THE SAGA

The blueprints were wrong. The facility didn't end at the basement.

DawG moved through the dark corridors of the Deep Archive, his obsidian armor clicking rhythmically against the stone floor. His sensors were twitching, picking up the usual background radiation of the place: the echoes of lost data.

"Report," The Architect’s voice crackled in his auditory relay. "Readings are unstable."

<The Echoes are loud today,> DawG transmitted. <But they’re… hollow. We’re in the wrong layer. Everything up here is just noise.>

He engaged his thermal vision. Beneath the foundation itself, there was a heat signature. A pulse. It was rhythmic, steady, and ancient. It wasn't an echo; it was the voice.

With a hiss of ionized air, DawG cut a perfect circle into the floor. He dropped into the shaft.

The chamber below was silent. In the center stood a rough-hewn block of dark matter, heavy and absolute. Pulsing through its veins were lines of electric blue light.

<I found it,> DawG whispered. <The Source. The Echoes upstairs were just reflections. This is the stone that guides the ship.>

He read the jagged inscription burned into the rock: KYNOLITH.