Chapter 3 - Heartbeat Beneath the Hill

Dawn bled slowly across Skellig Ionrach, turning the Atlantic into hammered bronze and filling the monastery's cloisters with a ruddy, half-dreamt light. Charlie Mutton stood in that glow feeling as though sunrise had reached inside his ribcage and tapped a drum that only he could hear. Every flagstone under his boots, every grain of salt in the air, seemed to answer, Yes—awake. The island itself throbbed, a living extension of the lattice now alive in his blood.

Brother Kelan guided the family down a spiral stair that corkscrewed into the basalt heart of the rock. At the bottom waited a low octagonal vault, its walls slick with quartz veins that pulsed in time with unseen tides. In the center rested a waist-high obelisk of crystal, dull at first glance, but alive with hints of inner sunrise that chased themselves along each facet.

"This is the Solar Archive," Kelan murmured, voice respectful as a prayer. "Buried here before Rome was dreamt. Cost us three lifetimes to coax it awake when the reptiles dulled the capstones. It will show the Eventborn why the sky is chained—if he's strong enough not to drown."

Charlie swallowed. His finger, still wrapped from Maeve's ritual cut, tingled beneath the bandage. Leyla's hand pressed lightly between his shoulders, offering warmth and an unstated promise that she would pull him back if the Archive tried to swallow him whole. Angus gave a single curt nod. That bare gesture weighed more than any speech.

Charlie drew a breath that tasted of salt and cold iron. Then he placed his palm flat upon the crystal.

Soundless thunder overturned the world. One moment he stood in the vault; the next his consciousness streaked across oceans like a comet made of questions. Pyramids erupted from every horizon: Giza's weathered giants blazing white beneath a copper sun; Teotihuacan shimmering with obsidian dust; Nubia's steep-sided sentinels etched red against the desert; Xi'an's grassy tumuli shedding camouflage to glint like polished glass; terraced ziggurats drowned off Yonaguni glowing through clear water; a white shard of ice rising from Antarctica's storms.

Golden filaments sprang from each apex, tasting the air like roots hungry for sky, and then shot outward. Sparks met sparks; lines braided into a luminous web that wrapped the planet tighter than longitude. Where threads crossed, symbols ignited—falcon wings fusing with feathered serpents, thunder hammers overlapping lotus thrones, spider webs tangling with trickster pawprints. Myths did not battle here; they harmonized, each glyph a note, each pantheon a chord, the whole planet an instrument waiting for someone to strike the first drum.

Voices layered over that impossible scene—elder and child, male and female, rough as iron and soft as lullabies:

We are the Synod of Custodians. The pyramids are tuning-forks soldered to Gaia's core. Myth is map, myth is key, myth is firewall. Keepers built ladders so mortals could climb back to themselves.

A shadow spilled across the lattice. From low-orbit citadels shaped like fang and talon, black energy snarled downward. Wherever it touched, the glowing lines shrank to embers. Charlie recognized the serpentine sigil carved into that umbral net: Commander Tzeker's empire, welding its own frequency onto humanity's heartbeat, rerouting power into psionic wells that kept billions dreaming with their eyes open.

Break five shackles, the Custodians intoned. Five Heart-Nodes slumber. Wake them, and the cage will melt.

Then the vision snapped. Charlie's knees hit the quartz-veined floor; frost traced the edges of his lashes. Leyla's arms were around him first, then Richard's, then Maeve's steadying hand beneath his elbow. The Archive pulsed an afterglow, as if satisfied.

"I saw the grid," he panted. "Pyramids everywhere. They're batteries. We have to ignite five Heart-Nodes—Tara first."

Angus exhaled, breath white in the cold room. "Then we'd best start walking." But Angus did not walk; he marched, lifting a leather satchel whose weight clinked ominously.

At the island's lowest tide cave a black-marble arch jutted from living rock, a single triskele etched in its keystone. Water pooled beneath it like oil. Kelan produced a medallion of beaten gold the size of a small shield, gleaming with characters from alphabets that had never before shared a sentence.

"The Nexus Medallion," he said. "Seat it, steward."

Angus pressed the disc home. Silver lightning forked across the arch. The pool boiled into steam, then spun downward into a corkscrew of jade and amber light tunneling straight through matter. The smell of ozone chased away the sea stench.

Charlie stepped forward, staff trembling like an eager dog. He drew breath and spoke the words that used to belong only to legends: "Solum irus vacan nor Slirak tum."

Light roared. Water, rock, and distance folded into a translucid corridor. Leyla gripped Charlie's hand; Richard hoisted Sarah; Maeve and Kelan flanked Angus; and the family strode into the whirl.

Pressure crushed momentarily, then yielded to strange buoyancy. Shadows of colossal whales drifted beyond the glowing walls; somewhere deeper, older eyes regarded them and let them pass. When green seeped into the light, the tunnel spat them onto spring-wet turf beneath a clean Irish sky.

Before them rose Tara Hill, gentle in silhouette, monumental in memory. But the sacred mound was caged. Six gunships—sleek, black, indecent against the morning—hovered like carrion birds. Human collaborators in serpent-scale masks drove violet rods into the soil; arcs leapt between them, knitting a flickering dome that pressed the grass into obedience. At the center of that dome descended Commander Tzeker, armor hissing, crest erect like a blade hungry for blood.

The reptilian's voice broke over the fields, amplified until even the larks fell silent: "Eventborn of intertwined thrones, kneel. Yield the Heart-Node and I may dissect you after your kin is spared."

Something ancient stirred in Charlie's chest—not fear but the raw anger of a world denied its own song. Angus's fingers closed around the strap of his satchel.

"They've no idea what we've brought," the old Highlander muttered and produced crystalline spheres swirling with opalescent fire. "Sun-Shard grenades. Charged at Giza before the reptiles capped it."

He tossed one to each adult—and one to Charlie, whose hands closed around heat that felt like noon reincarnated. Brother Kelan raised two fingers; from beyond earthen ramparts rose the Fianna na Gréine, archers wrapped in cloaks of reed-green, antlered captain at their head. A hawk the size of a deerhound screamed overhead, its wings catching sunlight like bronze scythes.

An arrow flashed; a force-rod exploded; Leyla intoned, "Lux sillus orm," and air bent into a mirrored wall that devoured the gunships' first plasma salvo and spat it harmlessly into an empty sky. The battle ignited in full.

Charlie barely saw half of it. A psion-drone skated low, electrodes crackling. He hurled his Sun-Shard with a thought as much as a throw; the sphere shattered midair into a spear of liquid daylight that cored the drone, turning alloy into white steam. Somewhere Maeve sang a rune that unfolded into a shield wall; Richard swung Angus's spare staff like a barracks poleax, knocking a chain lash aside before a kinetic burst shot the assailant ten meters. Sarah huddled behind Leyla's robe, wide-eyed but unbroken.

Tzeker stalked forward through the chaos, each plasma bolt that neared him swallowed by a black crystal amulet at his throat. Angus pitched a grenade; the crystal drank that flare too and cracked for its trouble, but the commander kept coming.

Charlie could feel Tara tremble beneath the trooper boots: not in fear but in anticipation. He sprinted—speed singing through every joint—past stunned Hushkin, past Fianna swords flashing in the sun. His target was not the reptile but the pale Lia Fáil stone: a pillar once touched by High Kings. He slammed his palm to its chilled crown.

Stone boomed like a struck bell. A hatch irised open beside the pillar, exhaling warm saffron light. Charlie dove just as a plasma lance scorched the earth he'd left; Leyla, Richard, and Maeve tumbled in after him. The hatch sealed, leaving Angus to hold the line above with Kelan and the Fianna.

Down a winding ramp cut from crystalline basalt they plunged, shoes hammering sparks where quartz met staff. At the ramp's foot yawned a cavern vast as an upturned cathedral. Suspended above a pool of living light hung the Heart-Node: a diamond taller than five men, shot through with molten gold veins. It pulsed like a second sun.

Charlie stepped close. In its mirrored facets danced every pyramid he had seen: Giza, Teotihuacan, Nubia, Xi'an, Yonaguni, and one caught in eternal storm. Threads of energy twisted through those miniature silhouettes and converged where his palms pressed the quartz.

He inhaled—and instead of pain there came an overwhelming remembering. He stood on veldt grass where Zulu queens sang rainbows; on Nordic fjords where skalds hammered runes into whalebone; beneath Polynesian skies as Māui snared the sun only to pass it to Mayan death-gods who shaped it into masks. Myths poured through him not as stories but as instructions coded in awe.

Energy flared. The diamond sent pillars of gold through cavern walls, up the ramp, out into daylight. On Tara's surface every force-rod died with a stuttering gasp; gunships lost anti-grav and plowed into pasture; Hushkin masks cracked, their psion feed silenced. Tzeker staggered, his amulet screaming into shards that rained smoking onto the churned earth.

Charlie, eyes glowing with residual sunfire, raced back up the ramp. The hatch opened at his thought. Daylight met him, and a battlefield turned suddenly quiet except for the groans of wounded engines. Angus stood amid the wreckage, beard singed, staff smoking but whole, grinning like a man half his age.

Commander Tzeker alone remained upright, armor pitted and crest smoldering. He looked not defeated but genuinely uncertain for the first time in his long occupation of this planet. The lizard tasted the air, hissed, and tapped a wrist console. A sleek escape pod shot from the disintegrating flagship, caught him mid-leap, and hurtled skyward toward the obsidian dreadnought waiting in low orbit.

Charlie watched the shrinking burn-trail. "He'll come back with teeth sharper."

"Aye," Angus growled, "and we'll greet him with claws brighter."

They spent the afternoon clearing wreckage, tending injuries, and feeding everyone barley stew thick enough to stand spoons upright. The Fianna buried their fallen with quartz arrowheads crossed over silent chests; Kelan's bronze hawk stood sentinel on a ruined gunship, watching the horizon for returning clouds.

Inside Tara's chamber Charlie sat again before the Heart-Node—calmer now, as if meeting an old friend. When he asked quietly for guidance, a holographic globe spun into being, pricked with five lights. One—the Tara node—blazed bright. The remaining four winked like distant thunderheads: Egypt, Mexico, China, the Bermuda Rise, and Antarctica's ice.

Angus, Maeve, Leyla, Richard, and Kelan gathered round. Murmured plans began to mesh: Angus's Highland contacts still keeping clandestine RAF flight paths; Leyla's cousins guarding Sun-King papyri in Luxor; Maeve's network of scholars in Mexico City; Kelan's sea-monks who ferried quiet divers to volcanic vents. Sarah traced the glowing lines with a fingertip, her eyes shining as though she already saw the future sculpture of freedom.

Charlie rose. The heartbeat inside him had steadied, louder than yesterday but less frantic. It felt like purpose. "One node down," he said. "Four to go. Let's make the world remember how loudly it can sing."

Outside, the battered hill answered with the hush of wind through grass—relieved, eager, unbowed—and the first auroral ribbon of the alignment shimmered across the pale Irish sky, announcing that the Earth itself had begun, at last, to wake.