Neo took a breath before he began.

What had happened between the awakened inside the tower, the fear, the panic, the ugliness that came out once death pressed close enough to stain everything, that part had weight, but it was not for Cedric and Elara. Richards would hear it soon enough. These two wanted the Breach itself, the place, the structure, the creatures, the logic behind it. That suited Neo well enough. He did not know them deeply, and he had no intention of opening more than necessary.

"I’ll tell you what’s important for the investigation," he said, one hand resting against the arm of the chair. "The scenario, the tower, the Soul Beasts, the way the place worked."

Cedric gave a small nod at once, fingers folding together over one knee. "That’s exactly what we need."

Elara already had the tablet raised, her posture unchanged, though the room itself seemed to narrow around her concentration. Neo could have believed rain, fire, or a ceiling collapsing would not pull her away from what she was writing until the line had been finished properly.

"I appeared alone when I crossed," Neo began. "At first I didn’t know where I was, but the tower fixed that quickly. You could see it from far away. It stood over the whole jungle like the rest of the Breach had been made around it."

He described the forest first, the thickness of it, the hostile air, the way the place carried danger without needing to show it immediately. He spoke about the tower rising through that sea of green, how anyone dropped into that world would feel drawn toward it sooner or later because nothing else in the landscape held the same weight.

"There were structures around it as well," he continued. "Old ones. Not just broken stone lying there for decoration. Some resembled churches, or at least what I think churches used to be. Others had the shape of buildings Atlas doesn’t make anymore."

Cedric lifted his chin, visibly pleased by that. "Ah. That fits very well." He touched the side of his mustache, mind already moving faster than the rest of him. "Architecture keeps faith longer than people do. Before the Great Change there were many religions, many different gods, many ways of carving worship into walls, statues, halls, towers. Most of that vanished or was swallowed by newer beliefs once the world broke and changed."

Neo tilted his head slightly. "Newer beliefs."

"The Measured Heavens," Cedric said, with a small gesture of his fingers, as if he were placing the name in front of Neo. "You’ve heard of them."

"Even in Zone 0," Neo replied. "Sometimes you hear that they recruit."

Cedric smiled faintly. "That is right. They’ve grown stronger over the last hundred years. Plenty of people think they understand the divine better than anyone else alive." His expression turned a little drier there. "I’m not convinced. At most, they have one or two people who know fragments, and even those fragments likely came from relics rather than revelation."

He leaned forward a little, old excitement warming his face. "Soul Relics can hold far more than abilities, Neo. Sometimes they carry memory, history, truth, or pieces of the world that survived in stranger forms than books ever could. So if you ever acquire one that whispers something useful about the old gods, the Great Change, or the structure of Atlas itself, you may tell me. I would appreciate it immensely."

Neo’s thoughts brushed the divine relic inside him and withdrew immediately.

Arkayde. God of Creation. The nameless thing tied to Soul Reaver. The absent shape in the world’s history that the world itself seemed determined to hide. None of that was leaving his mouth today. Cedric and Elara had been better than he expected, but caution was older in Neo than comfort, and he had survived too much already to offer trust on the strength of one decent conversation.

So he kept going.

He told them what the closing of the Breach had done to the difficulty, how it had turned a bad place into something worse. The creatures inside were not what freshly awakened people should have been meeting. There were too many Vein and Heart Core Soul Beasts for a Breach filled with people who had barely entered Ember.

"That place wasn’t made for ordinary first-timers," he said. "Anyone under Vein had no business going deep alone. Most of them would die if they met the wrong thing in the wrong corridor."

Elara’s stylus kept moving.

Neo went into detail with the spiders first. He described the nests, the eggs, the way they spread themselves through the tower, the ugly intelligence in how they stored food and guarded territory. They were not mindless vermin enlarged by the Breach. They had habits, hierarchy, and patience.

"They rationed," Neo said. "Used the place properly. They kept food. They built around positions that benefited them. They knew how to make the tower work for them."

Cedric’s brows rose with honest interest. "That sort of sustained behavior matters." He gave a small tap against his knee. "Many people tell us a creature attacked them, but far fewer notice how it lives."

Neo moved on to the others. Night Walkers, quick and dangerous in low movement. Vagabonds, more human in outline and nastier in how they punished mistakes. Ragged Duelists, stronger, better armed, far more dangerous once the tower stopped pretending to be generous. He told them the base of the tower’s outer area had one more strange point. Soul Beasts did not gather there. They did not approach the foundation properly, and because of that, the awakened had established themselves around it.

Cedric’s interest deepened. "So the ground around the tower worked almost like a dead zone. That is useful."

Neo nodded and continued into the interior.

He described the statues inside first, the winged figures, the beautiful bodies, the sense that whoever had made them wanted reverence rather than simple decoration. Cedric almost laughed under his breath.

"Oh, yes. Church statuary, almost certainly. Religion or something close enough to it."

Neo spoke over the rooms after that, the black stone, the scale, the breadth of the halls, the balconies, the stairs, the feeling that each level had intent behind it rather than random placement. The more he described it, the more obvious the pattern became even to him. The tower was not simply a container full of monsters. It was arranged. It wanted certain kinds of movement, certain mistakes, certain pressure.

Elara finally spoke while writing. "It was built to shape the fight."

Neo glanced at her. "Yeah. That’s what it felt like."

He kept his voice even and told them about the cooperation between different Soul Beasts, how Vagabonds mounted Night Walkers, how their coordination made them more dangerous than either type should have been by itself. Cedric’s expression changed at that again, not into concern, but into the delight of a man being handed a problem worth thinking about for weeks.

"Fascinating," he murmured, fingers pressing lightly together. "I’ve heard similar things from other awakened, though never with enough detail to trust it fully. Two distinct creature types adapting to one another that well..." He let out a low breath. "That says a great deal."

Neo gave him the last piece after that.

He described the boss chamber, the throne, the three faces, and the way each face marked a phase. He explained the attack patterns, the sequence, the rhythm, the hidden order inside what first looked like chaos. Cedric listened with growing satisfaction while Elara wrote faster than before. By the time Neo finished, even her mouth had curved faintly, though her attention never left the screen.

Cedric sat back, visibly pleased now. "Neo, this helps more than you realize. The structures, the nesting behavior, the dead zone around the tower base, the mounted cooperation, the phase-linked mechanics of the boss, all of it helps us."

Elara gave a small nod. "Most survivors don’t notice this much. Or they do and can’t explain it well."

Neo inclined his head once and left it there.

Cedric watched him for a moment, the researcher easing aside enough for the older man beneath it to show more plainly. "You’ll keep going, won’t you?" he asked, one brow lifting. "Breaches, ruins, the wider world, all of it."

"If you mean whether I’m going to stay still after this," Neo said, "no. I won’t."

Cedric smiled at that, a quiet, satisfied thing. "Good. Give me your phone."

Neo frowned. "What for?"

"I’m saving my number."

Elara turned her head a little. "Are you sure?"

"Of course." Cedric waved the concern away and extended his hand toward Neo with easy certainty. "If you keep entering Breaches, and if one day you reach a Godscar Ruin with something in it worth understanding, I would rather not rely on chance to hear about it."

Neo considered that only briefly before handing the phone over. There was no real downside. Cedric knew things. More importantly, he knew enough to be useful. If Neo wanted answers about the old gods, the Great Change, and whatever lay buried beneath the world’s official story, keeping a connection to the co-director of the State Soul Research was a practical move.

Cedric entered the number, handed the phone back, and smiled with a faint self-aware warmth. "There. Now we can help each other in a civilized manner."

That almost pulled a reaction from Neo.

The conversation ended soon after. Elara walked him to the door, opened it, and stopped him with a quiet, "Neo."

He turned slightly.

"Don’t give Cedric’s number to anyone." 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Neo blinked. "Isn’t it just a number?"

She shook her head, dark hair swaying with the motion. "Cedric is the co-director of the State Soul Research. The right people would pay millions of Creds for private access to him. He is far more important than he acts."

That drew a short pause from Neo. "Oh."

Elara’s expression shifted by the smallest amount, almost amusement. "Yes. Oh."

"I won’t share it," he said.

She accepted that, stepped aside, and let him out into the hallway.

Snot was there. Alice too. Marika as well.

Max wasn’t.

Nothing needed to be said for the corridor to feel wrong because of it. His absence had a weight of its own, a broad gap in the shape of the group, as if something solid had been taken away and the empty space it left had refused to close.