---
Scene 1: Return to the Fire
It had been hours since the Architects' threat.
Aeyon stood inside the Memory Garden—an abandoned dome where psychic echoes of past students whispered to those who listened. The air shimmered with old voices, trauma, and time-looped laughter.
Lucine sat beside him. Quiet. Her bruises were fading, but something deeper remained—an emotional scar that made her hands tremble when she reached for paint.
> "They're still watching," she whispered.
> "Let them," Aeyon replied. "They're feeding me data every time they blink."
He was studying them through them. Even surveillance could be reversed when your mind worked like his.
---
Scene 2: The Hidden Signal
Aeyon entered the Simulation Vault—the digital nerve center of Valeiris. He requested a solo session.
Inside, he rewired the AI core manually. Disguised as routine training, he sent a silent backtrace through the Architect's earlier message.
Coordinates pinged back.
Not a base. Not a server. A person.
Ayra.
The girl from Project Mirrorfall.
Still alive. Still watching.
---
Scene 3: The Classroom Trap
The next day, Lucine was called for an exam. A routine history simulation. Except she never came back.
Aeyon checked the feed. Her simulation room was offline. Emergency override? Denied.
A slow, knowing grin spread across his face.
> "So this is how you escalate. Clever."
He cracked his knuckles and whispered to the AI controller:
> "Run Protocol: Ghostchild. Phase Alpha."
The lights dimmed. Systems flickered. Firewalls bent.
He vanished into the system.
---
Scene 4: Lucine's Mind Prison
Inside the simulation, Lucine floated in a liquid mirror. She couldn't move—her mind was being rewritten in real time by a program designed to break empathy bonds.
Her memories twisted. Aeyon was painted as her enemy.
But deep inside her, the truth screamed.
> "He cried for me… that's real… that's real…"
Just before the final overwrite—Aeyon appeared.
Not physically. Not virtually.
Mentally.
> "I told you. Next time I go to hell, you're coming with me."
He shattered the mirror with a single command:
> "REMEMBER."
Lucine gasped—and the mirror prison collapsed into stardust.
---
Scene 5: Exposed
The system rebooted violently. Lucine woke up choking. Aeyon pulled the headset off her.
Alarms. Security lockdown. Karst and half the faculty surrounded them.
> "You broke into a forbidden protocol," Karst barked.
> "I broke into a lie," Aeyon said. "And I found its architect."
He uploaded the data on Ayra. On Project Mirrorfall. On how Lucine was being used as an empathy detonator—meant to bind to him, then be erased to break him.
But she resisted. And that changed the equation.
Karst's eyes trembled.
> "Do you understand what you've done?"
> "Yeah," Aeyon replied. "I made your little puppet real."
---
Scene 6: The Message
That night, Aeyon received a final ping. A mirror flickered across his HUD. Ayra.
> "This isn't over, brother."
> "No. It's just starting."
The mirror cracked. A countdown began. 7 Days.
And Aeyon knew: The next game wouldn't be in Valeiris. It would be in the ruins where they were born.
Where everything began.
---
TO BE CONTINUED...