Chronicles of the Cycle: When the Sun is Blue

Chapter 7 - What the Flame Remembers

Miguel

Kai’s hand turned the knob, and the door swung inward, revealing a silent darkness. The sound of the “party” behind us cut off abruptly, as if we had crossed an invisible barrier. Kai gestured for me to enter and closed the door, plunging us into an almost total stillness. A second later, a series of fluorescent lights flickered on above us, revealing the true heart of the operation.

If the living room was the disguise, this was the brain. We were in a basement, its concrete walls hidden beneath an ocean of information. Enormous corkboards covered every inch, interconnected by a web of red string that looked like pulsing veins. They linked satellite photos, portraits of politicians—I recognized Governor Veyra at the center of it all—newspaper clippings, and complex scientific equations. The air was thick, heavy with the smell of burnt coffee, the low hum of several computers, and the static energy of a shared obsession.

Silas was already here, leaning against a table with his arms crossed, his defiant expression unwavering. Next to a tower of servers, a girl with thick-rimmed glasses and her hair in a messy bun typed furiously, not even registering my presence. Near one of the boards, a stocky boy with a budding beard studied me with a skepticism so palpable I could almost touch it.

“This is Miguel,” Kai said into the silence. “Miguel, this is Lena and Rocco. The core of The Flame.”

Lena raised two fingers in a wave without looking up from her screen. Rocco just nodded slowly.

“Right,” Rocco said, his deep voice breaking the tension. “Another believer in fairy tales. Kai, are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure his perspective is necessary,” Kai replied calmly, before turning to me. “We owe you an explanation. All of this,” he said, gesturing around the room, “started five years ago. With this.”

He pointed to the central board. At the heart of the web of string was a black-and-white photo of an elegant building, almost identical to Rixus. Below it, another photo of the same place: a smoking crater, charred ruins. “Tragedy at Fraxy Institute,” the headline read.

“The Independent Fraxy Institute,” Rocco continued, taking over. “Our old school. The official version, the one the Veyra Dynasty made sure everyone heard, was a gas leak explosion. One hundred and twelve victims. A regrettable accident. Case closed.”

He walked to the wall and pulled off one of the photos, holding it in front of my eyes. It was a close-up of twisted metal beams. “But gas doesn’t do this.” His finger pointed to the edge of the metal, which shone like black glass. “This is vitrification. It requires heat thousands of degrees hotter than a gas explosion. It’s the kind of damage you’d see from a massive, concentrated energy discharge. We looked into the archives. The Veyra Corporation had been buying up land around Fraxy for months before the ‘accident.’”

A chill ran down my spine. This was real. These weren’t just theories.

“There’s more,” said Lena, her voice crisp and fast, joining the conversation for the first time. “I hacked the servers of the Ministry of Geology. Weeks before the explosion, a research team from Fraxy submitted a report. They talked about a ‘high-frequency subterranean energy anomaly’ directly beneath the institute. An energy field that didn’t match any known geological model. The report was classified by direct order from Governor Veyra’s office two days before the explosion.”

My mind immediately flew to the mural at Rixus. To the cold of the stone, the vibration in my fingers. The hum. “A hum,” I whispered, almost without realizing it.

All three of them looked at me. Silas straightened up, his interest sharpened. “What did you say?” Rocco asked. “The testimonies the press ignored,” Kai said, staring at me intently. “The survivors talked about a deep humming sound coming from the ground right before everything blew up.”

“I felt it,” I said, my voice gaining strength. “At Rixus. There’s an ancient mural in the courtyard. I touched it, and the stone was humming.”

The silence in the room grew heavy. Lena stopped typing. Rocco looked at me, his skepticism finally wavering.

“That brings us to why you’re here,” Silas said, stepping forward and taking control. “What happened at Fraxy wasn’t an accident, and it didn’t stop there. They’re doing it again.”

Lena turned one of her monitors toward me. It showed a map of the continent of Fosack. “The ‘solar flares’ the governor talked about. A lie. We tracked the disturbances. They didn’t come from the sun; they came from the earth itself.” With a click, several blinking red dots appeared on the map. “These are the epicenters. The strongest signal, the most unstable… right here.” Her finger pointed to a spot I knew well. The ruins of Fraxy. “The others coincide with Veyra Corporation’s ‘deep exploration’ zones. We think that at Fraxy, they tried to harness that energy source and something went terribly wrong. Now, five years later, with more advanced technology, they’re trying again in multiple locations at once. They’re trying to concentrate immense amounts of that energy into specific points, causing a collapse of matter. It’s unstable, and the ‘flares’ are the side effects leaking across the continent.”

“But for what? What are they after?” I asked, my head spinning.

“We don’t know yet. Power, a weapon, a new energy source…” Rocco said.

“That’s where you come in,” Kai said, his soft voice cutting through the speculation. “In Abrak. Your ‘old wives’ tales.’ We don’t see them as myths; we see them as corrupted data. Remnants of a forgotten science. What do the legends say about places where the earth hums or energy rises from the ground?”

Silas crossed his arms, his tone more challenging. “Yeah, port boy. Enlighten us with your folklore.”

I ignored his sarcasm. I closed my eyes, forcing my memory, searching for the stories the old fishermen told on stormy nights, the ones I listened to, fascinated, while other kids played. And then, a phrase came to mind. “The Veins of the Earth,” I said, opening my eyes. “The old ones spoke of them. They said they weren’t rivers or roads, but lines of power that crossed all of Fosack, connecting sacred places. And they said that in the ancient world, the Veins used to ‘sing.’”

Lena turned to her computer. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. “‘Veins of the Earth’… I’ve seen that reference in some of the ancient texts we downloaded. We archived them as mythology. Here it is.”

She projected an image onto the wall. It was an old, hand-drawn map of Fosack. On it, a network of delicate, curving lines connected mountains, forest clearings, and points along the coast. It was beautiful and archaic. “Overlaying the mythological map onto our current energy grid,” Lena murmured, more to herself than to us.

On the wall, the ancient lines of the hand-drawn map lit up and settled directly over the holographic image. The Veins of the Earth matched, with terrifying precision, every single one of the blinking red epicenters on Lena’s map.

No one spoke. The only sound was the hum of the servers. Rocco was staring at me, his mouth slightly open. Silas had lost his arrogant smirk. And Kai… Kai was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher, a mixture of awe and something else, something that felt dangerously like hope.

I had come looking for answers about magic and had found a scientific conspiracy. But on that map, for the first time, the two stories had become one. And I, without knowing how, was right at the center of it.