He woke up.
Or thought he did.
There wasn't a moment. No sharp inhale, no cinematic jolt into consciousness. Just... awareness, creeping in slow like fog rolling through a ruined town. Not even a clear thought at first. Just the uncomfortable sense that something existed. And that it might be him.
His fingers twitched.
Felt like someone else moved them first.
His hand rested palm-down in something grainy. He lifted it slowly—each joint complaining like it had been holding position for too long. Dust spilled off his skin in lazy flakes.
Ash?
Maybe.
It didn't feel hot. Didn't smell like fire either. No burn in the air, no smoke memory clawing at his lungs. Just a heavy residue, like the world had fallen apart somewhere far away and the leftovers had drifted in.
He blinked.
Dry eyes. Not blinking-dry. Sand-dry. Like he'd forgotten what what blinking was for in the first place.
He tried to sit up, but only leaned. His muscles didn't fight—they just... hesitated. Not because they couldn't move. More like they were politely asking if this was worth the effort.
He settled for a half-rise. Sitting felt like a declaration. He wasn't ready to declare anything yet.
Metal scraped under his shoulder.
A hiss followed . Low. Mechanical. Like an old pressure valve just barely hanging on.
The sound crawled down his spine and curled beneath his ribs.
He didn't know why it bothered him.
It just did.
And then—
A voice.
Flat. Clean. Male-ish. The kind of tone that didn't belong to anyone real.
"Core: Nahr."
[Tag Initialized]
[Weight: Active]
[Command: null]
That last word lingered.
Null.
As in: no objective, no guidance, no handler. No one waiting for a report. No voice in his ear telling him what to do next.
Just hmi.
His back touched something—wall, maybe. He didn't need to look to know it was there. The trench had its own rules, and one of them was that things appeared when they needed to exist. Not before.
He rubbed the back of his neck.
Skin. Dry again.
Felt wrong.
Not in a painful way. More like wearing someone else's shirt—stretched in the wrong places, carrying the faint scent of a memory you didn't make.
His HUD flickered once. Then dimmed again.
Nothing helpful.
He squinted at his hand, turning it over.
Still dusty..
Still trembling just slightly, like his nervous system hadn't finished booting.
He flexed his fingers again.
"Right," he whispered, just to hear something human. "Still here."
It didn't feel like victory. More like a statement for the record.
__
He shifted onto his knees—slow and awkward. His joints didn't lock up, but they felt uncertain. As if his limbs were trying to remember what movement looked like.
His right knee clicked. Not in a dangerous way, just mechanical. old hardware noises. His left thigh jerked once and stopped, as if giving up halfway through a reboot.
He reached behind his shoulder by instinct more than intention.
Weight shifted. Familiar.
Galieya.
The blade was still there.
That meant something. He didn't know what, exactly—but it mattered.
He didn't draw it. Just touched the hilt with two fingers.
Cold.
But not the kind of cold that belonged to metal. This wasn't the bite of steel—it was something deeper.
Memory-cold.
That quiet kind of chill that crept into things when they'd been carried too long. Not dangerous. Just... tired.
He closed his fingers around it briefly, then let go.
Still there. Still quiet.
That was wrong.
Galieya usually hummed. Whispered against his back. A faint vibration, like it was aware of its surroundings even if he wasn't. But now—silence.
He leaned forward again, one hand bracing on the floor.
Not smooth. Not clean. The metal beneath him was scraped and uneven, with the texture OF a place that had been lived in—or fought over. And never cleaned.
His HUD sparked back to life, flickering softly in his vision.
[Location: Unknown]
[Weight Confirmed: 83%]
[Command Input: null]
[Sync Incomplete]
He scowled.
Still nothing useful.
Still null.
He stood slowly. This time, his body didn't argue as much. Just a sluggish agreement. Like, "Fine, if you're going to insist."
His boots—standard Core-issue—met the floor with a soft scrape.
He was standing. That felt like progress.
Or ta least momentum.
The corridor stretched ahead of him—too narrow, to straight. But only technically straight. The walls seemed to shift slightly when he wasn't looking, as if reality was trying a little too hard to appear stable.
He didn't remember where he was supposed to be.
Didn't remember how he was supposed to be.
Didn't even know what came before.
That part scared him more than the emptiness.
Because emptiness could be filled. But a missing start? That felt like a glitch in the blueprint.
He took a breath.
Hollow. Like the air didn't want to stay in his lungs for long.
Then a question hit him—quiet, uninvited:
Was he thirsty?
Cores didn't need water.
...Right?
RIGHTT.
He frowned and looked down at his hand again.
Still dusty.
Still real.
He took one step forward.
No reason. No plan.
Just enough movement to say: I'm not staying here.
Not because he was brave.
But because staying still felt like agreeing with the trench.
And he didn't agree with anything yet.
The corridor didn't feel right.
It looked simple—one long path , no turns. No branches. But it felt like walking down a memory that didn't belong to him. Too quiet, too balanced. Like someone built it with symmetry in mind, then let it rot.
The walls were made of metal, sure, but not clean metal. Scratched. Bent in places. Weld seams visa visible where they shouldn't be. As if someone had patched it together after something worse had passed through.
Nahr moved slowly. His boots made soft contact, scuffing more than stepping. He wasn't sure he trusted the ground to hold weight evenly.
Each step echoed just a bit too late.
His HUD pulsed.
[Location: Drift]
[Error: Drift]
[.....]
He frowned.
That shouldn't be possible. You can't have a location and an error at the same time. Either the system knew where he was—or it didn't.
"Pick one," he muttered under his breath. His voice came out hoarser than expected. Rough-edged. Like he hadn't spoken in days. Or years.
No one answered.
Of course not.
The trench didn't talk back.
And yet—it always seemed to listen.
He stopped.
Not because anything told him to. Just... he noticed something.
The floor sloped.
Not steeply. Just enough for the gravity to feel heavier in one foot than the other. Barely a tilt.
He hadn't noticed it at first. Hadn't seen it.
But now that he had, it was impossible to ignore.
his weight shifted forward, whether he liked it or not. Like the trench was leaning in toward him, breathing lightly on his shoulder.
He looked down the hall.
Nothing obvious. No lights flashing. No warning glyphs. Just a continuation of what already was—a slope into darker metal, slightly colder air.
His HUD lit up again:
[DESCENT CONFIRMATION: MANUAL ENTRY]
He hadn't touched anything.
Not with his hands, anyway.
"Standing counts now?" he said quietly. "Good to know."
No beep. No denial.
Just the trench... watching.
He stood there for a moment longer.
His hand twitched near Galieya. He didn't draw it—didn't want to. Drawing it would mean expecting something. Would mean giving the trench a reason to respond.
He wasn't in the mood for cause and effect.
He took the step.
Forward.
Down.
And gravity didn't drop him. It accepted him.
Like it had just been waiting for him to agree.
The slope continued. It never got steeper. It just persisted, like a thought you tried to ignore but couldn't shake.
The air changed again.
He noticed it in his tongue before his nose. A shift in taste—dry, metallic, faintly stale. Like it had been exhaled once too often by too many people who didn't make it back.
Galieya buzzed faintly on his back.
It wasn't awake. But it was listening.
That should've comforted him.
It didn'.
He walked for what felt like a long time.
No turns.
No markers.
The only change came when the walls began to widen.
Not suddenly. Gradually. The way a cave mouth widens when you're not paying attention.
The corridor bled into a room—large, circular, but crooked. The lines weren't clean. The angles didn't match. Whoever designed it gave up halfway through.
In the center, a chair waited.
A Vault Chair.
Nahr froze.
He hated these.
Not the way you hate insects or pain. He hated them the way people hate a mirror after too many years of trying to like what they see.
It wasn't even pretending to be comfortable.
The arms curled inward—not in an embrace, but in threat. The seat was solid metal with exposed clamps. Brutal. Honest. It didn't promise safety or pain. It just was.
He didn't remember walking toward it.
But his boots carried him forward anyway.
Step. Step.
Then nothing.
Just—there.
In front of it.
He didn't sit immediately.
He stared at it for a long while, knowing it wasn't going to change, but wishing it would. Wishing something, somewhere, would give him a hint of purpose beyond just keep going.
He exhaled.
Short. Harsh. Not relief. Just momentum escaping his lungs.
Then—
He sat.
Quick. Sharp. Like a decision made too fast but too late to reverse.
The clamps closed over his arms.
Not tight.
Just a suggestion.
Just enough pressure to remind him that pain was an option. That itit could happen, if the chair decided it mattered.
His HUD flickered.
A soft blink, then one word:
SHINE
No timer.
No intro sequence.
Just that.
A command, maybe.
Or a title.
Or a joke.
He stared at it too long.
Tried to blink it away. It stayed.
Then—
Pressure.
In his spine.
Fast. Focused. Intentional.
Not pain. Not exactly. Just... targeting.
His mouth opened—he thought. Maybe.
He tried to gasp, but couldn't tell if sound came out. Couldn't tell if breath was involved.
Then his vision buckled.
Split in half.
Time thinned around the edges.
His mind tried to track it—catalog sensations, label effects—but the filing system failed.
There was no scream.
No fade-out.
Just—
Quiet.
Not silence.
Quiet.
The kind you can feel in your teeth.
And in that quiet, he felt something slip. Not break. Just... step aside.
And then—
He was walking again.
No memory of standing.
No sound of the chair unlocking.
No transition.
Just the echo of footsteps—his own—already in progress.
He hated that.
The trench loved it.
That was the difference.
The trench didn't want to hurt you. It wanted you to forget that you ever noticed what it was doing.
The hallway ahead was different now.
Smoother. Too clean. Not sterile—erased.
Like the floor had been scrubbed not to disinfect, but to remove whoever came before him.
No blood.
No markings.
No echoes.
Just that horrible, polite emptiness.
And ahead of him—
Another Vault Chair.
This one wasn't empty.
He didn't remember starting to walk.
But here he was.
Already moving.
Already mid-step.
The silence around him was too clean to trust. His own breathing felt artificial—programmed. He wasn't sure if the chair had done something or if the trench had just taken something when he wasn't looking.
Ahead of him, the Vault Chair waited.
This one wasn't empty.
The Core slumped in it was beyond recovery—chestplate collapsed inward, spinal plating scorched black. Dead still. The kind of still that didn't wait for help.
His HUD pinged once.
Faint.
Soft.
[CORE ID: ERROR]
[Status: Terminated]
[Memory Echo: Dormant]
That last line scratched at something in the back of his head. He stepped closer—too close—and immediately regretted it.
Above the body, a glyph hovered.
Text. Sharp. Unapologetic.
[YOU ARE PERMITTED TO FORGET WHAT YOU FAILED TO UNDERSTAND]
Nahr stared.
Not because he believed it.
But because the words wanted him to.
He read it again. And again.
And then said, loud enough to hear himself:
"Bullshit."
It echoed.
Not far.
Just enough to prove the trench was listening.
He didn't check the body. Didn't need to. He'd seen enough to wonder if it looked like him—and chose not to confirm it.
Instead, he turned. Walked past. Not fast. Not slow. Just enough to suggest he'd made peace with not knowing.
A nearby panel hissed open. Air drifted through—stale and thin. Like it had passed too many lungs to be trusted anymore.
He stepped through without thinking.
And froze.
At the far edge of the corridor—barely visible through flickering light—stood a figure.
Small frame. Still. Skin too smooth.
Not armored.
Not marked.
No face.
Just the suggestion of a person.
Nahr blinked.
Gone.
Nothing there now. No echo. Not even footprints.
Just air.
But his fingers were already on Galieya's hilt.
Cold again.
He exhaled through his nose.
'You're losing it,'' he whispered.
But the way the blade buzzed in response…
No. He wasn't alone.
Not exactly.
A second Vault Chair waits.
And this time, something is sitting in it. Watching him.
Breathing.