The anomaly

CHAPTER 10 — The Anomaly

Germon stood before the main screen of the command bridge.

Zekra fell behind.

The reconquest had been clean. Efficient. Exactly as planned. His forces controlled the main sectors. Zekra's communication systems were under trinita supervision. And Zarpon was in his cell with information Germon had already fully processed.

Three young people.

Earth.

The Kratar.

"Braga," he said.

His pilot turned from the controls.

Braga was different from other trinita officers. Quieter. More precise in his movements. With a loyalty to Germon that came not from fear but from years of sharing the same vision of the world.

"Sir."

"Change course. Planet Earth."

Braga processed that without blinking.

"With the full fleet?"

"No." Germon looked at the screen. "A small ship. Discreet. Just the two of us."

Braga nodded.

"And the detection AI?"

"We bring it."

---

The ship they chose was unrecognizable as trinita technology at first glance.

Compact. Without the characteristic light blue lines. Without the empire's emblems on the hull. The kind of ship that could move between planets without generating records anyone would bother searching for.

Germon and Braga boarded alone.

No escort.

No announcement.

The ship crossed space toward Earth with the silent efficiency of something that didn't want to be seen.

The detection AI occupied a side panel on the bridge. It wasn't a conventional screen. It was an energy anomaly analysis system the Trinita Empire had developed to identify unconventional power sources on planets under supervision. Useful for detecting hidden technology. Useful for finding magic.

Useful for finding the Kratar.

When they entered Earth's atmosphere, the system began to process.

Germon watched the data in silence.

The planet was green and blue from above. More organic than most planets he had visited. Without the visible infrastructure of advanced civilizations across most of its surface.

Primitive compared to Trinita.

But with something the instruments picked up immediately.

An anomaly.

"Sir," Braga said. "The AI is registering an anomalous energy concentration. Green sector. Coordinates..."

A map of Earth's surface appeared on the screen.

A point pulsed softly.

A valley.

Green. Wide. Surrounded by gentle hills.

Germon looked at it.

"Take us down."

---

They landed behind the northern hills.

The same position Zarpon had used three years earlier without knowing it.

Germon and Braga stepped out of the ship.

Earth's air was different from any planet Germon had walked on. Denser. With smells that had no equivalent in his universe. Grass. Damp soil. Something alive and constant that permeated everything.

They put on their robes.

Gray. With wide hoods that completely covered their features. The fabric was trinita technology. It didn't just hide their identity visually—it suppressed the biological signals any basic sensor might detect.

Invisible without being invisible.

Present without being seen.

They walked toward the valley.

---

They found him before reaching the center.

Marek.

Sixteen years old. Dark blue armor. The red K on the center of his chest catching Earth's morning light. The lock of hair falling over his forehead with the same naturalness as always.

He was in the air.

Not high. About four meters off the ground. His yellow aura igniting and extinguishing in sequences that clearly weren't random. Training. Specific. Conscious.

Germon stopped behind a tree at the valley's edge.

Braga stood beside him.

They watched in silence.

Marek's aura was unlike any energy Germon had seen before.

It wasn't technology.

It wasn't the blue energy of trinita systems or anything that could be classified with the empire's conventional instruments.

It was organic.

Alive.

It ignited from the inside out with a density that had clearly grown since the Zekra records described the young warrior who had defeated the guardian three years ago.

Germon watched him with the same attention he gave everything.

Without underestimating.

Without overestimating.

Just recording.

Braga leaned slightly toward him.

"Is that him?" he murmured.

"Yes," Germon replied, equally quiet.

---

Marek landed.

His boots hit the ground with a clean impact. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and stood still for a moment, looking at the green horizon.

Then something in his expression changed.

It wasn't the focus of training.

It was something softer.

He thought of Joe.

Germon couldn't know that for certain. But there was something in the way the young man looked toward the eastern hills—toward wherever it was that mattered to him—that was unmistakably the expression of someone thinking of someone they loved.

Marek extinguished his aura.

And began to move.

Not walking.

Flying at low altitude. Slowly. With his aura barely ignited, just enough to stay aloft but without the brightness that would draw attention from below.

Careful.

Like someone who had learned to move through this sky without being seen.

Germon and Braga followed him on foot.

The AI on Braga's wrist tracked Marek's energy signal with a precision that never lost him, even as he changed altitude or direction.

---

The pink mansion of Cromatica was exactly what its name suggested.

Large. Orderly. With gardens that spoke of expectations before anyone opened the door.

Marek descended into the side garden with the discretion of someone who had made that move many times.

Germon and Braga positioned themselves behind the perimeter wall.

The AI pulsed.

The energy anomaly was no longer just Marek.

There was something else inside that mansion.

Something more intense.

Germon looked at the screen on Braga's wrist.

His light blue eyes focused on the point pulsing from inside the building.

There it is.

---

Sira opened the door before Marek could knock.

"I saw you coming from the window," she said.

"Always so efficient."

"Always so predictable."

Marek went inside.

Outside, behind the wall, Germon and Braga listened.

The mansion's interior was exactly what Sira was. Orderly without being cold. Books and papers organized in systems only she fully understood. A large window letting in the morning light over a worktable where three different lists were in simultaneous progress.

"How was training?" Sira asked.

"Good." Marek looked around. "Do you have the Kratar?"

Sira looked at him for a moment.

"Why?"

"I need to ask it for something."

Sira went to the desk. Opened the bottom drawer. Inside, wrapped in dark cloth, was the Kratar.

She set it on the table.

Marek looked at it.

The artifact was exactly as he remembered it. A square greenish-blue emerald with a K of a distinct green in the center.

He took it with both hands.

"I need you to transform this," Marek said quietly.

He pulled a simple wooden stick from his pocket. Thin. The kind found in any field.

"Into a shovel. Technologically advanced. For farm work. With multiple functions."

The Kratar pulsed once.

The light from within intensified briefly.

The stick in Marek's hand began to change. A small greenish-blue flash manifested.

The wood transformed. The material grew complex. In seconds, what had been a simple stick became an elegantly designed tool with components no Earth technology could have produced. Lightweight. With mechanisms in the handle that responded to touch. With a blade that could adjust angle and depth with a simple movement.

Marek looked at it.

He turned it in his hands.

He smiled.

Not the smile of someone receiving a gift.

The smile of someone who had thought of another person when making the request.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

He returned the Kratar to Sira.

"Joe's going to ask where this came from."

"Tell him you found it."

"He'll believe everything except that."

Sira almost smiled.

Marek tucked the shovel under his arm.

"Thanks, Sira."

"Go."

Marek left the way he had come.

Outside, behind the wall, Germon didn't move until Marek's footsteps had completely faded.

Braga looked at him.

"Did you see it work?"

"Yes," Germon said.

He had seen it.

A wooden stick transformed into advanced technology in seconds.

No visible spell. No ritual. Just a small greenish-blue flash. Without any of the apparatus conventional magic required in the accounts he had read about artifacts of this kind.

Just a request.

And a response.

Germon processed that in silence.

Dangerous.

More than he had initially calculated.

---

Inside, Sira set the Kratar on the table and looked at it for a moment.

Then she looked at her lists.

Three lists. Seventeen pending tasks between them.

She picked up the Kratar.

"Finish all my pending tasks," she said.

The Kratar pulsed.

The lists on the table filled with checkmarks. One by one. Fast. Orderly. As if someone had worked for hours in seconds.

Sira looked at them.

Everything completed.

She let out a small laugh—not exactly joy, but the particular relief of someone who had been carrying a list for weeks and had finally seen it disappear.

Then she looked at the Kratar thoughtfully.

"I should use it for my work on Zekra," she murmured. "It would be so much more efficient than..."

She stopped herself.

She remembered something.

"Ah. That's right."

The energy limit. The Kratar wasn't infinite. Every wish drained it. If she exhausted it, it would become inactive for years. And on Zekra, there were things bigger than task lists that might need it.

She put it back in the drawer carefully.

Still with a small smile on her face.

---

Behind the wall, Germon turned to Braga.

"Tonight," he said.

Braga nodded.

"Do we enter the mansion?"

Germon looked at the pink building over the wall.

"Desk drawer. Wrapped in dark cloth."

Braga didn't ask how he knew.

He never asked.

"Tonight," Germon repeated.

And the two withdrew silently to where no one could see them.

The Kratar waited in its drawer.

Unaware of what was approaching.

END OF CHAPTER 10