2025-07-29 00:20:28The fog hadn’t lifted by sunrise. If anything, it had grown thicker—so dense Jared could barely see past the tree line without straining. Nature didn’t move like this unless something unnatural had disturbed it.
He was already dressed in full tactical gear, rifle strapped tight across his chest, boots laced up to the shin. His breath was slow, even, but everything about his body was alert. Primed.
Mei stood on the porch in his old hoodie and jeans that didn’t quite fit, trying to shake the cold out of her limbs. She looked at the treeline and then at him.
“You’re going out there, aren’t you?”
Jared nodded once. “North Ridge sector. Something pinged the motion sensors.”
“Could it be an animal?”
He strapped on his knife. “Not unless it knew how to disable the backup camera first.”
Her mouth parted slightly. “Someone’s watching us.”
“They’ve probably been watching for days.”
She took a breath, trying not to panic. “Let me come with you.”
“No.”
“I’m not staying behind while you walk into a trap. If something happens to you—”
He walked up to her, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his chest. His hand cupped the side of her jaw gently, grounding her.
“Mei,” he said, voice firm but not unkind, “I need you alive. In here. Watching the monitors. If I’m compromised, you’ll see it first.”
She hesitated. Swallowed. Then nodded.
“Come back,” she whispered.
His gaze lingered on hers. “Always.”
He vanished into the fog minutes later.
The ridge was quieter than it should’ve been.
No birdsong. No rustling squirrels. No wind.
Just the dense, choking silence of something waiting.
Jared’s boots moved with calculated precision. Each step was deliberate. Controlled. He followed the narrow path between moss-covered rocks, his ears sharp for anything out of place.
Two hundred meters in, he paused near a broken pine stump.
There—half-buried in the mud.
A boot print.
Not his.
Fresh.
Jared crouched and examined it. The tread was military-grade. Not civilian. Someone trained. Someone who knew how to cover their tracks—but not well enough.
He stood and scanned the ridge again, slow and patient. Then he heard it.
Click.
To his right.
Too close.
He turned instantly, raising his rifle—only to meet the sharp glint of a scope catching light through the fog.
A figure emerged. Not charging. Walking.
Deliberate.
Unbothered.
Jared didn’t lower his gun. “You’ve got five seconds to explain why you’re here.”
The man stopped ten paces away, hands lifted slightly. “Relax, soldier. I’m not here to kill you.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I came to warn you.”
Jared’s finger hovered over the trigger. “About?”
“They found you.”
Everything in Jared went still.
The stranger lowered his hood slowly. His face was lean, scarred across one eye. Pale hair buzzed short. Familiar in a way that scratched the edges of Jared’s memory.
“You were one of us,” Jared muttered.
The man nodded. “Special Recon. Ghost Division. Same as you. Different theater.”
“Ghosts don’t talk after discharge.”
“Unless the world’s ending and the rules don’t matter anymore.”
Jared didn’t relax. “Name.”
“Finn Morgan. I was tasked with tracking down former assets. You? You’re number seven on the list.”
“Assets for what?”
Finn’s expression turned grim. “Reconstruction. They’re not trying to save the world. They’re trying to restart it. Clean slate. Old money. New gods.”
Jared’s stomach turned. “The Custodians.”
“They’re real. And they’ve activated Phase Two.”
He didn’t speak. He just looked at the man, eyes narrowing.
“They want the survivors divided. Terrified. Weak. You’ve got a companion now. That makes you unpredictable.”
“I’m not joining your suicide cult.”
“I didn’t come to recruit you.” Finn’s voice was quieter now. “I came to tell you that you have less than forty-eight hours before the first Purge Drones arrive in this zone.”
Jared’s jaw clenched. “Why warn me?”
Finn’s smile was bitter. “Because I died three years ago. You ever see what happens when your daughter starves in front of you? When there’s enough food in the convoy to feed a town, but they’re told to let her die for population balance?”
Jared didn’t answer.
“I believed in the system. Until it killed everything I loved.”
Finn dropped something into Jared’s hand—a chipped black badge. Old military encryption embedded in its side.
“This still opens the satellite uplink bunker near the ravine. I couldn’t get inside. They changed protocols. But you… you’re one of the last keyholders.”
Jared looked down at it. “You’re running.”
“No. I’m surviving. For now.”
He started to turn.
Jared called out. “If you’re lying…”
“I’m not.”
And then he was gone.
Just like that.
Back at the cabin, Mei was pacing when Jared returned. One look at his face stopped her mid-step.
“What happened?”
He tossed her the badge. “We’ve got forty-eight hours before we’re wiped off the map.”
She stared at it. “What do you mean wiped?”
“Purge drones. Full sector elimination. No warnings.”
“Who gave you this?”
“Someone who used to be like me. Might still be. Doesn’t matter. He left intel.”
She followed him inside, breath picking up. “So what do we do?”
Jared turned to her, fully facing her now. “We find the uplink station. We breach it. And we shut this down before it reaches the others.”
“The others?”
“There are survivors scattered across sectors. Kids. Families. People like you. If this system completes Phase Two, there won’t be anything left to rebuild.”
She stepped closer. “Then we fight.”
His eyes softened just slightly.
“You’re not scared?”
“I’m terrified. But I’d rather die with purpose than live hiding.”
Jared nodded once.
The next forty-eight hours would decide everything.
And he wasn’t going to let the world burn without putting up a fight.
[System Update: Mission Branch Unlocked – Uplink Bunker Breach]
[Timer Engaged – 47 hrs 19 mins Remaining]
[Bond Status: Companion Level 2 – Mei Bai now trained in Defense Protocol I]
[Reward Pending: System Core Memory Fragment – “Origin”]
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Episode 52- The Last Log
[Before the first reset]The world wasn’t quiet when it ended.It screamed.The sky above the city split open like a wound, releasing static and gold instead of rain. Emma watched the power grids below blinking out one by one from the upper floors of the research tower. Every shutdown had the distant sound of a dying heartbeat. She didn't flinch. This was what she had expected. There was always fire, noise, and Jared's name on her lips at the end of the loops. Around her, the lab was collapsing. Wires were sparking beneath the feet, half the screens were black, and red warnings on the main console kept flickering.[System integrity: 3%][Core fracture detected.][Reinitialization impossible.]Emma’s reflection wavered on the cracked glass, a ghost of herself staring back — tired eyes, smudged lenses, hands trembling from too much coffee and not enough sleep. She exhaled slowly, almost a laugh, though it sounded more like a sob.“Figures,” she whispered. “You’d crash right when I s
Episode 51- The loop breaker
Jared didn’t run this time.He just stood there, in the middle of the street, as the crowd of his own faces passed him by. Every screen showed him smiling, shaking hands, saving cities that never fell. The applause sounded hollow. Too perfect.He raised his hand, almost afraid to touch the nearest display. His fingers met cold glass. The man inside the screen mirrored him perfectly, down to the twitch in his jaw—then, for a split second, didn’t.The reflection blinked the wrong way.A chill slid down his spine.The system whispered, soft but shaking.[Observation node unstable.][Loop integrity: 92%][Warning: anomaly detected.]Jared’s chest ached. He could hear his own heartbeat echoing like it didn’t belong to him anymore. He had been here before, hadn’t he? This street, this moment, this air that tasted like metal and memory.“Stop it,” he muttered. “Stop showing me this.”But the city didn’t stop. It kept moving, kept smiling, kept pretending everything was fine.Then one screen—
Episode 50- Rebirth of the Chainbearer
The light tore the sky open. Not like thunder. It was unlike any storm he had ever seen. Thin, gold, and alive, it poured through the cloud fissures and bled downward as though the heavens themselves were being rewritten. Jared covered his eyes. The interface of the system was glitching, flickering between static and warnings. Whatever was coming wasn’t supposed to exist. Then the shape broke through. Feathers that glistened between light and metal, wings that resembled blades, and chains underneath it. Like a crown of ruin, dozens of them drag through the air. He gasped. That silhouette was familiar to him. Buried in one of the system's locked files, he had seen it before—the day humanity fell. The day he died.The Archon.Except this time… it wasn’t the same.The light shifted as the creature descended, and for a moment—just a heartbeat—he saw a human form at its center. A face. Pale. Still.Emma.“No…” His voice broke. “No, no, that’s impossible.”The system buzzed, cold and
Episode 49- When the seal Broke
The world didn't feel alive again, even after the storm had passed. It was hollow. Jared took a seat at the edge of what used to be the chamber. The light was gone, and the stone had split open like a wound. The sky and the ash and the taste of the air were all gray now. Even though he was no longer bleeding, he could still feel the burn where the chains had been beneath his skin. The heartbeat wasn't his when he put his palm to his chest. It sounded heavier and slower, like someone else was still inside of him.[System recalibrating…][Host integrity: 82%][Warning: Identity interference detected.]He exhaled through his teeth. “You again.”Silence. Then—faint, like a thought that didn’t belong to him—You opened the seal, Jared. We’re not separate anymore.He froze. The voice wasn’t cold this time. It sounded… calm. Familiar. Almost like his own, if it were stripped of everything human.“Get out of my head.”I can’t. You brought me back.His fingers curled into fists. He could st
Chapter 48- The Echo Beneath
The air was colder here. It felt thin and sharp against his skin, as if the world were breathing without him. Something nearby was dripping water when Jared woke up, a slow rhythm that held him in place. The room had vanished. Dust, roots, and stone in its place. It didn't feel natural, but it might have been a cave. Veins of light pulsed faintly through the walls, resembling arteries. He sat up too quickly. The world slanted to one side. His hands shook. The marks remained deep into his arms. However, they were now different, with black streaks twining with gold lines that moved with each blink. His palms ached from rubbing at them. They didn’t fade.He sat there for a long time, listening and trying to remember how to breathe like a normal person. Everything inside him continued to hum from what happened in the chamber. That voice. That thing wearing his face. The crack of the seal. When he eventually forced himself to stand, the cave seemed to be watching him as the walls tremb
Chapter 47- The Awakening Below
The sound came first, a low, thrumming pulse that didn’t belong to the air. It went directly into his bones through the stone's fractured veins beneath the floor. As the rhythm got louder and faster, Jared stumbled and gripped his head. Something alive was inside the fracture. Like lightning, the golden threads exploded outward and shattered through the chamber.The chains on his arms trembled as though they had been called home, writhing in response. He could feel them pulling, dragging his body closer to the stone. He hissed, "Stop," but the roar erupting around him caused his voice to break apart. Images flickered through his mind —Faces, burning cities, the gleam of a crown half-buried in ash. And through it all, that same whisper, soft and sure: You left us.Jared fell to one knee. The stone split wider, spilling light so bright it burned the air. Something within it moved—slow, deliberate—and for the first time, Jared wasn’t sure if it was reaching for him… or becoming him.
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