He didn’t climb.
He dragged.
One arm dislocated. The other trembling, locked at the elbow, fingers gnarled like claws. The Last Light moved because he had to. Not for himself—but for her.
Echo did not stir.
Her breath was shallow. Her body slack. Circuits along her spine sparked faintly, white against blood-matted hair. She was barely alive—less a person now and more a memory he refused to let die.
The shaft stretched above like the throat of a forgotten god. No ladder. No path. Just cracked stone and the mockery of light bleeding from far, far above.
He hooked his arm around her torso. Pulled.
A scream tore through his ribs—deep, wet, final. He ignored it.
Pulled again.
There was no rhythm. No grace. Only pain.
His knees scraped against rust and bone. At times he slipped, fell backwards—Echo nearly tumbling from his grasp. But he clutched tighter. His fingers broke before he let her go.
Time didn’t pass. It bled.
Twice he blacked out.
Once he vomited blood and bile down the incline.
But each time—he woke. And he dragged her higher.
The light above grew closer. But it mocked him, flickering through smoke, as if unsure whether to allow him through.
When his hand finally crested the rim of the shaft, he didn’t cry out. He didn’t smile.
He collapsed.
The world beyond was no paradise—only desolation under a cracked, irradiated sky. But there was air. Real air. And ruin that wasn’t trying to kill them.
He turned back.
Reached one last time.
With a broken grunt, he hauled her up beside him—her unconscious form catching on stone, cutting deep.
When she landed on the surface, her chest still moved.
That was enough.
He lay beside her in the ash. One arm across her body like a shield. His vision swam.
For a moment—one breath—he thought:
"We're free."
High above the ash-blasted earth drifts the Vermilion Silica—flawless, merciless, and sacred in its precision. It is not a warship. It is not salvation. It is the immaculate machine of forgetting, where memory is judged, rewritten, or burned. Every being in the system knows its name—not because they were taught it, but because it was written into the language of fear.
Interior: The Vermilion Silica
There is no shadow in this place.
The walls are seamless. Reflective. So perfectly polished that looking at them feels like falling into yourself. Not like mirrors—worse. Like staring through the idea of a mirror. A place where light does not bounce, but bends—folds—rewrites.
Everything gleams. But not with warmth.
The ceiling arcs high, a white dome ringed with holo-anchors—each one pulsing with refracted memories pulled from below: dead towns, half-erased conversations, digital remains of people who no longer know they existed.
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The floor is made of silica so refined, it registers thought impulses like pressure. Just stepping into this place is an act of surveillance.
No chairs. No consoles. Only suspended strands of hardlight interfaces that float mid-air, adjusting themselves to Commander Thros’ neural rhythms. He does not reach to command them.
He only thinks.
And they obey.
He stands at the center—alone, surrounded by memories that are not his, made his only by right of control. His coat is white, but not ceremonial. Functional. Armored. Burnt at the cuffs from countless calibrations.
His face? Unreadable. Not stoic—controlled. His eyes scan the reflected chamber, and in them, one might think they saw mercy.
But they'd be wrong.
What little light glints off his profile disappears behind him, swallowed by a vaulted wall where The Mirror sleeps in glass—a spherical engine of cerebral fire.
He speaks.
“Begin sweep calibration. We retrieve what remains.”
One of the Reign’s neural aides—genderless, faceless—approaches in silence.
“Sir. The field’s unstable. The ash carries too many residuals.”
“Then cleanse it,” Thros replies. “Burn every thought that lingers.”
His hand raises slightly.
No gesture. Just intention.
The Mirror awakens.
Its surface fractures open like a flower of white light. Tendrils of memory-thread spread through the command core, pulsing, searching, tasting.
A low hum rises. The glass beneath his feet vibrates.
“Prepare the Mirror,” Thros commands.
“Let it see. Let it know.”
“But do not burn—not yet.”
The first wave is not fire. It is observation.
The Mirror, now active, emits a harmonic signal—a low, pulsing frequency felt in bone before heard in air. Across the scorched land, far below, the air quivers.
From beneath the Vermilion Silica's hull, hatches unfurl like petals of glass, and from their sterile bloom, the Listeners descend.
Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Thin, spindled, silent.
Each one minimal and surgical in scale, faceless and chrome-skinned, crafted in the Reign's likeness of precision and intrusion. Their design favors infiltration—slender, seamless, impossibly fast. They skitter and dart with terrifying speed, crawling through wreckage, ruins, and bone with insectile grace, scanning with optical threads that shimmer like spider silk.
They do not speak. They do not kill.
They only record.
Through ash and ruin they drift, gathering residuals: heat shadows, psychic imprints, memory echoes etched into walls and blood.
And all of it streams upward—into the Mirror—into him.
Commander Thros watches it all.
Still and quiet.
Waiting for one memory to blink back at him.
But then—an anomaly.
One Listener halts.
Its threads twitch mid-scan, like nerves hit by static. A structure long buried beneath collapsed steel—an old outpost, forgotten by all but dust—sends back more than echoes.
It returns clarity.
Not a trace of life. Not a heat signature. A memory—too clean. Undamaged. Untouched by time. Projected as if waiting to be found.
The Mirror absorbs it.
A figure. Uniformed. Standing in front of a Reign terminal. The face is unreadable—but familiar. A blurred imprint. Something ancient… and living.
Thros watches.
His pupils contract. No alarm. No reaction.
But the room holds its breath.
The aide speaks. Quiet. Careful.
“Sir… this memory. It predates the Fall. It’s… impossible.”
Thros turns—slowly.
“Archive it. Mark it as irrelevant.”
“But—”
“Do it.”
The aide nods and retreats, silent.
Thros turns back to the memory stream.
The figure flickers.
The memory plays again. Then vanishes. Then replays—unauthorized.
The system attempts to erase it a second time.
FILE PLAYING. FILE NOT FOUND.
The console glitches. Light dims.
Something else has hold of this memory—and it isn’t the Reign.
The surface world continues to burn, but now—so does something inside the Vermilion Silica.
And for the first time, the Vermilion Silica doesn't remember by choice.
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