
Everyone froze.
??? (final words):
"There is another.
Born of drift. Split across the Verge.
Not Kael. Not clone. Not echo.
But you.
Your second part.
Give him the Dimensional Core.
Only then will the system remember its origin."
Lira's body arched slightly—
her glyphs flared—
And then—
SNAP.
She gasped, hands on her chest, blinking rapidly.
The possession ended as fast as it began.
REN (leaping to his feet):
"Lira?! Hey—hey! Are you okay?!"
She coughed. Shook her head.
Groaned.
LIRA (breathless):
"What… what the hell was that?
Why does it feel like I got throat-punched by a timeline?"
FROST (stammering):
"Someone… something used you as an audio log."
GRAVITY (flatly):
"No. Not a log.
A message.
A command from Verge Root Code."
Ren sat down again.
Hard.
Staring at the glowing disc of the Override Core, which now pulsed dimly… like it had heard everything, too.
REN (muttering):
"There's another me...
Out there."
SNARKSTEEL (perking up):
"Oh hell yeah. You versus you? I'd stab popcorn for that showdown."
Lira, finally steady, rubbed her temples.
LIRA (groaning):
"Okay. Right. Let's—let's back up."
She flicked her fingers, and the projection of the Verge reappeared.
LIRA (narrating now, focused):
"Twenty planets. One broken system.
The Builders intended for each planet to serve a function —
Emotion, time, thought, death, memory... balance."
She gestured to three specific planets again:
LIRA:
"Threxil, Solmerea, and Ka'rath'Mar.
They broke first.
Because of us. Because of Kael. Because of... what we were."
She turned back to Ren.
LIRA (serious now):
"But now we know. You're not Kael's replacement.
You're the next node.
One half of a system key meant to either restore the Verge…
or collapse it fully."
REN (quiet):
"...And the other half is still out there."
LIRA (nodding):
"We find him. We fix this.
Or the Verge folds in on itself like a guilt-ridden black hole."