“Warning: there’s no turning back after this…”
That was the voice inside you that sounds suspiciously like your common sense…
Tethering back into a proxy while suffering phantom pains feels like slipping into clothes soaked in ice water. The connection stutters, fragments, your consciousness bouncing between digital layers before finally settling with a jolt that rattles your artificial spine. Each step sends tremors up through your legs—the gravity here now crushes down like invisible hands pressing you into the floor.
As you exit the ether deck, the UI label augments in your vision:
“The Temple”
- ⚠ Breach Alert — Casualty assessment ongoing
- ⚠ Proxy reconstruction teams deployed
- ⚠ Tethering restrictions in effect – level 7
You approach what feels like a security gate, its red scanner light sweeps across your proxy’s damaged biometrics once, twice, three times. Each rejection sends error codes cascading across your vision:
- Authentication failure.
- Biometric mismatch.
- Tether instability detected.
Finally, on the fourth attempt, the light turns green with a reluctant chirp.
Security personnel track your movement with narrowed eyes, their hands resting on weapons you didn’t see during your first visit. Tether scanners hum and click as you pass through checkpoint after checkpoint—barriers that weren’t here before, manned by guards whose faces carry the tight mask of recent trauma.
Where the tour area once invited contemplation with its flowing holographic displays, now tactical equipment sprawls across every surface. Cables snake between hastily-erected command stations. Officers bark coordinates into headsets while technicians hunker over glowing screens.
The air carries metallic bite—ozone mixed with something organic and burnt that makes your artificial nostrils flare involuntarily.
Media proxies cluster outside the massive Chamber doors like moths drawn to flame. You press through the crowd, trying to reach the entrance, but security immediately moves forward to block your path.
“Entry restricted to emergency personnel only,” one guard barks, his hand moving to his weapon.
“I’m media—I belong inside,” you protest, but he doesn’t budge.
Your mind works quickly across your comms interface, sending an urgent message to your boss. Moments later, the chamber doors crack open and your manager’s familiar voice cuts through the noise — but booming from a different proxy.
“He’s @#!$&! with me! Let him through!”
The guards reluctantly step aside, their suspicious glares following you as the massive doors groan fully open, revealing the Temple Chamber’s ravaged interior.
Emergency crews navigate the space on magnetic platforms that whine and screech, their movements casting jagged shadows across the scarred surfaces. Massive work lights float in the air, powered by long cables connected to backup generators, their harsh beams sweeping unpredictably as crews adjust their positions. Emergency strobes flash in chaotic rhythm throughout the chamber—long pauses of darkness punctuated by blinding bursts that make everything appear frozen in stark relief.
Hairline fractures spread across walls like spider-webs that once seemed indestructible, their edges bleeding light like digital wounds. The pearl-like floor spasms with erratic bursts—no longer responding to footsteps with mathematical harmony but triggering seizures of chaotic illumination that sear your retinas.
The vaulted ceiling presses down, its infinite constellation patterns corrupted into stuttering static. The purposeful hum has been replaced by the grinding whine of backup power and the intermittent shriek of dying circuits.
Emergency crew members shout seemingly random commands to each other. You’re not sure exactly what they mean, but you can tell it’s not anything good:
“Structural integrity at sixty percent and dropping!”
“Energy readings are completely haywired near the epicenter!!”
“We’ve got proxy fragments scattered across a thirty-meter radius!!!”
Your gaze drops to the chamber floor. Limbs jut from debris at angles that would be impossible for human anatomy. Torsos split open like mechanical flowers, their organic guts and circuitry spilling in colorful tangles. Heads rest with facial features melted into abstract sculptures of synthetic flesh and synthetic bones.
Your comms overlay identification data as you focus on specific wreckage. That mangled arm—press badge still clinging to torn fabric—belongs to your boss’s previous proxy. Those legs in familiar pants, twisted beneath a chunk of masonry, are pieces of your own destroyed form. Dozens of other proxy bodies lie scattered like discarded mannequins, each one representing a consciousness violently severed from its artificial housing.
“Jesus…” an emergency worker mutters, his voice tight with disgust. “Command says these proxies were rigged… Someone weaponized the tether network itself. Hacked and turned their proxy and any other nearby into improvised explosive devices.”
The words hit like physical blows. Your phantom pain erupts across every nerve ending as understanding crystallizes, your synesthesia firing on all cylinders, attempting to calculate the carnage in front of you in mathematical patterns of destruction. Your eyes unfocus as you try to process the overwhelming barrage of information. The phantom pain seems to create interference—red static overlaying the mathematical patterns your pattern scans usually renders in perfect clarity. You consciously push through the burning sensation, forcing your enhanced perception to function despite the neural chaos…
That’s when you began to see with more clarity — Your proxy hadn’t been caught in an explosion—your proxy was part of the explosion, along with many others. Your artificial bodies transformed into bombs, your tethered minds the unwitting triggers. The burning that’s tormented you since the incident suddenly makes perfect, terrible sense.
The same emergency worker shakes his head, his voice heavy with loss. “An’jel #2… completely destroyed. All those centuries of wisdom, just… gone.” His hands tremble as he gestures toward the empty space where the second An’jel once stood. “I’ve been working Temple security for fifteen years, and I never thought I’d see the day when another one of them would be killed…”
At the chamber’s heart, An’jel #2 exists only as a heat-shimmer outline burned into the floor—erased from reality itself. An’jel #1 remains upright but visibly damaged, her form caught between moments of grace and violent mechanical-like spasms, like a dancer fighting invisible strings.
The other three An’jels form a protective circle around their wounded sister. Their hands trace complex patterns that leave trails of luminous energy in the air.
Your eyes drift upward, drawn by some instinct to the chamber’s apex. The three suspended lamps that had once cast gentle illumination now tell a different story. Your synesthetic perception kicks in, processing the visual data with mathematical clarity.
Now, two lamps hang dark—not simply turned off, but void of light in a way that seems to absorb the chamber’s ambient glow like hungry mouths. The intricate metalwork that surrounds each fixture appears tarnished, corroded, as if the light’s absence has somehow infected the physical structure itself. The third lamp continues its soft radiance, but the light seems fragile now, isolated in the vast ceiling space, casting long shadows that stretch down toward the chamber floor like reaching fingers.
“What happened to the second light?” you ask aloud, your voice carrying over the emergency chatter.
Voices rise around you in cascading panic as they follow your gaze upward:
“It’s referring to the quantum entanglement cascade triggered by dimensional instability—”
“No, it represents the tethering network failure propagating through the entire grid—”
“No you fools, it means if the pattern continues, total system collapse within seventy-two hours—”
The noise washes over you like static interference. These people pile complexity onto simple truth, building elaborate theories when the pattern stares them in the face. The Archivist’s lesson echoes in your mind—doctors and mathematicians turning basic addition into incomprehensible equations. Keep it simple, stupid.
You activate your synesthesia deliberately, letting the chamber’s chaos resolve into mathematical clarity. The destruction patterns, the energy readings, the lamp configuration—it all reduces to elegant simplicity that your enhanced perception processes instantly.
The pattern crystallizes in your mind with perfect clarity, the relationship is elegantly simple, beautifully logical.
“Two An’jels are gone, and now two lamps are out.” The words scrape through your throat as phantom fire lances across your sternum. “One lamp left means… one An’jel remaining… Is it like a video game and there’s only one life left? If so, what happens when we lose all three lives — is it game over?”
Your voice carries farther than intended. Conversations falter around you. Heads turn. Engineers pause their calculations. The elegant simplicity cuts through their academic speculation like a blade through silk.
But one figure already heard you—the tall Adept from the ceremony, standing motionless at the emergency perimeter while chaos swirls around him.
He moves toward you with predatory grace, midnight-blue robes somehow pristine despite the destruction. Your damaged nervous system screams warnings as he approaches, phantom pain spiking with each step he takes.
“The child is right.” His voice carries effortlessly through the din. The word ‘child’ strikes like a slap—why would he address your adult proxy as “the child”? Eyes ancient beyond his apparent age study you with uncomfortable intensity.
Ozone mixed with sweet incense drift from his robes as he steps closer. The phantom pain builds to crescendo as he examines your hands and palms. “You have an ancient soul—much older than your apparent years. And I sense severe pain—likely remaining from the explosion.” His clinical observation drips with satisfaction. “You must not fear… The first death is always the hardest..”
His eyes locked into yours like — almost like a staring contest that makes tears stream down your face from the burning intensity. “You’re one of the Archivist’s pupils, aren’t you???”
Ice water floods your veins. How could he know about the Archivist? Before you can form a response, he raises his hand and your platform begins a descent toward the sacred floor.
“You’ve noticed other things today.” The statement isn’t a question. “You see things, actions, people out of harmony with their surroundings. You see patterns others miss…”
He levels his voice to a tone only I could possibly hear, “Tell me, what do you see now that just doesn’t fit…”
Through waves of phantom agony, you scan the floating workers above. Your synesthesia kicks in, processing their movement patterns, highlighting anomalies. There—one emergency worker 30 or so feet above An’jel #1. The mathematical rhythm of his actions creates discord in your perception, his motions lagging microseconds behind the others, moving slightly irregular, following instead of anticipating, like an actor who’s memorized choreography without understanding its purpose.
“That worker there…” Your trembling finger points through the pain. “His timing’s off.”
The Adept’s expression sharpens instantly. “You can see it too.” His subtle facial expression sends signals to unseen allies.
The worker’s posture transforms in an instant. The careful mimicry evaporates, replaced by coiled menace. His fingers work frantically at his magnetic vest’s release clasps.
“Everyone down!” The Adept’s shout carries impossible authority.
The infiltrator plummets toward the sacred ground, hurling a small cylindrical device in a perfect arc toward An’jel #1’s damaged form. The Adept’s hand blurs to his robes, drawing a crystalline shard that blazes with inner light and lancing it toward the device.
The shard streaks past your head—close enough that you feel its electric warmth singe the air, hear its harmonic hum like wind chimes in a storm. Fine strands of your hair drift away, severed by its passing. In length it is easily equal (or likely longer) than the height of your entire head. Your UI identifies the shard as a “FLINT”. The flint impales into the infiltrator’s device mid-flight, detonating it in a concussive shower of sparks and electromagnetic discharge.
The chamber erupts in panic. Emergency workers abandon their platforms, diving for whatever cover they can find. Media crews scramble to maintain recording angles while staying clear of the violence—cameras shaking as their operators crouch behind debris. Someone screams. Multiple voices shout contradictory orders. The emergency alarms add their harsh wailing to the chaos.
The infiltrator rolls upon a nearby landing, already drawing more devices from hidden pockets. They resemble metallic spheres wrapped in copper wire—your UI instantly identifies them as “electromagnetic pulse grenades.” Two more Adepts emerge from the crowd, their midnight robes billowing as they join the battle formation.
The infiltrator hurls his cluster of spheres toward the An’jels below. Flint slice through the air like liquid crystal— like throwing knives that leave luminous contrails in their wake. Each projectile finds its mark with surgical precision, intercepting the grenades before they can reach their target.
The spheres detonate in mid-air, raining white-hot sparks that hiss against the chamber floor.
You duck lower as a stray energy discharge scorches the air above your head.
The infiltrator flows between cover points, dodging waves of the Adepts’ flint—rolling behind debris, vaulting over fallen platforms, each movement designed to force the Adepts to divide their attention between offense and protecting the vulnerable An’jels behind their defensive line.
“Protect the An’jels!” the tall Adept shouts.
The other Adepts shift into a triangular formation above the An’jels, their movements synchronized like parts of a single organism. Flint materialize in their hands as if conjured from thought, the crystalline weapons pulsing with inner radiance that leaves afterimages in your vision.
The infiltrator produces another pulse grenade. But instead of aiming down at the An’jels, he pivots and fires at a massive support pillar about forty feet above the chamber floor.
The explosive bolt strikes with devastating precision. Ancient stone cracks with thunderous reports that echo through the chamber. A section of pillar the size of a box truck begins its fall toward the An’jels below.
All three Adepts react instantly, hurling Flint upward to intercept the plummeting masonry. Their crystalline weapons pierce the falling stone, energy tethers forming between them to create a net that slows its descent. You can actually see and feel the tethers — threads of pure energy that seem to bend reality around them! But their attention is now divided…
The infiltrator charges forward with liquid precision, drawing curved blades that gleam with their own inner light. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.
In this moment your phantom pain explodes beyond all previous limits. White fire consumes your vision as every nerve ending simultaneously ignites. You collapse behind an emergency platform, gasping, your proxy’s notifications overloading from the sympathetic trauma response.
Through the agony, you watch the Adepts move with impossible coordination. Their bodies bend and flow like water given form, each motion precise and economical. They seem to dance around danger rather than through it, their robes billowing in patterns that defy the chamber’s air currents. Their Flint create complex geometric patterns—projectiles that become tools, weapons that transform into barriers. Energy tethers snap between the crystalline shards, forming nets and triplines that force the infiltrator to constantly Adept his approach.
You spot a security officer trying to shepherd civilians toward the exit, his face pale with terror. A technician abandons her equipment and sprints for the doors, her footsteps echoing strangely in the damaged acoustics. Two reporters huddle behind an overturned platform, one—who you make out to be your boss—is still streaming while the other curls into a protective ball.
Your comms crackles with your boss’s voice: “Kid! Keep that @#%! camera rolling! This is @#$%! gold! Don’t you dare stop streaming!”
The infiltrator leaps high, using his remaining magnetic gear to suspend himself above the Adepts’ defensive line. For one crystalline moment, he has a clear shot at the An’jels’ exposed position.
A rain of flint launch simultaneously from three angles. The infiltrator tries to dodge, but the crystalline shards trail energy tethers that form a three-dimensional web around him. His struggles only tighten the bonds as the tethers respond to his movements like a living thing.
But as he hangs suspended, something seemingly impossible happens. Flint that had missed their earlier targets and lodged themselves in the chamber walls suddenly reverse course. They dislodge and streak back toward their Adept masters with the same velocity they’d originally been thrown—but now they’re aimed directly at the infiltrator’s back.
The infiltrator’s eyes widen as he realizes the trap. The returning Flint strike with perfect timing, each rotating him slightly as the next flint embeds itself — completing the energy matrix that holds him. Now about seven crystalline flint form a complex geometric pattern around his suspended form, crackling with forces that go beyond mere electricity.
The mathematical precision of the Flint placement becomes clear—each shard appears to be positioned to create optimal containment with minimal energy waste, the angles calculated for maximum effect.
Each Flint seems to create an increasingly powerful magnetic field that suspends him in mid-air. He floats inverted and twisted, a grotesque display of suffering suspended in pure crackling energy. His body arches backward sharply, slightly upside down, his spine curved at an impossible angle. His skin begins to singe slowly, cooking from electromagnetic forces rather than flame. His face contorts in what should be screams of agony, mouth stretched wide, but no sound emerges—either the magnetic field interferes with his vocal cords, or the pain transcends anything that could be expressed in mere sound.
“Leper! Exile!” the tall Adept says with cold satisfaction. “You’ve been trying to infiltrate Temple security for months.”
The infiltrator’s struggles weaken as whatever the Flint are doing takes its toll. His eyes—wide with terror and something that might be recognition—lock onto yours through the crackling energy web.
The Adept watches his prisoner with clinical detachment. “Do you not know, we are guardians of the balance between worlds—the digital, the manifest and beyond!”
Security forces maintain their distance from the suspended figure, their faces reflecting fear and awe at the Adepts’ methods. The chamber’s emergency alarms continue their discordant wailing while survivors slowly emerge from cover.
Your manager’s voice crackles through comms: “Holy @#%! This footage is @#$%! unprecedented! Millions are watching! Keep streaming!”
Despite the phantom pain clouding your thoughts, you can’t look away from the mathematical beauty of the Flint formation—seven points of light creating perfect geometric harmony in three-dimensional space, forming a shape you recognize from your geometry studies as a chestahedron.
“Everyone out! NOW!” The lead Adept’s voice booms through the chamber with supernatural authority that brooks no argument.
The evacuation happens in seconds. Emergency crews abandon their equipment. Security forces herd civilians toward the exits. Media personnel scramble to gather their gear while backing toward the doors. You’re swept up in the panicked crowd, your feet barely touching the ground as bodies press around you from all sides.
The moment you cross the threshold out of the chamber, relief floods through your system like cool water on burning skin. The phantom pain that’s tormented you since your violent ejection begins to subside—not disappearing, but fading to manageable levels. Your breathing becomes easier. The crushing weight of the chamber’s damaged energy field lifts from your shoulders.
A notification chimes in your UI:
“Holy Ground Zero” COMPLETE
The notification triggers an immediate improvement in your phantom pain levels. The burning sensation across your chest drops to a dull ache, the sharp stabbing pains in your limbs fade to occasional twinges.
You make your way toward your ether deck, eager to process what you’ve witnessed, to maybe even disconnect and take a break from the intensity. Your steps feel lighter, your proxy’s movements more fluid as the phantom pain continues its retreat.
“Hey, kid!” Your boss’s voice cuts through the crowd as he approaches, his proxy showing none of the stress-induced glitches from earlier. “That was some @#%! incredible work in there—spotting that infiltrator saved everyone’s @#!$. Four hundred million viewers and climbing!!” He claps your proxy’s shoulder with uncharacteristic warmth, his usual manic energy replaced by genuine satisfaction. “Take a breather, you’ve more than earned it. This footage might just land us a @#%! Zemmy,” he says walking away with pure delight…
“What’s a Zemmy?” you think to yourself….
Your comms immediately respond with a quick data burst:
“Zemmy Award – Annual recognition for excellence in Etherverse journalism and media coverage. Named after pioneering journalist Zara Emmanuel. Considered the highest honor in digital reporting.”
You settle into the ether deck’s familiar embrace, as your comm drones on more about the Zemmy’s, when another notification appears:
“I See Shadows” NOW UNLOCKED
“What is that?” you wonder aloud, your finger hovering over the notification to examine its details —
“You! Media proxy!” The voice cracks like a whip behind you.
You turn to see a Temple security officer striding toward you with aggressive intent. His uniform bears fresh scorch marks from the battle, his face twisted with barely controlled anger and stress.
“Orders from the lead Adept. You’re to return to the Chamber immediately,” he barks, his hand resting on what looks like a weapon.
“This is not a request…”