CHAPTER NINE: DAWNSHARD
Day 11 – A New Remnant Wakes
---
The girl didn't speak.
Not during the long walk back from the burning vault, not when Jex cracked a dozen jokes trying to get her to smile, and not even when Nira handed her a ration bar and said softly, "Eat, or pass out again. Your call."
She simply sat there, pale and silent, swaying slightly on the makeshift bench they'd bolted into the inner chamber of Ephra Dusk. Her eyes didn't track movement. Her pupils remained dilated too long, like she was staring through time.
Silas watched her from the shadows.
She wasn't bound. That was Senya's decision. "She's not hostile," she'd said. "Not yet." But Silas wasn't convinced. Not after what they'd seen. Not after what she did with just a note.
Jex paced like a caged animal. "Okay, can we just ask the obvious question already?"
"No," Senya replied without looking up from the console she was repairing.
Jex blinked. "You don't even know what I was gonna say."
"You were going to say, 'What the hell is she?'"
He stopped pacing. "…Fair."
"I already told you," Nira said, her voice quiet but firm. "She's a Singularity-class Contractor. Or something beyond it. Her Remnant isn't just active. It's self-aware."
Torren finally spoke. "Then it's not a Remnant. It's a god."
"No," Silas said. "It's something older than that."
The girl stirred.
Everyone froze.
She raised her head slowly, lips parting for the first time.
"I dreamed," she said.
Silas stepped forward cautiously. "What did you see?"
She didn't look at him. Didn't look at any of them.
"I was fire. I was song. I was…" her voice caught, faltered, and then she whispered, "…ruin."
Something pulsed in the walls. A sympathetic vibration. Riftlight shimmered briefly across the Bastion's spine.
Senya glanced at Silas. "If she triggers again, the whole damn structure might collapse."
"I'm fine," the girl said suddenly. Her voice was hoarse, but steady. "I'm not going to hurt anyone. I didn't choose what they put in me."
Silas crouched. "What's your name?"
She hesitated. Then, "Dawn."
Nira looked up sharply. "Dawn... like Dawnbreak Protocol?"
Dawn nodded once.
Silence settled over the team like a new layer of ash.
---
Elsewhere…
"Wake them."
Judicator Velae's order hung in the sterile white chamber like a commandment.
Across from her, a Tribunal technician flinched. "All of them, Judicator?"
"Yes. Dawnbreak's containment has failed. The Ashbinders have taken her."
He hesitated. "That will destabilize four Ranks. At least one Arc-Singularity—"
"I know exactly what it will destabilize," Velae cut in coldly. "This was always the plan. They think they're building a rebellion."
She smiled, and it did not reach her eyes.
"We're building the fire that will burn it all down."
---
Back at Ephra Dusk
The girl, Dawn, sat cross-legged now, tracing shapes in the dust with a fingertip. She looked younger like that. Like someone's little sister. But the hum in the air betrayed her truth.
Silas turned to the others. "She stays. For now. But we keep watching. We treat her like a bomb with a pulse."
"I can hear you," Dawn said dryly.
"Good," Senya replied. "Then maybe you'll understand when we say this isn't personal."
"It's always personal," Dawn murmured. "That's what makes us human."
Jex groaned. "Great. She's poetic. We picked up a Rift philosopher."
But his grin was hollow.
Because deep down, they all felt it.
This was the moment the Trial ended. And the war began.
---
They gave her a room.
It wasn't much—just an old storage alcove repurposed with a sleeping mat, two field rations, and a cracked terminal that occasionally buzzed to life with fragments of forgotten logs. But it was hers. For now.
Dawn didn't ask questions. She didn't thank them. She didn't cry.
She sat cross-legged in the center of the room, facing the far wall like she was waiting for it to speak to her.
Nira lingered at the doorway.
"You don't sleep either?" she asked gently.
Dawn didn't turn. "I used to. Before they woke the song."
Nira stepped in. "What does it sound like?"
Dawn paused. Then: "It doesn't sound. It remembers."
"…What does that mean?"
Dawn tilted her head, still staring forward. "It remembers me. Before I was born. After I'll die. I think… I think my Remnant isn't just bonded to me. It's witnessing me."
Nira didn't respond. There was no right answer to that.
---
Elsewhere in the Bastion, tension thickened.
Torren paced like a storm bottled in flesh. He didn't like it—bringing an unknown into their sanctuary. Especially one that could erase Echoes just by existing.
"We don't know where she came from," he growled.
"We know she didn't kill us when she could have," Silas countered. He leaned against a support beam, arms crossed, eyes closed. "She's scared. She's isolated. And she's the reason Edgepoint went dark."
"That's exactly why I don't trust her," Torren said. "That level of power? If she loses control again—"
"Then we do what we have to," Senya interrupted from behind them. She stepped into the firelight, eyes like sharpened glass. "But until then, she's under protection. Ours. And no one makes a move without consensus."
Torren looked away, jaw clenched. But he said nothing more.
---
Later that night, the Bastion pulsed.
Faint at first. A heartbeat beneath the walls. Riftlight danced in the cracks between floor tiles like ghostfire.
Jex was the first to see it.
He was halfway through a can of synthetic protein—probably spoiled—when the walls sighed.
Not mechanically. Not structurally.
Livingly.
He dropped the tin. "Uh. Guys?"
The light twisted again. Not dangerously. But rhythmically.
Senya entered a moment later, her scanner already active.
"It's her," she said before anyone asked. "She's syncing."
"With what?" Jex asked.
Nira's voice came from the corridor, rushed. "With the Bastion."
They met in the main relay hall—an old chamber once used to map Rift blooms. Most of it had been dead for years. But now, the old sigils were glowing. Spiraling. Shifting in response to something unseen.
Dawn stood at the center.
Arms out. Eyes open. Not glowing—but watching.
She wasn't controlling anything. That much was clear. The Bastion was responding to her.
"She's a tether," Nira whispered. "The Forge woke her, and now the Bastion is syncing with that resonance. It thinks she's its core."
"Then this place is going to kill itself trying to match her frequency," Senya muttered.
"No," Silas said slowly. "It's evolving."
The room changed.
Panels that hadn't functioned in years lit up. Storage vaults hissed open. Even the internal power flow adjusted—cleaner, smoother, almost… sympathetic.
And then, a door opened.
Not one anyone had ever seen before.
A heavy slab in the south chamber slid aside, revealing a circular descent filled with dustless air and faintly glowing runes.
Dawn blinked. "That wasn't me."
Senya looked to Silas. "Forge protocol?"
"Or something deeper," he replied. "We triggered something when we brought her back."
"Then we go down?" Jex asked.
"Tomorrow," Senya said. "We rest tonight. Prep. Map it if we can. If we go in blind, we go in dead."
No one argued.
Even Dawn simply sat back down, cross-legged on the floor, eyes wide with distant awe.
---
That night, the Ashbinders didn't sleep well.
The Rift sang through the stone. The Forge pulsed faintly from far below.
Something was changing.
And the world was beginning to notice.