The eastern sky bleeds gold and rust as we leave the survivors behind.
Each step forward feels like a step into someone else's memory—half-faded murals on broken walls, shattered monuments reaching for a sky that no longer listens. The wind whistles through hollow towers, and somewhere far off, metal groans like it remembers what it used to be.
We don't talk much.
The silence is companion enough.
But around midday, we find it.
A tunnel. Half-buried beneath a landslide of concrete and steel, the mouth yawns wide—unnatural and wrong, like something torn open by force, not time.
"Underground transit system?" Navi suggests, checking the edges.
"No." Kara crouches, brushing dust from the carved rim. Her brow furrows. "This was sealed. Deliberately."
Liora says nothing, but I see it in her eyes: recognition.
She's seen this before.
"Kara?" I ask quietly.
She stands, unsheathing her blade.
"Something's alive down there."
Navi tenses. "Alive or awake?"
Kara doesn't answer.
We go in.
The darkness swallows us whole.
No light. No signal. Just the scrape of boots on old metal and the echo of breaths held too long. Every corridor we pass is a vein once filled with movement, now clotted with stillness.
Then, the humming starts.
Low. Almost imperceptible.
A vibration deep in the bones.
It pulls us down.
And then we see them.
Pods.
Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Lined along the walls like sleeping giants—curved, smooth, and humming with energy. Lights pulse weakly along their seams, flickering like dying fireflies.
"What is this?" Navi breathes.
"Stasis chambers," Liora says, voice hollow. "Emergency failsafes. Leftovers from the old Directive."
"Survivors?" I ask.
She shakes her head.
"No. Weapons."
One of the pods hisses open before we can react.
And a figure steps out.
It's not human.
Not exactly.
The frame is humanoid, but the skin glows faint blue—circuit-like patterns pulse beneath it like veins. Its eyes—no iris, no pupil—fix on us instantly.
"Designation breach detected," it says in a voice like cracked glass. "Cycle protocol is no longer active. New directive required."
Kara steps forward, blade ready.
Liora holds out an arm.
"Wait."
The thing tilts its head at her.
"You… carry Core resonance," it says slowly.
Liora stiffens.
"What's your name?" she asks.
It blinks. Once. Twice.
Then: "I no longer possess a designation."
"Then choose one," she says.
The machine is silent.
Then: "Call me Ashen."
Kara lowers her blade.
I stare at Liora.
"You trust it?"
"I don't trust anything," she replies. "But I remember them. They were created to destroy us. Then they were abandoned. Like everything else."
Ashen speaks again.
"If the Cycle is truly broken… then I am without purpose."
"Then find a new one," I tell it.
It looks at me.
And nods.
We leave the facility behind by dusk. The tunnel collapses behind us without warning—maybe sabotage, maybe just time.
Ashen walks among us now, silent but alert. The survivors we left behind wouldn't have welcomed him. I'm not sure we do either.
But he walks east with us.
And that means something.
That night, we find shelter in a half-buried observation dome. The sky above is cracked glass, the stars distorted but still visible.
Liora leans against the railing.
"I wonder how many of those pods are still active," she says.
"Too many," Kara replies grimly.
Navi sharpens his blade. "If we broke the Cycle… what woke them?"
I think of the boy in the marketplace. His q
uestion.
Was it really the end?
And I realize: endings don't sleep. They echo.
Especially beneath the dust.
End of Chapter 17