Chapter 368: Back To Nexus

The journey back from Aegis was much quieter than the journey there.

Nobody said much as the transport wound through the wilderness. The ancient towers shrank into distant silhouettes, the great walls slipped behind the mountains, and before long, the last trace of Aegis was gone.

None of them could stop thinking about what they had seen.

Lily sat by a window with her tablet, where she had spent most of the trip recording everything they had found.

She hadn’t stopped at the final message. She had written down every record, every symbol, every description of the Disasters and the Judgment, and every detail she could remember about the civilization that had failed.

Gabriel sat across from her, but she wasn’t writing anything. She was staring out the window with an unusually serious expression, and Sera noticed.

"You’ve been quiet."

Gabriel looked at her. "Have I?"

"Yes." Sera leaned back. "You’re usually the one explaining everything."

Gabriel gave a small smile. "Perhaps I don’t have anything to explain this time."

"That bad?"

Gabriel looked toward the mountains. "Aegis is older than any surviving record in Nexus, and yet they knew about the Disasters."

"At least three of them," Lily said, looking up.

"That alone changes a great deal," Gabriel said, and then she looked at Kai, who hadn’t said a word. "But the final message changes even more."

"Exactly," Lily said, turning her tablet toward them and counting on her fingers. "First Disaster, the Dragon of Destruction. Second Disaster, the Sixfold Calamity. Third Disaster, the King of the Sky." She stopped at three, and her expression grew uncomfortable. "And then the message tells us not to prepare for the fourth."

Sera crossed her arms. "Which is weird, especially since the chamber itself started a Fourth Judgment."

"That contradiction is probably important," Lily said.

"It might not be a contradiction," Kai said, and everyone turned to him. "The Fourth Judgment and the Fourth Disaster might not be the same thing."

Lily’s eyes widened. "That’s possible."

"The wording matters," Gabriel said slowly. "The chamber said the fourth would not descend from the sky."

"And then it told us not to prepare for it," Sera said, "but to prepare for what comes after."

Nobody spoke as the transport rolled on. Outside, the wilderness gave way to roads, then power lines, then modern buildings, until Nexus finally rose on the horizon with its airships and floating platforms drifting between the towers.

The sight should have felt normal, but Kai saw the city differently now. He could see the layers beneath it, modern Nexus built over older cities, those cities built over Aegis, and Aegis built over the civilizations before it, with the Disasters running through every one of them.

Sera noticed his expression. "You’re thinking again."

Kai glanced at her. "I always think."

"That’s the problem."

Kai almost smiled.

Lily looked up from her tablet. "I have a bigger problem. I want to go back."

Sera stared at her. "To Aegis?"

"Yes."

"No."

Lily blinked. "I didn’t even explain."

"You don’t need to."

Lily frowned. "There are thousands of records we didn’t recover. I could spend years studying that place."

"That’s exactly why you’re not going back."

Lily looked offended. "I’m a professional researcher."

"You’re a professional researcher who almost touched an ancient machine that could have killed you because it looked interesting."

Lily paused. "That happened once."

Sera looked at Kai. "It happened several times."

Kai nodded. "She’s right."

Lily crossed her arms. "You two are becoming annoying."

Gabriel laughed quietly, and the tension inside the transport eased a little. Then she looked back toward the city, and her smile faded. "I need to speak with the Church."

"About Aegis?" Kai asked.

"About everything. The Church has records from civilizations that existed before Nexus."

Lily leaned forward immediately. "You have records older than Aegis?"

Gabriel hesitated. "Fragments."

Lily’s eyes lit up. "Can I see them?"

"Of course," Gabriel said, and Lily looked almost relieved until Gabriel continued. "But after what we found in Aegis, I’m not sure how much of our history is actually true."

That silenced everyone.

Sera frowned. "You think the Church’s records are wrong?"

"I think they’re incomplete." Gabriel looked at Kai. "For centuries, we believed humanity had simply forgotten its ancient history. Now I’m wondering whether someone wanted it forgotten."

Kai’s eyes narrowed. Forgetting history was one thing, but having it removed was something else entirely. "Did Aegis mention anything about that?"

"Not directly," Gabriel said.

"But?"

"The records mentioned information being restricted more than once."

Lily looked up. "Restricted by whom?"

"We don’t know."

Kai looked out the window as the question settled in his mind. Who had erased the past, and what had they been trying to hide?

The transport passed through the city’s outer security barrier, and Nexus opened up around them. Cars moved along the elevated roads, airships crossed between districts, and Hunters walked through the markets. Everything looked normal, almost too normal.

"Feels strange coming back," Sera said.

"After Aegis?" Lily asked.

"Yeah. It’s hard to look at this place the same way."

Kai understood. Nexus wasn’t just a city anymore. It was another civilization built on top of something older, and somewhere beneath it, there could be answers.

When the transport stopped in the Church district, Gabriel stepped out first, and several Church personnel hurried toward her the moment they recognized her. "Archbishop!"

Gabriel raised a hand. "Later. Get the senior archivists."

One of them hesitated. "Is something wrong?"

Gabriel glanced at Kai, then at Lily and Sera. "We found something in Aegis that changes what we know about the Disasters."

The man’s expression changed. "I’ll get them immediately."

As he hurried off, Lily watched him go. "Can I go to the archives now?"

Gabriel laughed. "You really only care about the records."

"I care about everything."

"Mostly records," Sera said, and Lily didn’t deny it.

Kai smiled, and for a moment, things felt normal again. Then Sera fell into step beside him.

"Kai. You’re hiding something."

Kai’s smile disappeared. She wasn’t accusing him. She was only stating a fact.

"I told you what I saw," he said.

"You told us fragments."

Kai kept his eyes forward. "So did the ruins."

"That isn’t the same thing." She lowered her voice. "When we found the records about the King, you weren’t surprised."

Kai said nothing.

Sera sighed. "I knew you weren’t going to tell me. I didn’t say you had to." She smiled faintly. "I just wanted you to know that I noticed."

Kai nodded. "I know."

They walked in silence for several seconds before Sera spoke again. "You’ve met him, haven’t you? Bahamut."

Kai stopped and looked at her. "Yes."

"How?"

He looked away. "I can’t explain that yet."

Sera studied him for a long moment, and then she simply nodded. "Okay."

Kai looked surprised. "That’s it?"

"For now," Sera said, walking ahead of him.

Lily passed them with her tablet in hand. "I heard that."

Sera turned. "You weren’t supposed to."

Lily shrugged. "I’m standing right here."

Gabriel laughed, and for a moment, Kai almost forgot about the vision. Then he remembered the ancient warrior staring at the broken sky, and the words that came after.

The System isn’t protecting us.

His expression grew serious again. When they left for Aegis, he’d had only one question, which was why the Third Disaster had passed. Aegis had answered it, but now he was left with far more questions. He needed to know what Bahamut had really been judging, and why he had chosen Kai. He needed to know why Mythal had survived when so many civilizations had failed, why the System had created the Disaster cycle at all, and most of all, what came after it.

The answers might be in the Church archives, somewhere in Nexus, in the ruins buried beneath the continent, or somewhere far beyond all of them.

Gabriel returned a few minutes later. "The archivists are ready."

"Finally," Lily said, already moving.

"But there’s something else," Gabriel said, and her expression turned serious. "The Church has received reports from several other cities. Seven more ancient sites have fully activated since we left for Aegis."

Lily stopped. "Seven?"

"And it’s happening faster," Gabriel said, looking at Kai. "Since the Third Disaster passed, ruins all across the continent have been waking up."

Kai’s eyes narrowed. "Like Aegis."

"Yes."

Lily slowly lowered her tablet. "So Aegis wasn’t only waking up because of us."

Gabriel shook her head.

"Then why?" Lily asked.

Gabriel looked toward the distant skyline. "We don’t know."

Kai stared at the city. One ruin waking up could have been a coincidence, but seven was something else. If ancient structures across the continent were activating at the same time, then whatever had started in Aegis wasn’t ending there. It was spreading.

He looked at Sera, and she was already watching him. Neither of them said anything, because they didn’t need to.

They had come to Nexus looking for answers about the Third Disaster, and they had found something far bigger. Kai looked up at the ancient towers rising between Nexus’s modern skyline.

Whatever came next, he would find it. But first, he needed to understand what Bahamut had actually been judging, and why the System had brought him this far.