2024-12-23 17:43:13Madeline’s mind was in chaos, her hands trembling.
The sudden withdrawal of the two biggest investors supporting J&S Corp’s cash flow almost made her faint.
This meant the company had abruptly lost its operating funds, which could disrupt the supply of raw materials—and paying workers would be out of the question.
A major corporation can collapse in an instant!
A flicker of doubt crossed her mind:
Could it be... that Samuel was actually important?
She quickly dismissed the thought.
If Samuel were so capable, why would he have worked to help run the Brooks family’s company?
There must have been some mistake during the partnership.
Gritting her teeth, Madeline returned to her seat.
Gideon and Arthur didn’t seem to have heard anything, cheerfully sipping their wine.
Looking at Gideon’s face, Madeline felt reassured.
After all, it didn’t matter if the investors pulled out.
J&S Corp was about to partner with The Hawthornes!
With The Hawthornes Corporation involved, those investors were irrelevant. J&S Corp would only grow faster than ever before!
Feeling uplifted again, she raised her glass with a smile.
“To our future partnership—cheers!”
Amid the frustration overwhelming Madeline, the person she was thinking about seemed to be enjoying his journey to the West Line.
Samuel lounged in a black sedan wearing sunglasses, accompanied by none other than Joey Gunther.
“You should’ve just let your men escort me.”
Joey smirked and shook his head. “I was wrong, and I admit it was very careless of me.”
The car came to a stop in front of a gate marked ‘Aurora Farm.’
“We’re stopping here for a moment. I need to pick something up before heading to the West Line,” Joey said.
Samuel simply nodded, and both of them stepped out of the car. He looked around, realizing the place seemed familiar.
“I’ll take a walk,” Samuel said.
They both entered through the gate but headed in different directions. Samuel walked to the right, where a path lined with flowers stretched out.
He inhaled deeply, savoring a sense of calm he hadn’t felt in a long time.
His eyes landed on a building by an artificial lake with the sign ‘Aurora Époque.’
Just standing there, Samuel felt a rush of complicated emotions.
This used to be his favorite place.
It was right here that he proposed to Madeline, kneeling on one knee and offering her a diamond ring.
As he approached the elegant building, a voice stopped him in his tracks—one he knew all too well.
It was the laughter of his ex-fiancée, Madeline.
Samuel frowned, and he turned to leave without hesitated.
At the time, a waiter standing near the back door noticed him.
“Mr. Hayes! Mr. Hayes is here!” he exclaimed excitedly.
Madeline's eyes widened.
Her breath catching in her throat as she reflexively turned toward the door.
The muffled sounds of Arthur and Gideon’s conversation faded into the background.
She couldn't focus; her attention had been snatched by the name she had just heard mentioned by a waiter.
“What’s wrong, Madeline?” Arthur’s voice pulled her back for a moment.
His brow furrowed as he leaned toward her from across the table.
Madeline straightened, shaking her head quickly.
“Nothing. I just need to use the restroom for a moment.”
Without waiting for a response, she pushed back her chair and stood, her steps hurried and purposeful.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she followed the faint sound of voices toward the back door, her unease growing with every step.
“Mr. Hayes! Oh, my, it’s an honor for us to welcome you!”
"We thought you weren’t coming!"
The words hit her like a thunderclap, freezing her in place for a moment.
They were unmistakable now, and they spurred her into action.
Madeline pushed open the door without hesitation, her heels clicking sharply against the floor as she descended the stairs.
There he was.
Samuel Hayes.
Samuel stood still, his expression unreadable.
Disaster, Samuel thought to himself. He didn’t expect to see this woman here.
Madeline stormed toward him, fire blazing in her eyes.
“Are you following me, you bastard?” she snapped.
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619
At first, they thought it was just an echo.A flicker on the surveillance net. A brief distortion near the old Echo Chamber beneath Bastion’s west wing — long abandoned, used only during the early calibration of shard synchronization. The space had since fallen into disuse. No power, no systems, no reason to return.Until now.“Tell me you’re seeing this,” Sarah muttered, leaning over the monitor.The image was faint: a silhouette pacing slowly inside the chamber, pacing in exact steps Sarah had once taken.“Looks like you,” Joey said, frowning.“That’s because it is me,” she whispered.“But that can’t be—”Samuel entered behind them, already reaching for his personal interface. “Pull the prism scanner. I want a temporal signature.”Sarah tapped in the override.A moment later, the analysis came through.Thread anomaly: 94% match.Anchor origin: Flame Net timeline [Locked: UNKNOWN]Subject: SARAH, VARIANT 3B - INVERTED FLAME“Jesus,” Joey breathed. “It’s a version of you. From another
618
Not the kind that followed battle. Not the heavy kind that came after decisions like the one they'd made — to delay sealing the world, to buy time they didn’t understand.This silence had shape.It bent.It listened.It waited.And then, without warning, it spoke.Joey was in the lower observatory, seated by the paneled dome where the artificial stars had begun to glitch. Every few minutes, a light would flicker and repeat itself — blinking patterns out of sync with the constellations.He was alone.Or he thought he was.“Still think we made the right call?” he muttered aloud, fingers tracing the rim of his cooling tea.No answer.He reached for his comm-link, considered calling Lin, then Sarah… but didn’t. The others were all in their corners, dealing with the consequences in their own ways. Samuel had retreated to the eastern wing, no doubt reviewing models and constructing fallback rituals. Sarah had been pacing the upper deck like a hawk for the past hour. Lin was—nowhere. She dri
617
The Bastion’s war table hadn’t been used in months.Dust lined its edges. Old energy signatures flickered faintly along its curved interface, echoing long-erased battle maps. It was built to track enemies—Void incursion zones, Ashborn troop lines, shard anomalies.Tonight, it displayed Earth itself.Not the Earth they remembered.Not the Earth they had fought for.The globe was fraying. Threadlines glowed red across the surface—unraveling. Symbols blinked where entire cities once stood. Others spun erratically, overlapping. Multiple realities clashing for space, like two ghosts trying to possess the same body.Joey stared in silence.Lin sat with a heavy shawl around her shoulders, pale but awake.Sarah stood stiffly across from Samuel, arms folded.Nobody had spoken in five minutes.Until Joey said softly, “We’re already losing it.”Samuel said nothing.Sarah’s voice came next, hard-edged: “Not yet.”Joey turned to her. “What would you call what just happened? We opened a hole in the
616
No one touched the relic at first.It hovered midair in the center of Bastion’s Deep Chamber — spinning, slow, silent, and not entirely present. Shaped like an orb, but its edges shimmered and warped, refusing to settle into a single dimension. Every time someone looked too long, they saw something different: a beating heart, a writhing knot, a tiny flame.Samuel stood closest, arms folded, the memory of Kael’s echo still fresh in his mind.Sarah and Joey flanked him. Lin hadn’t woken yet — her mind was still torn open from the Spiral’s flood.“Where did it come from again?” Joey asked, voice barely above a whisper.“Kael gave it to me,” Sarah said, hand tight around her shard. “Or what’s left of him. He called it a key. Something older than the Net.”Joey eyed the orb. “It doesn’t look like any relic I’ve seen. Doesn’t feel like one, either.”“It’s not a relic,” Samuel muttered.Sarah turned to him. “Then what is it?”“It’s a hole.”They didn’t believe him at first. Not until the orb
615
The corridor was silent, save for the soft pulse of the emergency lights. Sarah moved carefully, her fingers trailing the wall, her shard still flickering from the chaos at the ridge. She wasn’t sure why she’d come down here — the lower levels of the Bastion were sealed, memory-locked since the first Wave.But the shard pulled her. Not through flame. Through grief.Room B-17. Her mother’s old chamber.Except it wasn’t.The moment she stepped inside, the light shifted. Everything became thinner, quieter — like sound had been tucked under glass. Dust didn’t settle here. No time passed.And in the center of the room stood Kael.Her breath caught.He wore the old uniform — burnt red sash, blade across his back. He looked… unchanged. His expression unreadable, his hair slightly windblown as if he’d just returned from patrol.“Kael?” she whispered.He didn’t answer.But he smiled.“I watched you climb the cliff once,” he said. His voice was softer than she remembered. “You were thirteen. Th
614
Flames crawled along the blackened hillsides like serpents starving for breath. The sky above the Eastern Ridge had begun to turn the color of bruised plum, a prelude to something no one wanted to name. Ashborn forces, once so unified, so terrifyingly synchronized, now moved with jagged rhythm, like puppets on strings too tight or too frayed.Samuel stood at the ridge's edge, panting, one hand gripping the hilt of his flame-blade. Around him, the remaining Guardians kept their weapons drawn but hesitated to attack. Not because the Ashborn had stopped advancing, but because they were... speaking.Not shouting. Not chanting.Whispering.He couldn’t understand the words, not fully. The tones were warped, soaked in static, like memories being replayed through a broken machine. But the cadence was unmistakable.Voices from the Void.One Ashborn, eyes glowing with leaking violet light, fell to its knees. Another followed. Then three more. Their mouths moved, and Samuel heard it more clearly
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