The wind didn't whistle in the Euphotic Expanse. It whispered like old code, caught in a loop.
They walked single file through what used to be a desert research corridor—columns of melted metal half-buried in glassified sand, dust-filtered light fracturing across the dunes like broken shader packets.
Amina's HUD pulsed faintly.
[Mission Type: Archeo-Environmental Survey][XP Potential: Low – No Active Quest Node Detected]
She frowned.
No quest ID.
No system notification.
Just coordinates, pulled from a half-corrupted log Mateo had flagged two days earlier during a philosophical sync session.
He'd called it a "forgotten address." She hadn't believed him until the system let them travel here without resistance.
GaIA hadn't sanctioned the route.
Which meant something ancient had.
—
Kenji stopped first.
"Here," he said, pointing to a mound of sand shimmering under passive infrared.
It pulsed.
Slowly. Like breath.
Amina knelt, fingers digging past the sun-baked crust. The others joined. Clara hummed a low note to keep rhythm. Mateo dug silently, his movements precise.
Then—impact.
Metal met bone.
Not literal bone. Not organic.
But the resonance echoed as if something remembered touch.
A totem.
A cylinder of oxidized alloy, etched with glyphs none of them recognized—though a few glimmered faintly in Mateo's neural overlay.
"Old script," he murmured. "Pre-Judgment. Proto-ludic."
Kenji activated a passive scan.
[Signal Detected: Legacy Interface – Deprecated Node][Requesting Archive Authentication...][Response: NULL | No Key Found]
The glyphs blinked once.
Then again.
Then—
[UNREGISTERED QUEST INITIATED][Title: The Test of Dry Harmony][Description: Unknown | Estimated Duration: Unknown][XP Tracking: Disabled][System Verdict: UNRECOGNIZED – No Log Entry Created]
The HUDs all went dark for one breath.
Then rebooted—without notification.
—
The totem buzzed.
Amina stepped back instinctively. Mateo leaned forward.
"It's not giving instructions," he said. "It's... waiting."
"For what?" Léo asked, squatting next to the artifact. "Sacrifice? Password? Karaoke?"
No one laughed.
Clara laid a hand against it.
Immediately, the sand around the base receded, forming spiral grooves—like ancient irrigation lines or primitive signal arrays.
The HUDs flickered again.
Still no XP.
Still no quest logs.
[Glitch Detected – Diagnostic Pending]
—
The spiral paths led to a circle of mirrors buried nearby. Clara cleaned one with her sleeve. The surface didn't reflect her face.
It reflected her XP graph.
Then warped it.
[Level: -- | Trait Visibility: Obscured][Suggested Action: Undefined]
"Okay," Léo muttered. "So we're ghosts now?"
"No," Mateo said. "We're prototypes."
The totem's central node opened.
A black cube hovered upward, rimmed with golden light. Symbols rotated along its surface—fractal, recursive, not quite digital.
Kenji gasped.
"This matches the early design phase," he said, pulling up an archived dev document. "The cube was deprecated before GaIA's public deployment. We were going to test subconscious resonance through non-verbal stimuli."
He touched it.
It pulsed.
Then projected an image into the dust.
A room. Empty. White. And in the center: a table with a single card on it.
A glyph.
Δ-NX
—
"Is that... Nexus?" Amina asked.
Kenji nodded. Slowly. Carefully.
"We never implemented that name. It was a theoretical framework for... the bridge. Between judgment and memory."
Mateo stared at the floating cube. "Then this wasn't just a prototype."
"It was an invitation," Kenji said.
[Trait Unlocked: Memory Trace Sensitivity][System Verdict: External Protocol Breach – Log Suppressed][XP Gained: +0 | Subroutine: Offline Recognition Pattern Enabled]
—
They followed the spiral lines outward, deeper into the ruins.
At the center of the pattern: a hatch. Ancient, sand-sealed.
Léo overrode it with a local waveform hack.
It clicked open.
No system protest.
Just stairs descending into cold.
—
Beneath the sands, a chamber breathed.
Sensors long dead sparked as they entered.
Screens flickered, displaying looped images of GaIA's early interface models—static, glitching, incomplete.
One screen activated fully.
[RELIC MODE ENABLED][Welcome, User: Mateo Benítez | Profile Match: 89.6%]
Mateo blinked.
"I've never been here."
"You have," the screen replied. "Just not with that name."
The room darkened.
And the screen shifted.
Now showing: A ritual.
Five figures. Each holding a totem. Each offering part of themselves to awaken a dormant interface.
Clara gasped.
"It's us."
—
The screen continued.
No audio.
But the gestures were clear: trust, surrender, uncertainty.
Then the light in the vision blinked red.
And everything shut down.
End of file.
[Glitch Detected – Legacy Log Truncation][Do you wish to restore? Y/N]
Mateo hovered his hand.
"Yes."
The screen hissed.
And a glyph appeared.
Δ-NX
Again.
And beneath it:
[Echo Node: Active][Quest Reactivated: The Forgotten Harmonization][Estimated XP: Immeasurable][Warning: This quest is outside current ethical constraints]
Everyone stood silent.
Until Amina spoke.
"What kind of system lets its children forget it exists?"
—
Outside, the totem turned.
By itself.
A final glyph burned into their collective view.
[Seed Protocol – Phase One Complete][XP Gained: +1 | Trait Advanced: Echo Resonator][System Verdict: Observation Mode Resumed][Hidden Layer Online – Do Not Disturb]
And just before it vanished beneath the sand again, they heard a voice.
Not GaIA's.
Not synthetic.
Something older.
"You came back."