Livius snapped his eyes open, his hand instinctively reaching for a dagger that wasn't there. He saw the violet eyes of the woman and froze. He didn't see a stranger; he saw a face from the "Genetic Memories" he had experienced in the Origin Vault. She was the woman standing beside his mother in the glass forest.
"Aethelgard?" Livius rasped, his voice sounding like dry parchment.
"I am," she replied, her eyes softening. "And you are the one who broke the glass. You are the son of the arsonist and the moon. I have spent twenty years in a tank of pressurized mana, dreaming of the day a Ghost would come to pull the plug. I did not expect the Ghost to have the eyes of the Emperor."
Livius struggled to sit up, his muscles screaming in protest. "My father was a monster. My ancestors were thieves. I have no pride in the Argentine name, Aethelgard. I only have the responsibility of the blood."
"The responsibility is a heavy crown, little dragon," Aethelgard said, sitting on the edge of the cot. She began to hum a low, resonant frequency, and Livius felt the "Mana-Burn" in his veins begin to subside. It wasn't a healing spell; it was a "Tuning." She was realigning his internal vibrations to match the world around him.
"Your mother, Elara... she knew the Federation would come for us," Aethelgard continued, her gaze drifting to the snow outside. "She knew the First Emperor's hunger would never be satisfied. She gave herself to the palace not to save herself, but to plant a seed in the very heart of the rot. You are that seed, Livius. You are the 'Fault in the Design' that Sophia van Held is so afraid of."
Livius looked at his bandaged hands. "Sophia knows about the Silver blood now. She won't stop with one Dreadnought. She'll send the entire fleet. She'll turn the continent into a furnace just to find me."
"She will try," Aethelgard agreed. "But she lacks the one thing we possess. She has 'Logic,' but she has no 'Memory.' She sees the world as it is now—a series of resources and grids. She doesn't remember the world as it was—before the 'First Emperor' stole the Sun. There is a place, Livius. A place called the 'Shattered Zenith.' It is where the Dragon God was truly imprisoned. If you reach it, you can do more than just fight a war. You can reset the world's clock."