All Chapters of BENEATH THE MASK: REVENGE OF SAMUEL HAYES: Chapter 341
- Chapter 350
621 chapters
341
The pine-scented air of the camp settled over them like a lullaby. A frozen lake lay just beyond the circle of tents, its surface so smooth it mirrored the aurora dancing above. LUX’s shield nestled into low hum, casting gentle gold-blue glow through the camp, but everything else seemed calm, almost comforting.Inside Samuel’s tent, candles flickered. Aria rearranged sleep packs while Sarah and Joey rested nearby, exhausted from their emotional battle. LUX sat perched like a quiet guardian. It was almost midnight.SAMUEL sat on the edge of his cot, boots unlaced, reflections of candlelight in his spiraled rune. Aria crouched beside him, folding his coat with care.She spoke softly, voice wavering:“You can lie down… we don’t have to—”He interrupted gently:“No.” He looked at her, earnest. “I want to stay awake with you—just until sleep arrives.”Aria’s breath caught. She bit her lip, nodding. Tent’s warm air shimmered as she slid closer. She brushed his hand. “Okay.”Their faces hove
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Samuel stood at the prow of the ancient monorail car as it rattled through the Himalayan foothills. Outside, twilight draped jagged peaks in molten gold, the air thin and laced with spiritual tension. He gripped the rune-etched railing, feeling its pulse echo his own “Inheritance Pulse” — the ancestral power that now lent weight to every breath.Sarah and Aria flanked him. Joey walked behind, scanning remotely mapped footprints in snow. LUX’s soft hum trailed in their comms.They were here to reach the sealed Vault of Song. An artifact used by Samuel’s parents to contain Veil energy, now buried beneath the Sanctuary of the Sky.Samuel exhaled. He sensed the mountain’s breath, the vestiges of ancient wards. This place was alive with old magic.Sarah cleared her throat. “We’re approaching the drop point.” Her voice was steady, but her eyes betrayed awe.He nodded. “Remember: no open energy cursing. We need precision.”The monorail jolted into a darkened cavern. Crystalline veins glowed
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Snow swept violently across the high-altitude cliffs, but the cold wasn’t what made the air hard to breathe—it was the unseen force that pulsed beneath the soil, resonating like a buried heart. The winds carried more than ice; they carried whispers, echoes of ancient languages that hadn’t been spoken aloud in centuries. Words of warning. Words of power.The Vanguard stood at the foot of the sealed valley—an ancient pass choked with spiraling runes and floating shards of obsidian rock. At the edge of that broken terrain stood a shimmering wall of translucent blue. The barrier shimmered with symbols from the Orion Codex, flickering between dimensions like a heartbeat syncing with an alien mind.“No one crosses this threshold,” said the monk who had guided them, his voice tight with finality. “This path only opens to the bloodline of the First Light. To force it… is to invite a breach between realms.”Samuel stared at the shimmering seal with clenched fists. The mark of Orion pulsed fain
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It was not the sound of stone grinding against stone, but of a world exhaling, as if it had finally caught their scent. Samuel and Sarah stood on the edge of something ancient—older than any known structure, deeper than the subconscious mind, a place where thought could carve stone and guilt could manifest flesh.“This isn’t just another vault,” Sarah whispered, her voice echoing unnaturally. “It’s… alive.”The passage before them shimmered like melted glass, twisting in impossible angles. The walls were not made of stone, but a smooth, liquid-like surface that reflected not their physical forms—but their emotions. Every breath they took painted color into the walls: red when Sarah trembled, flickering violet when Samuel clenched his fists.He took her hand.“Stay close,” he said quietly.She nodded. Her hand was cold.As they stepped deeper into the illusion realm, the atmosphere changed. Sound grew distant, muffled, like being submerged underwater. Time didn’t move linearly—one step
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Samuel and Sarah had just stepped away from the fractured illusion realm, their bodies aching from the weight of confronting their own darkness. Now, within this enormous subterranean dome, the atmosphere had shifted again—this time to something older, colder, and profoundly sentient.The walls glowed faintly with runes that pulsed like veins of a living being. Each symbol hummed in rhythm with Sarah’s heartbeat. At the center of the dome stood the Artifact: a monolith of obsidian and crystal, floating inches above a silver dais. It spun slowly, like a planet suspended in a gravity well. Fragments of memory—voices, cries, laughter—whispered in the air around it, too fragmented to understand.Aria stood already before it, her coat torn at the shoulder, eyes wide and glimmering. Her fingers hovered inches from the monolith, trembling slightly—not with fear, but with recognition.“This is it,” she said, her voice low, almost reverent. “The heart of the Gate... the core from which all psy
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Samuel didn’t remember falling.He only remembered the sound—the way it cracked through his skull like a tuning fork struck against the fabric of reality. A pitchless vibration that wasn't heard, but felt, rippling through his bones and seizing his breath.He dropped to his knees before the Artifact.The monolith had resealed, the first seal closed tight again after Sarah's blood had reacted to it. But now it pulsed in rhythm—not with Sarah, but with him. With every thrum of its light, something deep inside Samuel pulsed back.Like a mirrored heartbeat.“Something’s wrong,” he whispered, clutching his chest.Sarah turned sharply. “Samuel?”He gritted his teeth as the pain lanced through his ribcage and spine. The resonance between his blood and the Artifact was accelerating—spiraling into dangerous synchronization. Symbols from the vault began lighting up across the floor beneath him, flaring to life in succession, like a countdown.Aria’s face paled. “He’s syncing with the core.”“No
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Sarah had always known the danger would come for him first.Samuel had been the center of the storm from the beginning—born of secrets, haunted by forces no one could name, and forged in a crucible of shadow and light. But as she knelt beside him now, his chest barely rising, veins burning gold beneath his skin, she understood something far more terrifying.The Artifact hadn’t just reacted to his power.It had tried to consume him.His body trembled in her arms, too hot to hold. His fingers spasmed in silence. His pulse raced and then slowed, staggered, faltered.He was dying.“He’s rejecting the core resonance,” Aria said, frantically scanning the runes that still pulsed weakly along the floor. “His cells are over-saturated. His body can’t hold what it awakened. He’s collapsing at the molecular level.”Sarah didn’t respond. Her eyes were on his.They were still open—but vacant. Glowing, pulsing, dimming.“No,” she whispered, brushing his soaked hair from his forehead. “No, you’re not
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The wind was bitter on the mountainside.High above the world, in the snow-choked ridges of the Tibetan cliffs, the sky stretched gray and wide, like a mourning shroud. Beneath it, Samuel stood still, the woman he loved cradled in his arms.Sarah hadn’t stirred since the resonance had torn through them. Her skin was cold but not lifeless, her breathing slow but steady, her eyelids fluttering like distant memories caught in a storm.But her soul—her light—was quiet now.Too quiet.Joey had rejoined them at the base of the ridge with what remained of the Vanguard team. Aria moved around them briskly, setting up a portable energy shield to shield the group from detection. No one dared speak too loud. No one tried to interrupt.Samuel had not said a word in hours.He sat beside a fire that he had built not with flint and stone, but with raw light summoned from his palm. A fire that did not consume wood, but burned in a slow, golden flame—warm and silent, like a memory refusing to die.Sar
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Dimly. Slowly. Like a dying heart refusing to surrender its final beat.In the cold depths of the Temple of Origin, its obsidian form loomed above the center chamber—half-sealed, half-awake. Though the first lock had already been broken, the remaining two held fast, their glyphs still dormant. The ancient patterns no longer screamed with light as they had during Sarah’s collapse—but they shimmered faintly now, responding to a presence that should not yet exist.Samuel stood at the threshold once more.His breath misted in the thin, frigid air. Behind him, the Vanguard team had taken up cautious positions along the perimeter of the chamber, weapons holstered, ready to intervene but terrified of interfering. No one understood the Artifact—not truly. Not Aria with all her stolen research, nor Joey with his endless optimism. And certainly not Samuel, who felt the weight of it humming against his skin like a curse made flesh.But he knew one thing.Something inside had started watching.Th
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The wind howled across the Western cliffs of the old West Line compound, biting with a bitterness that seemed almost intentional—as if the mountains themselves wanted to keep secrets buried.Samuel pressed his gloved hand against the frost-covered keypad embedded in the rock wall. The device flickered to life after several attempts, emitting a sharp, low beep that echoed across the ravine.They were here.Behind him, Joey exhaled a white cloud of breath and lowered his rifle slightly. “You sure this is the place? Doesn't look like anyone’s been here in years.”“That’s the point,” Samuel replied.The mountain rumbled softly as the door began to slide open, stone scraping against steel. The darkness beyond was thick and stagnant, untouched by light or life for decades. Samuel’s eyes narrowed. There was something different about the energy here—not malicious, but still… watching.The group advanced into the corridor, their boots echoing on the metal floor panels. The bunker smelled of ru