🕯️ Somewhere Beneath Ashenwell – Weeks Ago
The Court never spoke Max's name aloud. To them, he was just Nether. A file. A weapon.
The orders were simple: Eliminate Subject Solace if he breaches protocol.
Grim.
Max stood in the gloom of the Underhall chamber, the echo of those words still vibrating in his skull. But he didn't move. Not then. Not yet.
He remembered the day the labs collapsed. The fire. The screaming. Grim holding the ceiling back with his bare hands so the others could escape.
He remembered the Court branding his brother's back with the sigil of "corrupted potential."
He remembered wanting to scream. But he didn't. He hid. Watched. Waited.
Because that's what the shadows taught him to do.
🌘 Shadowstep – 6 Days Ago
Max watched from the rafters as Grim sliced through a training simulation, fire in his eyes, sweat clinging to his collar.
He was slower. Distracted.
Weighed down by ghosts, Max thought.
He watched Sparks glitch into view mid-fight, only to vanish again. Saw Grim flinch like it hurt. Like her very absence carved him open.
Max had no words to offer. He was built without them.
Instead, he followed Grim back to his dorm. Saw him sit by the window. Head down. Still. Quiet.
I could kill him now, Max thought.
His fingers flexed. But nothing moved.
The memory of childhood cut through the moment like a blade.
Grim teaching Max how to hold a knife—"Not for killing. For control."
Grim shielding him from a Court enforcer—taking the lash himself.
Grim, holding Max's hand in the dark, whispering, "If we ever get out, I'll make sure they never touch you again."
Max exhaled slowly, pulled the blade back.
"I remember," he whispered into the silence.
🌑 The Mission That Broke Him
Three months ago, the Court sent Max on a test purge: a rogue agent in the Dead Zones. Standard protocol. Execute, report, vanish.
But when he arrived, the rogue wasn't some monster.
It was a girl no older than Hadi, hiding inside a shattered Lume bubble, begging him to "tell Solace I'm sorry."
Max killed her anyway. Clean. Fast.
Then he vomited in the snow and screamed without making a sound.
🩸 The Moment of Defiance
Two nights ago, when Grim accessed the Solace files, Max waited in the shadows again—expecting alarms. Hoping the Court wouldn't send him to clean it up.
But the order came.
Directly to him.
Terminate Subject Solace. Immediate clearance.
Max stared at the command for three full minutes before snapping the terminal in half.
He didn't say a word.
He simply melted into the shadows and began following Grim out of Ashenwell, his blade not drawn in duty—
—but in defiance.
🌑 Now – Shadow Ridge, Watching the Flame
He heard Grim whisper Sparks' name. Heard the pain in it. The guilt.
Max gripped the hilt of his blade tight enough to draw blood.
They don't get to break him again.
He stepped from the rock, cloak rippling around him like smoke, and finally said what he'd been holding back for far too long.
"You're not ready."