2025-05-15 17:47:11
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188
Samuel stood atop the old watchtower overlooking the eastern wall, his cloak flapping in the breeze. The glyph on his forearm was still burning faintly under his skin, pulsing like a second heartbeat. The Raven Path had changed him. Not just his powers — his perception of time, pain, even reality itself. Everything felt thinner now, fragile.Below him, Aretra was moving again.The Brook family banners were rising from the spires. One by one, their agents and sleeper factions reclaimed sectors of the city. Bribes, manipulation, bloodshed — their methods hadn’t changed. What had changed was their boldness.And it made Samuel sick.He clenched his fists.Footsteps sounded behind him.It was Sarah.“They’ve taken Sector 9 entirely,” she said. “And they’re moving on the lower refinery routes. If they reach the archives—”“They won’t,” Samuel interrupted, his voice low. “We’re taking the city back.”Sarah frowned. “Not yet.”Samuel turned to her, sharp. “What do you mean, not yet?”“Exactly
187
Night had fallen over the outpost, but the air was restless. A subtle tension vibrated through the ground, like the land itself held its breath in anticipation of something catastrophic. The moon hung low and swollen, tinted red — a bad omen, The Falcon had once said.Samuel stood at the edge of the courtyard, staring at the horizon. He hadn't spoken a word since stepping out of the Mirror Glyph chamber.Sarah approached quietly behind him, holding out a flask of bitterroot tea, laced with stabilizers to help mitigate the side effects of temporal dissonance. She knew better than to ask what he saw — the haunted look in his eyes had told her everything."You haven't blinked in five minutes," she said softly.Samuel blinked."Guess I forgot," he replied, his voice rough. He took the flask without looking and drank deeply."You saw the fifth glyph, didn't you?""No," he muttered. "I saw what guards it. Or... who."Sarah stepped beside him. "The Bloodstone Guardian?"He finally turned tow
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The early morning fog had barely begun to lift from Aretra’s skyline when Samuel stepped into the chamber beneath the Resistance command. A dozen eyes turned toward him—some with admiration, others with uncertainty. It was different now. They could sense it. Something in him had shifted.The glyphs that once burned on his skin now pulsed faintly beneath it, like an invisible heartbeat tethered to something far more ancient than flesh.Sarah stood near the main table, her fingers flying across the interactive surface, shifting maps, cross-referencing resistance positions with Brook family checkpoints. She glanced up.“Finally,” she said. “You took long enough.”“I didn’t rush,” Samuel replied, his voice quieter, heavier. “It would’ve broken me if I had.”Sarah paused, then nodded. “Falcon said that might happen.”At the mention of the name, the room fell silent.Falcon was in the next chamber—recovering—but even unconscious, his name carried weight. Fear. Discipline. Reverence.Samuel
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The towering skyline of Aretra City came into view beneath the clouds, its once-proud spires now shadowed by unrest and the quiet resurgence of old power. Samuel leaned against the cabin window of the aerial skimmer, eyes scanning the streets below. They looked the same, but they weren’t. Nothing was the same.He exhaled slowly.Too much had changed since the last time he stepped foot in the capital—since Nelson fell, since The Brook family had begun creeping back into their ancestral seat like ivy choking the ruins of their old empire.As the skimmer touched down at the south terminal, Samuel grabbed the worn book tucked beneath his coat—The Chrono Veil. He could feel the glyphs humming faintly inside it, as if reacting to the tension in the air.Sarah was already waiting on the platform, her coat fluttering in the wind, a comm clipped to her ear, eyes scanning data projected in the air before her.“You’re late,” she said without looking up.“I had to make a stop,” Samuel replied, st
184
The silence in the infirmary was thicker than the stench of antiseptic. Only the soft beeping of The Falcon’s vital monitor punctuated the quiet. He lay half-upright in bed, eyes bloodshot, his breath shallow but consistent. Tubes ran along his arms like mechanical vines.Samuel stood at the far end of the room, pacing.He’d been trying to steady his breathing for the last five minutes.But it wasn’t working.Every time he inhaled, the edges of reality trembled. A lamp in the corner flickered twice—then shattered as if time hiccupped. A nurse who passed the doorway paused, glanced at him, then walked faster.Samuel clenched his fists. “Not now… come on, not now.”He exhaled—and the world slowed. Not completely. Just slightly. A ripple, like the aftershock of a silent detonation, ran down the corridor. The motion of the clock on the wall stuttered. The beeping of Falcon’s monitor blurred into a singular note.“Damn it,” Samuel hissed, grabbing the edge of a nearby metal tray. His knuck
183
The moon had barely risen when Samuel entered the restricted zone of Teritora’s underground archives. His steps echoed against the steel walls, damp with the weight of secrets too heavy to bear in daylight. Cradled in his hand was the worn, leather-bound tome he found within the hidden vault—Chrono Veil—its title etched in a dialect he could only decipher through fragments Nelson had left behind.Trigger key… Cache data… Falcon’s warning. Damian… a traitor?The thoughts spun in Samuel’s head like a razor-edged storm, sharp and constant.But for now, he needed to see what lay hidden in the digital vault Nelson had mentioned. The coordinates were embedded in a dead zone, a forgotten junction of the old surveillance network buried beneath the city.“Authorization, biometric scan,” the machine’s monotone voice demanded.Samuel held out his palm. A pulse of energy flickered from his skin. Since unlocking Void Phase Two, his body had undergone subtle changes—his blood ran cooler, and light
182
Sarah sat in the tactical room, her fingers deftly skimming across the holographic projection screen. After hours of filtering through internal communications, she found one suspicious data fragment: an encrypted message from Dr. Elna to an unknown party, using a code that belonged to their old enemy, Helix.Without hesitation, Sarah sent the evidence to Samuel’s device.“Look at this, Sam. I think we’ve got a real traitor on the team.”Samuel opened the message as he walked out of the control room toward the power training area. His mind was racing. If Elna truly was in league with Helix, then every strategy they had built could collapse in an instant.“I need to test her again,” Samuel muttered, clutching his Void pendant, which shimmered faintly.In the center of the test chamber, Samuel took a deep breath and activated the power he had only recently honed since gaining partial access to the Void Trigger.Time... slowed.For three seconds, the world around him froze. Dust suspended
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"Nelson left something. It’s not just a record... it’s a trigger," Damian said quietly but sharply. His gaze pierced through Samuel from behind his dark sunglasses.Samuel stood leaning against the balcony of the semi-military apartment in Teritora, his eyes staring into the dark sky slowly being graced by a light drizzle. "Trigger key? I never heard Nelson mention that."Damian leaned his shoulder against the wall. "Because it wasn’t meant for everyone. Nelson knew who needed to know. It’s the key to unlocking full access to Void power data... including the final limit of your abilities."Samuel rolled his shoulder and turned to him. "And you came all the way here just to say that? Or... is there another agenda, Ghost Zero?"Damian chuckled lightly. His old nickname still stuck, even though he’d vanished years ago after the Eastern Sector massacre mission. "I’m retired. But I can’t sit back and watch Nelson’s former pupil get devoured from the inside."Meanwhile, in the next room, Sa
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The cold wind of the underground city of Teritora crept into the bones like poison. A thin mist blanketed the old corridors, while flickering neon lights gave the impression that this place had once been prosperous—before it was abandoned by time. Samuel supported The Falcon’s limp body through the main gate of City Hall, greeted by the suspicious stares of black-coated guards."Open the way. Now," Samuel commanded with a cold tone. No one dared to argue. Samuel's aura had changed since he gained access to the core power of Void Pulse. Every step he took seemed to bend gravity itself.They entered the main hall, and as Samuel lowered The Falcon onto one of the steel rattan chairs, something unexpected happened. The Falcon’s hand moved swiftly, pulling a pistol from inside his jacket. The muzzle pointed directly at Samuel’s head."You’ve gone too far, Sam," he hissed.Samuel didn’t move. Only a slow breath was heard, like air trapped between two dimensions. In an instant, the air aroun
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