The secretary led him deeper into the complex.

The corridors narrowed by degrees. Decorative panelling gave way to bare, sealed joints; ambient lighting gave way to recessed strips angled toward the floor. Each checkpoint required her credentials in a different combination — palm, card, and code at the third; biometrics alone at the fourth — and the doors themselves grew progressively heavier, built to contain rather than simply to close. By the final approach, the air had lost several degrees, and the walls had the particular density of something that had never been intended for comfort.

They arrived at a vault corridor.

Even before the doors opened, Luke could feel it — not from one direction, but from the space itself. A deep, layered pressure, the kind that only built up when powerful things had been stored in proximity long enough to press against each other. Old. Dense. Held down rather than simply stored.

The secretary turned to him. "You're authorised to select one firearm and one artifact as part of your contract package."

The inner vault doors opened with the slow, unhurried certainty of something that had never needed to move quickly.

Inside, the lighting was softer — a deliberate design choice, he suspected. Display chambers lined the room in clean rows, each item separated by category and security class. Some rested behind clear panelling; others sat in sealed cases edged with containment sigils that glowed faintly at their joints. The arrangement was controlled and precise. Beautiful objects sat beside things that looked like they'd been dug out of a battlefield, and both sat beside items with the quiet stillness of something actively suppressed rather than simply shelved.

The room existed for one reason: to keep power in reserve until someone needed it.

Luke moved to the firearms first.

His right hand drifted toward his hip — the old muscle memory, reaching without being asked for the weight that used to rest there.

He let it drop.

His last day with the Bureau, he'd surrendered the sidearm without a word. Badge, clearance, the weapon he'd carried for six years — all of it handed across a desk in under twenty minutes. He hadn't argued. There was nothing to argue with, and he'd known it. But the body had apparently filed that under temporary.

He refocused.

The weapon selection was broad: standard sidearms, modified awakened-frame pistols, rifles, compact assault configurations, and several specialist models designed for elemental reinforcement — the hybrid engineering common here, where advanced materials and ancient techniques had long since stopped being distinguishable from each other. He worked through them the way he'd been trained: grip balance, barrel weight, trigger tell, the frame's tolerance for sustained soul-power reinforcement. He bypassed anything with aesthetic modifications. Engraving and custom work were for people who hadn't yet learned what they actually needed a weapon to do. What he was looking for had no interest in being admired.

He made his choice, noted it, and moved on.

Artifacts were a different kind of problem.

As an ex-Bureau agent, Luke had handled enough of them to skip the reverence. They were tools — often irreplaceable, occasionally catastrophic, but tools. Some were ancient: battlefield relics, ruins salvage, family-vault pieces passed down through bloodlines that treated them as both inheritance and identity. Others had been made — Alchemists working monster materials, rare ores, and stranger things into objects as reliable as anything pulled from a tomb. Every one of them ran on the same principle: soul power in, specific function out. A defensive piece became a barrier; an offensive piece became a weapon. High-tier items required a blood-binding to lock to a single user. And all of them had a ceiling — push past it with the wrong rank or the wrong attribute and the artifact didn't fail quietly. It fed.

The secretary guided him to a specific aisle. "These are cleared for your access tier — utility, defence, and support. Offensive items above threshold require separate corporate approval."

Luke wasn't bothered. A well-chosen support artifact kept you alive through situations where firepower alone wouldn't.

He moved through the cases.

[Gale-Step Anklet]
Attribute: Wind / Agility
Use: Generates rapid burst movement; significantly reduces perceived body weight during activation.
Duration: Up to 3 minutes of continuous use.
Limitation: Requires 12 hours of passive ambient recharge before next activation.
Side Effect: Severe cramping in calves and thighs following deactivation.

Useful for running. Less useful for anyone who needed to hold ground.

[Obsidian Mind-Veil Pendant]
Attribute: Psychic / Defence
Use: Passively blocks low-level psychic intrusion, minor illusions, and surface-level mind-reading. Active mode provides direct shielding for up to 10 minutes.
Limitation: Shatters on contact with any mid-tier or higher psychic attack.
Side Effect: Dulls the user's emotional response and deadens tactile sensation while active.

He picked it up and turned it over once. Fragile for a dedicated psychic defence — one serious attack and it was gone. The passive protection was harder to find anywhere else, and that mattered. He set it down but didn't dismiss it.

[Goliath Bone Bracer]
Attribute: Earth / Physical Enhancement
Use: Hardens skin to approximately the density of structural steel; effective against physical strikes and minor elemental blasts.
Duration: 30 seconds per activation.
Limitation: Two activations per day maximum. User becomes significantly heavier during activation; running and jumping are not possible.
Side Effect: Heavy blunt impacts during activation bypass surface hardening; resulting shockwave causes micro-fractures in the arm bones.

Thirty seconds of standing still in an active engagement was a long time to be stationary. He moved on.

[Hollowed Mana Quartz]
Attribute: Neutral / Energy Storage
Use: Absorbs and stores ambient elemental energy. Releases stored energy as either a concussive blast or a direct soul-energy transfer to restore the user's depleted reserves.
Duration: Instant release; holds charge indefinitely until discharged.
Limitation: Capacity equivalent to one low-tier Awakened's full reserves. Requires one hour of meditation to charge completely.
Side Effect: Emits continuous low-level mana radiation. Prolonged proximity — more than a few hours — causes nausea and persistent headaches.

A reserve was never useless. The radiation was a management problem, not a disqualifier, but carrying it meant tracking exposure carefully — and a headache at the wrong moment had a way of becoming a permanent one.

[Crimson Sap Vial]
Attribute: Life / Plant
Use: Accelerates natural tissue repair; halts active bleeding immediately and closes shallow to moderate wounds.
Duration: 5-minute healing window per dose, activated by inhalation.
Limitation: Ineffective against lost limbs, shattered bones, or severe internal trauma. Three doses total; vial does not refill.
Side Effect: Healing draws on accelerated caloric burn. Severe hunger and physical exhaustion follow each use.

Three uses. He thought briefly about the past year and how many times he'd needed something like this — and how rarely those situations had arrived one at a time.

[Shadow-Weave Cloak Pin]
Attribute: Shadow / Illusion
Use: Bends ambient light around the user; provides near-complete visual concealment in low-light conditions and eliminates footfall sound.
Duration: Up to 15 minutes per use.
Limitation: Concealment breaks immediately upon offensive action, active soul-power channelling, or direct sunlight exposure.
Side Effect: Draws heat from the user's body continuously while active. Exceeding the 15-minute limit risks hypothermia.

Luke kept moving.