The ash in the high-temperature incinerator was still warm. Sineus stood before it, the ghost of Archivist Cato’s warning—the price is absolute—a cold weight in his gut. The words were a declaration, a final term on a contract he had not yet signed. Outside, the Atlantic hammered the granite coast, but inside the workshop, a fragile quiet had returned. He ran a diagnostic on the main power grid, his fingers moving across the console with practiced economy. All systems reported nominal. The generator’s rhythm was steady.
He walked back to his workbench, the restored Mercator-Hondius atlas lying open under the lamp. His gaze fell on his father’s gimbaled compass. The heavy brass instrument was a testament to physical law, its magnetized steel needle locked on true north. It was a single, unwavering fact in a world of secrets and lies. For a moment, the sight of it settled the unease. The world’s foundation, however stressed, was holding.
A sound cut through the generator’s hum. It was not loud, but it was wrong. A high-frequency whine, thin as a razor’s edge, emanated from the far corner of the workshop. Sineus turned, his body already moving. The sound came from the Faraday rack, a heavy, shielded cabinet built to contain the unstable energies of artifacts. The air around it grew cold, a pocket of unnatural frost forming on the matte black steel. The whine sharpened, climbing the scale into a piercing shriek that vibrated in his teeth.
Without warning, the Astral Compass inside the locked rack ignited. It was a crystalline dodecahedron he had kept dormant for years, a relic of a forgotten science. A surge of energy blew the rack’s heavy door off its hinges. It cartwheeled across the workshop and slammed into the opposite wall with the force of a cannonball, leaving a deep crater in the stone. The whine became a deafening roar, a physical pressure that made the air feel thick as water.
A column of pure, blue-white light, no wider than his arm, erupted from the shattered rack. It was not a beam; it was a solid object of impossible energy, a drill bit of raw power. It punched through the workshop’s ceiling, through the two meters of granite and steel that formed the lighthouse tower, and tore a hole into the overcast sky above. Splintered timber and powdered stone rained down, coating every surface in a fine grey dust. The smell of superheated air and burnt ozone filled the room, acrid and sharp. The signal was a silent scream visible for over one hundred kilometers.
Sineus shielded his eyes, the sheer power of the discharge staggering him. He took a step back, his boots crunching on the fresh debris. His gaze fell to the workbench. His father’s compass was no longer a bastion of stability. The brass housing rattled in its gimbals as the needle spun wildly, a frantic, chaotic blur of motion. It was completely decoupled from magnetic north, a prisoner of a force that had torn a hole in the fabric of physical law. The quiet, steady tool now produced a frantic, ticking sound as the needle hammered against the inside of its glass casing.
The grammar of the world was being erased.
Then came the second wave. The wall of communications equipment—a bank of monitors, receivers, and encrypted servers—exploded into life. Every screen, from the satellite weather displays to the secured diplomatic channels, went black and then flashed to a single, unified image. Every speaker, from the shortwave radio to the encrypted burst-link, emitted a sharp tone that overrode all other sound before falling into a synchronized, pulsing hum. One hundred percent of the global communications spectrum in his vicinity had been hijacked.
On the screens, the image resolved. It was stark and simple: a countdown timer, its numbers a clean, sans-serif font in the same blue-white as the light still tearing through his roof. Beneath the timer, a set of coordinates appeared, pointing to a desolate patch of the North Atlantic. The secret was out. The covert war for memory, fought in shadows and whispers for decades, was now public. The prize was no longer a rumor; it was a destination with a deadline. His anonymity, the most valuable tool in his arsenal, had just been burned away by a one-gigawatt beacon.
A priority channel on his secure link fought through the signal override, the speaker crackling. — Sineus, confirm source! — Ben Carter’s voice was tight, stripped of all pleasantries. — That signal is painting every satellite from geosynchronous orbit down. Is that you?
— It’s the Compass, — Sineus said, his own voice flat, a cold instrument of assessment. He watched the numbers on the screen tick down. The spinning needle of his father’s broken compass began to slow, its chaotic dance resolving into a steady, unnatural quiver. It was no longer pointing north. It was pointing toward the coordinates on the screen. — It’s active.
— Active is the understatement of the century, — Carter shot back. The sound of frantic typing came through the speaker. — I’m tracking mass mobilization. Axiom’s Atlantic fleet is spooling up. Russian Northern Fleet just went to high alert. Every agency with a budget is moving. The whole world is looking at your front door, Sineus.
Sineus stood motionless amidst the wreckage of his sanctuary. The light from the Astral Compass finally subsided, leaving a jagged hole in his roof through which the grey daylight poured. The alarms from his comms array continued their relentless, unified scream. He was no longer the quiet guardian on the coast, the preserver of history working in isolation. He was the epicenter. He was the target.
The countdown timer on the screen clicked over to a new second. The price of Cato’s warning was no longer abstract. It was the sound of approaching engines.
The air in the workshop was cold and tasted of dust. The only movement was the steady, downward tick of the clock.
The world was coming for him, but he would not play their game.
