Lexa floated.
Not in water, not in air, but in memory. Or something close to it.
The world was white around her. Blinding, without source or shadow. Her feet found no ground, yet she stood. Her breath made no sound, yet she was alive. This was not the Polis she had ruled, nor the forest she had fought in.
This was something older.
And in the distance, voices called to her.
Lexa turned. Shapes emerged from the white – faces, familiar and not. Becca's voice echoed like wind through a canyon. "You are not the first."
The ground formed beneath her feet, spiraling outward like circuitry. A map of lines and pulses. A memory, not hers, but still in her.
"Where am I?" she asked aloud.
"The Flame," said a voice.
She spun around.
It was herself. Or nearly. A version of her with older eyes. A Commander long gone.
"You carry us," the echo said. "But you are not ready to see."
Lexa tried to reach for the figure, but it vanished into light.
Outside, in the real world, Kira was losing time.
They had tracked the intruders to an abandoned outpost buried beneath Polis—a relic of Second Dawn, masked by roots and forgotten stone. Clarke stood beside her, face pale in the torchlight, Raven checking her pistol for the third time.
"You sure she's down here?" Raven asked.
"Yes," Kira said. Her voice was sharp. "I can feel her."
They moved through the ruin like ghosts, past banners decayed to threads. At the end of the corridor was a metal door half-rusted shut.
Kira placed her hand on it. It sparked at her touch.
"This place is tech-locked," Raven whispered. "But by what?"
Clarke answered softly, "Not the Ark. Not the Mountain. Something older."
Kira drew her blade.
"We go in together."
In the Flame's memory-scape, Lexa stood before a circle of Commanders.
"You were not meant to awaken this," one of them said. "The Flame was damaged. Corrupted."
Lexa clenched her fists. "Then fix it."
Another Commander stepped forward. "There is no fixing what they built beneath us."
She saw then—flashes of metal cities, long before the bombs. Children wired to machines. Experiments masked as evolution. The Flame was never meant to be peace.
It was a key.
"They want you," the First Commander said. "Because you can open the rest."
Lexa gasped.
Outside, the chamber exploded into view.
Lexa lay on a slab, wires in her skin. Her face serene, like sleep. Beside her, a man in old Earth tech armor typed rapidly on an interface.
Kira didn't speak. She moved.
One moment she was at the threshold, the next she was in the air, blade flying. The first guard went down. The second didn't even draw his weapon.
Raven disabled the panel with a surge of EMP.
The man shouted, "You don't understand! If she wakes up now, she might not come back as herself!"
Kira didn't stop.
She dropped beside Lexa, ripped the wires from her body, pressed her forehead to hers.
"Come back," she whispered.
And Lexa opened her eyes.
Not with a gasp.
But with a growl.
She lunged upward, arm snapping around Kira's throat before stopping just short.
Recognition.
Her pupils focused.
She whispered, "Kira."
And fell forward into her arms.
They burned the lab.
Lexa slept for twelve hours. When she awoke, her voice was raw.
"They showed me things I wasn't meant to see."
Kira held her hand.
Lexa turned, their eyes meeting in the dim candlelight.
"I saw a world before this one. Before the bombs. Before the war. We didn't rise from the ashes. We were buried in them."
Kira only nodded.
"And what do we do now?" Clarke asked.
Lexa stood.
"We find the rest of the keys."
"And we end what they started."
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