Gilded Ashes: When Shadows Reign

Saffi sat at a bench with a mug she wasn't drinking from. Alteea perched on the counter like the lab belonged to her, one leg bouncing, coffee in hand, eyes too bright to be ignored.

"So" Alteea let out a smug face. "Tell me everything."

"There's nothing to tell" Saffi said, studying a file that had erased data, and censored words.

"Did he smile?"

"He breathed. That's all."

"Did he look at you?"

"He was awake."

"Mmh. Suspicious." Alteea squinted. "Waaiiit. You're blushing!"

"I'm overheating" Saffi said. "The AC isn't working. It's lazy today"

"From what, air-conditioning guilt?"

Saffi lasted seven seconds. She cracked. "I... might have fallen on him."

Alteea blinked once. Then laughed so hard she set the cup down so she wouldn't spill it. "You what!?"

"It wasn't intentional, I swear."

Alteea wiped a tear. "Oh, Saffi. I adore you. Your romantic life could power the whole Glowline."

"Please stop. I'm never entering that room again."

"Did he die?"

"Thankfully, no."

"Then it's a win. I mean, of course. That idiot does NOT know when to die" Alteea's smile softened. "He's healing?"

"He sat up without wincing" Saffi admitted, pride escaping before she could stop it. "Mostly."

"Good." Alteea tapped the counter twice, then clapped once. "Enough heart trauma. Let's get back to work. Tell me about that luminite"

Saffi's spine straightened. "Right. The chunk from the mountain? I found something… Interesting."

"Hit me"

"It overly responds to a specific frequency."

"How specific?"

"Four hundred forty hertz."

Alteea's eyebrows climbed. "What? It gets brighter if I play a concert?"

"I don't know about concerts. But yes. A pure 440Hz tone. First run, it just glowed. Second run, brighter. Third run, it woke faster. It's not just resonating. It's... remembering."

Alteea stopped stirring her coffee. "You mean… It was taught that frequency."

"That's the word. Taught." Saffi said, eyes bright now. "If I hit it with the same tone, it learns that tone. Each time, it responds quicker and cleaner. Like it read the room and decided to be helpful."

"Luminite doesn't learn" Alteea said out of habit. Then she softened. "It channels..."

"It doesn't show" Saffi said. "But maybe we were the blind ones all along."

Alteea set the cup aside. "You think someone taught the cavern crystals a language years ago?"

"Or a few tones. 440 is just the strongest. At 442 it lagged, like it was annoyed. At 432 it pulsed once and sulked. When I returned to 440, it brightened like it recognized me."

"After all, the cavern was sealed for unknown reasons…"

"They didn't want their study to be found"

Alteea leaned forward until her hair brushed her shoulder like a black metronome. "Wait. The responses we're getting… It's like how Luminite weapons attune to their users."

"Bond" Saffi said. "They don't just read us. They remember us."

"Exactly! That's why some luminite weapons let out more energy with one specific user!" Alteea snapped her fingers and turned on a huge screen.

Layers of city archives rose like a glass library. Dates. Expedition logs. Audits. She said, "Alright. Let's ruin someone's day" and typed: CAVERN - MOUNTAIN - LUMINITE - RESONANCE - 440.

Nothing.

"Huh." She narrowed the query. "North Range - resonance - field trials."

Nothing.

Saffi slid off her stool to her shoulder. "Try Lighthouse citations around the time the cavern opened."

Alteea broadened, then dove. Graphs. Tags. Metadata. A training roster. A forgotten grant request about acoustic dampening. No resonance. No cavern. No tone.

"Empty" Alteea said, flat.

"Could it be wiped?" Saffi asked.

"Everything leaves a footprint" Alteea said. "Even deletions. This is... absence. Like the page was never written in the first place."

"What if they cleaned it off the network entirely?"

"That's impossible. Only I can do it. Or, in the old times, there were clearances above me."

Saffi stared. "There was clearance above yours?"

"A few old ghosts" Alteea said wryly. "They don't attend meetings. They attend… Legends."

Saffi looked back at the blank glow. "So someone did this. Years ago."

"And hid it" Alteea said. "Which means it matters."

"Why hide a tone?"

"Because it isn't just a tone" Alteea said quietly. "It's intent. They weren't studying Luminite. They were training it. Telling it what to like."

"Then someone was there before us" Saffi said. "Long before the cavern collapsed."

"Someone patient" Alteea said. "Someone who wanted a crystal that listens. Luminite that does what's told."

They watched the emptiness a breath longer. It felt worse than any error message.

Alteea hopped off the counter. "Come."

"Where?"

"Don't ask any questions" she said before Saffi could even finish her question, already moving.

Saffi grabbed her tablet and jogged to catch up. They left the comfort of the lower lab and entered quieter halls where the hum thinned into a low pulse you felt in your feet more than your ears.

"Where are we going?" Saffi asked.

"I told you not to ask questions. But I'll let this pass. We're going… To the part of The Heart that remembers" Alteea said.

"Well that's not too comforting" Saffi muttered.

They turned into a corridor most people refused to notice. No signage. No traffic. The walls shifted from warm composite to a darker, polished alloy that reflected them as thin smudges.

Ahead, the central Spire shaft rose through the building - a vast, super thick cylinder of alloy and something else that looked like black metal. It went up past where you could see and down past where you could imagine.

Saffi had walked by it a hundred times. It was just a good old support pillar, holding the Spire up... Or was it?

"It's a stabilizer" she said, mostly to check her old assumptions.

"That's what everyone says" Alteea said. "It keeps the top from wobbling. It smiles for workers and Vanguards."

"But actually?"

Alteea stopped at the base where the cylinder widened and met the floor in a perfect seam. "Actually it's a door."

Saffi's mouth made a small, involuntary "oh."

"To what?" she asked.

"To something even the Council doesn't know" Alteea said, voice lower, like speaking in a museum that deserved the hush.

Up close, the alloy had a grain like brushed stone and a sheen like calm water.

"Does anyone else know?" she asked.

"Well… A select few." Alteea said. "Most dead. Two retired. One pretends this isn't here and takes leading this city way too seriously, our Ruler."

"And you."

"And me. And now you, If you want. It won't make your life easier."

"Nothing does" Saffi sighed. "I fell on a patient yesterday."

Alteea grinned despite herself. "True."

"How does it open?" Saffi asked.

"Badly" Alteea said, and spread her fingers against the surface. She didn't press. She drew - a quiet pattern, smooth and practiced, the way you trace a childhood route on a map. It wasn't really a code. It was more like a memory.

Nothing happened.

Then the alloy sighed. A seam appeared where no seam had been, a hairline that widened one breath at a time. Air moved, cool and clean, like a room exhaling after a long shift of holding itself together.

"How long has this been here?" Saffi asked, mouth still open in amazement.

"Longer than me" Alteea said. "Longer than anyone alive."

"What's inside?"

"Secrets. The most hidden secrets of history, as much as mankind knows."

Saffi swallowed. The light turned her fingers pale.

"You trust me with this?" she asked.

"I trust you" Alteea said simply. "You see what things do. And you feel what they're trying to do. That's rare. Also your hands are steadier than mine when I haven't slept. Which is… Most of times."

"True" Saffi smiled.

Alteea tilted her head toward the opening. "Well? What are we waiting for? Getting seen? After you, genius!"