Chapter 235: Calling At Two AM

Evren held Calista close against his chest in the basement shelter, his arms wrapped securely around her shoulders. She leaned her head into him, taking slow breaths as the lingering tension from the incursion faded.

Evren gently brushed a strand of silver hair from her cheek. "Are you hurt anywhere?"

"Not at all," Calista whispered, looking up with a soft smile. "Just startled by the shaking."

She looked down at her flat leather boots resting firmly on the polished tile floor. When the shelter doors opened and Evren stepped inside, she had rushed forward without a single wobble or hesitation in her legs.

Even under the panic of an S-Rank dimensional emergency, her body had moved completely naturally. Her recovery was rock solid.

"Look at you," Amber said from the doorway, leaning against the steel frame with a fond grin. "Moving like a sprinter the second our man walks into the room."

"I was worried about all three of you," Calista murmured, a faint blush warming her cheeks. "The roaring from the river shook the concrete down here."

"Just an oversized squid," Amber chuckled, unhooking her twin sabers from her belt. "Though Evren did dive straight through a flooded pipe just to get back to you."

Zephyra stepped into the doorway beside Amber, looking around. "Seems everyone is okay."

"Yeah," Evren said with a warm smile, letting his hand rest gently on Calista’s shoulder.

He guided her out of the shelter and led the group through the quiet service corridor of the restaurant. They stepped out onto the open riverfront promenade, where the cool night air felt clean.

Evren brought around their vehicle, and the four of them climbed inside. Within twenty minutes, the vehicle rolled smoothly into the underground private garage of their tower.

They rode the express elevator all the way up to the eightieth floor in comfortable silence. When the doors slid open, the warm, familiar luxury of the Sky Palace penthouse welcomed them home.

Amber stretched her arms over her head with a long sigh. "I need about forty gallons of hot water to wash that lake water out of my hair."

"Same here," Zephyra said, heading down the hall to change out of her dark combat leathers.

Evren unzipped his damp jacket, tossing it toward the laundry hamper. "Make that three of us. That reservoir water smelled like sulfur and rusted iron."

He headed into the master bathroom for a quick, hot shower, washing away the grit and murky brine from the rift. He stepped out ten minutes later, completely refreshed in a soft black shirt and comfortable lounge pants.

By the time he walked back into the living area, Calista was already in the open kitchen. She moved confidently, reaching up into the wooden cabinets to pull down a tin of dried honey-chamomile blossoms.

She set a kettle on the stove, listening to the soft hum as the water heated up. Evren walked into the kitchen, leaning against the marble island to watch her.

"You don’t have to wait on us tonight, Calista," Evren said softly. "You’ve had a stressful evening."

"Making tea isn’t work for me, Evren," Calista replied, turning around with a gentle smile. "Moving around this kitchen on my own two feet is still the greatest joy of my life."

She poured the hot water into a teapot, letting the golden blossoms steep until a sweet, calming fragrance filled the room. Evren carried the tray while Calista brought the cups, and they sat together on the plush living room sofa.

A few minutes later, Amber and Zephyra joined them in clean loungewear, the steam from the tea wrapping them in a peaceful atmosphere.

"Before we drink," Evren said, setting his cup down on the table. "I have something for you, Calista."

He reached into his spatial ring and retrieved the glowing crimson sphere: the Level 80 Sanguine Kraken Boss Core.

The red crystal hummed with a low vibration, sending out gentle waves of pure vital energy that made the entire room feel warmer. Intricate crimson veins branched through the interior of the shell, pulsing like a living heart.

Calista froze with her cup halfway to her lips, her sapphire eyes widening in pure disbelief. She set the porcelain cup down with trembling fingers and leaned closer to the glowing sphere.

"Is this... from the beast in the canal?" Calista whispered.

"The Level Eighty boss of that flooded incursion," Evren nodded. "Its primary perk was rapid limb regeneration, replacing a severed thirty-foot tentacle in seven seconds."

Calista hovered her palms over the core, feeling the rich, restorative mana radiating against her skin. A flush of pure excitement lit up her face as the passionate alchemist inside her took over.

"This vitality is incredible," Calista breathed, her fingers tracing the air above the core. "Standard cellular salves rely on plant catalysts, but an abyssal core of this rank carries active regenerative enzymes."

She looked up at Evren with sparkling eyes. "If I can extract and stabilize this enzyme in our lab, we could synthesize Grade-Six elixirs capable of repairing shredded nerve clusters and severed mana meridians."

"Then it’s yours," Evren said with an easy smile. "Take it to the facility tomorrow and use it for your research."

"Evren, a core of this rank is worth hundreds of millions on the open market," Calista said, her chest tightening with emotion.

"An armored vehicle can’t brew life-saving medicine," Evren replied. "Your hands can."

Calista looked at him, her lips parting slightly as warmth washed through her chest. She carefully wrapped both hands around the smooth crystal, holding it against her lap like the rarest treasure in the world.

They finished their tea as the clock ticked past midnight, and one by one, the three women retired to their bedrooms.

By one in the morning, the penthouse had grown completely still. Evren sat alone in his private study at the end of the hallway, illuminated only by his desk lamp and the distant city lights below.

A dull, lingering throb pulsed behind his temples. It was a faint ache right behind his eyes, sitting in the exact spot where that sharp, blinding pain had hit him right before they entered the rift.

Evren focused his thoughts and accessed his System interface. A translucent golden menu flickered to life, showing the diagnostic query log:

[SYSTEM STATUS: 100% STABILITY. NO ANOMALIES DETECTED.]

Evren frowned, his dark eyes narrowing at the glowing blue screen. The System was actively concealing the event.

He closed his eyes and let his memory replay the moment the red glitch had flashed across his vision. Three terms had burned themselves into his memory: the Progenitor Archive, the Archive Seed, and the Custodian Protocol.

Those terms weren’t random gibberish. They were the exact foundational concepts he had encountered in Dr. Alistair Morrow’s classified research papers deep beneath the Citadel.

Then there was the interior of the rift itself. Every dimensional rift in imperial history had been a wild, desolate wasteland of rock, magma, or abyss.

Yet in tonight’s rift, they had found Outpost 7. It was an ancient subterranean facility built with poured concrete buttresses, titanium blast doors, steel crane rails, and industrial drainage pipelines.

It was human technology and pre-war military engineering, buried inside a dimensional rift and preserved beneath dark water for decades.

The pieces were beginning to align into a chilling picture. The dimensional rifts weren’t just sudden alien tears appearing at random from deep space.

The forbidden research into the Progenitor and the Archive Seed thirty-four years ago was one way or another, tied to the origin of the incursions. And Dr. Alistair Morrow, the chief researcher purged from history and sent into quiet exile, was the only living soul who knew something.

Evren took a slow, deep breath. He couldn’t afford to sit idle in the capital waiting for the next anomaly to strike.

He needed to travel south to Oakhaven and track down Dr. Morrow. The professor held the missing answers to what the System actually was, why it was glitching, and what was truly coming for their world.

A soft, muffled vibration broke the quiet of the study. Evren paused, lifting his head as he heard the buzzing out in the main living room.

He walked down the dimly lit hallway toward the kitchen. On the wide marble island, Calista’s phone was buzzing persistently against the stone, its screen lighting up the dark room with a pale glow.

Calista was fast asleep in the bedroom, thoroughly exhausted from the evening. Evren looked at the glowing display, where the caller ID flashed with an urgent name: Raymond Wells.

It was nearly two in the morning. Raymond was a disciplined supervisor who would never call so late unless something had gone seriously wrong.

Evren picked up the vibrating phone and answered in a low voice. "Calista is already asleep, Raymond. It’s Evren."

There was a sharp gasp on the other end, followed by rapid, shallow breathing. "Mr. Evren, I am so sorry to disturb you at this hour, sir, but I didn’t know who else to turn to."

Evren’s eyes narrowed, his calm demeanor instantly sharpening. "Speak slowly, Raymond. Did the ten thousand liters of solvent from Boreal fail to arrive?"

"No, sir, the solvent arrived safely two hours ago," Raymond whispered frantically. "Captain Keller’s provost squad escorted the tankers directly into the rear bay, and all three lines are fully charged."

"Then why are you calling at two in the morning?" Evren asked, his voice steady and cold.

"Because the solvent isn’t an issue anymore, Chairma Evren," Raymond replied. "We have another problem, sir. A much bigger problem."