Chapter 120: Sealed Light
Inside the command module, light ran across Alteea’s face like water off glass. Screens stuttered, then froze, then ran again.
[- Eon Resonance Detected -]
[- Origin: Unknown -]
[- Proximity Signature: >###_### -]
[- Reconstructing... Failiure -]
[- Error_129B: Data Overwrite -]
The program tried to name the thing. Failed. Flagged:
EON RESONANCE – UNKNOWN ORIGIN.
The map showed a pulse near Raizen’s coordinates. The point slid two grid squares, paused, then winked out.
"... It moved" she whispered. No one heard her. Keys clicked. People murmured behind her, watching their own screens lie politely.
"Team Three, confirm position" she said, voice steady again.
"Outside the shaft" Raizen answered. "No interference now. Everything’s... stopped."
She didn’t say good. She said, "Hold."
Alteea zoomed the last log again. Corrupted strings tried to become a shape and failed into noise. The system suggested a category anyway, too helpful to shut up:
[Eon Resonance – Unknown.]
[Sub-note: Pattern resembles a call.]
She ignored the word. She switched channels. "Kori?"
"I’m here" Kori said. No noise. Steel.
"I need them to go back in."
"You’re out of your mind" Kori said at once. "That mountain’s done breathing."
"If it collapsed, I need data before the miners arrive. The readings were - " Alteea caught the rest and cut it down. "I need confirmation."
"You want confirmation, send a drone."
"Drones don’t improvise."
Kori took a breath long enough to almost be a threat. "You want readings. I want my team alive."
Raizen cut through both of them. "You want confirmation or a rescue report later?"
"Both" Kori said. "Pick the one that doesn’t involve dying."
"Minimal exposure" Alteea said. "If the readings breathe, retreat immediately. You’re scratched anyways."
Silence. Somewhere in the module a printer started and stopped like it had changed its mind.
"Raizen" Alteea added, quieter. "Be careful. You’re still inside its radius."
He didn’t ask what its was. "Understood."
...
They retraced their steps. Snow made that dry squeak like old paper. The tunnel mouth looked smaller, half-swallowed by new rock. Raizen went first. Breath cooled on his lip, then vanished. Lamp light cut the dark into a narrower dark.
Lynea tested a hop. She rose higher than she should, landed with a surprised sound, then adjusted. "Gravity’s still weird."
"Numbers?" Raizen asked.
Lynea checked her slate. Lines crawled up and down like nervous snakes. "Off, but stable."
They passed the hedge of strange symbols. The hum that had lived behind the walls was gone. No pressure. No second note. The air was a room that had put all the furniture back and couldn’t remember where the last chair went.
"The slab" Arashi remembered.
It wasn’t where they’d left it. Ten feet away, folded wrong. The foam they’d peeled hung in ripped pieces. The chalk marks were gone. The rock looked the way it always had, like nothing anyone had done could matter.
They squeezed past the frame and stepped into the approach bowl
The entrance to the crystal chamber was sealed. Not choked. Not piled. Sealed. A face of stone flowed across the opening, seamless, faint mineral lines running down it like frozen water. Not a patch. Not a break. A decision.
Lynea set two palms to it and pushed because people always try. "This isn’t collapse" she said. "This is... closed."
Arashi leaned close, breath fogging the rock. The fog clung and refused to fade. "Who seals a mountain from the inside?"
Raizen laid his hand flat. Warmth. Not heat. The kind of warmth a stone holds after a day of light. They were deeper than sunlight. He took his hand away. The warmth lingered a heartbeat too long.
"Lighthouse?" he said into comms, quiet. "It’s gone."
Static wove a thin veil. Alteea’s voice came through softer than usual, like she’d stepped closer to whatever she was afraid of. "Define gone."
"Broken. Buried" Raizen said. "It looks like the mountain... closed itself."
A hum - almost a memory of one - threaded the air under his words and disappeared when he tried to hear it harder. He felt stupid. Then angry at himself for feeling stupid. Then decided anger was just fear wearing different clothes.
Kori: "Alright, then! Seal and leave."
"Copy" Raizen said. Then, because he could hear Alteea not breathing, he added, "Unless you have a better bad idea."
Alteea took the opening. "If possible, clear the opening" she took the opportunity. "Workers are twenty minutes out. If it shifted this fast once, I don’t want them standing blind in a choke point."
"Alteea" Kori said.
"That’s data" Alteea said, and made it sound like mercy.
Arashi looked at Lynea and tried to smile. "You heard the lady."
Lynea exhaled once, steadying. She let her fragments drift - dozens now, clean little shapes spinning in loose rings that clicked against the air the way beads do when you roll them in the palm. She stepped back, judged angles, and raised her hand.
"Everyone behind me" she said. "Five- No. Ten meters."
Arashi did a graceless hop back. Raizen held his ground long enough to check her face. Focus, not bravado. He stepped beside Arashi, blades down. The tunnel watched.
Lynea drew her arm back. The fragments answered. Orbits widened, nested, aligned - one inside another until they weren’t... Fragments, they were a single thing, long and narrow - the ghost of a spear made out of everything she wasn’t holding. The air hummed around it just enough to raise hair.
She pivoted, and then let the thing fly.
The spear hit the sealed opening like thunder. Stone jumped. Light blew up into powder. The shockwave ran down the walls and shook loose a stripe of snow from the ceiling. For a second, everyone was sound and dust and the bright taste of minerals.
Stillness found them again.
The dust settled in slow gray sheets. The last grains glittered and gave up. Lynea’s hand stayed out, palm empty.
No hum. No pressure. No noise.
Then they saw the opening.
Arashi’s mouth fell open. He closed it because the air felt like it didn’t want to be disturbed.
Lynea’s fragments hovered, uncertain, as if waiting for the room to tell them what to do.
Raizen stepped once, slow, like approaching an animal that hadn’t decided what it was yet.
"Why..." he breathed, not to the comm, not to the others. "Why...?"