Secret Bunker Beneath the Swiss Alps-
In the bunker's war room, the echo of ancient tales of Lemuria and Mu had faded, replaced by the cold, pragmatic logic of survival. The Thirteen Families, now armed with knowledge they never wished to possess about the true nature of cosmic forces, faced a crucial decision regarding their "arcane assets." The pact made with the mages of the White Brotherhood – their freedom and that of the Elder Eleonora in exchange for vital information – had been accepted under duress, but its fulfillment would be carried out under the implacable terms of the Council.
"We have obtained the necessary intelligence from our... 'guests'," The Director's metallic voice resonated through the room's communicators. "Their understanding of hidden history and prophecies, though tinged with a mysticism I consider inefficient, has been... enlightening for our analysts at The Consortium. It is time to fulfill our side of the agreement. It is time to 'release' them."
An icy silence settled in. Lord Ashworth, with a half-smile that did not touch his eyes, took the floor.
"Release them, yes, Director. But 'freedom,' as we well know, is a remarkably malleable concept. To release them with their knowledge, their power, and their newly acquired and quite justified grudge against us intact, would be an act of strategic suicide. They are too powerful, too unpredictable."
"Exactly," Baron Von Hess confirmed with a grunt of approval. "We will release the bodies, certainly. We will honor them with the gift of life on the surface. But the minds... the minds are assets too dangerous, libraries of forbidden knowledge that cannot be allowed the luxury of memory. They will suffer a... forced retirement from their former identities."
The decision was made. There would be no genuine release. There would be a purge, one of the cruelest kind: the annihilation of the self without spilling a single drop of blood.
The Director gave the order: "Activate the 'Psionic Readjustment Chronoscopes'. Prepare the subjects."
In the depths of the bunker, in laboratories as sterile as operating theaters, the plan was executed. The devices, marvels of reverse-engineered Anunnaki technology and the Families' own neuro-quantum engineering, were activated. They were not torture machines, but apparatuses of a terrible elegance that utilized fields of modulated light and resonant sonic frequencies to, in essence, "reset" the human and supernatural mind. They unraveled the neural networks that contained memory and personality, replacing them with a new, mundane tapestry of false recollections, of simple and uneventful lives.
Isabel and Ricardo, the proud and defiant mages of the White Brotherhood, were the first. Their chaotic fire and unwavering loyalty dissolved into the device's white light. Hours later, they would awaken in a quiet retirement home in the Swiss countryside, believing themselves to be a married couple of retired accountants, with a vague sense of having lost something important, but never able to remember what it was.
For the other mages and ancient clans they held hostage, the same fate awaited.They were scattered across the world with new identities. A powerful vampire from a lineage rivaling Drácula's awoke as a modest baker in a French coastal town. An Alpha werewolf, whose rage had made the walls of his cell tremble, became a quiet park ranger in British Columbia, with an inexplicable fear of the full moon. They were ghosts, echoes of power now silenced and scattered to the winds, their true identities erased from the book of life.
But for the Elder Eleonora, Aria's grandmother, the bearer of a pure magic tied to Gaia, the plan was different.
"She... is different," The Director had decreed. "Her innate connection to the planet's energy, her lineage... is too potent to simply release her, even with her memory erased. Her presence could, unconsciously, create anomalies or attract unwanted attention. She must be... contained, but in a way that allows us to monitor her closely."
And her destiny would lead her, in the cruelest of cosmic ironies, to the very epicenter of the resistance her granddaughter now led.
"We have a facility of our own on the Yucatán Peninsula," Ashworth had explained to the Council. "A place designed to house individuals of 'high sensitivity' whose minds have... fractured under the stress of the modern world. Officially, it is a luxury residence for the elderly with senile dementia and neurological conditions, a haven of peace with the finest care. Its name is... ironically appropriate for our purposes."
Eleonora was thus sent to an asylum named 'Ciudad de la Alegría' (The City of Joy), in the quiet suburbs of Cancún.
The place was idyllic on the surface: immaculate white walls, lush tropical gardens, attentive nursing staff with serene smiles, and a peaceful view of the Caribbean Sea. But beneath that facade of benevolence hid a high-tech gilded cage. The walls were lined with psionic dampeners, the air circulated with subtle sedatives, and every corner was monitored by sensors that tracked the energy fluctuations of its 'patients'.
There, the true Eleonora, Aria's grandmother, the ancient and wise witch of the White Brotherhood, would awaken as a sweet and confused old woman, with a new name, without a single memory of her power, of her granddaughter, of magic, of the sacred oaths she once made, nor of the decades of captivity she had just endured. She would live out her days in a manufactured peace, a relic of immense power neutralized and forgotten... right in the same city where her granddaughter was fighting for the fate of the universe.
The Thirteen Families, in their ruthless efficiency, believed they had solved a problem, keeping their word in the most treacherous way possible. But destiny, or the Lattice, or some other cosmic force, had just placed the most important piece of Aria's puzzle right within her grasp, though hidden in plain sight, behind a veil of forgetfulness and a false joy.