________________________________________
Southridge – Thorne's Compound, Before Dawn
The rain hadn't stopped. Thunder rolled like distant drums as the team sat inside the common room — not as trainees, not as allies, but as people finally ready to confront the truth.
Thorne sat silently in his usual chair, steam curling from the mug between his hands.
Across from him: Zara, holding the memory shard that changed everything.
Elena paced restlessly near the wall, the flux-bracer pulsing softly around her wrist. Marcus leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, jaw clenched. Rico had stopped cracking jokes — always a bad sign.
Zara placed the shard on the table. Its glow reflected in Thorne's eyes.
"You were there," she said. "The first time she Awakened. The reactor. The children. You buried the truth."
Thorne didn't flinch. His voice was quiet. Tired.
"Yes."
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The Hidden History
It had been years ago — before Elena had any memory of flux. Before any of them were soldiers or awakened warriors.
The government project was called Initiative Vanta — an illegal flux experiment designed to trigger forced Awakenings in genetically predisposed youth.
Elena had been one of the candidates.
A girl with volatile gravitational anomalies that no one understood. The scientists thought they could force her power into manifesting.
They succeeded.
And failed.
The facility imploded. Dozens died. Flux ruptured through reality. Time and space fractured around the core of Elena's awakening.
And in the eye of it all — a little girl screaming as the world fell upward.
Thorne had pulled her from the wreckage himself.
He was younger then. Not yet the man who taught by silence and scars. Back then, he still believed in salvaging broken things.
So he made a deal with Casian Vale.
"Erase it," Thorne had said. "She deserves to live without that burden."
And Casian had complied. For a price.
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The Present Shatters
"You had no right," Elena whispered. "No right to take my memory."
"You were a child," Thorne said. "It would have destroyed you."
"I was destroyed," she snapped. "I just didn't know why."
The room pulsed with tension. Zara stood beside her, her voice sharp.
"And what about the others? The ones who didn't make it?"
Thorne looked at her, and for the first time, something broke behind his stoic expression.
"I remember all their names. Every single one."
He stood.
"Do you think I built this compound to train warriors?" he asked. "I built it as penance. As a place for the ones the world threw away — like I once threw her memory into a pit and called it mercy."
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Warning From the Sky
Suddenly, the flux sensors embedded in the wall screeched.
The air thinned. Light flickered. Outside, a dark fog rolled down from the northern cliffs.
Not fog.
Not mist.
Not weather.
Wraithborn.
But different.
It moved like it was alive. Intelligent. Purposeful.
Zara's eyes widened as she reached out with her flux.
"This one isn't just emotion. It's… cognition. It's speaking."
The compound shook.
From the courtyard, a voice rang out.
A deep, echoed distortion layered with rage and recognition:
"Thorne."
"Do you remember me?"
________________________________________
Outside – The New Wraithborn
They emerged from the mist slowly — humanoid in shape, but wrong in every way. Their flux wasn't wild or instinctive like lesser wraithborn. It was controlled.
The leader — nearly eight feet tall, with fractured obsidian armor and eyes like smoldering glass — stepped forward.
He spoke again, and this time, it was clear.
"Project Vanta. Subject 03. You called me failure. Then you left me to die."
Thorne's face went pale.
"No…"
Rico stared. "Wait — that's a Wraithborn that remembers being human?"
Zara confirmed it. "More than remembers. He's anchored. His identity survived the transition."
Marcus stepped forward. "Then it's not just a spirit. He's one of us. One who never got saved."
Elena raised her hands, ready to fight.
The wraithborn's energy surged — dark flux coiling in elegant spirals.
"I came to return the memories you buried in all of us, Thorne."
"Starting with yours."
________________________________________
Battle Erupts – The Teacher Bleeds
Thorne stepped forward alone.
"Everyone else — back. This is my past. I'll face it."
But Marcus grabbed his shoulder. "You told us to face our limits. We're facing yours too."
The wraithborn attacked.
The battle was chaos made precise.
The wraithborn moved like a fallen monk, channeling corrupted flux into mirrored strikes. For every blow Marcus landed, it fed the enemy's momentum. Elena's gravity spirals barely phased it. Rico's copies were torn apart in seconds.
Zara screamed as the wraithborn hit Thorne with a flux burst — not of pain, but memory.
He staggered. Then collapsed.
And in his eyes — terror.
Not of death.
But of remembering everything he tried to forget.
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Final Moments
The team fought with desperation, buying time.
At the last second, Thorne rose again — barely breathing — and channeled a final, forbidden technique. Flux Reversal.
The air inverted.
The wraithborn's core trembled. For a moment, memory unraveled — and the creature howled not in pain, but in sorrow.
"We were children," it cried. "You were supposed to save us."
Then it vanished into smoke and screaming echoes.
Thorne fell. This time, he didn't get up.
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Epilogue – The Price of Secrets
Zara stood over Thorne's body, tears silently streaming. Elena knelt beside her, holding his hand.
A simple note was found in his quarters. No signature.
"You were never failures.
I was."
They buried him beneath the training platform, under the stars, in silence.
And as the mist cleared, they understood:
The Circle wasn't coming.
It was already here.