All Chapters of BENEATH THE MASK: REVENGE OF SAMUEL HAYES: Chapter 501
- Chapter 510
621 chapters
501
The rain came without warning—sharp, cold, and thick like needles of glass. It soaked through Samuel’s coat as he stood at the edge of the cliff, staring at the narrow road winding through the basin below. The shard he had retrieved at the canyon still burned against his chest, its heat undiminished by water or wind.Behind him, Dareth lit a fire with a snap of his fingers, shielding it from the elements with a dome of flickering flame. Ilara sat cross-legged, her eyes closed, fingers twitching with the echoes of what they’d just experienced in the temporal knot. None of them had spoken much since the escape.Joey’s voice broke the silence through the comm-link. “We’re two hours from Mirror Valley. Kael spotted movement. Sentinels—four of them. No insignia, cloaked in shadows. They knew we were coming.”Samuel turned away from the ledge. “They’re reacting faster now. He’s watching more closely.”“He always was,” Ilara said softly, eyes still closed. “We’ve just started giving him reas
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Samuel didn’t stop until his lungs threatened to rip apart. The forest behind them groaned as if mourning their escape, the pale trees curling inward as the energy from the monoliths ebbed. Deadglass had not consumed them—but it had marked them.Dareth carried Ilara over one shoulder, the wound in her arm leaking magic as much as blood. Her face was pale but determined, lips moving in an endless murmur of protective wards. Every step deeper into the eastern valley brought them closer to the second shard—and further into the Gatekeeper’s trap.“There’s something watching us,” Dareth said, his voice low.Samuel looked around. The land was dry and empty, nothing but jagged rock and dust devils caught in their own dance. “I don’t see anything.”“That’s the problem,” Dareth growled. “I don’t either. And I should.”They stopped at a ridge. Samuel dropped to one knee, pulling the shard from his coat. The light it emitted pulsed three times—then stilled. It no longer pointed. It no longer hum
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Dawn broke in slashes of gold and ash across the jagged skyline. Samuel stood at the edge of the plateau, watching the mist rise over the valley below, where faint lines marked old roads and long-buried cities. The shard pulsed weakly in his pocket now—ever since Reva’s collapse, its energy had dimmed, as if mourning her silence.“She’s waking,” Ilara said behind him.He turned. Reva lay bundled in a thermal cloak, eyes fluttering against the morning light. Her fingers twitched slightly as if reaching for something she could no longer grasp.“She’ll remember everything?” he asked.Ilara nodded. “But the backlash from severing the Mirrorwell... it might’ve fragmented her. She may not know who she is for a while.”Dareth stirred from his watch, cracking his neck. “She’s lucky she’s still breathing.”Samuel glanced at him. “She chose to stop the attack.”“And she still would’ve killed you if she had the strength,” Dareth muttered. “Don’t romanticize mercy.”Ilara sighed. “We need her, Da
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The cold winds of the Northern Divide bit into their skin the moment they crested the ridge. Snow blasted across their faces like shards of glass, and yet none of them hesitated. Not after what they had just survived.Samuel led the group forward—Ilara, Dareth, and Kieran just behind him. Reva remained back at the base with Joey and Sarah, recovering and overseeing the others. For this mission, they only needed precision, not numbers.According to the shard’s resonance, the next Sentinel wasn’t in hiding.He was imprisoned."Coordinates still holding?" Samuel called, voice raised over the howling gale.Ilara adjusted the orb in her palm. The runes etched into its surface flickered, pulsing in response to a steady beat. “Yes. About three hundred meters east—under the glacier.”Dareth grunted. “Wonderful. Let’s just walk into a frozen tomb and hope he’s not dead.”“He can’t die,” Kieran said softly.They all glanced back at him.The boy’s eyes had changed since the last encounter. Where
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After two days of windstorms and sky-cracking heat, the land gave way to the Expanse—an endless stretch of scorched earth and skeletal ruins that reached all the way to the southern horizon. The air shimmered with residual magic, old and hungry. Even without stepping into it, they could feel the static against their skin.Samuel halted at the crumbled border arch, hand resting on the pommel of his blade. "This was once a city.""More than a city," Ilara whispered. "It was one of the last Flame Havens before the Collapse. But when the Gatekeeper rose, this place vanished from all maps."Mavik walked past them, his eyes narrowing. “It didn’t vanish. It was devoured. Turned inside out. The echoes still linger.”Kieran stepped beside Samuel, gripping his staff tightly. "The Sentinel here isn't imprisoned. She's waiting."Samuel raised a brow. “You’re sure it’s a she?”Kieran nodded. “Her presence feels... melodic. But discordant too. Like a song split into two harmonies.”Reva, now recove
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The road to Mirror Valley twisted through silent canyons and moonlit ridges, every turn hiding more than just shadows. By the time Samuel’s team reached the valley’s outer ridge, they were battered from the terrain, but not broken.Mirror Valley lay below like a scar of silver against the earth—its lake still, glassy, reflecting stars that hadn’t yet appeared in the sky. The trees along its edge stood tall and skeletal, stripped bare as if something had consumed their leaves.Dareth stood at the edge of the ridge, eyes narrowed. “Something’s wrong.”“It’s too quiet,” Ilara agreed. “This place was supposed to be neutral. A convergence point. But it’s...empty.”Joey unslung his rifle slowly, cocking it. “Maybe we got here first.”“No,” Samuel said. “If we had, the lake wouldn’t be like that. Look at it. The stars are reflected—but not the moon.”Everyone froze. Above them, the moon hung full and bright, but in the lake, there was only darkness.“That’s not water,” Kieran said. “It’s a s
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The echo of their arrival still rippled through the chamber as Samuel paced slowly before the Core Gate. The symbols on the locks flickered with a faint pulse, responding subtly to the presence of the Guardians. Each hue was unique, yet there was something off—a hesitance in their resonance, as though the locks sensed that something had changed.Reva knelt by the base of the gate, running her hand along one of the cracks. “These aren’t natural fractures. Someone tried to force it open.”Samuel frowned. “The Gatekeeper?”“No. If it were him, the energy residue would be corrupted. This feels... ancient. Like an echo of something unfinished.”Ilara approached the far wall, where patterns in the stone shifted beneath her gaze. “He was here, but so was something else. Another force tried to harness the gate before him. It failed.”Dareth stood motionless, his arms folded across his broad chest, fire flickering gently across his shoulders. “Then we’re not just fighting the Gatekeeper. We’re
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Even in shifts, with trusted comrades standing guard, the tension was an invisible weight draped across their shoulders. Samuel sat alone by the edge of the chamber, staring into the pulsing core of the Gate. Its nine locks shimmered like stars in a pattern he’d begun to memorize—but still couldn’t decipher.Behind him, footsteps approached.“Can’t sleep either?” Ilara’s voice was quiet.Samuel shook his head. “It’s like the Gate hums directly into my bones. Even when I close my eyes, it’s all I hear.”Ilara sat beside him, hugging her knees. For a while, they didn’t speak.“I’ve been thinking about Alion,” she said eventually. “About what he said… ‘Even the worthy can fall.’ Do you think he meant himself?”“I think he meant all of us.”Samuel looked at his hands—hands that had taken lives, changed destinies, stolen fire from gods and returned it to mortals.“I used to believe I was doing everything for a reason. Now, I’m not always sure.”Ilara studied him. “You’re not the same man I
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The Trial of Endurance didn’t begin with fire. It began with nothing.Joey opened his eyes and found himself standing in a vast, gray expanse—flat as death, silent as sleep. There was no wind, no sky, no horizon, only fog that clung to the ground like ash.He took a step forward. The fog coiled around his boots like something sentient.“Great,” he muttered. “Hell’s waiting room.”His voice didn’t echo.He reached for his comm crystal out of habit, but it wasn’t there. No weapons. No armor. Just a worn gray shirt and dark pants—like he’d been stripped of everything but skin and spine.A whisper slid into the air behind him.“Joey…”He turned fast, but nothing was there.“Joey…”Again, louder. Familiar. He knew that voice.Another figure emerged from the fog. A woman—shorter than him, lean, wrapped in a soldier’s stance. She had Joey’s eyes.His sister.“Alana?”She didn’t smile. She looked straight through him.“You left me,” she said flatly.Joey’s breath hitched. “You died. I couldn’
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The air grew heavy with silence as Samuel and his group reached the outskirts of Tarsen Ridge, a forgotten region nestled between fractured mountains and overgrown ruins. The earth felt old here, ancient, as if the ground itself remembered too much. Wind passed through broken statues and toppled spires, whispering the names of those long dead.Ilara paused, her eyes scanning the horizon. “This used to be a sanctuary,” she murmured. “Long before the Nexus war. Before the Gatekeeper’s influence bled into the soil.”Dareth grunted, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. “Feels more like a graveyard.”Samuel crouched beside a moss-covered marker, brushing away the lichen. Symbols etched into the stone glowed faintly—an old language, pre-dating the current cycle. His fingers traced the carvings, unlocking a soft pulse of energy. The earth trembled gently.“They sealed something here,” he said. “Not a relic. A memory.”Ilara stepped forward. “Let me.”As her hands hovered above the rune