The underground corridor felt profoundly silent, worlds away from the raging storm and the roar of the city high above. Zulfa and Naya’s footsteps echoed softly against the neatly laid ancient stone floor. The walls on both sides were lined with ancient stone torches that automatically flickered to life with a soft blue flame as they passed, illuminating a path sloping sharply downward into the earth's belly.

"This place makes zero sense," Naya murmured, her eyes wide with wonder as she observed the stone walls decorated with faintly glowing mechanical reliefs. "No trace of dampness, no mold. The natural ventilation system works perfectly without a single modern electrical component. Your ancestors were truly god-tier engineers, Zulfa."

Zulfa walked in front, shaking the remaining raindrops from his jacket. "Or they were a bunch of lunatics with way too much free time and an unhealthy obsession with underground plumbing. I still can't believe we're walking beneath an abandoned old shrine."

"This isn't just a shrine, Zulfa. It's a secret archive vault belonging to the Arditama bloodline," Naya replied gravely. "And I think we've arrived."

The corridor finally opened up into a fairly spacious subterranean chamber resembling an underground study or private workstation. In the center of the room, a solid granite stone table stood tall, illuminated by the dim, steady glow of dozens of ancient candles burning eternally around it. Resting upon the stone table was a single object emitting a faint blue aura: a thick, leather-bound journal that looked immensely aged yet perfectly preserved.

Zulfa and Naya approached the stone table with slow, measured steps, as though afraid of disturbing the sanctity of the place.

"That..." Naya pointed at the old leather-bound book, her breath catching slightly. "Your ancestors' ancestral logbook."

Zulfa reached out with his right hand, brushing the surface of the book's leather cover. The moment his fingers made contact with the aged hide, the volume flipped open on its own, its pages turning rapidly before settling dead in the middle. The letters within were written in a glowing bright blue ink that shimmered softly.

"Open it and read, Zulfa," Naya whispered softly, her eyes captivated by the luminous text.

Zulfa took a deep breath, then began reading line by line the ancient text meticulously penned in technical jargon and high-level mathematical symbols fused with classical script.

"To my descendants who hold the Arditama bloodline, if you read this log, it means the seals we built with sweat and blood are beginning to crumble under the world's greed..."

Zulfa read in a raspy voice. He looked up, frowning as he stared at Naya. "Nay, my great-grandfather... he wasn't just a municipal public works chief engineer back in the day."

"Then who was he?" Naya asked, curiosity piqued as she leaned closer to the table.

"He was the First Seal Architect," Zulfa said in disbelief, reading on. "This city, Aethel City, was never built on empty land. Centuries ago, this region was the epicenter of The Rift—a cosmic tear where extradimensional entities tried to breach our world. My ancestors and their peers engineered this entire system of modern pipelines, tunnels, and electrical substations as a colossal mechanical restraint to imprison those entities."

Naya’s eyes widened to their limits. "So... all the city infrastructure we know today—the MRT lines, the water mains, the fiber cables—are a giant cage?"

"Exactly," Zulfa continued, turning the page to reveal a complex schematic diagram. "But read this... this is the craziest part." Zulfa pointed to a paragraph heavily underlined in glowing red ink. "The Aethel Corp corporate syndicate we're fighting today... isn't led by just anybody. The company was founded by the descendants of one of my great-grandfather's traitorous past peers."

Naya gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth. "Traitorous? You mean Aethel Corp's founders knew about the dimensional entity from the very beginning?"

"Not just knew," Zulfa answered, his jaw tightening with suppressed rage. "That traitorous faction deliberately helped design the system with secret backdoors built straight into its original structure. Their goal all along was to wait until modern civilization advanced far enough, then use those backdoors to forcibly break the seal for eternal power and dominion over extradimensional energy."

Naya scoffed cynically, shaking her head in sheer disbelief. "So for decades, that corporation hid behind the mask of technological progress and municipal maintenance contracts, when they were actually a doomsday cult?"

"And they almost pulled it off," Zulfa said softly, turning to the journal's final page.

Suddenly, that last page blazed with a brilliant blue light, projecting a three-dimensional holographic schematic floating above the granite table. The projection mapped out the 3D blueprints of the Main Valve structure beneath the city's central public square.

Naya stared at the hologram with eyes shining bright with hope. "Zulfa... look at that! Is that the emergency lockdown schematic?"

Zulfa studied the holographic blue lines intently, his engineer's mind instantly recognizing the underlying logical patterns. "Yeah... this is the manual override code blueprint to shut down the Main Valve permanently. This book details every single step of the locking gear rotation sequence and hydraulic counter-pressure release."

Naya clenched her right fist with fierce enthusiasm. "Incredible! With this code schematic, we can infiltrate the main control room and slam that dimensional rift shut before it opens all the way!"

Yet, the smile on Naya's face slowly faded as she noticed Zulfa's expression morph into one of grim, heavy tension.

"What is it, Zulfa?" Naya asked anxiously. "Why's your face so pale? Isn't this good news?"

Zulfa stared at the fine text printed beneath the holographic schematic. He read a footnote penned in deep red ink by his ancestor.

"Good news, but practically impossible to execute, Naya," Zulfa answered in a raspy voice, locking eyes with her. "This log says... this manual override code cannot be accessed from a remote control panel, cannot be hacked via computer, and cannot be reprogrammed."

"Then... how do we input it?" Naya pressed impatiently.

Zulfa swallowed hard. "The code has to be entered mechanically using a physical manual lever... right inside the deepest fault heart of the city, directly beneath the swirling vortex of the Main Valve where heat and extradimensional radiation are spewing out raw."

The underground chamber fell dead silent. The sound of ancient candle ticks and the faint rumble of the surface storm served as their only background noise.

Naya went still, staring at Zulfa with a hollow gaze. "Meaning... whoever goes down there to punch in that code... has to walk right into the hell-mouth where those shadow entities dwell, with almost zero chance of coming back alive."

Zulfa gazed deeply into his ancestor's journal, then drew a long breath and slowly exhaled. He snapped the leather-bound book shut with a quiet thud, looking up at Naya with a resolute glare.

"If that's the only way to stop them and save Rani and the millions of people up top..." Zulfa offered a thin smile, though it masked immense inner strain. "...then I know precisely where we need to head next."