All Chapters of BENEATH THE MASK: REVENGE OF SAMUEL HAYES: Chapter 571
- Chapter 580
621 chapters
572
He sat on a throne of roots and ash, deep in the heart of a world no map would name.Above him stretched a sky of shifting black—liquid, alive, and utterly silent. No stars. No constellations. Only the ripple of void-light where reality frayed.The Gatekeeper no longer needed form, but he wore one anyway—tall, robed in deep obsidian folds, with hands too long and eyes that flickered with the memory of broken souls. His mouth never moved, but the air around him whispered, always whispering.Beneath his feet pulsed the convergence circle—a ring of molten glyphs carved through the bones of the Second Gate.The Gate was not open yet.But it was breathing.Its hunger rippled through the air like heat off cracked stone.He stood.The whispers around him rose into a chant—not in words, but meaning:They remember.They resist.They rebuild.They must be undone.He swept his arm across the air—and the void shimmered into a window.Dozens of flamepoints flickered into view across the continent.
Last Updated : 2025-06-29
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The wind on the high cliffs of Kellen Reach carried no scent of rot, no song of birds—only silence and salt.Sarah stood before the cairn of stone they had built weeks ago. No flame burned here. No relic marked the site. Only a shallow curve of earth, packed with reverence, and a shard of Joey’s old blade driven into the center like a monument.There had never been time for more.He had fallen protecting her—again.And she'd buried him with shaking hands.She wasn’t sure what had pulled her back here.Only that the flamepath had stirred that morning—quietly. Like a breath caught in the lungs of the world.Rion knelt beside her, placing a smooth riverstone on the pile.“He’d hate this,” Rion said. “The quiet. The rocks.”Sarah smiled faintly. “He would’ve preferred a bonfire and a bottle of something that burns twice.”“He deserved it,” Kiyen murmured behind them.They had all come—those who could.Lin stood to the side, eyes unfocused. Tessa held a small flamefruit flower between her
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Footfalls against stone. Steel against wood. Breath against frost.The Guardians had begun training again.Not for themselves.But for those who had nothing.And chose to stand anyway.It started with only seven recruits.A mix of frightened, determined faces—pulled from shattered towns, broken sanctuaries, and the outer wilds. They came with calloused hands and stories carved into their bones.No one was chosen.No one had flame.But they had intent.That was enough.Sarah watched them from the upper terrace of Seridan’s Flame Court, arms crossed, Nexus mark dim under her cloak. Below, Rion shouted corrections as two boys—barely sixteen—tried to hold a proper stance with training spears.“Wider,” Rion barked. “You’re not balancing dinner trays, you’re fighting nightmares.”One of them slipped.Tessa was there before he hit the stone.“Up,” she said gently, helping him steady his grip. “Fail now. Bleed now. So later, you live.”The boy nodded.The Guardians had disagreed at first.“To
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The flamepath opened with no sound.No flash.No heat.Just a shift in the air, like a page turned in the book of the world—and suddenly, he was there.Samuel.Alive.Whole.And burning with a quiet fire that was no longer just power—but purpose.Sarah turned slowly from the map table in Seridan’s upper observatory, stunned into stillness. The others nearby froze. Lin’s breath caught. Rion stepped back. Tessa dropped her training blade.He stepped into the room as if no time had passed.But the world knew better.His hair was streaked with ember-red. His skin bore faint glyphs along the arms—marks of tetherbreaking, timeline walking. His eyes…They weren’t the eyes of the boy who sealed the Gate.They were older.Heavy.And kind.“Samuel,” Sarah breathed. “We thought—”“I know.”He looked around the chamber—the constellation wall, the pulse map, the training scrolls—and nodded once, slowly.“You’ve built something.”Sarah swallowed. “We’re trying.”“You did more than try.” He walked p
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The chamber beneath Seridan’s Flame Archive had no doors—only memory.It could not be found on a map. Could not be reached by stairs.To enter, one had to be called.And tonight, five recruits were.They stood in a circle of stone and silver ash, the sigils of the Nine etched around them, glowing faintly in hues that matched no living fire—colors belonging to lives extinguished, but not forgotten.Sarah stood outside the ring, silent.Beside her, Lin watched with eyes that seemed older than ever.“They’re ready,” Lin said softly.Sarah didn’t respond. Her breath was held in her chest.This moment was sacred.Each of the five recruits held a shard in their hand—smooth, dark fragments drawn from the relics of Guardians who had fallen in the early days of the war. They were not weapons. They were echoes.Memories locked in form.Whispers of power waiting to be chosen.And if the bond took, the shard would flare—merging with the recruit’s flame, amplifying their path, guiding their instin
Last Updated : 2025-06-29
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At the edge of the ruined cliffs of Maereth's Spine, Lin stood alone, hands outstretched, hair twisting in the wind like threads of silk flame.Around her, the air shimmered—not with heat, but with tension.Lines of light—thin as breath, fragile as thought—danced between floating relics she’d planted across the canyon ridge.Each relic was different.One carved from Guardian bone.Another from Sentinel crystal, purified through flame.A third bound with living bark grown from the Nexus Tree.Each one pulsed with its own beat, its own memory.And now, Lin was weaving them together.Back at Seridan, Sarah watched from a mirrored projection orb. The image was faint—occasionally flickering—but clear enough to reveal what Lin was doing.“She’s combining flame patterns with resonance ley-paths,” Rion said quietly. “She’s making a net.”Tessa frowned. “A net for what?”Sarah didn’t answer.Because she already knew.Out on the cliff, Lin spoke—though no one was near.Her voice was like the wi
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The wind howled across the southern wastes of Varneth Hollow, curling through cracked stone and scorched earth like a predator searching for prey.Dareth sat alone by the remains of a fallen archway, legs folded, hands clasped, eyes fixed on a pile of cooling ash.He hadn’t meant to burn the forest.Not that much.But the flame didn’t listen to him anymore.It had started as a rescue mission.A simple sweep. One of the new recruits—Lio—had gone missing near the Varneth outskirts after a Flame Net pulse. Dareth had offered to go alone.“You sure?” Sarah had asked. “You haven’t been sleeping.”He’d waved her off. “It’s me. I won’t even need to light a blade.”He hadn’t meant to lie.But Lio wasn’t just missing.The boy had been taken.When Dareth found him, the scene had already soured into nightmare.A half-sunken Sentinel construct had risen from the dry riverbed—long-dormant, drawn to the boy’s flickering spark like a shark to blood.It wasn’t fully awake. Not yet.But it was hungry.
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He hadn’t slept since the shard-storm in Mereth broke five weeks ago—since the light filled his lungs and left its symbols behind.Now, in the moonlit infirmary below Seridan’s sanctuary, he sat upright in the cot.Watching.Waiting.Whispering names that didn’t belong in this world.Sarah stood at the doorway, her knuckles clenched around the edge of the threshold. Lin was beside her, silent, arms folded, the soft glow of her forearm sigils reflecting in the still water that collected along the floor from the mountain’s cold breath.The child—Aem—looked seven years old.But when he turned toward them, his eyes carried centuries.“I heard him again,” Aem said. His voice was small. Delicate. Too calm.Sarah stepped closer. “The Gatekeeper?”He nodded. “Not speaking. Not directly. But humming. In the walls. In the space behind the space.”He touched his chest, just over his heart. “The mark hurts when he’s near. But it sings when he’s coming.”Lin exhaled slowly. “And now?”Aem didn’t a
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The edge of the world was not flat.It curved upward—like a question.Samuel stood at the very lip of the ancient rift known as The Unmade Fold, where maps failed, compasses spun, and even flame grew silent.He had followed the tether this far. Through flamepath echoes. Through gate-marks on broken stone. Through whispers in the net only he could hear.They all pointed here.To the beginning.Or perhaps the undoing.The earth beneath his feet was not earth anymore.It remembered being stone—but only faintly.Now it pulsed—soft, like flesh, but without warmth.Above him, the sky folded into itself. A dozen half-moons hung suspended, overlapping like discarded coins. Stars blinked in wrong places. The air smelled of iron and ash, and when Samuel exhaled, his breath came out black.Still, he pressed forward.He had to see it for himself.He found it at the base of the Fold, lodged between time-frozen roots of a tree that no longer cast a shadow.The Void Shard.It was nothing like the ot
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Across the fractured regions once seething with shard pulses, the Flame Net detected… nothing.No flares.No fragment activity.No Sentinel movement.No Gatekeeper glyphs appearing overnight in blood or shadow.The world had not healed.But it had gone silent.In the high towers of Seridan, Sarah paced the map hall, frowning at the smoothed lines across the network.“We’ve had thirty-six uninterrupted hours of quiet,” Tessa reported. “Even Gharai’s woundfields aren’t bleeding light anymore.”Sarah crossed her arms. “That’s not right. There should’ve been backlash. Movement. Anything.”Tessa hesitated. “Are you saying we’re… losing the war too quietly?”“No,” Sarah murmured. “I’m saying we’re not fighting anymore. Because he doesn’t want us to.”She tapped the map's center.“The Gatekeeper is hiding. And that terrifies me more than his attacks ever did.”Out in the field, squads returned.Battered, bruised—but victorious.Or so they believed.In Kelnar’s Valley, children began playing
Last Updated : 2025-06-29