All Chapters of BENEATH THE MASK: REVENGE OF SAMUEL HAYES: Chapter 391
- Chapter 400
621 chapters
392
The storm parted above the Gate like curtains of heaven tearing open. Light poured down in strange, layered shafts—some golden, some violet, some pitch black, like threads stitched from dimensions not yet born. Samuel stepped back from the monolith, the pulse of its activation still burning through his veins like divine static.And then he felt them.Ten separate gravitational pulls.Ten consciousnesses—twisted, ancient, and powerful—descended upon the battlefield like gods from ruined stars.The Vanguard regrouped, forming a defensive semi-circle around the monolith. Snow and blood streaked the ice. The wounded cried out behind hastily raised barriers of kinetic energy and conjured stone.Joey’s voice crackled through the internal comms. “Samuel… we’ve got a problem. A big one.”Samuel didn’t answer.He was already looking at them.They emerged from the curling smoke and dimensional fractures left in the wake of the Gate’s awakening. Cloaked in relic armor, each of them bore weapons
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Samuel’s blade of light and shadow clashed with the Masked King’s aura of void, and for a brief moment, the very air between them ceased to exist—reality itself gasped. Time bent. Stars flickered in and out like faulty signals.And then it happened.The Masked King lifted a single finger and traced a symbol midair. A pulse of ancient magic erupted—one not of force, but of absence. Samuel’s footing slipped on the collapsing ice. Beneath him, the glacier split with a guttural roar.“Samuel!” Sarah’s voice cried, distant.But it was too late.The world beneath him gave way.And he fell.The abyss swallowed Samuel whole.He didn’t scream.He couldn’t.The air was stripped from his lungs the moment he plummeted into the rift. Down, down—past layers of ice that had never known sunlight, past the veins of crystal and relics buried in time. The world blurred into darkness and silence.And then—Impact.He hit something hard. Unyielding.But it didn’t kill him.Instead, it welcomed him.He lay
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The frost still shimmered on Samuel’s skin as he stepped through the shattered remains of the battlefield. The cold no longer bit at him—it obeyed him. Snowflakes danced around his shoulders like feathers caught in slow time, and the whispers of the dying storm echoed with reverence.All around him, the Vanguard was silent.Even the Ten Kings who remained had vanished into the ether, scattered by the weight of Samuel’s rebirth. The Gate behind him pulsed with dormant energy, no longer unstable but watchful—as if waiting for one final reckoning.“Where is he?” Samuel murmured.Joey, limping and bleeding from his left arm, pointed toward a distant ridge wrapped in spiraling ruins of ancient black stone. “He’s waiting there. The man behind the curtain.”“The one who signed your father’s death,” Sarah added quietly. “UN Security Head. Director Caelum Varion.”Samuel’s jaw clenched. The name wasn’t new—but knowing he was finally this close to the architect of everything twisted around his
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Behind Samuel, the chamber where Caelum Varion had taken his final breath was now sealed beneath layers of frozen stone. The air shimmered from residual frostlight, and the silence that followed his death carried weight—like the moment after a war ends, but before the bodies are buried.Samuel stood at the edge of a new dawn, but the world did not yet know it.Sarah and Joey emerged behind him. Both were battle-worn, bloodied, and quiet. Joey held a broken commlink in one hand; Sarah had her arm wrapped tightly in makeshift gauze, her shoulder stained red.They didn’t speak.They didn’t have to.He was dead.Caelum Varion—the mastermind of IMA’s internal council, the man who signed Samuel’s father’s death warrant, the silent manipulator of Project Orion—was gone.But it wasn’t over.Not yet.From the north ridge, Aria approached, carrying a metallic satchel. Her expression was unreadable. “We found it,” she said. “The relay terminal Varion used to communicate with the UN Security Netw
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Samuel stood alone at the edge of the frozen Tibetan plateau, his breath barely misting despite the cold. The glow of frostlight within his body pulsed gently beneath his skin, a reminder of the transformation he had undergone, and the storm he had unleashed upon the world.Behind him, Vanguard's temporary base buzzed with frantic energy. Joey was coordinating intel streams, Sarah was tending to the wounded, and Aria remained uncharacteristically quiet, her gaze often turning skyward, as if waiting for something no one else could see.But Samuel’s thoughts were inward.He had exposed everything. Every lie. Every secret.Now came the cost.A sound broke the silence—soft footsteps crunching snow.Sarah approached, bundled in a thermal cloak, her expression unreadable.“You didn’t come back inside,” she said gently.“I couldn’t,” Samuel replied without looking at her. “Not yet.”She stopped beside him, arms folded against the wind. “You did something no one else could’ve done. You change
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The Vanguard base was silent, heavy with tension and expectation. Word had spread through the team like wildfire—Samuel’s identity as the final result of Project Orion had been confirmed, and the world was now spiraling into upheaval. Yet, in that silence, something else lingered. An unease that none dared name.In the command tent, Aria Lin stood alone.The room was dim, lit only by a faint blue glow from the LUX terminal. Aria’s eyes were bloodshot, her fingers trembling slightly as she held a small metallic capsule in her palm. She stared at it like it was alive—because in many ways, it was.The failsafe.The one thing Samuel didn’t know she had built.Her orders from the IMA had been clear, years ago: infiltrate the remnants of Project Orion, gain the trust of the key subjects, and install a control mechanism should any one of them—especially Samuel—become unstable. She had done exactly that.But she had never expected to care.Not like this.“Doctor Lin.”Aria flinched.Joey stoo
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The clouds had scattered into a spiral formation—celestial, unnatural—as though the heavens themselves were watching. A low hum vibrated through the atmosphere, deeper than thunder, older than time. Even miles away from the Vanguard’s hidden base, villagers and mercenaries alike turned their heads to the east, toward the light that danced beyond the mountains.The Vault had opened.But no one knew what had stepped inside… or what would come back out.Inside the Vanguard command tent, Sarah stood at the central table, her eyes fixed on the flickering biometric readouts of Samuel. His vitals, once readable in pulses and graphs, had transformed into patterns of light and motion. LUX, the AI built from Samuel’s soul-energy, struggled to interpret.“It’s not biological anymore,” LUX said through its holographic interface. “It’s… harmonic.”“Harmonic?” Joey asked, squinting at the readings. “Like music?”“Like resonance,” LUX answered. “Like a voice aligning itself with the frequency of the
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Not the silence of defeat or fear—but the breathless stillness that follows transformation. As dawn rose over the Tibetan peaks, the snow glistened like polished crystal, glowing with the remnants of energy that had burst from the Vault hours before. Light lingered in the air like dust suspended in time. Every gust of wind seemed to whisper a question no one had the answer to yet.And from that light, Samuel returned.He walked barefoot across the frost-covered ground, no longer in armor or uniform, but wrapped in a simple robe of layered white and silver. No one saw him descend from the mountain. One moment, there was nothing—and the next, he was there, standing before the new Vanguard command camp as if he had always belonged.The sentries said nothing. They simply lowered their weapons and bowed their heads.He was no longer just their commander.He was something else now.Inside the newly constructed meeting hall—made from salvaged tech and reinforced with aetherstone from the Vau
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The train eased into the outskirts of City A under the shroud of dawn, its sleek black shell reflecting the faintest glow of the rising sun. Fog rolled across the tracks like hesitant spirits, masking the city’s skyline in a haze of dust and half-forgotten ambition.Samuel stood alone in the final carriage, his hands tucked into the pockets of a charcoal-gray coat. He wore no insignia, no armor, no visible display of power. And yet, power pulsed beneath his skin—subtle, restrained, but undeniable.This was his city once.Before the Vault. Before the fire and blood and betrayal.Now it was time to reclaim it.The doors slid open with a quiet hiss.Samuel stepped out into a different world.Despite the fall of Spiral and the global upheaval that followed, City A had clung to its old power structures like ivy on a dying tree. The elite class remained hidden behind walls reinforced with outdated mercenary tech. Crime lords flourished in the gaps left by collapsed military chains. Whispers
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The meeting was held underground, beneath the skeletal remains of what had once been the headquarters of the Central Security Bureau—a building that had collapsed in the early days of Samuel’s rebellion. Now, its ruined bowels served a new purpose: a war room for the desperate.Lisa leaned against the rusted edge of the old tactical table, her crimson lips pursed, eyes fixed on a city blueprint projected into the air. Her leather gloves were stained with oil and something darker. Beside her stood Arthur, gaunt and grizzled, fingers tapping impatiently against the hilt of a ceremonial dagger he had not used in years.Only three other people were present: high-ranking survivors of their old elite force—each a shadow of their former glory.“This is suicide,” one of them grunted. “We have, what, fifty men total? Half of them mercs who’d switch sides for a better paycheck.”Lisa smiled coldly. “And yet, you came.”“That’s because we have no other choice,” Arthur muttered, his voice low and