The silence after truth was always the loudest.Samuel stood in the middle of the makeshift camp just outside the West Line ruins, where the Vanguard had stopped to regroup. But he wasn’t present. His body was, yes—tense, unmoving, arms clasped behind his back.But inside?A memory fractured open like a collapsing mirror.The sky above him shimmered, flickering with unseen static. Only Aria noticed. She frowned from her seat beside the fire, sensing the tension ripple from Samuel’s core. The air around him was warping, reacting to something unseen—no, unremembered.It began again.Not with a vision.But with a scent. Burnt metal and synthetic jasmine—false comfort layered over antiseptic horror.Then came the sound.Drip. Drip. Drip.The cadence of IV tubes.The hiss of neural stabilizers.The soft humming of a lullaby composed from quantum resonance.Samuel blinked—and the world slipped.Memory Realm — Age: 6He sat strapped in a rotating prism of light, knees pulled to his chest. The

The ruins of Sevrin Outpost creaked with memory. Located at the southern edge of the Rusted Fjords, it was a place where maps lied—buildings sank half into glassified sand, and time ticked backward for those who stayed too long.Joey knelt beside a broken obelisk marked with the sigil of the International Mercenary Alliance—interlocked triangles within a blood-marked eye.He scanned the surface. The symbols weren’t just warnings—they were instructions.“You sure this is the place?” asked Lioran, standing guard beside him.Joey nodded, brushing off dirt. “This is where the informant said the Archivist-Crypt fell. The one that held… the ‘Inheritance Vault.’”Lioran frowned. “Sounds too clean. You think it’s legit?”“No. I think it’s a trap.” Joey stood and tapped the side of his communicator. “But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing here worth stealing from under their noses.”Back at the Vanguard’s mobile camp, Samuel stood near a digital memory-screen. Sarah and Aria stood nearby, tensio

The night was deep in the Vanguard camp—the fire reduced to smoldering coals, shadows long and restless under the tent’s canopy. Only two lanterns burned tall: one by Aria’s chest, the other fixed beside the map table where she and Samuel were once again locked in quiet tension.Sarah stood between them, chest tight, eyes focused on the glowing map of their path ahead. The Spiral Wastes loomed ominously; they had only days until the IMA regrouped.Samuel sat on a low stool, heart heavy. “What did you find, Aria?”Aria pressed a finger to a datapad, projection glowing red and blue.“I pulled genetic resonance logs,” she said, voice steady but urgent. “Pinpointed anomalies tied to your DNA and Sarah’s.”Sarah didn’t flinch.“Anomalies?”Aria nodded. “When you took the Genesis Orb, we thought the bond was new. But the logs show… a seal in Sarah’s genome dating back to infancy.”Samuel’s brow knitted. “Seal?”Aria leaned in.“Ancient power seal. Not synthetic. I decoded the markers. They a

The night had a softness you couldn’t see but could feel—like breath held in velvet. In the hidden chamber beneath Vanguard camp, Samuel sat cross-legged before a circle etched into the floor: an interwoven lattice of Archive Glyphs, Veil Sigils, and his own Spiral – the Nexus Rune.Around him, the ward lights pulsed gently. Aria stood to his left, monitoring glyph-nodes. Sarah knelt at his right, her hand hovering near the Nexus Rune. Joey and Lioran stood guard against interruptions.Samuel’s eyes were half-closed. Fingers traced the Rune’s lines slowly, deliberately. From his chest, a glow started—white with violet edges. It spread along his arms, through his veins, and into his hands.Each exhale carried wordless intention.AR (Minute compression)Samuel (soft whisper): “LUX… Be the watcher unseen. Be the shield unshaken.”Energy flowed into the Rune. Glowing threads snaked upward, weaving around spectral holograms in midair—maps, data streams, eyes of distant satellites, whispers

The morning air in City B carried the stench of smoke and fear. The streets were empty, shop fronts shuttered, but one building—an orphanage—still stood unnaturally quiet.Inside, little ones huddled beneath threadbare blankets. A child with brown curls nuzzled a teddy bear, unaware that something unseen had stolen the other children last night.Joey’s phone buzzed. He stepped into the hallway to answer.“They’re gone,” said the voice on the other end—Aria, voice tight. “Eight kids. All under ten. Taken from the orphanage. IMA raid.”Joey closed his eyes. “Samuel needs to know.”At the Vanguard command centerSarah and Lioran monitored over maps. Lights blinked red where the kidnap had happened.Samuel paced slowly, spine straight like a blade. His fists clenched until nails dug into palms.“They took children?” he asked softly.Sarah swallowed. “Yes. Taken for experiments. Continuation of Orion derivatives.”Samuel’s gaze shifted toward the frozen blood vial on the table—his father’s