The automatic glass doors hissed shut, sealing Rok Ishimoto inside his ivory tower. He immediately loosened his silk tie and draped his tailored coat over a chair, turning his predatory gaze toward his assistant. "Status report. What do you have for me, Mira?"

  Mira didn't need to check her notes. "I reviewed all possible candidates, prioritizing proximity to ensure they can intercept the intruders in time. I have isolated those currently within Luminia's borders. The strongest mercenary available is an Arch Auron."

  Rok glanced at her, unimpressed. "Is that it? I expected you to be more thorough."

  "You specifically requested an operative who possessed prior knowledge of the SolThanor facility," Mira countered smoothly, adjusting her designer glasses. "I could broaden the search parameters if you wish to remove that criteria."

  Rok waved a hand, dismissing the idea. "No, no. That would just complicate things. Who is this Arch Auron?"

  Mira hesitated. A fraction of a second, but enough.

  "Mira?" Rok eyed her, his casual demeanor slipping into something colder. "What aren't you telling me?"

  She straightened her posture. "My apologies, Lord Ishimoto." She tapped her tablet, mirroring her interface to the massive wall monitor.

  A profile materialized in crisp, high-definition light. Mira stepped in front of the screen, slipping effortlessly into debrief mode. "Name: Sebastian Sanitory. Age: Forty-six. Aura Type: Lightning, Evolved. Evolved Ability: Physical Lightning."

  Rok rested his cheek against his knuckles, his expression bored. "The name sounds vaguely familiar. Who is he?"

  "Fifteen years ago, he participated in the SolThanor operation. That is how he knows the town's layout."

  "Right." Rok nodded slowly, before his brow furrowed. "Wait. Is he affiliated with Shadoom? You need to tell me such things before proposing an asset."

  "Not to worry, my lord. He is a freelancer."

  "I see..." Rok tapped his desk. "Then how did he gain clearance for an AES operation?"

  "Shadoom subcontracted several elite outsiders to bolster their vanguard for that specific op. It was an Anti-Enlightened Society facility, after all. The defenses were... robust."

  "Makes sense." Rok paused, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Wait. How do you know the little details of a fifteen-year-old black op? Weren't you around five at the time?"

  "No, my lord. I was eight," Mira corrected with a soft, melodic chuckle. "As for how I acquired the intelligence... with the resources and access afforded to me by this company, there is very little I do not know."

  Rok's mouth broke into a twisted, knowing smile. "How terribly capable. That is exactly why I hired you."

  She adjusted her glasses again, preening slightly under the compliment.

  The warmth vanished from Rok's eyes, replaced by sharp calculation. "Now, explain to me why you hesitated earlier."

  Caught off guard, Mira recovered quickly, her professional mask sliding back into place. "Nothing escapes you, my lord. Indeed, Sebastian is... complicated."

  "In what capacity?"

  She returned to her station, pulling up a secondary file. "According to my sources, achieving the rank of Arch Auron has inflated his ego considerably."

  "Ah. Hubris. One of the tragic flaws that makes us so delightfully human," Rok mused ominously.

  "Indeed," Mira said, tucking a stray strand of perfectly styled hair behind her ear. "It seems he has a documented tendency of playing with his food, so to speak."

  "That widens our margin of error," Rok noted, his voice hardening. "Considering the scarcity of high-ranking Aurons, I won't even bother asking if there's an alternative in the region."

  Mira closed her eyes—a silent confirmation that he was correct.

  "Very well. Hire him," Rok commanded, standing from his desk. "However, ensure he understands the terms. He has exactly one hour to get to that town, or the contract is null and void. Secondly, he must leave no loose ends." Rok turned to face the sprawling cityscape beyond his window. "Do not let anyone get out of SolThanor alive. Destroy the entire town so it appears the ruins themselves collapsed, burying the lab with it. With any luck, by tomorrow morning, this will all be forgotten history."

  "Right away, my lord."

  "Hey, guys, check out what I found!" Neiva's voice echoed off the metallic walls.

  She stood in a ruined corridor, her phone flashlight cutting a trembling beam through the pitch-black darkness. The air was thick with the smell of rusted iron and stale dust. Rubble and broken machinery littered the floor like the scattered bones of a dead beast.

  Angelo and Sol stepped carefully over a twisted steel beam to join her.

  "What is it, Neiv?" Sol asked, his blue eyes scanning the shadows.

  She turned, holding up a jagged shard of dark matter. "Look at this! Maybe this black crystal is a clue!"

  Angelo leaned in, his dark eyes narrowing. He tried to catch his reflection in the surface, but the material was an absolute void. It swallowed the light from Neiva's phone entirely. "What kind of rock is that?"

  Blue materialized beside them in a wisp of azure smoke, adjusting his imaginary glasses as he leaned over the shard. "Intriguing," his aristocratic voice hummed. "It devours light entirely, yet it retains a vitreous, glass-like composition."

  Sol aimed his flashlight across the floor, sweeping the beam over the debris. "Looks like this room is full of them." He nudged a cluster of the black shards with his boot. "Somehow, I don't think broken glass is going to lead us to GHOST. Let's keep moving."

  He turned on his heel, motioning for Angelo and Neiva to follow. Blue lingered behind, crouching to examine the strange crystalline fragments with clinical fascination.

  Neiva fell into step beside Sol, stepping carefully over trailing wires. "What exactly are we looking for, then? Secret security footage? Hidden skeletons? A forgotten glass tube with a creepy lab-grown specimen floating inside?"

  Sol let out a tired chuckle, the sound flat in the dead air. "You play way too many video games."

  "I don't know," Angelo said, his voice grim. "Considering what we've seen lately, growing humans in a lab is completely on the table."

  "See! Completely in the realm of possibility!" Neiva chirped, though the strain in her voice betrayed her nerves.

  Sol stopped and crouched near a collapsed desk, brushing dust off a rectangular metal box. "This looks like an old computer chassis. If we can find a hard drive that survived whatever cleanup operation gutted this place, we might be able to extract some data."

  "What I don't get," Neiva continued, kicking a loose screw across the floor, "is why an assassin group like GHOST would need a massive underground laboratory. You painted them as a network of hitmen, not scientists."

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "Now that you mention it," Angelo muttered, realizing the contradiction.

  "Maybe they have an R&D division," Sol offered, though he didn't sound convinced. "Or maybe—"

  Red suddenly materialized on Angelo's right side, his gray-tinted face split into a chaotic grin. "Or maybe this creepy little lab has absolutely nothing to do with them!" he blurted out, throwing his hands in the air.

  Sol frowned, brushing past the volatile manifestation. "I wouldn't jump to conclusions just yet."

  Red and Neiva exchanged amused looks behind the detective's back.

  Meanwhile, back in the crystal room, Blue had grown tired of the inadequate lighting. He summoned half a dozen azure energy spheres, sending them floating upward to bathe the immediate area in a cold, blue glow.

  He hummed thoughtfully, holding two distinct shards up to the light. "These black crystals... these fragments were obviously part of a much larger, cohesive structure originally." He noted the melted plastic and sheared metal bolted to the floor around the debris. "It appears there were multiple operating stations dedicated to experimenting on the intact pieces."

  "Hey, Angie!" Red called out, instantly bored with Sol's computer search. He twisted his head toward Angelo. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

  "We share a brain. Yes," Angelo deadpanned.

  Red shook his head, his crimson aura flaring. "Then let's show the detective boy how we get things done."

  Angelo sighed, noting how painfully slow their manual search was going. "Might as well."

  Both ignited their auras simultaneously. Orange and crimson light violently pushed back the subterranean darkness. Red looked over his shoulder, shouting down the hall. "You too, Blueberry! Get your ass over here!"

  Blue tore his gaze away from the crystals with a heavy sigh. "Very well," he murmured. He dissolved into azure mist, instantly reappearing beside Angelo and Red.

  Neiva watched with wide-eyed wonder, while Sol pointedly ignored the light show, stubbornly continuing to dig through the rubble the old-fashioned way.

  The trio raised their hands. Colorful energy particles began to swirl around them like cosmic nebulas, the vibrant orange, crimson, and azure contrasting sharply against the dead, mechanical tomb.

  "Whoa," Neiva gasped as the miniature galaxy expanded.

  "Alright!" Red yelled, vibrating with competitive energy. "Whoever finds the good stuff first gets... eternal glory! Now go! Go!"

  With synchronized eye rolls, Angelo and Blue unleashed their energy. The particles rushed outward like a tidal wave, flooding the corridors and rushing into adjacent rooms. Where their physical output reached its limit, they seamlessly transitioned into Remote Energy Manipulation, pushing their senses through the microscopic particles.

  It wasn't just visual telemetry. Whatever the colored dust touched, the trio could feel, rapidly constructing a massive, 3D mental map of the facility.

  Blue focused on analyzing the objects throughout the central rooms. Angelo concentrated on sheer volume, quickly realizing the laboratory's footprint was staggeringly large.

  Red, however, went hunting where no sane person would look. He forced his crimson particles into air vents, down rusted shafts, and through hairline fractures in the concrete. He found an abandoned elevator shaft and aggressively punched a hole through the rusted floor of the car, sending his energy plummeting into the absolute depths.

  Forty nerve-wracking minutes ticked by in silence.

  Suddenly, Red's face twisted into a blood-curdling grin. "Jackpot," he purred.

  "What? What did you find?!" Neiva jumped, her patience entirely depleted.

  Even Sol paused his fruitless search, standing up to listen.

  Blue tuned his consciousness into Red's telemetry stream. "Fascinating. It appears to be a vault."

  "A vault?!" Neiva practically vibrated. "Now that sounds promising! Where is it?"

  Angelo was already moving, his boots crunching over the glass. "Down the main elevator shaft. It's deep."

  "That does sound promising," Sol admitted reluctantly. He caught Red grinning at him like an idiot. "Oh, wipe that stupid smile off your face!" he grumbled, storming after Angelo, which only made Red cackle louder.

  Five minutes later, they stood at the bottom of the shaft, staring at a massive, perfect cube embedded directly into the bedrock. It featured two heavy doors at the front. The metal wasn't just cast in shadow—even under the harsh glare of Sol's flashlight, it was pure, light-devouring black.

  "Oh, I know!" Neiva blurted out. "I bet those black crystals from upstairs are related to this vault!"

  Blue activated his energy vision, his azure eyes glowing brightly. "I am afraid I must disagree. This construct appears to be the product of an Auron's ability. Evolved matter, to be precise."

  "So it's a special kind of metal?" Neiva gasped, taking a quick step back. "Wait! What if it's poisonous to the touch? Don't touch it with your bare hands!"

  Red immediately leaned forward, pressed his face to the door, and dragged a long, gray-tinted tongue from the bottom of the metal all the way up to the seam in a comically exaggerated lick.

  "NOOOOO! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Neiva shrieked, recoiling in pure disgust.

  Red burst into manic laughter, wiping his mouth. "Tastes like dusty nothing! Besides, I don't have blood to poison, remember?" He tapped his temple with a wicked grin.

  While Neiva chased Red in angry circles, Angelo coated his hands in dense orange forged energy and gripped the seam of the doors. He pulled with a grunt, his boots slipping on the dusty floor. He let go, shaking his head. "It's extremely dense. It didn't even budge against Auron power."

  Neiva's aura flared to life, her eyes shifting to neon blue as she cracked her knuckles. "We'll see about that!"

  Two gigantic, metallic gauntlets rapidly built themselves around her slender arms. As the constructs solidified, her aura snapped colors, her eyes bleeding into a venomous, predatory yellow.

  She planted her feet, wedged her gauntlets into the seam, and roared. "Kyaaaaaaahhhh!"

  The yellow light flared blindingly as she poured every ounce of her stamina into her arms. The ground beneath her boots cracked, but the black doors remained absolutely defiant. She fell back, gasping for air.

  "Damn. To create permanent matter that even a Force Duoron can't muscle open? Either the creator made it impossibly dense, or the base element is virtually indestructible. Probably both," Sol noted, his own silver darkness igniting around his hands. "I think this calls for a group effort."

  "Why not just use that decay trick of yours?" Angelo asked, nodding to Sol's hands.

  "Too risky. If the atomic chain reaction spreads to whatever is inside, we might end up disintegrating the only evidence we came here to find," Sol explained.

  "Fair point. Very well then." Angelo looked over his shoulder, his hands slipping casually into his jacket pockets. "Trinergy Mode."

  "Yeah, yeah," Red groaned, crossing his arms. "Probably the right call."

  Blue offered a crisp nod, stepping back to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Red.

  Without warning, Angelo's aura detonated.

  A blinding silver light erupted through the cavern, violently shot through with veins of red, orange, and azure. The oppressive darkness of the metal tomb was instantly banished.

  "The Angel's Silver Hands," Angelo commanded. Two massive, tri-colored Trinergy arms materialized into existence, hovering just over his shoulders.

  The spectral hands gripped the center of the black doors. Sol stepped to the left, wedging his fingers into the seam, while Neiva flanked the right, her gauntlets locking into place.

  "Ready?" Sol called out over the roar of their combined auras. "PULL!"

  The subterranean air filled with desperate grunts and screams. The three Aurons pulled with earth-shattering force. The black metal shook, vibrating violently under the assault, emitting a low, horrifying groan of stressed steel.

  "MORE!" Red roared from beside Angelo. "Give it everything!"

  "AhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHH!"

  Their collective shout echoed through the labyrinth above. The auras flared to critical mass. The sheer physical strain caused a capillary to burst in Angelo's nose, sending a stream of blood over his lip. Blood trickled from Sol's mouth, and Neiva squeezed her eyes shut as a crimson trail leaked from her left eye.

  SNAP.

  The doors finally surrendered. They didn't open cleanly; the metal buckled and folded inward upon itself, creating a jagged diamond-shaped breach. The sudden loss of resistance sent Angelo, Neiva, and Sol tumbling backward into the dust.

  "Commendable work," Blue noted aloud, brushing a speck of dust from his lapel as he surveyed the breached door.

  Angelo wiped the blood from his nose, glaring Blue as he stood up and dusted off his jacket. He maintained the Trinergy Mode, the silver light illuminating the newly opened vault.

  Neiva moved to deactivate her aura, but Sol quickly held up a hand. "Don't. We don't know what's in there, and we need the extra light."

  "Let's go," Angelo ordered.

  They stepped through the jagged breach and into the vault.

  What they found made Sol freeze in his tracks.

  Neiva lowered her gauntlets, her breath catching in her throat. "Are those... prisms?"

  Stacked neatly against the back wall, rising from the floor to the ceiling, were hundreds of identical geometric shapes.

  "Not just any prisms," Sol said, stepping closer. "Black prisms."

  "So those shattered crystals upstairs—" Neiva started.

  "Were originally these," Angelo finished, the pieces clicking together in his mind.

  "But why?" Sol murmured, reaching out to wipe a layer of dust from the surface of the nearest prism. "What were they trying to do with these? Why mass-produce them?"

  "Bah, talk about boring!" Red complained aloud from the doorway, thoroughly unimpressed by the lack of weapons or monsters.

  "Prisms... huh..." Angelo's mind drifted. The shape triggered something in his memory.

  While his focus slipped, his subconscious brushed against the network of anchor points he had seeded around SolThanor's perimeter.

  Through a tiny marble of forged energy perched high on the cliffside, Angelo saw it.

  A man wreathed in roaring lightning, hovering above the ruins, his hands raised toward the sky.

  Angelo's blood turned to ice.

  "Everyone, there's—" Angelo screamed, spinning around.

  The sky fell.

  A sound like the world tearing in half shattered the silence. A colossal bolt of lightning struck the surface of the necropolis with the force of a meteor, instantly obliterating the bedrock.

  The laboratory ceiling didn't just collapse; it was atomized. Millions of tons of earth, stone, and steel violently caved in.

  Red and Blue, who had both remained physically present outside the vault, were crushed instantly.

  Inside the vault, the indestructible black ceiling buckled under the impossible weight of a collapsing mountain, dropping downward with terrifying speed, preparing to squash its occupants in a makeshift metal grave.