Southridge University – Off-Limits Research Wing
The building was abandoned, most of its top floors condemned after a flux detonation a decade ago. But Zara knew the rumors weren't just ghost stories. She stood in front of a sealed basement door, her fingers trailing over an old security glyph.
The same symbol from her dreams.
A spiral loop — broken at the center.
Her flux shimmered softly as she focused on the sigil.
She whispered: "Memory recall… deep layer. Let me see what was lost."
The glyph flickered.
Then clicked open.
________________________________________
Beneath the Surface
She stepped into darkness.
No lights. No sound.
But as her flux extended outward, faint emotional signatures pulsed from the walls — each one like a trapped echo.
• Guilt.
• Shame.
• Fear of forgetting.
Then she saw them:
Memory orbs.
Floating fragments suspended in glowing glass capsules. They hummed with faint energy, arranged in a maze — a twisted archive of removed truths.
"Casian was here," Zara whispered.
This place wasn't forgotten by accident.
It was curated.
________________________________________
Meanwhile – Thorne's Compound
Elena stood atop the training platform, practicing microgravity shifts. Each pulse was measured — tight, precise.
But halfway through a burst, her flux flared uncontrollably.
The platform tilted violently.
Marcus and Rico were thrown aside.
Zara, still gone, couldn't help stabilize.
"Elena—!" Marcus called, grabbing a support pillar.
She clenched her fists, willing the wave back inside.
The gravity dropped — too fast.
Her knees buckled. Her body slammed into the floor.
The energy pulse collapsed in on itself.
FLUX DISRUPTION.
________________________________________
Memory Vault – Deep Chamber
Zara approached the central archive — a reinforced vault door protected by triple-layered mental locks.
Her own face stared back from the door's recognition panel.
The system spoke in a voice eerily familiar:
"Zara Okafor. Memory Level 7 access confirmed.
Welcome, Architect's Assistant."
Her breath caught.
I was here before.
Inside, the chamber pulsed with cold light. At the center, a single sealed memory shard floated in isolation. Its color: ashen violet — like a dying star.
She reached for it—
A hand gripped her wrist.
Casian Vale.
"I told you not to dig."
________________________________________
Flux Combat – Vault Interior
Zara stepped back fast, activating a memory flare to blind Casian — but he was already rewriting the nearby space.
Casian's Awakened Ability: "False Recall."
He plants fabricated memories into opponents, forcing them to act on false pasts.
Zara's senses blurred — she suddenly remembered him as a friend, then an enemy, then someone who once saved her life.
She staggered.
"No—! You're not real!"
He stepped forward calmly.
"You were my assistant. You helped erase them. All of them."
He pointed to the memory shard.
"This one… you locked away yourself."
________________________________________
Thorne's Compound – Recovery Room
Elena lay in bed, sweat on her brow, gravity still pulsing weakly around her. Marcus sat nearby, watching the tremors flatten.
Thorne entered, grave.
"She's approaching Phase Two," he muttered.
Rico looked up. "That's good, right?"
Thorne didn't answer.
Instead, he handed Marcus a sealed case.
"Next time she loses control… open this."
"What is it?"
"A counterweight."
________________________________________
Memory Vault – Conclusion
Zara's hands trembled. She forced herself to focus, ignoring Casian's manipulations. She unleashed pure Memory Burn, searing through his illusions and anchoring her mind to the present.
The memory shard pulsed once. Opened.
Images flooded her mind:
• Elena standing in front of an old reactor.
• Thorne screaming.
• Dozens of children.
• A massive flux experiment gone wrong.
• Zara choosing to erase everything.
She collapsed to her knees.
Casian smiled, even as he bled.
"You see now?"
Zara looked up at him.
"I see what we did. And I won't let you bury it again."
She vanished in a flare of flux — memory in hand.
________________________________________
Final Scene – Eclipsed Circle Inner Sanctum
Casian knelt before Vincent, bruised but intact.
"She has the memory."
Vincent nodded.
"And Elena?"
Mira appeared, holding a gravity map.
"Her power's escalating faster than we expected. Disruption's begun."
Vincent turned to the dark mirror in the wall — the one no one but him could see through.
"She remembers what she buried. Elena is destabilizing. Team Flux is stretched thin."
He smiled faintly.
"Let the next Wraithborn loose. One that remembers her."