Ashenhold slept uneasily beneath a sky of silver clouds.
Mike moved like a ghost through its forgotten southern edge—past rusted train tracks, collapsed drone towers, and old memorials no one remembered. The map stitched into the relic had burned a single word into his mind all night:
"Down."
He found the entrance where the signal peaked—behind a collapsed underpass coated in graffiti. A steel hatch waited beneath a blanket of moss and ash.
He gripped the handle.
The metal was warm.
Beneath the City
The tunnel spiraled downward into darkness.
No lights. No tech. Just walls carved by hands that didn't exist anymore—marked with glyphs that shimmered faintly as he passed.
The Hive was awake here. Not in voice, not in motion—but in presence.
Every breath Mike took felt thick with memory. Visions flared at the edge of his vision—of flames, cities falling, a warrior screaming something in a lost language.
And Jessie's face.
"You said you'd forget."
He reached the bottom of the spiral.
And found the door.
The Temple
The room was impossibly large.
A cathedral beneath the earth, built of obsidian, basalt, and blood—forged long before the cults wore robes and masks. The floor was covered in a massive mosaic: the spiral-triangle sigil, etched in fireglass.
At its center stood a pedestal.
On it rested a stone tablet—charred, cracked, and humming with invisible force.
Mike approached slowly, feeling the heat rise with every step.
"This is it," he whispered. "The first seal."
The tablet pulsed.
And his mind unraveled.
The Flame's Memory
He was somewhere else—inside a memory so deep, it felt like death.
The world burned.
Not in chaos, but in design.
Structures crumbled with purpose. People knelt in streets, not screaming, but whispering as the Hive flowed over them like shadow-water.
And in the center of it all stood Vyre—his armor shattered, his chest cracked open, the Hive clawing at his soul.
A girl was with him.
Jessie.
But she was different—older, brighter, eyes glowing violet with borrowed power.
"You can't seal it again," she told him.
"I don't have to," Vyre said. "I just have to delay it… and forget you."
Then the light consumed them.
Back in the Temple
Mike collapsed to the floor, chest heaving, tears streaking down his cheeks.
He couldn't move.
The scar on his chest now radiated golden heat, lighting the room with flickering firelight.
The relic in his pocket vibrated—shrieking in pulses only he could hear.
Then the voice returned.
Not the Hive.
Something else.
"Do you remember the oath?"
Mike gasped. "Who are you?"
"I am what you buried. I am what they sealed. I am memory."
"Are you… Vyre?"
Silence.
Then, "You are the last of us. But not for long."
Something Wakes
Far across Ashenhold, alarms lit up across a dozen forgotten sensors—government and cult alike.
A flare of ancient energy had erupted below the city.
Ysara's team scrambled.
The cult's seers screamed in unison.
And deep beneath another ruin… Jessie's fingers twitched in her sleep.
Mike Stands Again
He rose slowly, the room still burning in dim firelight from within his skin. He touched the tablet once more.
This time, it didn't resist.
It unfolded—revealing a hidden archive of glowing memory threads that hovered mid-air like fireflies.
At the center: a name.
"Seras."
And beneath it:
"The Betrayer Flame."
Mike stepped back, trembling.
"She was one of us."
The Hive pulsed.
"She still is."