Xavier's Special Operations branch, set at Prestara University in Linkon. The villain is Soren, an old Backtracker comrade who has undergone EVER-funded surgical facial alteration to embed at the university as student-council VP. Soren uses the RMFMA sensor device — accessible via Professor Ulysses's credentials — combined with an Aether-Core Wanderer to project Xavier and MC into a Protofield illusion of Starfall Forest: the site of the Gladius Ceremony and Xavier's worst memory. Inside the illusion, Xavier is drawn toward allowing himself to be consumed by the forest's grief. MC saves him by voluntarily feeding the forest with her own Aether Core energy, at significant personal cost. They escape on the Traceback II. Soren is not captured and remains at large.