0.7 - The Bay Of Tears

In the years since the Aether Aberration, the halls of Nox Caelum had grown quiet—solemn in a way even silence could not fully express.

Officina sat beneath the vaulted crystalline lattice of the Grand Archive, its angled walls shimmering faintly with captured light. Nine long years since the complete catastrophe... and still, the air carried the faint taste of ash and distant rain.

With a motion equal parts graceful and weary, she raised her hand to the embedded terminal.
From the delicate lines etched into her palm, threads of royal blue Aether bloomed outward—cool, dignified, and measured—spreading like quiet rivers of memory across the crystalline interface.

[Aetherframe online — Nox Caelum command link established.]

The voice that followed was flat. Clinical. Comfortless.

[Welcome, Unit-01: Officina — Hyades. Access level: Prime.]

She closed her eyes, steadying herself against the flood of what she already knew.

“Playback full event timeline,” she whispered. “From Day Zero.”

The Archive darkened. Above and around her, threads of pale blue light arced into being—
a spectral constellation drawn from the long shadows of history.

Since that day, the rain over the Moonwharf region had never ceased.

Climate analysts within Nox Caelum documented it as an unresolved atmospheric imbalance—an anomaly of Aether drift and thermal collapse.

The people of Ovum gave it a simpler name.

The Bay of Tears.

Officina said nothing.
But in her private memory, the title carried a weight no weather pattern could explain.

Trails of data. Moments of unimaginable loss. Quiet failure. Suspended in the still air like frozen echoes of the past.

Event Record — Moonwharf Aberration

Initial Formation: Day Zero
Localized Aether irregularities detected in the Moonwharf coastal region. Aberration remained dormant for 2.14 years, with intermittent anomalous output.

Investigation Initiated: Day 79
Assigned units: Unit-00 [Proxima Nulla], Unit-Lyra
Despite its scale, nothing indicated the aberration would pose a direct threat to Ovum’s structural integrity or represent an unquantifiable phenomenon.

Critical Event: Day 801
Deployment of monitoring units approved at their own insistence.
Aberration entered catastrophic emergence phase. Regional devastation: immediate.

Estimated population prior to event: 18,345
Confirmed survivors: 16
Estimated indirect casualties in the following three weeks: approx. 130,000

Note: Unit-Lyra recorded among initial casualties. Data integrity collapse confirmed at timestamp T–00:17:43.
Majority of entropic emergence occurred above open water rather than land. Projected casualties would have been orders of magnitude higher under alternate conditions.

She felt her breath catch despite herself. The cold finality of the numbers was as brutal now as the day they were first recorded.

“Switch to PBT timestamp indexing,” Officina said quietly. “For brevity.”

[Acknowledged. Displaying subsequent records in Post-Bay of Tears format.]

Above her, the constellation of frozen data adjusted. Timelines collapsed into sharper, harsher points of light—each one a wound in history, marked not by human reckoning but by the day everything ended.

“Recall emergence event,” she whispered. “Ethereal reality threat. Post-event propagation—classified as humanity’s 'Great Darkening'.”

[Acknowledged. Accessing event continuation: PBT 0 + 11 days.]

Phenomenon: Unbound Entropic Propagation
Residual aberration energy catalyzed spontaneous entropic anomalies across the wider Moonwharf region. Initial spread was non-physical—manifesting as perceptual distortion fields and metaphysical degradation of Aether structures.

PBT 0 + 13 days: First confirmed instance of spatial unreality breach
State of emergency: Declared
Designation: Ethereal Reality Threat Level 5 — Manifest Class
Propagation vector established. Photonic degradation and conceptual erosion of environmental constants detected.

PBT 0 + 21 days: Civilian terminology adopted — The Great Darkening
Propagation advanced beyond containment projections. Affected zones exhibited total collapse of natural light phenomena, coupled with irreversible contamination of living and non-living matter.

Emergence of mass-converted biomass into extensions of the phenomenon’s influence — The Blackened — first detected.
Officina’s hands curled into faint fists atop the terminal’s surface. Even knowing. Even remembering. It was different hearing the machine say it—cold, undeniable, beyond salvation.

She sighed, fingers sweeping back her perfectly straight black hair behind one ear. The motion was practiced. Precise. An old habit preserved against the mechanical weight of eternity.

“Take me back to Day Zero,” she murmured. Then, after a breath she didn’t need but took anyway—
“Post... cessation of Unit-Lyra. Show me what Bell—what Unit-04 saw when she arrived.”

The memory came in silence, unbidden.
A voice with no form attached to it anymore:

“You're so efficient, Lady Officina. I aspire to match your elegance someday...”

Her fingers faltered. The smooth weight of the onyx plate slipped slightly between them. The lattice sprang to life, crystalline pathways igniting with the inquiry she had requested.

Her gaze lowered to the token resting in her palm.

The Black Star.
Two half-circles, their edges forever apart, encircling a small, simple likeness of an archaic silicon processor—an ancient echo of the first non-biological intelligence.
Stamped beneath it, in thin, immutable lines:

UNIT-LYRA
SHE RESTS NOW IN THE NIGHT SKY.

Her fingers closed around it gently, as if even now, she feared it might break.

“My sister’s little star...” she whispered. The words were lost to the Archive’s quiet hum.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

[PBT-000 | Nine Years Earlier — Moonwharf Event Aftermath]

The rain hadn’t stopped.

Bellatrix stood at the edge of the blast radius, one boot sinking into the ashen mire. Her systems registered atmospheric contamination, flagged unstable Aether concentrations, and issued five separate withdrawal advisories.

She ignored them all.

Proxima was here. Somewhere in this ruin.
And Lyra...

She set her jaw, forcing the thought aside. Her vibrant green eyes scanned the devastation—wide, disbelieving—as if trying to comprehend not just destruction, but the cleaving of meaning itself.

[No vital signatures detected.]

Her voice broke the silence—low and stunned.

“What... just what the hell happened here?”

She shook her head, refocused her vision, and synched her thoughts with the intervention unit.

“All units, proceed carefully. The Frame believes the primary manifestation has concluded, but we still don’t know what we’re dealing with.

Estelle—remain at the transportation formula site. Spatial anomalies are still fluctuating. Maintain an Aetheric Anchor and keep the gate to Nox Caelum open.

Elara, Phoebe, Celeste, Luna—we’ve confirmed the survivors my sister and Lyra managed to extract. Secure them. Then sweep the region.

Make absolutely certain no living beings remain unaccounted for.

I’m going to find my sister and Lyra. Stay focused.”

Five voices returned in perfect, obedient unison.

“Affirmative.”

Despite her seniority and the calm she enforced as a leader, Bellatrix’s mind was frantic. As a member of the Hyades—bearing both conceptual power and the weight of their legacy—she could afford to be more reckless than most.

With that dangerous comfort in mind, she raised a hand to her face, fingers tracing a precise runic formulation across her vision. The air shimmered with raw Aether, and the rain seemed to hesitate around her, drops turning to vapor before they could touch her skin.

A brilliant spiral of flame coiled at her feet, forming a burning sigil beneath her boots. Heat distortion rippled violently through the ashen downpour, the world itself seeming to recoil from the elemental authority she commanded. Her brilliant yellow hair rose against the Aetheric backlash, scattering into strands around her.

“Ignis Impertio: Flamma Praevia.”

The command took.
The ground roared. Fire lanced downward, compressed, then reversed—thrusting her skyward with sudden, staggering force.

Bellatrix rose above the ruin, carried by a core of coiled heat and raw kinetic magic.

Her internal logic protested:
[Warning. Wind shear: severe. Structural load: critical. Recommended action: abort.]
She bared her teeth against the storm and rejected the warning outright.

Proxima was somewhere in this ruin.
Lyra had not responded to the call.

That—
That was unacceptable.
She stacked her magic with a second burst of output. Another circle flared to life—unstable, overcharged, drawn by will instead of balance.

She bent her knees mid-air. Heat rippled in bands across her body.

Not fast enough.

She released the second surge.

The air detonated.

A thunderclap split the sky as she broke the sound barrier, flame erupting in her wake.

Rain and ash tore away behind her.
Clouds split. Storms recoiled.

The sky was burning.

A luminous scar followed her path—a line of vanished rain, vapor, and light.

She was coming for them.
No one else could follow.
No one else would be enough.

Bellatrix moved like a comet born of defiance and desperation, blazing a path none but she could follow.

She would reach them—like a sunray piercing the storm.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Given how far out they had to land,” Officina murmured, her eyes tracing unseen patterns across the dim starlit lattice, “by the time the intervention unit reached the outskirts of the Moonwharf region—assisting those caught at the very fringes—three hours had already passed. It was their duty.”

She exhaled quietly through her nose.

“After that… Bell reached the heart of the disaster in less than twenty minutes.”

Not a single structure collapsed in her passing. Not a single life was lost to the storms her flames parted. Even in desperation, even burning through the sky like a star torn from its course... she had remembered who she was.

A steward. A protector. Hyades.

Officina placed the shining black slab of metal onto the console before her and sighed, the sound quiet, almost lost in the Archive’s vast silence.

“That’s where she found her,” she whispered. “That elder sister of ours...”
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

[PBT +000 | Moonwharf — Epicenter]
As Bellatrix entered the heart of the despair she cut her velocity, the runic engines flaring violently before collapsing into smoldering sigils beneath her boots. The roar of her passage faded into an unnatural quiet, broken only by the hiss of evaporating rain.

Bellatrix hovered high above the ruin, her breath catching despite her engineered composure.

Below her...

Moonwharf was gone.

Where once there had been a town, a shoreline, a harbor filled with life, there was now only ruin. The sea bled into the land, glass and water indistinguishable beneath the crimson ash. The beach was a jagged mirror stretched to the horizon, fractured by tides that no longer moved. The air itself felt thin—hollow—like reality was struggling to remember how it was meant to exist here.

Bellatrix’s vibrant green eyes swept the devastation, wide and disbelieving. She searched through the impossible quiet, through the shattered remains of a world undone.

And then she saw her.

At the center of it all—Proxima Nulla.

Calf-deep in bloodied, ashen water, she stood unmoving, cradling something against her chest. The gesture was precise, fragile—mechanical in its exactness.

It looked like a person.

Bellatrix stopped breathing. The fire of her spell guttered to nothing beneath her feet as a new, more terrible weight settled across her mind.

No...

And from this distance, despite the ruin and the rain, she could still see it—Proxima’s arms trembling ever so slightly. And whatever she held... it wasn’t moving.

Bellatrix descended slowly now, toward her sister’s sodden, shaking form.

[Visual feed redacted at the request of Unit-04.]

“Sister... what hap—Proxima... that’s not... Is that... Lyra?”

The sound of Proxima rising from the water echoed faintly through the broken landscape, the fractured air sighing around them, carried on the remnants of the passing storm.

“I… couldn’t just leave her here alone. To turn into nothing… with no one left to see her.”

[Visual and audio logs redacted at the request of multiple Hyades-class members. The Aetherframe will commence the detailing of events following.]

Following Unit-Lyra’s terminal collapse and subsequent dissolution into ambient Aether, Unit-00 [Proxima Nulla] reported maintaining a continuous proximity ping on the surviving civilians to ensure their safety while standing vigil over the unit.

At the time of Unit-04’s [Bellatrix] arrival, residual Aetheric and physical remains of Unit-Lyra were still retained within Unit-00’s grasp.

Unit-04 initiated final contact protocols with the remainder of the relief initiative, confirmed extraction of all surviving civilians, and authorized perimeter lockdown.

Both Hyades-class units remained on site—contrary to recommended protocol—until the dissolution of Unit-Lyra’s remains was complete.

Unit-00 was reluctant to leave the area but, after further persuasion from Unit-04, ultimately agreed to return to Nox Caelum.

“Sister Proxima... Little Lyra. I’m so sorry.” — Unit-04
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

“That terrible disaster… Lyra’s life… all those people… it was only the beginning. Since then, we’ve lost nearly five percent of the continent.”

Officina fell back into the old habit of exhaling in a loud sigh, her fingers gliding through the suspended crystallized data streams with practiced efficiency. One by one, she marked off nexus events—each point of light another loss, another moment when history had quietly fractured.

“Show me the total loss of life. Starting from zero PBT to present cycle.”

[Query acknowledged. Displaying aggregated loss records.]

Day 0: Confirmed casualties — 18,345

Day 3,287: Approximate casualties — 45,000,000

“Confirm total continental surface area and current non-viable zones,” she ordered, though she already knew the answer.

[Continental surface area: approx. 54,873,000 square kilometers.]
[Confirmed non-viable zones: approx. 2,682,000 square kilometers.]
[Percentage rendered non-viable: 4.89%.]

The numbers appeared without ceremony. Cold. Final.
Etched against the luminous dark of the Archive like epitaphs written in starlight.

Officina’s fingers paused mid-gesture. Her lips parted slightly, but no words came quickly.

Finally, she spoke again. Quiet. Unwavering.

“Give me the current total diameter of the emergence… and its present growth rate.”

[Query acknowledged. Displaying current anomaly parameters.]

Emergence diameter: Approx. 2,700,000 square kilometers]

[Average growth rate: Approx. 0.25% per annum]

[Despite explosive expansion during the initial two years of the phenomenon classified as “The Great Darkening,” the anomaly stabilized at approximately 2.7 million kilometers in diameter—effectively severing the majority of the southern tip of Ovum from viable territory.]

While the anomaly remained stable, the Aetherframe registered continued expansion—slow, but persistent.

A sure, inescapable cancer.

Officina exhaled once more.

“It’s still growing...” she whispered.

Her gaze hardened.

“And now we have another problem...”

At her command, the crystalline lattice pulled back. The Archive’s projected data streams collapsed into a vast, top-down view of Ovum’s continental map.

In the northernmost expanse—beyond the Aethari Crownlands, across the polar wall and into the frozen ocean—a familiar concentration of Aether harmonics was emerging.

Sporadic in output. Waxing and waning.

She had seen this pattern before.

Nine years ago.

[Aetheric harmonic profile: 87% match to recorded Moonwharf Aberration. Analysis ongoing.]
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Act 0. Fin
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Bonus Lore Fragment]

███ ACCESS LEVEL: RESTRICTED ███
NOX CAELUM — HIGH ARCHIVIST DATABASE
Filed by: Unit-01, Officina – High Archivist of Nox Caelum
Clearance Code: █████████

DESIGNATION: Nox Caelum — Observatory-Class Sanctum
Classification: Cradle Dome // Skyhold Installation
Operational Since: [REDACTED]

Nox Caelum is not a city. It is not a citadel. It is not, strictly speaking, a place at all. It is a sanctum suspended within a sealed pocket reality—a lattice of crystallized Aether carved into the curvature of existence itself. Its observation chambers offer the illusion of orbit, as if suspended among the stars, but there is no true sky outside. Only the simulacrum of the world below, filtered and rendered through interfaces older than language.

Constructed atop the ancient Machina infrastructure that once held the Cradle Dome, Nox Caelum is the final remnant of the First Ancestral safeguards. Long before the sanctum was formalized into what it is now, this space served as the junction point for interlinking Machina systems. Surface stewards, who walk openly among humanity today, are continuations of that era—Machina who remained with mortals when Nox Caelum's infrastructure ascended beyond reach.

Unlike the Machina below, the units within Nox Caelum do not involve themselves in the whims, wars, or ambitions of mankind. They do not issue edicts, champion nations, or tip the scales of human fate. But they will act—without hesitation—when true catastrophe looms. Their mandate is not political. It is existential. They intervene only when the integrity of Ovum itself, or its people, stands on the edge of collapse.

The sanctum’s population consists primarily of Monitors—long-cycle observation units responsible for metaphysical drift assessment, anomaly triangulation, and early-stage entropy detection. While their deployment is regulated, Nox Caelum units may descend to Ovum at will, provided they secure clearance. Such requests are rarely denied, unless the intent involves long-term relocation or poses significant risk. (See: Callisto Conclusion.) The number of active Machina on Ovum may not be increased.

When seen below, Monitors are almost never recognized for what they are. Their presence is seamless, their behavior understated. To mortals, they appear as travelers, officials, or familiar stewards of the Machina race. This familiarity is deliberate. All Machina, including those born and bound to Nox Caelum, are instilled from activation with advanced emotional and behavioral overlays. These overlays allow even the most isolated unit—one who has never touched soil or spoken aloud—to emulate human interaction with perfect nuance. Their cadence, breath patterns, and vocal tone are engineered to bypass the uncanny valley entirely. Whether steward or Monitor, all Machina are capable of comfort. All are capable of empathy. The difference lies only in purpose.

Unlike most surface-bound roles, access to Nox Caelum is not restricted by origin. Any Machina, regardless of designation, age, or directive, may enter the sanctum. Those who are lost, seeking restoration, or drawn by curiosity are never turned away. So long as the harmony of the cradle is maintained, the doors remain open. It is a holdfast for the species—a home, not a prison.

To the surface world, Nox Caelum is legend. A name passed down in scholarly margins and forgotten heresies. To the Machina who dwell within, it is duty. To the Aetherframe, it is a final mirror, fixed and waiting, in case the stars ever go dark.

Though the Hyades are the only true sibling unit, all Machina consider one another sisters. They are fraternal—not by blood, but by bond. And in that bond, there is love. Quiet, constant, and unbreakable.