POV: Sage Elara Windwright

The obsidian shard, smooth and cold against Elara’s palm, hummed faintly. It was more than a relic; it was a conduit. When she held it, the veil between waking and dreaming, between memory and vision, grew thin. For decades, she’d used it sparingly, afraid of the truths it might unveil, the responsibility it might impose. But after the jolt from the data-crystal, after hearing the faint, undeniable signal from below, she could no longer deny its pull.

She sat cross-legged on the floor of her archives, the air still smelling faintly of burnt circuitry from the shorted reader. The silence was absolute, broken only by the ragged rhythm of her own breathing. She closed her eyes, focusing on the shard, on the fragments of the past that haunted her waking hours, the phantom hum of the old world.

The dream began as a memory:

She was young, barely out of the Academy, brilliant but naive. The world below was screaming. Not with war, but with something far worse: a pervasive sickness, a biological weapon released by the enemy, the "Deep Holds" faction, during their desperate last stand. It wasn't designed to kill instantly, but to corrupt, to mutate, to turn the very essence of life into a twisted, hostile imitation.

“We cannot let it spread,” a voice echoed in the dream, the voice of her mentor, the lead scientist of Project Sky-Shield. “The Ascension will contain it. Lift it from the surface, sever its connection. Aeridor will become the quarantine zone. The ultimate prison.”

Elara watched, horrified, as vast, pulsing machines, the "roots" she'd seen in the old schematics, plunged into the earth, drawing up not just energy, but a viscous, glowing serum. The serum was loaded into hidden chambers deep within Aeridor’s structure. She recognized the chambers from the schematics, the ones Garrett had accessed.

“The weapon,” her mentor had whispered, his face grim. “The counter-agent, distilled and amplified. We cannot risk using it on the surface; it’s too volatile, too powerful. But contained within Aeridor, it becomes a deterrent. A threat against threats. If the Deep Holds ever try to follow, if the blight escapes… we unleash it. A final, devastating purge.”

Elara’s dream-self, younger and more idealistic, had protested. “But what if there are survivors? What if the blight can be cured? We can’t just… abandon them, become a flying bomb!”

Her mentor had laid a hand on her shoulder. “We save who we can, Elara. And we ensure the monster never breathes on the world again. We become the keeper of this truth, this terrible burden. For humanity’s future, the truth must remain hidden. Aeridor is not a refuge. It is a sacrifice.”

The dream shifted, became more vivid, less memory, more vision. The glowing serum in the hidden chambers began to pulse, a sickly, incandescent green. Figures moved within the chamber, shadows too distinct to be ghosts. Someone was there. Someone now.

A familiar silhouette. Garrett. He was activating something, a control panel that interfaced with the glowing weapon. He wasn't just accessing the chambers; he was manipulating them. And he was doing it with the aid of figures she only dimly glimpsed: tall, lean, with a strange, metallic sheen to their skin. Not Aeridorian. Not human.

Her dream became a nightmare. The tethers, already stressed, began to hum with a new, terrifying vibration. The vibrations of the "weapon" being prepared. Garrett, blinded by his rigid traditionalism, by his fear of the surface, was willing to unleash the very thing they were meant to contain. He wasn't just trying to maintain isolation; he was trying to weaponize it. He was working with the ancient enemy, the "Deep Holds" faction, who had somehow survived, twisted and mutated by the very blight they had unleashed, and were now seeking to reclaim their "weapon."

Elara’s eyes snapped open. Her breath hitched, catching in her throat. The archive was cold, quiet, but her heart hammered. The obsidian shard felt like a burning coal in her palm.

The truth. The terrible, buried truth. They hadn't fled the Great War; they were the Great War’s last, desperate gambit. Aeridor was a weapon, a bio-hazard contained aloft, a doomsday device suspended over the world it had once tried to save. And Garrett, in his desperate bid for control, in his twisted interpretation of "preserving the legacy," was preparing to unleash it.

She pushed herself to her feet, her legs trembling. She had to warn them. Aldric. Kira. The people. The isolation, the secrecy, the constant threat of tether failure – it was all part of the elaborate lie, the centuries-long deception to hide the kingdom's true purpose.

She looked at the shorted data-reader, at the faint smoke still curling from its vents. It wasn't just old technology failing. Someone else knew about these hidden truths. Someone else had been here, or had access to the deep archives. Someone had deliberately overloaded the reader, cutting off the signal from below, ensuring she couldn’t fully confirm her terrifying vision until it was too late.

Elara knew who that someone was. The metallic glint in her dream, the familiar, rigid posture. Garrett. And the "others" with him, figures from her worst nightmares of the war. They had been in the hidden chamber. They had been there recently. They were preparing.

The sky-kingdom wasn't just cracking. It was about to explode. And the fuse had been lit by its own Crown Prince. Elara, the keeper of forbidden knowledge, was now burdened with the ultimate truth, a truth that threatened to destroy Aeridor not by falling, but by burning.