Telran didn’t let them leave.

  The foundry seemed to breathe as Lysa, Kael, and Andrel tried to cross the main gates. The old metal groaned, rusted mechanisms moved with a morbid slowness — and then, they shut with a crash that echoed through the entire structure.

  Andrel only sighed.

  “I tried to warn you. Telran isn’t just ruins. It’s a cell.”

  Lysa clenched her fists.

  “The System locked you in here?”

  “It did. And threw away the key,” he replied with a shrug. “Years ago, they said I could leave. I just had to complete one mission. Simple, straightforward. Kill the leader of this zone.”

  Kael frowned.

  “What leader? This place looks abandoned.”

  “Because you don’t know where to look.” Andrel walked among the rubble and pointed to one of the extinguished furnaces. “He’s there. Alive. Sleeping. Hidden. And the System wants him dead.”

  Lysa approached slowly.

  “Why?”

  “Because he broke everything before I did. He was the first to try rebuilding a Value from scratch. But not like us. He tried to create a new root of the System… and he almost succeeded.”

  Silence.

  Lysa felt the System stir uneasily in her mind. The name of this so-called leader was erased, shrouded under a veil of prohibition. That was rare. The System almost never hid something — it simply killed it.

  “Why didn’t you kill him?” Kael asked, suspicious.

  Andrel laughed, but there was bitterness in it.

  “Because he showed me what would happen if I did. He showed me visions of the code breaking… and a worse world being born. He made me doubt. Made me think. And the System doesn’t tolerate doubt. Since then, I’ve been blocked. Trapped here. Watched. Every escape attempt… fails.”

  Lysa walked up to the furnace. The heat emanating from it wasn’t physical. It was a presence. Something deep, slumbering, but aware.

  “If the System wants him dead, maybe we should do the opposite,” she said.

  Andrel raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s not prudence. That’s blind rebellion.”

  “Maybe it’s instinct,” Lysa replied.

  Kael observed the two. Then he broke the silence:

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  “If we’re stuck here for a while… I think we deserve a few answers.”

  Lysa turned to him.

  “I agree.”

  Andrel leaned against a pillar and sighed.

  “You want to know why I broke the System?”

  “Yes,” Lysa said bluntly.

  He ran a hand through his disheveled hair, as if the words carried real weight.

  “I was a Numerator. A Value programmer. I worked for the high ranks of the Registry. One of the guys who determined how much a soul was worth.”

  “So you chose who deserved to exist?” Kael asked, with a hint of anger.

  “I read the Code. It ‘chose’. We just translated it. But one day, I saw something. A baby, Value 0. Same variables as another newborn who got 68. Same lines. Same magical DNA. Everything. But one of them was the son of a Lord.”

  Lysa closed her eyes. She knew that story. In flesh.

  “That’s when I realized,” Andrel continued. “The System isn’t neutral. It’s biased. Or manipulated. Or… diseased. And I tried to meddle. Tried to create my own reading. A new pattern. The System felt it. And sent me here.”

  Kael crossed his arms.

  “And what do you hope for now?”

  “Honestly? Nothing. But if you want to get out… and if you think this so-called leader might be more useful alive than dead, then maybe… maybe we can free Telran. For the first time.”

  Lysa sat on a fallen beam. The sound of the furnace whispered behind her.

  “And you, Kael? What’s your story?”

  He took a moment to respond. His eyes were lost in the smoke rising from the foundry’s cracks.

  “I was a priest. Swore to serve the System. I thought order was all that kept us alive. Until I met someone… a girl with Value 0. I was assigned to deliver her discard sentence.”

  Andrel raised an eyebrow.

  “And did you?”

  Kael shook his head.

  “No. I ran with her. Hid her. But they found us. Killed her in front of me. And let me live to remember. Since then, I don’t pray anymore. I hunt.”

  Silence returned. Heavy.

  Lysa looked at the two men. One broken by remorse, the other by doubt. And she, by vengeance. A dysfunctional trio, but together… maybe they represented something new.

  “Then let’s go to him,” she said, standing. “This leader. Let’s find out if he’s really a threat… or a promise.”

  Andrel nodded, but his expression was grim.

  “Follow me. But be ready to doubt everything.”

  The staircase leading to the furnace’s depths seemed endless. Each step engraved with symbols the System tried to hide — runes of rewriting, nullification, choice.

  At the bottom, they found a round chamber, wrapped in illusory flames. In the center, in a meditative pose, sat the man.

  He looked like an ordinary old man. Thin, white-haired, hands folded in his lap. But his eyes were two slits of void, as if they had seen too much already.

  Life Value: N/A

  Class: Unknown

  Status: Outside the System

  “Lysa,” he said before she even spoke. “The System fears what you might become. But it fears even more what you might awaken.”

  Kael drew his sword by reflex.

  “What are you?”

  “The proof that the original Code didn’t come from the System. It was taken by it. Corrupted. But I remember the language before.”

  Andrel stepped forward.

  “You showed me visions. Made me hesitate.”

  “And I’m grateful for that,” the old man said. “Because now she is here.”

  The old man reached out. And when Lysa touched his hand, visions exploded in her mind: a world without Values, without the System. Only choices. Humans standing equal to magical forces. And then, the arrival of what would become the System — a form of control, of uniformity. Of oppression masked as balance.

  She recoiled.

  “I… don’t know if I can accept this.”

  “You don’t have to. You only have to choose. And make others choose.”

  The old man smiled, and his body began to disintegrate into light.

  “My time is up. But you three… you can do better.”

  As he vanished, a message flared in Lysa’s mind:

  New ability acquired: Echo of the Root

  Superior Class Permission: Initiated

  Mission unlocked: Break the Link

  Kael murmured:

  “He gave himself to the code. Gave us the rest of his essence.”

  Lysa fell to her knees, her eyes burning.

  Andrel knelt beside her.

  “The gate will open now. Telran accepts those who listen. Rejects those who obey.”

  And in the distance, the sound of ancient mechanisms unlocking echoed through the foundry.