I sat alone in the vault.
The fire danced low in its pit, casting warped shadows on the old metal walls, flickering like ghosts. The stolen uplink core from the rescue ship pulsed faintly in my lap—its data slowly decrypting through my visor.
But I barely saw it.
All I could think of were their faces.
Thorne, Varik, Seela.
The ones who tormented me back on Earth. Who laughed when I failed my first simulator trial, who rigged my oxygen scrubber during cold-weather drills, who made sure I never forgot I wasn't their kind.
And then my crew.The ones I bled for.The ones I trusted.
They told Earth I'd sacrificed myself to save them.
They built a lie out of my ashes and made it noble.
And my lover—Aren.She cried for a week, then curled into someone else's arms.Elias. Of all people.
I could still remember her voice in the dark when we'd bunk together between shifts.How she promised to wait for me.How she said "You're the only thing that makes this mission bearable."
A brittle breath escaped my lungs.
Maybe I did die that day.
But this thing wearing my skin, crawling through flame and bone—it wasn't the man they left behind.
The data decrypted with a final blink.
My visor lit up.
BABEL NODE 12C – PRIMARY RELAY BEACON FOUNDVault Designation: Throne of CindersStatus: ACTIVELocation: 437 km northeast, across the Scorch Ridge Basin.
An intact node.
Likely with working power, uncorrupted records, and—if I was lucky—a command-level uplink to the BABEL system itself.
And something else. A notation embedded deep within the signal trail:
"System Beacon Locked // Command Key Auth Pending // Leader Calibration Profile Detected"
I was being tracked.
Not just by people.
By the system that birthed this whole trial.
I left the vault and stepped into the open dark.
Above me, the stars pulsed like cold scars, scattered across the sky.
Ka'lenna waited for me near the ridge. Her posture relaxed, but not casual. She always stood like a blade—never at rest, only sheathed.
"Found something?" she asked.
"A vault. Northeast. Active. And… old."
She studied me for a beat longer than usual. "Your face looks wrong."
"I'm tired."
"No," she said. "You look like stone before the crack."
I didn't reply.
She shifted forward, close enough that I could smell the clay dust in her braids, the scorched leather of her armor.
"You knew them," she said. "The ones from the sky."
"I did."
"And they betrayed you?"
"They laughed when I was nothing. Then buried me in it."
A long silence stretched between us.
"You could have killed them."
"I still might."
Ka'lenna reached out—not to touch, but to place something beside me on the stone: a carved bone charm in the shape of a firefly.
"What is it?" I asked.
"A flame marker," she said. "We use it for things that still burn."
Her eyes met mine, and for the first time, I saw not just respect in them—but understanding. A mirror of rage that she, too, carried in her blood.
"You don't have to forget," she said. "But you should build something that makes them irrelevant."
I looked at the charm.
Something that still burned.
Yeah.
I could do that.
By morning, I'd gathered a scouting team.
The Throne of Cinders was waiting.
And I didn't need to be a myth, a ghost, or a hero anymore.
Just me.
Just Tarek.
The one who survived.
The one who builds.
And the one who will burn down everything they tried to bury him under.