They’d been underground for five days.Long enough for the smell of dust and ozone to become part of their skin, long enough for the sound of the world above to fade into a faint, constant hum. Shayne had learned to tell the time by vibration — how the tremors of passing drones changed with the hour.When the Vault opened, the world had changed. Then, just as suddenly, it had gone still again.Too still.He sat cross-legged beside a collapsed pillar, adjusting the cracked interface band on his wrist. It wasn’t connected to anything anymore, but the faint pulse of static kept him grounded — a ghost heartbeat, reminding him he was still tethered to the living.Elysia approached quietly, her boots crunching over loose concrete. “You should eat.”“I’m not hungry.”“That’s not an answer,” she said. She set the ration packet beside him anyway. “We can’t live on adrenaline forever.”He gave her a ghost of a smile. “We’re still alive. That’s progress.”Elysia studied him for a long moment. Hi

The first transmission lasted only forty-three seconds. By the time it ended, seventeen governments had already declared states of emergency. No one knew where it came from. The signal leapt between weather satellites, pirate stations, and dormant Accord arrays buried under oceans — every nation pointed fingers, but the message was always the same. “The fire endures. The Heir remembers. The world will kneel before memory.” It wasn’t just words. Embedded beneath the broadcast were data fragments — blueprints, fragments of erased history, coordinates that led to long-forgotten Accord research sites. Within hours, mercenaries, cults, and journalists were all chasing ghosts. By dawn, the world had split into two camps: those who wanted to silence the voice, and those who wanted to follow it. * * * In New Cairo, the first riot began at sunrise. Thousands of protestors flooded the lower decks, chanting verses pulled from the Heir’s speech — distorted, poetic, half-belief, half-

The air underground still carried the residue of static. A hum that didn’t come from any generator, but from the stone itself — like the city’s bones had absorbed the broadcast. Elysia watched the faint tremor ripple across the rusted pipes overhead. The light from their lantern shivered, cutting lines across Shayne’s face. He hadn’t spoken since the transmission ended. Not since the voice — that soft, commanding whisper — had said He rises from memory. She stepped closer. “It wasn’t your voice,” she said quietly, as if reassuring both of them. Shayne didn’t look at her. “You sure about that?” The words fell flat between them. He turned away, staring into the dripping dark. Somewhere far above, the city groaned under the blackout — the dull echo of unrest moving like a heartbeat through the tunnels. “They used your name again,” she continued. “They’re trying to rewrite the story. The Vault, the Seal — it’s all been turned into some… faith.” He gave a hollow laugh. “So I traded

The light that had consumed the chamber finally dimmed, leaving behind the smell of ozone and iron. A shape sat in the center of the scorched room — still, silent, almost reverent in its stillness.The figure looked like Shayne Marrow. Same jawline. Same eyes. Same faint scar trailing down his temple. But the resemblance was only skin.He blinked for the first time. The motion was mechanical — a flicker, a calibration. His pupils constricted to the dim light, scanning the perimeter, cross-referencing data against neural templates that weren’t his to own.He rose slowly, as though testing gravity for the first time. The remnants of the Vault’s energy webbed faintly across his skin — not the raw red of Shayne’s mark, but a muted amber, controlled, refined.A voice hummed from somewhere deep in his mind: the Accord’s failsafe, still alive in residual code.Protocol continuation in progress.Host integrity: stable.Memory assimilation: ninety-two percent.He frowned. “Ninety-two?”Discrep

The first reports came just before dawn.Emergency channels flickered to life across the remnants of the Accord’s networks, each broadcasting a different version of the same impossible footage: Shayne Marrow alive, standing atop the ruins of the Array—eyes alight, hand raised toward the burning skyline. But in some clips, his expression was serene; in others, savage. One feed showed him shielding civilians from the firestorm. Another showed him starting it.By the third hour, analysts stopped arguing over what was real. Because both versions of him had started moving—at the same time, in different places.Elysia watched it unfold from the safehouse buried under what was once Lagos Sector Nine. The blackout had forced every government into silence, every military into blind panic. And in the vacuum, two figures had emerged—each claiming to be the same man.One was calling for reconstruction.The other, for cleansing.And both spoke with Shayne’s voice.The room around her buzzed with u