Welcome to the Architect's Tomb.

  Everyone looked up at the letters above. Gale recognized some of the letters looked like the same letters he saw from the Dainv ship, although a bit different. Now that he thought about it, he was actually able to understand the letters in the ship as well. The symbols and letters themselves embedded the information into his mind.

  "Can everyone read that?" Ollie squinted at the floating symbols above them. "Because I swear those aren't English letters, but somehow I know exactly what they say."

  "Doesn't look anything like any language from Earth I've seen," Lily said.

  Kyle stared up. "Yeah. Feels like data being beamed into my head directly. Creepy as fuck."

  "Sounds like something a certain VR headset did decades back. Shut down because of government regulation," Clyde said.

  "Would've totally bought into that. Where's my death game?" Kyle chuckled.

  "Shut up, idiots." Rachel shook her head. "There's similar translation spells available in the UK."

  "Not like this one though," Clyde said. "This one beams the information into your retinas."

  Rachel sighed.

  Holographic people walked past them. One passed through Gale's own body, a man with a blue jacket, talking to his friends in an alien language he couldn't understand. Only the letters were legible.

  "We should look for clues about the city while we're here. Might be our only chance to see what this place was like before it emptied out," Gale said.

  "Rookie's right. If we're stuck in some kind of historical recreation, might as well learn something useful," Kyle said.

  Ollie looked through the main street and one of the alleys on the left side. "Split up into pairs. Cover more ground that way. Lily, you're with me. Clyde, take idiot number one. Rachel, stick with Gale. Meet back here when you're done scouting."

  "Which one of us is idiot number two?" Kyle asked.

  "Me, you idiot," Clyde replied.

  The pairs split up along different streets. The idiots went west, Lily and Ollie went north, Gale and Rachel went east. The directions were relative to the main entrance door they came through being south.

  Gale spread out Breath of the Void's tendrils as he and Rachel wandered about. Each person walking past had a distinct signature, similar to the ones he felt from the students who were unaware of their abilities. Not fully awakened, but definitely not mundane.

  A woman carrying groceries approached them from the front, hand in hand with her child to her left. Rachel reached out, trying to touch the passerby. Her hand simply passed through where she had tried to touch.

  "It's really VR," Rachel mumbled. "What do you think happened to this civilization? They had so much tech and something wiped them out completely."

  The knight's words rang in his head. The tide or the corruption. This was only his second rift, and from what the knight had said, each one was a world on its own, decayed or destroyed by the tide.

  They'd said worlds would be catalogued once explored. That meant other teams would know what was behind each rift portal. Would the rifts completely disappear if the mission given to him by the Dainv OS was completed?

  Rachel tilted her head slightly at him. "What's wrong? You've got that expression again."

  "Nothing," Gale said. "Just thinking."

  "If it's about my reaction earlier, back in the library..." Rachel stopped walking, turning her eyes away from him. "It's not like I don't want to share. It's just I don't know how to explain what grandma shows me sometimes. She does explain but… I would be able to... if you accepted her offer. Then you could be part of the family, just like aunt Leah."

  Oh no, this is a serious topic and she figured out his thoughts from earlier. Gale knew she had good intentions as well, and now he wanted to squint his eyes at her at how she was able to read his mind. It's not like he didn't want to join the Ann family or the Path though. He was just out of his depth, not understanding any of the rules like having dinner with the guy who tried to kill you literally two weeks ago. It'd take some time to get used to, and now his thoughts were just rambling along.

  Taking a deep breath, he said, "Realistically and technically, I've been in Aur for less than a year. I don't even know what to do yet, so I really don't know what I should do."

  I'm still also learning about myself, Gale said to himself, not wanting to say the quiet part out loud.

  Rachel smiled softly. "Makes sense. No pressure."

  Phew. Looks like she wasn't going to push it, otherwise, he might really just join her family and have to put up with an overbearing overlord.

  They kept walking through the virtual streets. Streetlights adjusted brightness as people walked under them, dimming to red when no one was there and brightening to a more white light when there was someone. Up above the streets, vehicles that looked like trains floated and rushed through the air on non-existent railings or roads.

  "Look at that," Rachel said, pointing ahead.

  A projection appeared near the corner where two streets met. It showed a detailed map of the section of the city. A red arrow blinked pointing to the centre of the map, stating you are here in the same writing they somehow understood.

  Rachel pulled out her phone and aimed it at the hologram map. Then she lined up her camera to get as much of the map as possible and pressed the digital shutter.

  The map showed they were inside the tower itself on Level - G. They were in a residential district called Tower - Harmony Section 1. They spotted a landmark called "Memory Hivestore."

  From Gale's memory of the streets around the building they entered, the building showing this virtual environment was that exact building. The map cut off with an arrow pointing north to something called "Level Transporter."

  Suddenly, a family walked through them. A couple held hands with a young boy between them. The kid pointed excitedly at something in a shop window, pulling his mom's arm. All three had crystal growths that looked like natural parts of their bodies rather than something foreign.

  "The dust corruption here isn't killing them," Rachel said.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "Maybe to them, it's not corruption?" Gale asked, though he was more melancholic at the affectionate display of the family.

  The family disappeared into the building, the kid pulling them in. He never had that kind of experience with mom and dad. Everyday was just training for survival. Tomorrow might not come, they said. If he wasn't careful, there might be a bear that's about to chomp down on his neck while he was asleep.

  Turning away from where the family went in, a crowd to his left caught his eye. Pedestrians paused all around, looking at the centre point where a commotion grew.

  The crowd parted, and three figures emerged. A man in the centre, a woman on his left, and a man on his right. It looked as if a celebrity was being eyed on by a large crowd. People in the crowd took out their phones made of transparent material and started taking pictures of the three celebrities.

  The three who walked through the crowd had clear distinct ether signatures, though somehow shaped differently. Not weaker nor stronger, just different from the rough shape it had back on Earth. Their shapes looked smoother and geometric.

  Rachel noticed where he was looking. "What is it?"

  "Those awakened," Gale replied. "Their signatures are different from the ones on Earth."

  A young boy broke away from his parents, holding what looked like a notebook. He ran straight to the three figures, weaving between other people.

  The man in the centre stopped when the child reached him. The boy held up a notebook.

  The man then crouched down, taking the notebook from the boy. He pulled out a pen and signed it with the same language they saw everywhere except in a more cursive format like a signature.

  After giving back the notebook, the man ruffled the kid's head, making the child laugh.

  He turned the child's attention to his palm, facing upwards. Water droplets from the air formed on a point above his palm, creating a small figurine. The water froze instantly, forming a small ice sculpture of the very same boy.

  The child's eyes widened as the man handed him the ice sculpture. The parents came over, one taking out what looked like a camera. They posed around their son and the man, taking pictures with bright flashes.

  "That kind of elemental control," Rachel whispered. "He made that sculpture in seconds."

  The family thanked the man before leaving, the child carefully holding his ice gift. The three figures continued on their way, turning a corner and disappearing.

  "Their awakened lives alongside mundanes in the open. Look how natural that was. No fear, no hiding abilities," Rachel said. "There were attempts on Earth. Times when awakened tried to reveal themselves, to live without secrecy."

  "What happened?"

  "Massacres. Every single time. The witch hunts in America and Europe were the most documented cases. Whole communities of awakened burned alive by mundanes who saw them as threats."

  "But mundanes are weak," Gale said. Why wouldn't the awakened fight back? Probably even the mundane armies wouldn't be able to fend off against the full brunt of Aur.

  Rachel smiled softly. "Aur was formed a very long time ago. Maybe even thousands of years ago. Mom and grandma always said that the duty of an Aurian is always to protect the weak, to protect the mundanes."

  "So Aur buried itself within mundane society."

  "Exactly. Hide or die." Rachel looked around at the busy virtual street. "But here, somehow, they made it work. Integration instead of separation."

  A group of teenagers passed by as the group passed by. One casually lit a flame on his palm, showing his friend, then pointing to a recruitment board for what looked like the military.

  "We should get back," Gale said. "The others will be waiting."

  Rachel took one last photo of the map board before turning away, a wider shot this time. They walked through the holographic crowd, bodies passing through them as they headed back to the meeting point.

  Lily and Ollie had already returned, deep in conversation. Lily made sharp chopping motions with her hands as she talked.

  "Found anything useful?" Rachel asked as they approached.

  Ollie looked up. "There you are. Was starting to wonder if you two got lost in virtual wonderland."

  "What about the twins?" Gale asked, looking around.

  "Still out exploring," Lily said. "Probably stealing virtual technology blueprints or something equally useless."

  "We found a map." Rachel pulled out her phone. She showed the screen to Ollie and Lily. "According to this, we're in something called 'Harmony Section 1' near a building labelled 'Memory Hivestore.' That's the building we entered in the real world."

  Ollie studied the screen, swiping through Rachel's photos and zooming in on parts of the map she took a photo of. "Does it show any way out?"

  "Sort of," Rachel pointed to the edge of the map. "There's something called a 'Level Transporter' to the north. I think it's an elevator or transit system between floors."

  "Makes sense," Lily said. "This place is huge."

  "What about you two?" Gale asked. "Learn anything useful?"

  Ollie scratched the back of his neck. "We found what looked like a walk-in clinic. Had info material on the walls about very basic stuff. But get this, all the info about those crystals were aimed at people who couldn't use 'Gifts,' which is apparently what they call Ether abilities here."

  "Gifts," Rachel said. "Interesting choice of words."

  "Yeah, and here's the kicker," Ollie said, "the crystal growth is exactly what dust corruption is on Earth. But here? It's treated like some coming-of-age thing. Totally normal development."

  "The documents showed treatments for those who had bad reactions to the crystals. Nothing like the fatal cases we see with dust corruption. They had ways to stabilize the crystallization process." Lily said.

  "You think there might be tech here that could help with dust corruption back home?" Gale asked.

  "Definitely," Lily said. "Possibly better than the shard. If we could get that knowledge, bring it back..."

  "That's a big if," Rachel said.

  They noticed Kyle and Clyde approaching from a different street, passing through the holographic crowd.

  "Look who finally decided to show up," Ollie called out.

  Kyle grinned. "Sorry we're late to the party. We were busy becoming experts on ancient dead civilizations."

  "You wouldn't believe what we found," Clyde added.

  "Try us," Lily challenged.

  Kyle pointed upward at the tower around them. "This place? It's not just a building. It's a hub for an entire multi-planet civilization."

  "Originally it was a tomb," Clyde said. "Built for someone they called 'The Architect.' But over time it became the central command structure for their empire."

  "How did you figure all that out?" Rachel asked.

  "We found a museum," Kyle said. "Complete with helpful little plaques that explained everything."

  "The tower has five main civilian levels," Clyde said. "We're on the Residential level right now. Above us is an Agricultural level, then a Core Lab level, followed by a Planetary Transit level, and finally the Power Gen Core level."

  "Each level has its own transit point to go up," Kyle said. "Different locations on each floor. Not all in the same place."

  Looks like this whole thing wasn't going to be a walk in the park to get to the power source. If this floor was already difficult, the upper levels might be even more difficult the closer they got to the top.

  Ollie whistled. "That's actually useful information. I take back at least twelve percent of the bad things I've said about you two."

  "I'll take it!" Kyle said.

  "So where do we go?" Rachel asked. "None of these levels seem to tell us how to get out of this place."

  All eyes turned to Ollie, who rubbed his chin. "Still can't believe you two dumbasses got into the special investigations division."

  "Smart dumbasses," Kyle said.

  "Tall and handsome too," Clyde said. "Don't forget that part."

  "And broke. Don't forget that part," Lily said, making the twins wince.

  "I think we should try to reach the Power Gen Core level. If we can power up the city, it might turn on systems that could help us get out," Gale said, cutting through the banter.

  "How do you know powering up the city would help?" Lily asked.

  "I mean, it's part of the mission, right? Finding the power source would-" Gale realized his mistake too late. He stopped, backtracking quickly. "I just meant it makes sense. Dead city, no power, we find power, things start working again. Basic logic."

  "Mission?" Rachel asked. "What mission?"

  "Figure of speech," Gale said. "Look, the point is, if this place has tech advanced enough to fix dust corruption, they must have equally advanced transportation systems. We turn the power on, we find a way out. Simple just like dead ancient civilizations in sci-fi books."

  "Pfft. Bookworm. Movies are so much better," Kyle glared at Gale. "Power Gen Core level it is."

  Read 25+ chapters ahead on

  And please