The transition through the Architects’ Gate was less a passage and more an expulsion. Kiyan slammed onto a wet, grit-covered surface, the residual energy of the portal sparking and dissolving around him. He tasted copper and ozone.

  ?When his vision cleared, he found himself in a colossal, decaying space.

  ?This was the Sunken City of Lyra, and it was dying slowly.

  ?The city was less a ruin and more a petrified skeleton, an immense structure built vertically, now partially submerged. Towering spires of blackened, crystalline architecture stretched upwards into a perpetually bruised sky, their bases lost in water that shimmered with an eerie, sickly green luminescence. The air was thick and humid, tasting of stale seawater and forgotten machinery. It was silent, save for the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of water from high above and the sickening groan of stressed metal.

  ?Kiyan realized he was standing on the upper deck of what looked like a massive, inverted plaza, half-flooded. He was hundreds of feet above the visible waterline, but the surrounding structures were still dizzyingly tall. The oppressive atmosphere earned the location its secondary name: The Prison of the Forgotten. This place didn't just hold secrets; it held ghosts.

  ?He didn't have time to process the grandeur of the decay. Vane would be arriving shortly.

  ?Kiyan sprinted for the nearest piece of intact architecture—a massive, segmented column with a faint, pulsing blue light at its base. As he neared it, the ground beneath his feet shifted, sending a sharp crack echoing through the chamber. He vaulted over a widening fissure, his heart hammering. Lyra was catastrophically unstable. The next exit had to be found and activated now.

  ?The Race to Converge

  ?Miles away, but traversing the voids with desperate speed, Sera and Elara pushed the Astral Wind past its limits.

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  ?“His biometric signature just stabilized in Lyra,” Elara announced, her knuckles white on the navigation yoke. “The Gate held for him. Vane should be crossing into that world within the next few hours, standard transit time.”

  ?Sera stood beside her, checking the charge on her plasma rifle, her expression grim. “Hours isn’t enough. Vane will tear that place apart to find Kiyan. We need to be there first.”

  ?“We’re taking the old Whisper-Route,” Elara said, her voice strained. “It’s faster than any Gate, but the gravitational stresses… this hull isn’t rated for it. Hold tight.”

  ?The star-skiff lurched, the lights flickering as Elara threaded the tiny vessel through a crack in the dimensional fabric, following an ancient, almost mythical ley-line that bypassed traditional space-time. The ship screamed in protest, but the jump would shave days off their journey.

  ?Sera focused on the task ahead. “Lyra is a death trap. An old Sentry archive. If Kiyan needs to find a schematic or a sequence, the data banks will be scattered. We need a way to pinpoint him before Vane does.”

  ?Elara grit her teeth, her eyes locked on the swirling chaos outside the viewport. “If we make this jump, we’ll be on top of Lyra in fifteen minutes. But once we’re there, Agent Vane will know we’re in play. He’ll stop chasing Kiyan long enough to deal with us.”

  ?“Good,” Sera muttered, sighting down the barrel of her weapon. “We’re his targets now, anyway. Let’s make him earn it.”

  ?Back in Lyra, Kiyan reached the glowing column. It wasn’t a terminal, but a data core—a glowing, cylindrical tube pulsing with captured light. He ran his hand over the slick surface. This was not the next portal. It was merely a clue.

  ?He activated his chronometer, pulling up the fragmented Architect's sequence left by the Traveler. The sequence mapped onto the city's structure, showing a path deep beneath the submerged plaza, towards the true heart of Lyra.

  ?Waypoint: The Central Engine Core.

  ?The ground rumbled again, more violently this time. A nearby section of the plaza, a piece the size of a landing pad, groaned and sank into the green water with a sickening shloomp. The reverberation felt less like tectonic shifting and more like a colossal door closing. The prison was locking down.

  ?Kiyan looked down at the sequence. To reach the Core, he had to descend. And the only path was through the water. He pulled a small breathing regulator from his pack and clipped it to his suit.

  ?He dove into the oppressive, luminescent green.