The morning wind sliced across the upper ridge like a warning.Samuel stood at the command balcony, watching the thin veil of clouds unravel along the horizon. But his attention was elsewhere—drawn toward the faint pulse that had echoed just hours ago. It hadn’t come from within Sarah. This was different. Older. Wilder.It was as if the world had exhaled.“Second Gate,” Sarah had whispered the night before.And now, something beyond the snowcaps was stirring in response.Joey entered the chamber, adjusting the hilt of his sidearm. “Recon confirms visual distortion over the eastern glacier shelf. Fog’s behaving wrong. Drone footage’s glitching out.”“Electromagnetic?” Samuel asked.“More like temporal layering. Everything’s overlapping. One frame shows clear sky, next shows lightning strikes—on loop.”Samuel nodded, deep in thought. “It’s responding.”“Responding to her?” Joey asked, glancing toward the infirmary below.“Maybe,” Samuel muttered. “Or maybe... to us.”In the medical wing

The cold was the first thing Samuel noticed.Not physical cold—his body, reinforced by energy coursing through his veins, no longer registered discomfort like it used to. No, this was spiritual cold. A chill that crept into thoughts and dreams, into the marrow of memory. Snow fell around the ruins of the Gate as if mourning its awakening, flakes dissolving before they even touched the skin of those who had touched its core.Sarah stood nearby, unmoving, her gaze fixed on the horizon. Her presence had changed. Once ethereal and reactive, now her aura had settled into something deeper—like the ocean at midnight. Still. Vast. Dangerous if disturbed.Behind them, Joey grunted as he rose to his feet, clutching his ribs. “Tell me that wasn’t the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”Tala brushed frost from her cloak. “It’s close. But not the stupidest.”“Top five?”“Easily.”Aria didn’t speak. She was kneeling in the snow, arms wrapped around herself, as if trying to keep something inside. Her

The wind swept across the battlefield like a quiet sigh, scattering the ashes of Iron Silence into the snow. The giant's last words still lingered in Samuel's mind: “Beware the One Who Burns Memory.”Joey descended from his overwatch perch, rifle slung across his back. “So that’s one of the Ten Kings? Just... gone now?”“Not gone,” Aria said, staring at the scorched earth where the metal titan had crumbled. “Kings like him don’t die. They leave impressions. That’s what the Spiral wants. Every death is a scar on the timeline.”Sarah looked pale, her breath trembling. “Did anyone else hear what he said before he dissolved?”Samuel nodded. “The One Who Burns Memory.”Joey raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a bedtime story gone wrong.”“No,” Tala interrupted. “It’s worse than that. That’s a Spiral myth. Or so we thought.”Samuel turned toward her, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. “Explain.”Tala crouched beside the broken remains of a pillar and drew a symbol into the snow—an eye w

The sun had not yet risen, but the frozen peaks were already bathed in a faint, blood-red hue—an omen, Sarah thought, as she stared at the horizon from the high ridge. A tension pressed down on her chest, like gravity had thickened overnight. Below, Vanguard members moved silently, preparing for the assault on the convergence facility Solas had marked.Samuel stood at the front edge of the camp, armored and motionless, his cloak fluttering in the mountain wind. His eyes were locked on the cliff walls ahead—he wasn’t seeing stone. He was seeing the next battle. The next threat.He was seeing him.The Second King.The first—the Mirror Entity—had almost rewritten his soul.The second one, according to Solas’ intelligence, was worse.It didn’t erase memories.It rewrote bodies.A perversion of science and psionics. A living forge of flesh and identity.They called him The Sculptor.“Report,” Samuel said as Joey approached, wiping sweat from his brow after hours of equipment calibration.“

Snow fell in rhythmic silence around the mountain refuge as dawn crawled across the sky in blood-colored streaks. Inside the cave, Sarah’s breathing had grown weaker, the once-steady rise and fall of her chest now sporadic, strained—like she was gasping from beneath invisible waters.Joey watched from a distance, his jaw clenched, guilt wrapping around his throat like a noose. He hated feeling useless. Each minute that passed felt like watching a clock wind down toward something irreversible.Aria sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by glowing tablets and ancient relics. Runes lit her face in shades of pale gold. Her brows furrowed in frustration.“It’s accelerating,” she muttered, brushing strands of hair from her eyes. “The corruption isn't just temporal. It’s metaphysical. Her soul-thread is unraveling.”Samuel stood in the corner, arms crossed, his body completely still. But inside, his mind was a tempest of rage, fear, and relentless calculation. The vision shown by the Tim