Chapter 138: Truth

  "My truth... and my sins," Dr. Iskandar said, his tone somber and heavy with the weight of ages.

  He hesitated. Just for a fraction of a second.

  He adjusted his holographic spectacles, looking not at the group before him, but through them, into the deep well of history.

  “Once I start,” he added quietly, “Do what you must with the story I am about to tell.”

  "The tale of the fall of the Old World. It started around a hundred thousand years ago... in the now forgotten era—or 2047, if you still believe calendars mattered at the end."

  The hologram flickered, and the scene around them seemed to shift slightly, the metal walls of the structure replaced by ghostly projections of a grey, smog-choked skyline.

  "I would not say that we were in a prosperous state during this year," Iskandar continued, his voice a dry narration of collapse. "Natural resources had started to dry up. Oil was gone. Water was scarce. Poverty was at an all-time high, creating a divide between the rich and the poor so vast it could swallow nations."

  He swept his hand, and images of riots, dried riverbeds, and military convoys played out in the air.

  "Nations were on the verge of another World War. The future was bleak, painted in shades of ash and desperation, with no definitive answer in sight."

  He exhaled, a long, digital sigh.

  "That did not sound good," Bob commented, shifting uncomfortably as he watched a projection of a starving crowd.

  "No. It was not," Iskandar agreed. "However... soon, everything would change. Not because of war, or famine, or politics. But because of a single event."

  CRASH.

  A sound tore through the memory—and the room. It was the sound of a million glass panes shattering at once, magnified until it rattled the teeth.

  "Everyone could hear it," Iskandar whispered, his eyes wide. "The sound... suddenly ringing in the ears of everyone on Earth. Loud. Sudden. Urgent. Like a cosmic alarm that demanded immediate attention."

  "We all collectively turned our heads up to the sky, answering that call. And we saw it."

  The projection shifted upward. The grey, smoggy sky of the old world... cracked.

  "The sky itself... shattering," Iskandar said.

  It looked like a broken mirror. Spiderwebs of white fissures ran across the blue atmosphere, jagged lines of impossible fracture appearing in the emptiness of space.

  "A phenomenon that still today remains unexplainable," he admitted. "We called this event... Heaven's Break."

  The group stared at the projection in awe. The sky, broken.

  “What happened, did something came out of it?” Yukari asked.

  "No, nothing came out of it, nothing yet.” Iskandar shook his head. “However, we did think that was the end," Iskandar chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. "An unexplained apocalypse waiting to happen. People prayed. Governments collapsed. We waited for the fire, the flood, the end of days."

  He paused.

  "Days turned to weeks. Soon months. And yet... nothing happened."

  The projection showed people slowly coming out of bunkers, looking up at the broken sky, then checking their watches.

  "The sky remained shattered, but none of our lives changed," Iskandar said, shaking his head. "Which, at that time, was honestly very awkward. Imagine seeing the sky shattering like glass, waiting for the end of everything... yet nothing happens. You still have to go to work. You still have to pay taxes."

  "Foolish," he muttered.

  "Since the end never came, and waiting sounded idiotic, a small group of experts decided to investigate this phenomenon," Iskandar said. The projection changed to a sleek boardroom filled with intense-looking people.

  "This task force, as we called it, was made up of the smartest minds of that era. Physicists, engineers, biologists... including a young genius prodigy who thought he knew everything."

  He pointed to a young boy—thirteen at most. Sharp-eyed. Smiling.

  “He looks proud,” Mila murmured.

  Iskandar lowered his hand.

  “He was,” he said.

  A beat passed.

  “That boy,” he continued, “is me.”

  “With the backing of a rich sponsor,” Iskandar said, “who believed the end of the world was an investment opportunity.”

  He smiled faintly.

  “He was not wrong. Thus, we reached for the stars.”

  "Stars?" Yukari interrupted, her eyes sparkling. "Like... beyond the sky? The sky up there?" She pointed excitedly to the metallic ceiling, indicating the heavens beyond.

  "It was possible back then?" she asked, intrigued.

  "Yes, it was possible," Iskandar said, a hint of pride returning to his voice. "Not as common as you might think in your head right now. But certainly possible. We had the rockets. We had the math."

  "Why are you getting so excited?" Raito asked, looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

  "It's an unexplored world, you know!" Yukari beamed, practically bouncing on her heels. "Beyond the sky! To hear that it was possible... how can I not be excited? Imagine the adventure!"

  She turned to him. "You don't?"

  Raito shook his head slowly, a shiver running down his spine. "Something about beyond the sky... terrifies me."

  "I can't blame you, kid," Iskandar said, his expression sobering. "Space travel requires an immense amount of mental and physical preparation. And tons of resources. Building a spaceship is not cheap. It costs nations."

  "Is it possible for us to build one too?" Yukari asked eagerly. "This space-ship or whatever you call it?"

  Iskandar laughed, a sound like static crackling. "Absolutely not. With your level of current technology? No. You are barely scratching the surface of steam and combustion."

  He paused, looking at the glowing ring on her finger and the boy next to her.

  "However," he mused. "One day you might. Especially if you keep breaking my expectations like you did today."

  "Then... we will absolutely break your expectations," Yukari said with a confident grin, squeezing Raito's hand.

  Dr. Iskandar smiled, a genuine expression that softened his aged, holographic features.

  "What happened next?" Raito asked, leaning forward. "Did you really go beyond the sky?"

  Iskandar shook his head slowly. "Unfortunately, we didn't at the time. After a year of grueling work, the space shuttle was finished. It was sitting on the launchpad, ready to pierce the heavens. But something else had taken our attention."

  "And that is?" Mila asked, her warrior instincts flaring at the change in his tone.

  “A visitor,” Iskandar whispered. “From the stars.”

  Yukari’s eyes widened.

  Mila’s hand went to her sword.

  Raito said nothing.

  "Life exists beyond the sky?" Bob asked, his eyes wide as saucers. "Not just gods?"

  "Yes," Iskandar said simply. "That encounter was also a wake-up call for us. A reminder that we were not alone in the dark."

  He hesitated.

  “One we took for granted.”

  "Were they... human?" Mila asked, gripping her sword hilt. "Or Sacred?"

  "Neither." Iskandar answered.

  The projection shifted again. The boardroom dissolved, replaced by a chaotic command center filled with blinking lights and frantic technicians.

  "I still remember it vividly, like it was yesterday," Iskandar narrated, walking through the frozen memory of his past self. "It was a day like any other. Me and my team were doing the final check for our space mission. Until..."

  BEEP-BEEP-BEEP... GRSHHH...

  A harsh, rhythmic static filled the central room.

  "We received a distress signal," Iskandar said. "From an unknown frequency. We tapped into it... but only received words from a language no one could comprehend. We were geniuses. Understanding various Earth languages was par for the course. But that day, we were taken by surprise."

  “So… they were asking for help?” Yukari asked.

  “Never figured it out, sadly.” Iskandar shrugs.

  The projection showed waveforms on screens—jagged, chaotic patterns that didn't match human speech.

  "Soon... we received a transmission from various space stations and satellites," Iskandar continued.

  He pointed up. The projection of the broken sky appeared again.

  "A mass was exiting the crack in the sky. Spitting something out from beyond the boundary."

  A fiery streak painted itself across the projected atmosphere. It was fast—too fast for a meteor. It moved with purpose, burning bright orange as it tore through the clouds.

  "That mass entered Earth's atmosphere in a quick manner, and crashed just as fast."

  BOOM.

  The projection shifted to a map of the world—a map that looked vaguely familiar to them, yet wrong.

  "Because of this, our space travel had to be postponed," Iskandar said, his voice heavy with regret. "Our main objectives changed to retrieving the crashed object in the Himalayas."

  "Where is that?" Raito asked, tilting his head at the unfamiliar name.

  Iskandar noticed Raito’s blank stares and sighed.

  “A place where the world rises high enough to scrape the sky. Or… an area with lots of tall snowy mountains, simply put.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Yukari jabbed Raito sharply in the ribs with her elbow.

  "Please continue," she gestured to Iskandar, eager for the story.

  Iskandar nodded, his eyes drifting back to the projection of snow-capped mountains.

  "The journey was arduous," he recounted. "We knew that a foreign object had crashed there, the trajectory data was clear. But at the same time, the search range was too wide. The terrain was treacherous, the climate lethal. Combined with the constant blizzards... we were almost ready to give up. We decided it was not worth the lives of our team."

  He paused, a wry smile touching his lips.

  “However, by some dumb luck,” Iskandar said,

  “—or fate, if you prefer cruel jokes—

  I fell.”

  The hologram showed a tiny figure on the mountain slope losing his footing and tumbling down a steep incline.

  "I slipped during one of my searches. I slid down the frozen path, gaining speed, until I hit something solid. Not the rock of the mountains... but something metallic."

  CLANG.

  The sound echoed in the memory.

  "We found it," Iskandar whispered.

  The projection zoomed in. Half-buried in ice and snow was a field of debris.

  "It was in tatters. Scorched marks from the atmospheric re-entry scarred the landscape. Mangled metal from the crash was strewn everywhere. Pieces were here, there, and everywhere in that area."

  He waved his hand, and the debris field highlighted in red.

  "But one thing remained relatively intact," Iskandar said.

  In the center of the crash site, a large, capsule-like metal object sat embedded in the ice. It was sleek, grey, and alien.

  "We immediately called for transport. Blinded by excitement of new discoveries, unknown possibilities. Both us and the pieces of the object were brought back to our lab for research. We worked in shifts, fueled by caffeine and the thrill of what lies before. And when shifts ended, we stayed anyway.”

  The scene shifted to a high-tech laboratory, pristine and white.

  "Days passed. We confirmed the object was not made of any earthly metal. The alloy was impossible, lighter than titanium but stronger than diamond. After weeks of analysis, we discovered it was oozing foreign energy. A power not yet discovered by science. A hum that defied physics."

  Iskandar leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

  "And after a month... we finally cracked it open."

  The projection showed the capsule. Sparks flew as lasers cut through the seal. With a hiss of escaping gas, the lid lifted.

  "Inside, just as you can kinda imagine..." Iskandar said grimly. "A corpse."

  The group leaned in, horrified fascination on their faces.

  "Not human. Not Sacred. Something... alien."

  The image clarified. Inside what seemed to be a cockpit, slumped over a console of strange glyphs, was a figure. It was tall, lanky, with grey skin stretched tight over thin bones. Its eyes were large and black, staring unseeing at the controls.

  "Dead. Lifeless," Iskandar confirmed. "It seemed that even an alien lifeform couldn't survive that level of impact. We designated the corpse as 'Encounter Zero'."

  "The corpse..." Bob squinted at the display, his merchant's eye catching a subtlety others missed. "They look... how do I say it... like they have lingering regrets?"

  The grey face on the screen was twisted, mouth slightly open as if in a final plea, hand reaching toward a specific button on the console.

  "So you see it too?" Iskandar asked, a heavy sigh escaping him. "Based on their facial expression, and the distress signal... they certainly came to Earth for something. A warning. A request for help.”

  He swallowed.

  “We never bothered to find out.”

  He looked down at his translucent hands. "But, we ignored that. We ignored all of that."

  "The sky... it did not end us," Iskandar recounted, his voice growing bitter. "The crash did not end us. The encounter did not end us. They were just events. Accidents that just happened to happen at that point in time, on Earth."

  He shook his head. "There had to be something more. A reason. But once again... humanity, me... I ignored it. We were too obsessed."

  The hologram flickered, showing images of scientists high-fiving, popping champagne bottles in the lab.

  "All of humanity watched science-fiction alien movies at some point in their life," Iskandar said. "To finally have a chance to see it become a reality...” He chuckled.

  "What... did you do?" Zhu asked, dread pooling in her stomach.

  "What any excited scientist would do," Iskandar said, his face twisting in self-loathing. "We researched."

  The projection changed. The clean observation room was replaced by an operating theater.

  "Or in other words," Iskandar corrected himself harshy, "we desecrated that corpse. We tore it from limb to limb. We opened the skin, the innards, just to find an answer to a question that never existed."

  The display showed the gory scene in high definition. Lasers cutting through grey skin. Saws grinding against alien bone.

  Black veins were pulled out like wires. Blue innards spilled onto metal trays. A heart, bright yellow and pulsing with fading light, was weighed on a scale.

  "They were living creatures, like us..." Iskandar whispered. "But we butchered it like an animal."

  The group saw the faces of the scientists in the recording. Including the young Iskandar. They were smiling. Laughing. Marveling at the biology while standing ankle-deep in blue blood.

  "We were monsters..." Iskandar said.

  Zhu looked away from the screen, unable to stomach the sight. "Did... did this atrocity give you anything in the end?" she asked quietly.

  "It did," Iskandar answered.

  The projection shifted to a containment unit holding a small, swirling vial of pure darkness.

  "It gave us... the biggest discovery of our life," he said. "An energy so clean, so raw, so powerful... “It shouldn’t have been possible. Life doesn’t leave behind something like this. It transcended any form of nuclear energy we had at that point. It defied the laws of thermodynamics."

  He looked at Raito.

  "From that atrocity... we found 'Void'."

  "Like the one inside me?" Raito asked, touching his chest.

  "And now within me too," Yukari added, clenching her fist.

  Iskandar nodded. "The corpse and the scrap were oozing that energy. It was volatile. Reactive. All of our equipment almost went haywire trying to harvest it."

  "So how did you... obtain it?" Mila asked, her curiosity piqued despite the horror.

  "It took a single genius to do the impossible," Iskandar said without humility.

  The display showed the young Iskandar, working feverishly under bright lights, fusing materials together. He was creating a small, intricate crystalline container.

  "That looked like..." Mila commented, leaning closer.

  "Yes. That was... the first Core," Iskandar confirmed. "I made them. I made the first one for the sole purpose of harvesting Void."

  The hologram rotated the image of the prototype. It was rougher, less refined than modern Cores, but the architecture was unmistakable.

  "I used pure diamond mixed with the scrap of the alien ship itself to create this container," he explained. "The first working prototype Core."

  "You made the Cores..." Zhu murmured. "That explains why you know so much about it."

  She frowned. "But the current iteration uses elemental energy instead of Void. So how did it become like that? Why the switch?"

  "I'm getting there," Iskandar said, exhaling a ghost of a breath.

  The projection showed the Core filled with swirling black energy.

  "The first Core was a success. We managed to trap all the leftover Void within that device. We did it. Humanity is saved. The energy crisis is no more once we have this."

  He laughed bitterly. "That's what we thought. Another one of my many mistakes."

  "You ignored that... the berserker aspect," Yukari said, remembering Raito's rampage.

  "We didn't know at the time," Iskandar defended himself weakly. "We didn’t bother. We thought we were the saviors, so we immediately tried to use it."

  The scene shifted to chaos. Machines exploding. Labs catching fire.

  "It was a disaster," he admitted. "Every device that was attached to the Void Crystal would go haywire and eventually explode, unable to handle the sheer, unregulated power of that energy. Our current technology at the time simply was not built to use Void. It was like trying to power a lightbulb with a lightning bolt."

  "One of my colleagues then asked a question that changed everything," Iskandar said, his voice dropping. "'If inorganic devices won't work... what would happen to organic matter?'"

  The group stiffened.

  "We happily obliged to test that question," Iskandar said, his face a mask of regret. "If electronics can't work, how would a human handle it?"

  The projection showed dark vans, shadowy figures grabbing people from alleyways.

  "We kidnapped multiple homeless people from the streets. People nobody would miss. The forgotten of society. One of them even thanked us for the food before we injected him."

  "We strapped the Void Crystal onto their bodies. We injected it directly."

  "The results are the same... and speak for themselves," he said.

  "Aggression," Raito whispered, knowing the feeling intimately.

  Iskandar nodded. "Heightened aggression. Loss of rationality. The birth of a berserker."

  The hologram showed test subjects tearing through reinforced glass, lifting weights that should have crushed them.

  "We saw enhanced strength, speed, endurance. They became superhumans. But without their minds, they were useless weapons. Rabid dogs."

  He snapped his fingers.

  SNAP.

  On the screen, a test subject suddenly collapsed mid-rampage.

  "And every time, they would just... snap," Iskandar said. "Drop dead. Like their strings were cut. They would be in the middle of their berserker episode and just like that... dead. Heart exploded. Brain fried."

  "It was amusing," he whispered, a terrifying detachment in his voice. "Horrifying, but amusing from a scientific standpoint. Dozens turned to hundreds. “I… I was smiling at the sight. I don't even know why we did not stop. It's like we wanted to prove that energy can work."

  "But it didn't. Every test was the same. No deviation. No outlier."

  Iskandar looked down at the floor. "We were at our wits' end. Years went by. Most who worked on Void moved on to other projects or retired. The crack in the sky became part of daily life, just another cloud."

  "I stayed," he said. "A crazy mad scientist, they called me at the time."

  He laughed, a hollow sound. "Oh, how right they were."

  He laughed, a hollow, scraping sound. "Oh, how right they were."

  "Why..." Raito asked, his voice quiet. "Why didn't you give up?"

  "I was young... no, that was not it..." Iskandar shook his head, the hologram blurring with static. "I... I wanted to be a savior. A god of the new age. It was hubris, pure and distilled. I wanted all eyes on me. 'The child genius who saved the world.' That was the tagline I craved."

  The projection showed a lonely figure in a cluttered, dimly lit lab. The air was thick with the haze of sleepless nights and stale coffee. He paced back and forth, muttering equations to himself, a prisoner of his own ambition.

  "I was locked up in my lab. Most of my colleagues were scared of my deteriorating health and my fracturing mind. Little did they know, I mostly just stared at the Void Crystal. I watched it swirl, drinking in the light of the room, mocking me with its infinite potential. I didn't know what to do with it. I just hated it."

  "But Cores clearly exist," Bob said, gesturing to the world outside the structure. "So you must have solved it."

  "Yes, that I did," Iskandar said, a faint, genuine smile returning to his face.

  "One day, a rat had managed to snake its way into my sterile sanctuary. I heard the scritch-scratch of its claws on the metal table before I saw it. It scurried across my notes, knocked my favorite potted fern over, and shattered the clay pot."

  CRASH.

  The sound echoed in the memory, sharp and decisive.

  "That... was my Newton moment. My apple falling from the tree. As I watched the dirt spill across the floor, separating from the shards, a thought struck me like lightning."

  Iskandar’s eyes lit up with the manic energy of discovery. "I began thinking. If Void was so powerful, so unstable... how come the energy did not explode during the violent crash in the Himalayas? Why was it contained within the ship's wreckage?"

  "I began testing. Was it because the energy split apart during the crash? I tried smashing a sample. Wrong assumption. Void is still Void when split up. It just makes smaller, equally angry pockets of nothingness."

  He paced again, his holographic steps rapid, his hands weaving complex shapes in the air.

  "I needed to change my approach. Conventional physics wouldn't work for something that came from beyond the sky. I had to think outside the box, like the madman they believed I was."

  "I put the crystal under a microscope. Not a normal one, but a spectral analyzer I built myself using lenses cut from the alien glass. And I saw it."

  He paused for effect, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Potential. My answer."

  "Within the Void itself... there was color. A chaotic, screaming spectrum hidden within the black. Different energy signatures fighting for dominance. I just had to pull them to the forefront. Separate the ingredients."

  The projection showed a massive machine—a particle accelerator—humming with a deep, bone-vibrating power. Blue lightning arced between its coils.

  "Using the particle accelerator, I managed to do it. I smashed the concept of Void. I derived it. I pulled it apart."

  HUMMM-CRACK.

  Two beams of light shot out from the black mass on the screen—one blindingly white, searing the eyes, the other a deep, rich purple black that seemed to absorb the room's light.

  "Two very distinct energy signatures. Neither of which should have exist. Not as powerful as void by itself, but more controllable. I called this twin energy 'Light' and 'Darkness'. A bit cliché, but it works."

  He chuckled. "I was happy. I finally did it. I have done it, right? I questioned myself."

  His face fell, the triumph replaced by the obsessive perfectionism of a genius. "No. I wasn't satisfied with this. Light and Darkness, although tamer, still had some leftover Void residue within them. Traces of uncontrollability. I needed something that was much more stable. More conventional. Safer for the masses to hold in their hands."

  "So I began researching again. Breaking it down further. Refining the distillation."

  "From there," Iskandar said, his hands mimicking the separation, "I discovered three energies from both Light and Darkness."

  "Elemental energy," Zhu said, recognizing the pattern of her own world.

  "Precisely," Iskandar nodded.

  The projection split the two beams again, fracturing them into a rainbow of power.

  "From Darkness, out came the heavy, physical elements. Fire, burning with thermal rage. Ground, heavy with gravitational force. And Water, fluid and adaptable."

  "From Light, out came the volatile, energetic elements. Ice, stripping heat away. Wind, kinetic and free. And Lightning, pure electrical discharge."

  "Finally. Finally, I found it," Iskandar breathed, reliving the moment his life peaked. "Six energies. Powerful, clean, stable, and with absolutely no drawbacks from the Void. No madness. Safe."

  "I made my discovery public."

  The scene shifted. Flashbulbs popped like stroboscopes, blinding and relentless. Crowds cheered, a roar of adulation. Magazine covers featured Iskandar's face, no longer the mad hermit, but the savior.

  "Overnight, my public reception changed from 'young mad scientist' to 'modern-day Einstein'. A hero. A legend."

  He puffed out his chest, basking in the memory of the applause. "I did it. With my Core technology at the forefront, humanity started to transition from old fossil fuels and nuclear-based energy to cleaner, more abundant elemental energy."

  Images flashed by rapidly: cities glowing with clean, soft light that never flickered. Hover-trains gliding silently on rails of wind. Cars floating on magnetic cushions. The smog clearing from the skies.

  "Every power station, every house, every form of transportation... and eventually, everyone gets their own personal Core. I propelled humanity into another Golden Age that lasted for decades."

  He looked at them, his eyes shining with the memory of a perfect world he had built with his own hands.

  "It was paradise."

  "That... is not the end of the story, is it?" Yukari asked, her voice cutting through the utopian vision. She sensed the lingering shadow behind the light.

  "Oh no, dear..." Iskandar’s expression darkened, the shine in his eyes fading into a dull, grey regret. "That was only the beginning."

  He waved his hand, and the images of floating cities dissolved into static.

  "This Golden Age... was the beginning of the end. The calm before the annihilation. And it all started, ironically, at the pinnacle of our achievement. On the most advanced space station built at the time, designed to be the gateway to the stars."

  "Artemis," Raito said.

  The word hung in the air, heavy and precise.

  Every eye in the room turned to look at him.

  Iskandar froze. The hologram flickered violently. He stared at the boy, his mouth slightly open.

  "How..." Iskandar whispered. "How do you know that name?"