Chapter One: The Unseen Threat
Saffron sat still as stone in the Academy’s courtyard garden, surrounded by obsidian lilies and glitching fireflies. Meditation came easily to her, calm was her superpower. She inhaled deeply, holding the breath at the peak, then released it slowly through her nose, grounding herself.
She always started the day with stillness, it was the only thing that ever felt like hers.
The garden, suspended on a floating terrace in the upper tiers of Indovian Academy, overlooked the crystalline sky-rails and interwoven towers of Indovia. The city pulsed beneath her like a living circuit board, neon rivers of light cutting through a skyline threaded with ancient towers and ultra-modern satellites.
Nearby, a group of students were practicing rhythmic breathing with a floating instructor drone that chimed in gentle tones.
"Breathe in the moment," the drone intoned. "Let your thoughts settle."
A small boy with bronze skin and luminous prosthetic legs raised his hand. "What if my thoughts don't want to settle?"
The drone blinked kindly. "Then listen to your breath. It will teach your thoughts to follow."
Behind him, another student, a lanky trickster named Pip, leaned far back in his self-balancing wheelchair, trying to hold a wheely.
"I am the balance," he said dramatically, arms outstretched like wings.
"You are going to be the ER visit," someone muttered.
Pip grinned, lost control, and toppled gently backward into a patch of neon moss.
"And I stuck the landing!" he shouted from the moss. "In my heart."
Laughter rippled through the garden. Even the drone beeped in amusement. "Balance is also knowing when to sit still."
Just beyond the group, a quiet girl with winged ears and amber fur clutched a sigil that was hanging around her neck and whispered affirmations beneath her breath. She offered Pip a hand up without a word.
Saffron liked to come here before class to listen, to watch, to feel the pulse of Indovia. She wasn’t the type to rush toward chaos. She preferred to let chaos come to her. And it usually did.
Last week, it was an exploded lunch drone. The week before that, the teleportation practice had gone wrong.
Today, it arrived in the form of Ben crashing through the hedges.
“Saffron!” he panted, headset flashing, tablet clutched tight like it might bite him. His jacket was half-zipped, and one of his cyber-shoes blinked red, out of sync with the other.
Of course, it was Ben. Trouble had a way of finding him and dragging her along for the ride.
She opened one eye. “What now?”
Ben skidded to a stop, nearly bowling over a meditating student with vivid quetzal feathers woven into their braids.
“Someone’s jamming the network. It’s bad. Vault-breach-level bad.”
Saffron stood, brushing petals from her pants. The meditation drone dimmed its lights to signal the end of the session.
She took the tablet, fingers gliding across the screen. “Encrypted fragments. Rewritten IP traces. Someone knows our patterns."
The quiet girl with the winged ears stepped closer, her amber eyes steady. Another student, a girl in a floating wheelchair with glowing tattoos across her arms, nodded grimly. "Time Thieves?"
Saffron didn’t answer. Her jaw tightened.
Ben glanced around. "Should we report it to the administration?"
Saffron shook her head. “No time. We go straight to Ladybird. If this is what I think it is, there won’t be a protocol left to follow."
As they turned to leave, Saffron cast one last glance at the courtyard. The wind shifted. The meditation drone hovered silently. The garden suddenly felt... watched.
"Come on," she whispered. "We have a timeline to protect."
They ran.
Chapter Two: The Signal
Inside the digital security lab, the air was sharp with static. Holographic displays flickered across the walls, casting code in every color imaginable. Maps, timestamps, threat levels—all blinking faster than the eye could track.
Ladybird Jenkins stood at the center like a general on the brink of battle. Her hair, a cascade of crimson curls, caught the glow of emergency lighting as she scanned the readouts. She didn’t flinch.
“Report,” she said, voice like cut glass.
Ben and Saffron entered through the sliding doors. Riley was already there, hunched over a custom keyboard rig patched with neon wiring and a sticker that said: Hack responsibly.
“We picked up the breach from the garden node,” Ben said, catching his breath. “It’s not just a scan or a poke. Someone's deep in the net, routing through ghost protocols."
Ladybird nodded once. “Riley?”
Riley didn’t look up. “It’s surgical. They’re not stealing files, they’re deleting names, locations, and dates. Whole entries are vanishing. It’s like watching memories rot in real time.”
Koji, a tall student in a sleek wheelchair lined with circuitry, slid into place beside Ladybird, projecting a floating display from his wristpad.
“They’ve bypassed the Vault’s root access layers. Whoever this is, they’re not experimenting. They know exactly what they’re doing.”
Ladybird turned to Saffron. “How's your focus?”
“Clear,” Saffron said. “But the team needs grounding. We can't think like guardians if we're breathing like panicked kids."
Ladybird gave a tight nod. “Ten seconds. Everyone ground.”
The room dimmed. The hum of energy shifted into a steady vibration. The Academy's harmonic regulation algorithm kicked in, syncing heartbeats to a calming, low-frequency pulse.
Even Riley stopped typing.
Koji closed his eyes and straightened his spine. Pip, lounging sideways in a corner chair with a snack chip halfway to his mouth, let out a dramatic sigh but obeyed.
“Inner peace,” he muttered. “I was saving that chip for a big dramatic crunch.”
Ten seconds passed. The lights returned.
Ladybird clapped her hands once. “Back online.”
Ben leaned in toward the nearest console. “I can trace their signal to a transmission point. It’s off-grid, not part of the Academy’s system. We’ll need to go there physically."
Riley’s eyes lit up. “Field trip. Finally.”
Ladybird raised an eyebrow. “This isn’t a joyride. Suit up, team. We move in five."
Koji rolled back and flicked a switch on his wristpad. A shield shimmered around his chair. Pip grinned and slapped a helmet on.
“Any chance this helmet is sarcasm-resistant?” he asked. “Because I plan to make some bold commentary.”
Saffron placed a hand on the console, steady and centered.
“Let’s go protect the past,” she said. “Before it forgets itself.”
Chapter Three: Into the Dark
The abandoned substation stood at the edge of Sector Dusk, an eerie stretch of Indovia where even the neon lights dared not flicker too brightly. Wind howled through rusted data towers, and the skyline here sagged with forgotten ambition.
Ben double checked his tablet, the display pulsing like a heartbeat.
“This is the place,” he said. “Signal originated from here. Then vanished.”
The team approached in a silent wedge, their boots crunching over cracked pavement layered with moss and circuitry. Koji’s wheels hummed over the terrain with eerie smoothness, his chair adapting to every incline and glitch in the ground.
“Why do the villains always hide in the creepiest places?” Pip muttered, tapping his helmet like it might activate night vision.
“Because hiding in coffee shops would be too convenient,” Riley replied, unamused.
Ladybird raised her hand. “Silence. We’re breaching.”
Saffron closed her eyes for half a second and whispered a centering mantra beneath her breath.
Still mind, sharp sight.
The door creaked open with a sound like old code unraveling. Inside, the station glowed with residual energy. Broken monitors displayed fragmented images—old Academy lectures, corrupted security feeds, faces flickering in and out like memories struggling to stay alive.
“Anyone else feel like we just walked into a haunted motherboard?” Pip whispered. “No? Just me?”
Riley stepped forward and crouched by a flickering terminal. “This wasn’t just a base. This was a relay. Someone used this as a tether pinged through here into our system, then pulled out clean.”
Saffron knelt beside a dusty panel, running her fingers over a familiar crest carved into the steel: a swirling prism surrounded by eyes.
“The Codex seal,” she whispered.
Ladybird’s gaze darkened. “They were inside the Vault.”
A low chime echoed from deeper within the station.
Ben looked up. “That wasn’t us.”
Koji activated his chair’s sensor grid. “Motion, thirty meters. And... something else. Energy signature is bouncing.”
“Illusions?” Ladybird asked.
Saffron’s eyes narrowed. “Or distractions.”
They moved as one, deeper into the dark.
In the next chamber, light flickered in impossible colors, blues that felt like regrets, reds that pulsed with guilt. And in the center stood a single figure: cloaked in shimmering shadow, face unreadable, eyes glowing faint violet.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the figure said. Their voice was calm, almost kind.
Ladybird stepped forward. “We protect knowledge. That’s what we’re built for.”
The figure tilted its head. “Knowledge belongs to those strong enough to control it. History is only useful to those who write it.”
Riley cracked his knuckles. “That sounds like villain-speak for ‘I delete stuff I don’t understand.’”
Ben whispered, “They’re uploading something. I can feel it like heat in the code.”
Saffron took a step forward, gaze locked with the shadowed figure. “You erase truth to create power. But power without memory is hollow.”
A burst of static filled the room. The figure began to glitch, its body splitting into fragments of light and distortion.
Ladybird turned. “Now. Disrupt the uplink.”
Riley sprinted to the control array while Ben launched a cyber-spike into the terminal. Sparks flew.
Koji’s shield flared as the figure sent out a pulse of pure digital force, nearly knocking them all back.
Pip dove dramatically behind a pillar, yelling, “This is not the field trip I signed up for! I demand snacks and a refund!”
Saffron stood her ground. “Steady,” she said. “Truth doesn’t blink.”
The shadow fractured.
And then gone.
Only silence remained, humming like a held breath.
Ladybird walked forward and picked up a data shard still glowing faintly with heat.
“We’ve seen their face now,” she said. “Next time, we’ll see their fall.”
