THE LAST KEEPER

The air grew bitterly cold as Squad 25 descended the spiraling stone staircase into the deepest bowels of the mountain.

A pungent stench of burning mercury, ozone, and chemical preservatives hung thick in the draft, stinging their eyes with every labored breath.

At the base of the stairwell lay a cavernous amphitheater carved from solid black granite. The chamber was dominated by an ancient hexagonal floor array etched deeply with glowing, blood-red runes.

Sagiri stepped onto the lower landing, his twin crimson eyes locking instantly onto the dark dais rising in the center of the hall. Massive cables connected the dais to six colossal lightning collector pillars.

Bound to a massive black receptor pillar by heavy frost-covered chains was Rika, her head slumped forward in drug-induced stasis.

Her left beastly arm hung limp against the iron cuffs, her breathing shallow as dark alchemical inhibitors suppressed her immense physical strength.

High above the array stood Sir Black, his dark mantle billowing behind him while his polished silver mask gleamed beneath the pale chemical lights. His gloved hand rested atop a heavy iron staff capped with a glowing crimson focus crystal.

Beside him stood the silent, emotionless figure of Kiana. No wonder sagiri had not been able to feel her coming back then, when he was right about to finish off his aunt.

Thinking back even more, he had not been able to perceive her back then at the examination headquarters.

Her dust-rose eyes stared blankly into the void without a single flicker of human warmth. She stood utterly motionless, her presence undetectable to ordinary senses.

Kneeling on the lower platform was Lira, a pulsing black neural inhibitor clamped around her throat to suppress her conscious will.

Her head was bowed in forced submission, her emerald eyes clouded by dark hypnotic fog.

Sagiri’s crimson eyes narrowed into slits.

’Why was the girl always in places she should not be!’

”You arrived faster than I anticipated, Keeper of the N’folu, or should I call you chief of the south,” Sir Black said, his mocking laughter echoing across the vast subterranean amphitheater.

”Did you honestly believe you scouted this entrance and breached these galleries through your own clever tactics?”

”Every step you took through this gorge was mapped and anticipated from the moment you left Galka War Academy,” Sir Black sneered, pacing along the observation railing. ”You walked straight into my slaughterhouse, delivering the Living Memory into my hands.”

Before Sagiri could reply, Sir Black slammed his iron staff against the master activation rune set into the stone dais. The impact sounded like thunder, triggering a blinding pulse of crimson light across the entire floor.

The blood-red sigils across the floor flared into a blinding crimson blaze, unleashing an immense magnetic and spatial gravity field. The air pressure plummeted, creating an artificial gravity well that warped the surrounding light.

Sagiri’s boots locked to the stone as invisible magnetic bands crushed down upon his shoulders, pinning him to his knees upon the floor. He gritted his teeth, pushing out the archive to resist the crushing force threatening his ribs.

Kaka, Kiuga, Maita, and Zolinka were blasted backward by the kinetic shockwave, crashing hard against the reinforced iron perimeter railings. The violent repulsion knocked the breath from their lungs, leaving them sprawling across the flooded walkway.

”Galaka!” Kaka roared as he pushed forward, but the crushing gravity drove his armor against the floor, cracking the stone beneath him.

”Sagiri!” Kaka growled, veins bulging along his neck as he fought against the impossible magnetic weight.

”The Living Memory was never meant to remain in the savage South,” Sir Black declared, raising his arms as the extraction array began to turn. ”Your ancestors hoarded the echo archive while the rest of the realm starved in darkness!”

”Your aunt Rika proved too unstable to hold the power, but her mutated bloodline will serve as the perfect vessel to siphon the archive you archiveyou carry!” Sir Black shouted with maniacal delight. ”Her harvested form will become a new god under my command!”

A deafening, high-pitched harmonic resonance tore through the chamber, causing the six perimeter lightning conduits to crackle with violent blue fire. The ancient runes etched along the floor glowed with terrifying brilliance, spinning in counter-clockwise circles.

Blinding arcs of golden-silver light and ink-black runes were violently ripped from Sagiri’s chest, tearing through his flesh in jagged, searing streams. The extraction array pulled at his very life force, unraveling the sacred bonds of the archive and the four relics.

Sagiri threw his head back with a raw, agonizing scream, his mortal body convulsing as centuries of ancestral memories were torn from his core.

The pain was beyond anything physical, feeling as though molten glass were being dragged through his spiritual meridians.

Molten blood poured from his nose, ears, and mouth, sizzling as it dripped onto the glowing crimson runes beneath his knees. His vision flickered as his heart rhythm faltered under the catastrophic drain.

The extraction percentage blazed along the stone pillars, climbing relentlessly toward catastrophic completion. sixty percent, seventy percent, eighty percent! The energy transfer hummed with deafening acoustic pressure, shaking loose shale from the vaulted ceiling.

’My soul... the Archive is being ripped out of my flesh,’ Sagiri thought in blinding agony, his consciousness slipping as darkness crept along his eyes. ’If this array finishes... everything the N’folu fought to protect would be lost.’

On the raised platform, the sight of Sagiri bleeding and screaming in torment shattered the hypnotic neural inhibitor binding Lira’s mind.

The black needles clamped around her throat sparked violently as her profound emotional will overwhelmed the alchemical poison.

Her grey eyes flared with profound desperation and unconditional love, tears streaming down her soot-stained cheeks as she broke the trance. Seeing the boy she loved torn apart, all fear vanished from her heart.

”Sagiri!” Lira cried out, her voice cutting through the mechanical hum of the extraction array with fierce, unyielding emotion. The cry echoed across the stone walls, piercing through the fog of Sagiri’s fading consciousness.

She lunged across the observation platform, completely ignoring Sir Black’s guards as she threw herself toward the exposed power conduits. Her small frame slipped past two startled technicians before they could draw their sidearms.

With a final, desperate leap, Lira plunged both of her bare hands directly into the high-voltage master junction box powering the array.

She grasped the live geothermal conductors, closing the lethal circuit with her bare flesh.

A catastrophic explosion of blinding blue lightning and white-hot sparks ripped through the console, scorching her arms with agonizing current.

The blast blew the bronze housing into jagged shrapnel, throwing thick black smoke across the platform.

The primary power grid detonated in a violent chain reaction, severing the energy conduits and violently short-circuiting the extraction array at ninety percent! The high-frequency harmonic whine died with an ear-piercing pop as the converters blew out.

The blinding arcs of golden-silver light snapped instantly, halting the agonizing siphon and collapsing the crimson magnetic field pinning the floor.

Sagiri fell forward against the stone, gasping for air as the severed ancestral light rushed back into his chest.

Sir Black wheeled around with a venomous roar of sheer fury, his eyes flashing behind his silver mask as his grand scheme derailed. ”Insolent little rat!” he shrieked, his voice trembling with hysterical rage.

”Apex weapon!” Sir Black screamed, pointing his trembling staff toward the smoking console where Lira lay coughing. ”Eliminate that meddling wretch immediately! Tear her to pieces!”

Kiana moved with the cold, mechanical speed of an automated executioner, crossing the platform in a fraction of a heartbeat.

Her form blurred with void resonance, closing the distance before Lira could even lift her head.

She did not draw a blade, driving her reinforced palm directly into Lira’s chest with terrifying, machine-like kinetic force.

The brutal blow landed with the sound of a shattering anvil, releasing a devastating shockwave through Lira’s fragile frame.

The brutal impact lifted Lira off her feet, launching her twenty paces across the amphitheater with bone-crushing velocity. She flew through the air like a broken doll, trailing droplets of crimson blood across the dark expanse.

Lira’s fragile body slammed violently against a reinforced granite pillar, her back arching with an audible crack before she fell limp to the stone.

She rolled onto the bloodstained shale, coughing up crimson blood as her breathing slowed to faint, shallow gasps on the brink of death.

”Lira!” Kiuga and Maita screamed in absolute horror, scrambling across the floor toward their fallen comrade. Kaka struggled to his feet, roaring in fury as he charged to shield her fallen body.

A terrifying, suffocating silence descended upon the vast subterranean chamber, broken only by the crackle of dying electrical conduits. On the central floor, Sagiri pushed himself slowly up from the stone, wiping the burning blood from his lips with the back of his hand.

His dual eyes burned with raw fury that distorted the air around him into waves of pitch-black spatial glass.

The ancient bone-metal spine of Nokai snapped out of the archive pocket, expanding into twenty autonomous floating black blades humming with death.

Sagiri did not look at Sir Black, his blazing dual gaze fixed entirely on the emotionless girl in the silver mask standing above the broken body of Lira.

”You have made your final mistake, northern scum. I will not allow you to make another,” Sagiri whispered, his voice resonating with the terrifying, unyielding wrath of the Archive.