2024-12-23 17:43:36The room fell silent as the sharp crack of her slap echoed through the air. Samuel’s head turned slightly from the impact, but he didn’t react otherwise. His jaw tightened, his calm demeanor only fueling her anger.
“Bastard!” she spat, her voice trembling with fury.
As she raised her hand for another slap, Samuel caught her wrist mid-air.
“That’s enough,” he said coldly.
“I let you slap me twice.”
“The first was to repay the debt I owe your grandparents for taking me in.”
“The second was for the years you claim you were ‘trapped’ with me.”
“Now, we’re even. I owe you nothing.”
Madeline froze, her face a mixture of shock and rage.
How dare he defy her?
For years, she had grown used to Samuel’s quiet compliance, his willingness to endure whatever she threw at him.
She didn’t see her own faults, only her mounting anger.
This was all Samuel’s fault, she thought bitterly, especially after hearing about the investors pulling out because of him.
She burned with fury, wishing she could destroy him then and there.
The door behind her flew open, and Arthur’s voice rang out.
“Madeline!”
Arthur and Gideon hurried down the stairs, their faces a mix of confusion and alarm.
Arthur’s eyes locked on Samuel, his expression twisting in disbelief.
“What? Samuel?” he muttered, his voice low and stunned.
“Yes! You all see this asshole showed up!” Madeline’s voice rang out sharply as she pointed an accusing finger at Samuel.
Arthur’s expression darkened.
This woman—she had brought Gideon Hawthorne here, to a place that held such special meaning for the two of them.
“How did you get out of prison, you fugitive?” Arthur snapped, glaring at Samuel before signaling a waiter. “Call security!”
Samuel’s eyes moved between Arthur, Gideon, and Madeline.
He could feel their hostility bearing down on him, but he stood firm.
“I should’ve known—you’ve always been a worthless scumbag!” Madeline shouted, her voice cracking with anger.
Hurried footsteps echoed as the restaurant’s security guards arrived, followed by the manager.
The manager quickly took stock of the situation and gestured discreetly to the guards to hold back.
He wasn’t about to act rashly—especially not against Samuel Hayes, the man who had once saved the entire vineyard.
But Samuel had no intention of escalating the situation.
He gave a faint smile and nodded slightly at Gideon.
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hawthorne,” he said calmly, his voice steady.
Arthur’s face turned red with angry.
“Don’t pretend like you know him! You have no right to speak to The Hawthornes’ young master!”
“So, you’re Samuel Hayes?” Gideon sneered, stepping closer.
He looked Samuel up and down, curling his lip in disdain.
“Born a loser, destined to stay one. People like you deserve to be taught a lesson.”
His tone dripped with arrogance, clearly eager to play the hero. His pride, already bruised by the manager’s earlier praise of Samuel, demanded satisfaction.
He cracked his knuckles dramatically, drawing everyone’s attention.
“What are you waiting for? Arrest him already!” Arthur barked at the guards.
“Relax, Mr. Brooks,” Gideon said with a smug grin. “It’s no fun sending him back right away. Let me handle him first.”
He squared his shoulders, settling into a fighting stance.
As the heir of a wealthy family, Gideon had access to every privilege money could buy, including martial arts training.
His trainers were former special forces soldiers, making him confident that no ordinary person could match him in a fight.
Muay Thai was his specialty, and he couldn’t wait to show off.
He could already picture Samuel sprawled on the ground, utterly defeated.
Smirking, Gideon’s grin widened as he looked at Samuel.
“When you beg for mercy, Hayes, make sure it’s loud enough. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”
Samuel’s face stayed calm.
“You’re not even worth fighting with me,” he replied coldly.
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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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