Chapter 9: The Spiral Expanse
The morning after the combat trial was different.
Kai could feel it in the wind — or rather, the way the wind now spoke to him. It carried the scent of ozone and a whisper of data. Every blade of grass, every fragment of broken alloy around him... all humming softly with resonance.
The Fragment hadn't just awakened him. It had opened a channel to something deeper.
Lina noticed it too.
"You're spacing out more," she said, tossing a piece of dried meat into her mouth. "Are you seeing things again?"
"No," Kai replied slowly. "But I'm feeling more."
He traced his fingers across a mossy, half-buried dataplate. To Lina it looked like rubble. To him, it vibrated with residual memory.
From that brief touch, he saw flashes — soldiers in spirit-forged armor, marching down glass bridges, cities afloat in magnetic orbit. A world from a hundred years ago, before the Collapse.
Before cultivation and technology tore the world apart.
What were they trying to build?
"Kai," Lina said, shaking him from the vision. "We can't stay here. You said so yourself. If that masked guy or those AI things can track the Fragment…"
Kai stood. "Then we move."
"Where?"
He turned toward the east.
"Spiral Expanse."
Lina blinked. "The Ascendancy necrozone? Isn't that like... a death maze full of rogue constructs and unstable spirit-tech?"
"Yes."
She stared at him.
"I'm going to regret this, aren't I?"
---
They traveled light. Kai had fashioned a travel cloak from synthweave scrap, masking his core signature. Lina rode a hover-sled salvaged from the Null perimeter, carrying basic supplies, maps, and their only working pulse lantern.
It took two days to reach the outer rim of the Spiral Expanse — a region that once served as the Ascendancy's core research sector, back when Earth still had nations, borders, and rules.
Now it was a wasteland of beautiful, terrifying symmetry.
Cranes the size of mountains still turned slowly in the wind, building nothing. Rivers flowed upward into the sky before collapsing in spirals of glittering ash. Towers hovered half-buried in sand, their walls made of translucent alloys and scripture-carved steel.
Kai paused on a cliff's edge.
Below, in the swirling mists, lay Aethertrack Station 3 — an ancient waystation used to transport cultivators between testing zones and orbital platforms. Its landing rings still glowed faintly, pulsing in a strange rhythm.
"It looks alive," Lina whispered.
"It might be," Kai said.
That was what worried him.
***
They reached the perimeter gate, its old AI sensors long dormant — or so it seemed. As soon as Kai crossed the threshold, the ground shifted.
A faint whisper echoed in his skull.
> Fragment recognized. Access level: Rogue Initiate. Welcome, Kai Ardent.
Lina shivered. "Please tell me I imagined that."
"You didn't."
They entered the first corridor. Smooth obsidian metal. Lightless, until Kai's presence triggered embedded runes to flicker alive.
But something else stirred.
From the far end of the station came the sound of claws on metal.
"Company," Kai muttered, unsheathing the Vein Blade.
Three constructs emerged from the dark. Not like the ones from his trial. These were Ascendancy Wardens—half-machine, half-beast, with one side of their face covered in sensor plates and the other twisted into humanoid snouts. Their torsos were carved with fragmented sigils.
They did not speak.
They charged.
Kai moved to intercept. The first Warden lunged with a blade-arm that whistled through air. He parried, stepped inside, and stabbed into its chest—but the blade skidded off hardened crystal armor.
They're tougher than trial constructs.
Behind him, Lina shouted. A second Warden was flanking her.
Kai pivoted, ignoring pain in his shoulder, and unleashed his new skill: Vein Strike.
A pulse of violet energy lanced from his blade, hitting the Warden mid-leap and sending it flying into a wall. The construct shattered in a burst of static, but Kai staggered.
The energy cost was massive.
He turned just in time to block the third Warden's strike. It knocked him backward, nearly disarming him.
> [Energy: 22% Remaining]
[Overdraw Detected — Risk of Core Fatigue]
His HUD flickered. The Fragment was warning him.
But then—
A fourth presence stepped into the hall.
Not a construct.
A person.
Young, armored in a hybrid cultivation suit, eyes glowing with quiet power. She looked human—but her aura sang of artificial harmony. A synth-cultivator.
"You're not supposed to be here," she said, leveling a silverstaff toward him. "Access to the Spiral Core is restricted to Ascendancy-class candidates."
Kai raised his blade. "I'm not part of any class."
She frowned. "Then you're trespassing. And you're holding a Fragment."
Lina edged behind him. "She's not with them, is she?"
"I don't think so," Kai murmured.
The girl's gaze softened slightly.
"I'm Ashen Valk," she said. "Second-tier Initiate of Spiral Sector Twelve."
Kai didn't lower his weapon. "You going to kill me?"
"No," she said. "But you just triggered a dead sector's reactivation sequence. That means something's watching us now. And if we don't move, we're both going to die here."
She turned.
"You coming or not, Starborn?"