An emerald shockwave tore through the hall, not of kinetic force, but of pure, malevolent feedback. The floor dropped out beneath Radovan's consciousness, yanking him into a vortex of raw energy. The burning ache in his ribs, the fright in Zora’s pale face, Borislav’s ragged snarl—all of it dissolved, replaced by a vault suspended outside time. He stood, or rather, existed, surrounded by an expanse overflowing with recollection. The central hearth, now a dying sun of rot, remained fixed in his mind, but it was no longer this hearth. It was a projection, a shimmering, translucent map of the continental network, each monolith rendered in prismatic light across a vast, echoing hall. The air here hung still, dry, smelling of dust and ozone. Before him, hunched over the holographic array, stood a man whose face was etched with bitter lines. Wisps of white hair clung to a hollow skull. His gnarled, trembling hands traced the glowing lines of the towers. “Zora,” the dry voice rasped, the name barely carrying through the dark. Radovan felt a familiar ache, a grief that was not his own, but a lingering echo of what this elder had buried across an ocean of years. “You always saw the truth in the shadows. Something I… I could never grasp until it was too late.” The man, his elder self, coughed—a wet, rattling sound that tore his chest apart. He clutched his ribs, a dark stain spreading through his coarse linen shirt. “The regression… it bought us time. But it cannot change the fundamental flaw. The one I helped embed.” He paused, his gaze fixed on the luminous projection, each monolith a burning needle across Volos. “We told ourselves the pillars were our shields,” he continued, his voice gaining harsh clarity. “And they are, in a way. But the first builders… they didn’t erect them solely for defense. They built them to *draw* power. To channel the deep, raw veins of this world into their works. And in doing so, they produced a frequency. A harmonic that echoes into the dark.” Radovan, standing as a phantom in this vision, felt a chill settle into his marrow. This was no breached rampart. It was bait. Civilization had not merely guarded its borders; it had whistled in the predator. His older self turned, bloodshot eyes locking directly onto Radovan's face. He was not talking to a ghost of Zora anymore; he was speaking to the boy who had come before him. “My forebear called himself The Architect. He perfected the ley-lines, the mineral conduits that drew the ether up from the roots. He believed he was elevating our kind, forging an ascension.” A dry snort rattled in his throat. “He was fashioning a slaughterhouse. The Void… it does not drift blindly into worlds. It tracks dense knots of power. Living pulse points. And we, blind in our pride, erected towering flares. We called it.” The truth struck Radovan like an iron rod across the ribs. Every pillar of history cracked. The obelisks, worshiped as salvation, had brought the butcher to the pen. The Architect’s Folly was not poor masonry or mismatched runes; it was an innate, catastrophic lure woven into the stone. “The heartstones,” the dying veteran said, stabbing a finger toward the brilliant node marked Svarog on the projection. It flickered erratically, matching the poisoned mineral in the present. “They are the fulcrum. The primary beacons. Each one sings directly into the dark.” He coughed again, dark droplets speckling his chin, and sagged against the console frame. “We tried to slice the cord from beyond,” he wheezed, his voice thinning out. “Could not do it. Too vast. Too entrenched. There is only one method left to mute the tone. We have to shatter it from *our* side.” He fixed Radovan with desperate, hollow eyes. “This pillar is the oldest, the root of the network. Its heartstone is the key. Overload it. Fracture the signal. A controlled detonation. A localized singularity.” Radovan understood the words, and his throat went dry. “Level… the Academy?” he asked into the phantom air. The fortress of their training, the only shelter keeping Milena fed and hidden, the stone halls where Zora slept. All of it flattened to gravel. The dying man gave a slow nod. “The school grounds, the inner ward, perhaps half the lower district… Yes. It is the only lever that will snap the main conduit. It silences the loudest shout. The shockwave will bring ruin, but it buys the remaining bastions time to alter their tuning. Time for people to learn to breathe without these crutches.” He slumped hard against the iron panel. “It is a purge, Radovan. One I was too craven to trigger when the chance was mine. You cannot hesitate.” The projection flickered out, the phantom hall dissolving into green static. Dry dust gave way to the sharp, copper tang of the training vault. The quiet broke under the scrape of Borislav’s iron-shod heel on stone and the ragged pump of the man's lungs. Radovan slammed back into his flesh, sprawled across the chilled flagstones, bruised ribs throbbing where Borislav had booted him. Zora, cheeks pale, stood braced between him and the instructor, her pale Light flickering low across her palms to check the man's advance. Borislav gripped his stained throat, stepping back with a manic, bloodshot stare. Then he lunged forward, teeth bared. “You… you abomination! I’ll tear you apart!” Radovan looked straight past the instructor. He saw the immense heartstone, flashing with venomous viridian fire. It was not merely tainted; it was a blaring horn, a massive drum hammering an invitation across the dark. The calculus was simple now. The brutal, unsentimental work his future self had lacked the spine to finish. He shoved himself upright, ignoring the hot grating of cracked bone, eyes locked onto the jagged crystal. His voice came out raspy, hard as slate against the din: “We have to destroy it. All of it.”

An Architect's Confession