Gaia Chronicles: The Integral Saga

The tunnels beneath Lyrenthal twisted like a decaying maze—rusted steel, broken support beams, and ancient symbols long covered by grime and time. Yet now, lights had been reinstalled. Cameras blinked softly in the dark. Orion had taken root.

Team B moved quietly—Eun-Ha leading with a soft glow from Solmaria, Sylvia just behind her, ears tuned to the tiniest reverberation, and Hikari practically a ghost.

Mia stared at the walls, the markings stirring distant memories from her endless readings in Gaia's Library of Forbidden Tomes.

"These aren't Orion runes," she murmured, fingers tracing a glyph. "They're Abyssal hybrids. Someone's merging dimensional architectures."

"Then we're dealing with more than just spies," Eun-Ha said softly. "We're dealing with converters."

Sylvia paused. "Do you mean—?"

"They're trying to turn Lyrenthal into a breach site."

A silence fell over the group.

And then a whisper.

Not one they heard, but one they felt.

In the mind.

At the northern outpost, Cyg worked relentlessly beside Charlotte, decrypting corrupted Gaia signals now streaming from six separate relay towers in the city.

Elaine kept watch, her wind whispering like an early warning radar.

Harriet paced impatiently.

"We've got two teammates in the sewers surrounded by god-knows-what, and we're sitting here playing with math."

"We're not playing," Cyg said coolly. "We're dismantling a city-wide collapse algorithm tied to spatial-ether sync points. If I get this wrong, every leyline under Lyrenthal could implode."

Harriet blinked. "...Right. Well. Carry on."

Charlotte's eyes sparkled as data unfolded before her. "He's fast," she whispered to herself. "Precise. Like a blade."

Cyg barely glanced up.

"Stop monologuing. Your frequency merge is off by 0.3."

Charlotte smirked. "Still adorable, Cold Tactician."

He paused, barely frowning. "That name. Don't start."

"Too late," Elaine said, chuckling. "It suits you."

"It's already your nickname in the support threads," Harriet added. "The Cold Tactician. Steel mind. Zero heart."

"Inaccurate," Cyg replied, gaze locked on the stream. "Heart function is measurable. 62 BPM. Slightly elevated due to current operational intensity."

Charlotte leaned over with a mischievous grin. "And maybe the presence of cute teammates?"

Cyg paused.

"...Irrelevant data."

Meanwhile, in the undercity, Team B encountered their first ambush.

It came without warning.

One moment—silence.The next—black smoke flooded the hall.

Sylvia released a shockwave of sound to clear the field. It revealed—

A Mirror Blade.

Clad in obsidian armor, glowing with fractured memories and false faces.

It wore Eun-Ha's.

"Your light is hollow," it hissed, voice identical to hers. "You are a lie."

Hikari struck first, her scythe Sanguira cleaving through smoke. The assassin blinked away, reappearing behind Mia.

But before it could strike—

A beam of divine light slammed it into the wall.

Eun-Ha, calm and composed, walked forward as if untouched by fear.

"You've stolen my face. Let me show you the soul behind it."

She raised her staff—and Solmaria exploded with divine resonance, casting the clone into blistering etherfire. The Mirror Blade let out a distorted scream as its form unraveled into nothingness.

Back at the outpost, the relay decryption completed.

Cyg stood slowly, eyes narrowing as new data formed across the map.

"This city's grid isn't just compromised. It's looped to something external."

Charlotte blinked. "External? Like another city?"

"No," Cyg said. "Another realm."

He tapped the final projection.

At the center of Lyrenthal, buried beneath the Old Cathedral—a sigil neither Abyssal nor Orion, but something older.

Elaine exhaled. "What the hell are we standing on?"

Cyg's voice was lower now.

"An unrecorded breach. One Orion's been nursing in secret. And we're the only ones who know."

A thousand meters below, inside a control chamber pulsing with voidlight, Kael Verdan watched the city's feeds unravel.

His fingers moved across glyph-keyboards faster than a human's.

"They found the breach zone," he said, smiling. "Faster than I expected."

Marta Sirova appeared behind him, parasol now acting as a communication antenna.

"And what do we do, Catalyst Sovereign?"

Kael turned.

His eyes glowed with a quiet, chemical brilliance.

"We test the Cold Tactician. And if he passes…"

He smiled.

"We erase him."