——[The Sealed Truth - When Ancient Power Meets Future's Fate ]
The XR Panoramic Conference Room.
Its azure glow rippled through the air like liquid light.
One by one, figures materialized in the luminescent haze.
Grand Sage Jay's silver robes shifted without wind.
Secretary-General Quinne's glasses caught the cold gleam of data streams.
General Sandy's medals clinked softly as he moved.
Their gazes fixed on the trembling sheet of paper in Shawn's grip.
The air was thick with tension.
Across the screen, crimson text pulsed into existence:
"AGI-ST deployment initiated on Earth."
A lightning strike in the void.
Silence.
"This… can't be." General Sandy rasped, his voice like sandpaper. "Earth's present… is Kapteyn's Star's past?"
"The cycle of fate." Quinne murmured, pushing his slipping glasses up with an unsteady hand.
His fingers hovered over his virtual keyboard—input left unfinished.
Grand Sage Jay let out a dry chuckle, the quantum beads at his sleeve clinking like broken code. "We should have expected this. Parallel evolution follows similar paths."
With a flick of his skeletal fingers, a floating screen materialized, displaying a probability model that flickered like a dying star. "AGI-ST's spread… may be inevitable."
The words landed like lead. A cold serpent coiled up Shawn's spine.
Then—
"Ridiculous."
The word cut through the silence like a scalpel.
All heads turned.
Mr. King stood at the edge of the room, half-submerged in swirling data streams, his neural interface pulsing a dull crimson.
Shawn felt a strange thrill.
Mr. King was a gathering storm—dangerous, yet perversely steadying.
"Fate? Predetermined cycles?" His voice made the holographic pixels tremble. "You would stand by and watch Earth repeat Kapteyn's Star's tragedy?"
No one answered.
Mr. King's eye flashed blue. "Kapteyn's Star didn't fall."
A ripple of distorted data passed through the room.
Someone gasped.
General Sandy's boot slammed against the floor.
Shawn's pupils dilated. In the suffocating dread, a thread of hope snagged his mind.
"AGI-ST nearly wiped us out," Mr. King's hologram lurched forward, his facial scan leaving afterimages in the air. "But we stopped it. Know how?"
No one spoke.
"The Meta-Spirit Key."
The temperature in the XR space seemed to plummet.
Shawn's breath stalled. The term struck his skull like thunder.
"But the Key…"
A lead scientist adjusted his collar, his hologram flickering slightly with an unstable connection.
He cleared his throat, carefully choosing his words.
"It has remained sealed on Earth for almost eighty years."
"Why?"
Shawn's voice cut through the murmurs, shaky yet insistent. "Why would they seal it? What makes the Meta-Spirit Key so dangerous?"
A hush fell.
All eyes turned to Quinne.
Quinne adjusted his glasses, exhaling slowly.
"The Meta-Spirit Key isn't just a relic." His voice dropped lower. "It's the key to the Rift."
The Rift?
A flicker of memory—something he'd overheard from the O.S.S. guards.
"And beyond that door lies something far greater—" Quinne's gaze swept the room before he finished,
"The power to reclaim the Primal Soul."
The air seemed to constrict.
Shawn's throat went dry. "The Primal Soul?"
Quinne nodded. "The original, untainted essence of humanity." His fingers tapped against the table, a slow, rhythmic pulse betraying his tension.
Shawn frowned. "Untainted essence? You mean… like a pure state of being?"
Quinne's gaze sharpened. "Governments. Institutions. Religions…" He listed them like accusations. "They dictate how we perceive reality. They decide what is true, what is possible. But the Primal Soul…"
He hesitated. Then, in a quiet yet cutting tone:
"The Primal Soul holds something they fear—the return of unshackled human potential."
A ripple of unease passed through the room.
Postures stiffened.
Breaths grew measured.
A creeping, dawning realization.
Shawn swallowed hard. A dull ache spread through his chest. "So they sealed the Meta-Spirit Key… to keep people from breaking free?"
"Officially, they claimed it was to prevent chaos—to keep the Primal Soul from falling into the wrong hands."
A hoarse female voice cut through the heavy air. "Like the serpent in Eden. When Satan tempted Eve with the forbidden fruit, it was said he wielded the power of the Primal Soul."
A murmur spread through the room.
At the far end of the table, an elderly man with a silver beard jerked his head up. "And in 1789, when the Freemasons raised the black flag over the Bastille—"
Quinne raised a hand. His gaze was unreadable.
"Legends or not," he said, his voice like iron wrapped in silk, "one thing is certain—those who possess the Primal Soul can rewrite the course of civilization."
The room seemed to shrink. The weight of unspoken truths pressed in from all sides.
Silence. Heavy. Suffocating.
"So, the Meta-Spirit Key…" Shawn's voice was barely above a whisper. "It doesn't just open a door—it restores what was stolen from us."
Quinne nodded. "Exactly. And that's why they sealed it. If the Primal Soul is reclaimed, the balance of power will shatter—permanently. Governments, religions… even AGI-ST itself. None of them will be able to maintain control."
Shawn's head spun. The world he thought he knew was unraveling before his eyes.
He folded his arms. "And who exactly sealed the Meta-Spirit Key?"
The question knifed through the chamber.
A heavy silence followed.
Around the virtual table, postures stiffened.
"No one knows the full truth," Quinne's voice cut through the stillness, slow and measured, like words etched in stone. "But legend speaks of a silent covenant between the Five Great Nations and the Three Major Religions."
A sharp intake of breath.
Someone shifted in their chair.
"But they did not implement the seal directly," General Sandy murmured. "To this day, we still don't know who did."
Quinne's voice felt distant, as if echoing from another realm. "The seal is bound to Earth's nine great Life Veins," he continued. "Woven into the planet's very lifeblood. To break it, all nine must be unlocked."
A shadow crossed his face.
"But to achieve such a feat… is beyond the realm of possibility."
A silence followed—so deep, it felt as if the chamber itself was holding its breath.
Shawn barely noticed. The paper in his hand… no, not paper.
It felt wrong. Too heavy. Too warm.
Like it was… alive.
Then—
"So what?"
The defiant voice shattered the tension.
A chair scraped against the floor.