Valmont Series - Inheritance Code

Chapter 1.4 - The Descent

Aiden had gone quiet again, but it wasn't silence. It was reverence. His fingers skimmed the edge of the armrest, tracing hidden ports. "It's not just fast," he muttered. "It's beyond propulsion. There's no afterburn signature. No noise profile. No resistance. This thing isn't flying. It's gliding on physics we don't teach yet."

He sounded... impressed. Not logically. Emotionally.

Aria turned to her seat console. "Does it have Instagram?"

The screen blinked. ACCESS TO PUBLIC INTERNET HAS BEEN DISABLED.

"Of course it has," she whispered. And yet she wasn't even mad. Just... unsettled.

A new message pulsed quietly on her screen:

Welcome, Aria Lancaster. Legacy Protocol initiated.

She didn't open it.

Not yet.

Across the cabin, Aiden's screen blinked the same message. He didn't move either.

"I think," he said softly, "this is the part where our old life ends."

Aria didn't respond. The stars outside were getting closer. And for the first time that day – after the shock, the silence, and the unraveling of everything she thought was hers – she felt something entirely different. Not fear. Not loss. But the sharp, electric pull of wanting to see what came next.

They felt it before they saw it.

The hypersonic jet slowed without warning. No shift in pressure. No turbulence. No sound. One moment, they were slicing through stars like a whisper in space—detached, untouchable—and the next, the OLED walls around them dimmed into clarity.

The sensation was so smooth it was almost missed—only the faintest recalibration in the way their bodies sat against the seat cushions, as if the universe had tilted by a fraction.

Below them, the ocean wasn't just blue. It glittered—infused with circuits of pale silver and ghost-light gold—as though someone had rewritten the very fabric of water into a living code. Each ripple shimmered too perfectly, each wave cresting and falling in hypnotic, synchronized patterns.

Aria pressed her fingers against the armrest without realizing it.

The world was changing under them.

Then came the shimmer.

At first, it was just a ripple in the air—like a heatwave in summer. Then it sharpened, folding the sky inward with a bending of light, blooming into a vast, translucent dome that stretched over the sea.

But this wasn't atmosphere. It was something made. Something deliberate. The kind of technology that bent light, masked electromagnetic fields, and erased a place not just from sight—but from existence. For a heartbeat, the jet seemed to hover at the edge of that veil.

Aria barely breathed.

Aiden's hand flexed once on his knee.

And then they passed through—no jolt, no resistance, just a ripple along their skin, like stepping through a membrane stretched thinner than thought.

The cabin lights pulsed softly. A single chime rang out, crystalline and absolute.

"Legacy coordinates verified. Final descent to the Valmont Crown in two minutes."

Their names were never spoken. But somehow, the system knew.

As if responding to the acknowledgment, their seats reclined slightly—not enough to jolt, just enough for them to notice gravity itself being rewritten. Without warning, a subtle biometric scan swept the cabin.