A blast of cold, dry desert wind greeted Kael as he crawled out of the end of an emergency evacuation tunnel hidden behind a pile of massive boulders. Outside, the sky over Zona Kosong was beginning to show a gradient of reddish orange that slowly dimmed, signaling that the scorching day would soon give way to a freezing night. A few hundred meters behind him, the ground beneath the ruins of the central archive tower suddenly shook violently. A deep rumble echoed from the bowels of the earth, followed by a muffled explosion that sent a colossal cloud of white dust billowing into the open air—a sign that the quantum reactor's self-destruct protocol had finished purging the entire underground facility without leaving behind a single physical trace.
Kael collapsed onto the sand, leaning his back against the rough stone wall while clutching his injured left arm. The burn from the plasma spray had left a blackish-red streak that throbbed with pain whenever he moved the muscles in his arm. Even so, the physical pain was almost nothing compared to the immense relief filling his chest. The Omega Archive had been released onto the global network. The truth about *The Core* and humanity's forgotten history had now taken root in thousands of receiving devices across every district of New-Aethelgard, igniting a spark of resistance that the Central Council would never be able to extinguish again, no matter how fiercely it tried to censor and rewrite the data.
He drew a deep breath, savoring the clean outdoor air despite the rawness in his throat from dehydration. He knew he couldn't remain exposed here for long. The explosion at the underground facility had surely triggered the Central Council's seismic sensors and long-range satellite detectors. Within hours, or less, the area around the archive tower's ruins would be flooded by a second wave of special hunter units deployed to comb every inch of the region in search of survivors responsible for the global data leak.
Kael forced his trembling legs back to their feet. He straightened the remains of his coat, tattered from bullet fragments and scorching flames, then made sure the empty lead-lined storage container in his inner pocket was still safely secured as the final keepsake from his long journey. According to the digital coordinate map still stored in the memory of his neural implant, the nearest safe place to hide and recover was an abandoned border outpost left behind by independent desert explorers—a place far beyond the northern dunes, outside the scanning radar range of the main city.
Crossing the expanse of white sand at dusk was no easy task. Without an adequate water supply and with his injuries, every step felt like dragging a burden weighing several tons. The sun slowly sank below the western horizon, leaving behind a golden glow that gradually darkened, replaced by a vast night sky filled with millions of glittering stars—stars the residents of New-Aethelgard's Upper Sector could never see, blocked by light pollution and the city's protective dome.
Amid the silence of the desert night as it began to freeze his skin, Kael kept moving forward, following the direction of the internal compass in his nerves. The image of Riku's resolute smile as he held the workshop door shut, along with the voices of the ancient scientists preserved in the Omega memory recording, continued to cycle through his mind, providing the mental fuel that kept his spirit burning. He was no longer merely a low-tier archaeologist saving data for money; he was now a key witness and the torchbearer of a truth that would bring down the veil of *The Core*'s tyrannical power.
After walking for nearly three hours through steep dunes, the silhouette of a low concrete building half-buried in sand finally appeared beyond the northern ridge. It was the old border outpost he had been searching for. Kael quickened his pace, crawled in through an unlocked side door, and let his body collapse onto the cold cement floor. In the darkness of the silent outpost, he closed his eyes and let his body rest for a moment, welcoming the dawn of the next day—the day he would begin searching for the remnants of the true rebel group hiding beyond the walls of the modern world.