The diagram of the Sheathed Spear still glowed on the terminal, a terrible and perfect blueprint for a weapon made of souls. It was a new language, a poetry of force and control. The silence in the training space was the silence of shared, focused work. It was broken by the sound of footsteps. Corbin Shaw, the rebellion’s data analyst, stood at the entrance. His face was a mask of neutral observation. He held a datapad. He saw the diagram, his eyes flickered over it, and then he dismissed it. It was not his department.
"I have a location," Corbin said, his voice a flat monotone that cut through the fragile synergy in the room. "Relay Station Epsilon-9. It’s a defunct Dreamscape relay. Been offline for seven years. Completely isolated."
He looked at Lena, then at Elias. He was not asking for their approval. He was stating a fact. He had been given a task, and he had completed it.
— It’s the perfect hunting ground.
The words hung in the air, cold and hard. The theoretical diagram on the screen suddenly felt very real. It was no longer a concept. It was a tool for a job. The hum of the Foundry seemed to grow louder, a clock ticking. The distant drip of water sounded like a countdown. Now they had to build the weapon.
Corbin swiped a hand across his datapad, and the diagram of the Sheathed Spear was replaced by a three-dimensional map. A skeletal structure of dark, inert data-conduits hung in a black void. It looked like the fossil of some long-dead leviathan. Elias saw it differently. He saw an operating table. Sterile. Isolated. Free of variables. The ghost of the optimizer he used to be stirred within him, appreciating the clean, cold logic of the choice. This was not a hunt. This was surgery.
— The station’s isolation is its primary asset, — Corbin continued, his voice devoid of emotion. — Any psychic energy we generate will be the only signal for kilometers. The bait will be unambiguous. There is no background noise to hide in.
— Or to hide us, — Jax, the rebellion’s lead technician, grunted from the corner where he was cleaning his tools with a stained rag. He looked up, his face smudged with grease and exhaustion. — It’s a blind spot, but it’s also a kill box. No escape routes. No ambient energy to pull from if a construct fails.
Elias nodded, turning from the map to the small group assembled. Lena, her arms crossed, her energy a coiled spring. Jax, grounded and cynical. Corbin, a machine for processing probabilities. And standing quietly by the wall, Silas Kane, the Veteran Dreamer, his calm presence a silent counterweight to the frantic energy in the room. Five people to plan the single most dangerous operation they had ever conceived.
— The bait will be a Consensus Geode, — Elias began, his voice reclaiming the quiet authority of the teacher. He was on familiar ground now, designing a construct. — We will build a stable, multi-layered reality. A lighthouse. Something bright, orderly, and predictable. The Stalker hunts for patterns. We will give it the most perfect pattern it has ever seen.
He was outlining Plan A, a construct built on his core principles: stability, control, safety. It was a design that played to the strengths of his Healers, a slow, methodical weaving of thought. He could feel the old comfort in it, the rightness of a well-made thing.
Lena scoffed, a sharp, derisive sound. — A lighthouse. You want to build a lighthouse to attract a thing that eats light. It will see your perfect pattern and it will dismantle it, piece by perfect piece. We saw what it did in the alley. It moves outside of dream-logic. Predictability is a weakness.
— It is a baseline, — Elias countered, keeping his voice even. — We need to control the variables. We present a stable target to measure its response.
— No, — Lena said, stepping forward so she stood beside him, facing the map. She was not arguing with him anymore. She was co-designing. — We build your lighthouse. Your perfect, stable vessel. But inside, at the very center, we put a chaotic heart. A storm of pure, unstructured emotion. The Grief Storm.
She looked at him, her eyes burning with an intensity that had nothing to do with anger. It was the fire of creation. — It will be drawn to the stable outer shell, the pattern it understands. But it will be confused by the chaotic signal at the core. It will have to choose what to target. That hesitation is our window.
Elias looked at the map of the dead relay station, then at the memory of the Sheathed Spear diagram. A stable vessel. A chaotic core. She was right. It was the same principle, scaled up from a weapon to a strategy. It was their new language.
— The power consumption will be enormous, — Jax interjected, his voice cutting through the philosophical debate like a plasma torch through soft metal. He held up a datapad showing a series of cascading energy schematics. — A stable Geode with a chaotic core running simultaneously? You’re asking two different engines to run off the same battery. The energy bleed will be detectable from the Waking. And we have a 1.2-second window for data capture before I have to pull the plug. Any hesitation from the Stalker has to happen inside that window.
The hard numbers, the physical constraints of their scavenged technology, settled over the room. This was the price of their war. They were fighting for the soul with machines that were barely holding together.
It was Silas Kane who spoke next, his voice a low rumble that seemed to absorb the tension in the air. He had been a part of this rebellion since before Elias, a man who had seen the Mandate’s first, cruder experiments. — The Coach builds the vessel. Lena provides the fire. The principle is sound.
He walked toward the terminal, his large, scarred hands gesturing at the map. — But the Stalker is a new machine. We are assuming it thinks as we do, that it will be confused. What if it is not? What if it simply targets the vessel and ignores the fire? Or worse, targets the fire and uses its energy to shatter the vessel from within?
The question hung in the air, a new and terrifying variable.
— We need two teams inside the dream, — Silas continued. — A Lure Team to manage the Geode, to be the bait. And a Capture Team, hidden, silent, waiting for the moment the Stalker is engaged. Their only job is to spring the trap.
Elias felt the plan solidifying, taking on a grim, operational reality. He nodded. — A Lure Team of three to form the Geode. A Capture Team of two, cloaked in psychic silence. And a Monitoring Team in the Waking. Jax, you and Corbin will be the monitors.
— I’ll lead the Lure Team, — Lena said immediately. It was not a request. It was a statement of fact. She was volunteering for the most dangerous position, the one that would be closest to the Stalker when it arrived.
Elias looked at her. He saw the reckless fury, but he also saw the strategist who had understood the principle of the Sheathed Spear. He saw the soldier willing to stand on the front line. To deny her would be to break the fragile truce they had just forged. To accept was to place the lives of two other dreamers in her hands. He had to trust her. The price was control, traded for a fragile faith.
— Agreed, — Elias said, and the word felt heavy in his mouth. — You will be the chaotic heart of the Geode. But I will be the session anchor, here in the Waking. I will hold the safety tether. If your vitals drop, if the construct destabilizes, I pull you out. No arguments.
Lena met his gaze, and for a fraction of a second, he saw her about to argue, to demand full autonomy. But she held it back. She gave a single, sharp nod. The deal was struck. Their two factions, the Healers and the Hunters, were now bound together in a single, desperate gamble.
He turned back to the group. The plan was set. A kill box in the middle of a psychic void. A lure made of order and chaos. A trap waiting to be sprung. He reached into his pocket, his fingers closing around the warm, frayed fragment of the Weaver’s Thread. He had salvaged it from the ruins of his sanctuary, a symbol of his failure. Now, it felt different. It was not an artifact of a dead philosophy. It was a component. A single thread of light, waiting to be braided with a darker one to make something strong enough to be a weapon.
The hum of the Foundry no longer sounded like the gentle rhythm of a hidden sanctuary. It sounded like a war machine being assembled, piece by piece, in the dark.
The amber light of the terminal cast long shadows on the concrete floor. The slow, steady drip of water from a high pipe marked the passing seconds.
Now they had to teach the hunters to weave.
