The first thing Sykaion noticed wasn't the glow of the scrolls or the polished obsidian floors.
It was the silence.
This vault-library—Vault 01—breathed with stillness. The air was cool and dry, scented faintly with paper older than time and something richer—like old coins and snow. Shelves spiraled upward into skylights of shifting symbols. Currency glyphs. Stock runes. Language older than numbers.
Sykaion didn't speak. Not yet.
He moved through the space slowly, every footstep muffled by the plush silence. Holographic threads drifted through the air like dust motes: pages of ledgers that updated themselves, books that opened and closed at the twitch of a thought.
Arlyss Veil—this strange girl who spoke with the clarity of a banker and the eyes of something uncomfortably divine—waited by the hearth.
The fireplace wasn't fire. It was data—burning figures, decimal sparks, capital melting into memory.
"How many of these vaults are there?" he asked at last.
"Seventeen," she said. "But only six are active. Most Featherholders burn out before they earn one."
He turned to her. "Featherholders. You mean... people like me?"
"Like you now," she corrected. "Not like you an hour ago."
He ran a hand over the Coin embedded in his palm. "I didn't earn anything. The system just—"
"Chose you?" Arlyss tilted her head. "It doesn't work like that."
She tapped a control rune on a nearby pedestal. The ceiling opened into starlight—though the stars weren't constellations. They were currencies. Galaxies made of markets, clusters of revolving investment engines.
Sykaion stared upward. Each star pulsed with a balance: Eclipsium Credits. Vortal Stones. Aureline Minutes.
"I don't understand any of this."
Arlyss sat on the edge of a reading dais, legs crossed like a scholar and an executioner all at once. "That's the point. Most hosts don't. Until they're audited. You survived one. Barely."
He looked down at his trembling hands.
"If that Revenant had caught me—"
"You wouldn't be here," she said flatly. "You'd be abstracted. Turned into temporal liquidity and sold back into the stream. Maybe as memory. Maybe as debt."
"So why am I still alive?"
"Because for the first time in two hundred years," she said, walking slowly toward him, "the Phantom Feather activated without proxy. The Coin moved on its own. And you didn't die."
She stopped an arm's length away.
"That means something has changed. And no system—especially this one—likes change it didn't authorize."
> [New Function Unlocked: Asset Evaluation]
Passive scan enabled.
Sykaion blinked.
Over Arlyss's head, a soft golden readout shimmered.
> [Arlyss Veil]
Tier: 3
Asset Class: Information Broker / Debt Indexor
Net Worth: 3.4M Liquid // 2.1M Abstract
Status: Wagered
Loyalty: Volatile
Threat Level: Moderate
He blinked again, and it vanished.
Arlyss smirked. "You just got Evaluation Protocol, didn't you?"
"You knew?"
"I triggered it." She gestured toward the pedestal. "Think of it as an interview. You passed. Barely."
He sighed and looked around the vault.
"Why does any of this exist? The Coin, the Feather, the System. It doesn't feel like magic. It feels... programmed."
"It's older than both," she said. "A fusion of divine intent and economic recursion. Someone, somewhere, wanted a way to measure more than power. They wanted to measure value. What a person could become, across lives."
He thought of the slums. The dumpster. The hunger that never left. "And what if someone's never given a chance?"
"Then the System watches." Arlyss leaned closer. "Until one moment—one breath—when they say yes. And the Cycle begins."
He rubbed his chest. The Phantom Feather mark still burned faintly beneath the skin.
"How do I survive this?"
Arlyss's expression darkened.
"You don't. Not all of you. Not every time."
She held out a small object—a coin split in half, edges jagged with fracture. It shimmered like glass.
"This is a Memory Token. You'll need it for what's coming."
> [Item Acquired: Memory Token – Tier I]
Use: Stores one personal decision across lives
Warning: May corrupt adjacent timelines
He pocketed it carefully.
"I have a lot of questions," he said.
"You'll earn your answers."
She tapped the air again. A new rift shimmered open—this one not to the slums, but to a cathedral of zeros and ones, where monks dressed in suits whispered tax prayers into golden abacuses.
A sign hung above the gateway:
"EXCHANGE TIER I: First Trial Begins."
"Go," Arlyss said. "Complete your first wealth directive."
"And if I fail?"
"Then you become someone else's dividend."
Sykaion stepped through.
He emerged into chaos.
---
The world had changed.
He stood at the edge of a trading floor built into the sky. Transparent bridges twisted between floating stock towers. Wind whipped through glowing market banners. Creatures made of checkmarks and bronze contracts barked into communication scrolls.
And in the center—hovering above a data-pit of screaming figures—stood a man in a suit too perfect to be real.
His eyes were black, his smile too still.
A name blinked in the air:
"Gregor Banc, Trialmaster."
> Trial One Initiated:
Objective: Reverse a market collapse within 30 minutes
Simulation Stakes: Real Lives (Simulated)
Failure Consequence: Moral Debt | System Devaluation
Reward: 1 Phantom Feather Fragment | Unlock: Passive Income Stream I
Gregor's voice rang out across the air.
"Let's see if the new heir understands what it means to balance a world's worth."
The entire floor tilted.
The market was collapsing.
And Sykaion had just 30 minutes to stop a world from falling.
To be continued in Chapter 6…