The Next Morning — Location: Rebel Bunker – Common Room

The bunker had never felt this alive.

Mismatched mugs clinked over metal tables. Someone was tuning a broken stringed instrument near the back wall. For once, the air didn’t smell like oil and tension—but cinnamon bark and old laughter.

Ember sat off to the side, curled into her jacket, nursing a chipped cup of something warm and bitter. It stung her mouth—but she drank it anyway. She was still shaking, even if no one could see it.

Everyone else was glowing.

Voren was reenacting the mission near the main table, complete with exaggerated motions and the occasional chair slam. Deyar groaned every time he made himself the hero. Silen kept tossing crumbs at him mid-speech, cackling when they bounced off his face.

Renna moved between them like she belonged to both the fight and the laughter.

But then she saw Ember sitting alone—and broke from the group with a quiet smile.

She didn’t sit down right away. Just leaned beside the wall near her, arms crossed. Watching. Waiting.

“You’re the only one in here still wearing guilt like a second jacket,” she said.

Ember blinked, caught off guard. “I’m not—”

Renna didn’t push. She just slid down the wall until she was seated beside her.

“You froze when it was over,” she said softly. “Not during. Not when the alarms blared. Not when Voren screamed and you dragged him from the rubble. You froze when you were safe.”

Ember looked down at her drink. “I didn’t feel safe.”

Renna leaned her head back against the wall. “Me either. That’s how I knew you’d make it.”

The words hung between them. Ember tried to hold onto them, but they slipped through her fingers.

“I dropped something,” she murmured. “In the stronghold. I didn’t realize until later.”

Renna looked at her. “Does it matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s the thing about war,” Renna said. “You never get to know which mistake mattered most. All you can do is move forward.”

She nudged Ember’s boot with hers and smirked. “You’ve still got time to screw up better.”

Ember almost laughed.

Almost.

25 Minutes Later — Location: Rebel Command Hall – Secondary Channel Uplink

The laughter hadn’t followed him here.

Axel stood alone in the flickering light of the comm room—an old surveillance monitor casting a faint blue glow across his face. His armor was still half-unbuckled from the mission, dirt crusted into the seams. But he wasn’t moving.

He just stared at the transmitter.

It blinked. Waiting.

He exhaled slowly, knuckles tightening on the edge of the panel.

“Fractured Dawn HQ, this is Cell 6-Delta. Repeat: 6-Delta reporting successful data extraction. Asset secure. Requesting debrief and support allocation. Copy?”

Silence.

He tried again.

“Command, this is Commander Axel Caelis. Mission was a success. We have the Helion crystal. No casualties. Awaiting new directives.”

Static.

Then—finally—a click. A connection.

Axel straightened.

But the voice that came through wasn’t what he expected.

It was cold. Flattened. Scrubbed of identity.

“This line is closed.”

Just that.

No name. No code. No emotion.

The signal cut before he could speak.

He didn’t move. His fingers slowly uncurled from the console.

Behind him, Ember hovered in the hallway, breath caught. She hadn’t meant to listen—but she had.

Axel turned and met her eyes.

No words. Just a slow, controlled nod.

“Suit up,” he said. “Just in case.”

Then he walked past her like nothing had happened.

But she saw it.

The shift.

Something in him had shut down.

Location: Rebel Bunker – Common Room

The world ended with a sound Ember didn’t recognize at first.

It wasn’t a siren or an engine.

It was deeper—like something buried beneath the earth suddenly screamed.

The floor trembled. Her cup rattled off the table and shattered.

Then—

Boom.

An explosion ripped through the west corridor. The wall blew inward, fire and dust swallowing the room. Ember flew backward, ears ringing, lungs full of smoke.

Screams followed. Names. Steel. Ash.

She pushed herself up, dizzy, bleeding. Red lights flashed. The air became a war zone.

Across the chaos, she saw Renna pulling Silen to cover, coughing through the ash. Deyar was already firing toward the breach.

Ember’s heart slammed back to life.

This wasn’t just a breach.

This was a massacre.

Location: Rebel Bunker – Armory Access

“To the armory—move!” Axel shouted over the din.

Ember staggered through the hall, grabbing a torchblade from the rack just as another blast rocked the ceiling.

Voren hacked into the side panel, blood on his temple. “They’re inside. Too many entry points—I can’t lock them down!”

“How the hell did they find us?” Deyar yelled.

“They didn’t find us,” Axel snapped, strapping on his chest guard. “They followed something.”

The words hit Ember like a blade.

Her breath caught.

A glint of metal. The moment her coat caught. The tug. The drop.

The Echo Sigil.

She froze.

“Sigil…” she whispered.

Axel turned. “What?”

“I dropped it,” she said, her voice cracking. “In the stronghold. When we were escaping.”

The room stilled.

Axel stepped toward her, slow, deliberate, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “Not now.”

But his hand trembled

Location: Main Hall – Defensive Line

There was no time left.

Helion enforcers poured through the corridors—visors glowing red, steps precise. The rebels formed a line behind the broken blast doors, blades drawn, breathing hard.

Ember stood beside Axel.

The first wave hit.

She didn’t flinch.

Fire erupted from her blade as she met them head-on. Deyar dropped two more. Silen struck from the flank.

But they were drowning in bodies.

And then the smoke changed.

Location: Central Hall – Stairwell Approach

He stepped through the haze like a ghost.

Cassian.

Unmasked. Calm. Clean.

His coat drifted like smoke. His gaze swept the carnage.

Then it locked on Ember.

“You carried it well,” he said. “The sigil. It brought me home.

Location: Sublevel Access – Emergency Rail Tunnel

Ember ran.

She didn’t remember deciding. Just the heat of Axel’s grip, Voren shouting cover fire, Renna’s voice fading behind them.

The bunker was burning.

Axel led her to the end of the rail corridor—his ribs heaving, his blade flickering.

An old escape pod sat in the launch rack.

“Get in,” he ordered.

“No,” she gasped. “No, I’m not leaving you.”

“You’re leaving because I said so.”

He input coordinates with one shaking hand.

“It’ll drift. Keep you off Helion scans. Go dark. Don’t look back.”

Tears blurred her vision.

“I can’t. I won’t—”

He turned to her, voice quieter now. “You had a future. That’s all that mattered.”

He placed a hand on her face—gentle, final.

“Live like someone I’d be proud of.”

Then he slammed the hatch.

The pod lit.

“AXEL!” she screamed—

Then whoosh—

The rail caught, and she was gone.

She spun to the window, clawing at the view—

And just before the rail curved, she saw it:

The gate slamming shut.

No going back.

No rescue.

Axel was gone.

Location: Rebel Bunker – Central Hall

Axel stepped through smoke and ruin, torchblade dragging low. Every breath came with the weight of ash. Every step felt like walking through the bones of his own failures.

Cassian stood alone in the burning hall, untouched.
Not even a speck of soot marked his coat.

The light from the fires caught the edges of his expression—unbothered. Cold. Inevitable.

“You’re still standing,” Cassian said, voice calm. Almost admiring. “I thought you’d run with her.”

“I don’t run,” Axel said.

His blade hummed.
The floor beneath them hissed as heat met metal.

“She had a future,” Axel said. “You don’t.”

Cassian exhaled slowly—more like a man sighing at a familiar scene than facing a dying soldier. “Still clinging to nobility,” he murmured. “Even in the end.”

Axel didn’t reply.

He charged.

Cassian didn’t move—not right away. He tilted his head, measured Axel’s angle, and stepped once to the left. His coat swirled. His blade flicked up—clean, silver, sharp.

They clashed.

Sparks screamed from steel.

Axel drove forward like a hammer. Wild. Relentless. Every swing was memory—Renna’s laughter, Ember’s tears, the weight of a command no one else would carry.

Cassian parried each blow with clinical ease.

One. Two. Three.
Like music.
Like breath.

But Axel wasn’t trying to win.

He was trying to wound.

He feinted low—then surged forward, dragging the fire edge of his blade across Cassian’s chest. The cut was shallow—but real.

Blood bloomed, red against the black.

Cassian froze.

His expression shifted. Not rage. Not pain.
Annoyance.

“You’ll scar,” Axel said, smiling through bloodied teeth.

Cassian looked down at the wound. Then back at Axel.
And he spoke with finality:

“No one will remember you.”

He stepped in.

The air grew heavy. Still.

Axel raised his blade for a final strike.

Cassian was already inside the guard.

One step. One twist. One perfect motion.

His weapon slid under the ribs—just enough to stop the heart. Then—up. Not to sever. To silence.

Axel’s torchblade fell from his hands.

He looked at Cassian once more—not with fear, but with fire still in his eyes.

Then he collapsed.

The echo of steel hitting the floor rang louder than the gunfire still raging in distant halls.

Cassian didn’t look back.
He wiped the blood from his blade.
And walked on.

Location: Tunnel End – Ember’s Pod Landing

The pod hissed open.

Ember dropped to her knees, coughing. Dirt beneath her. Stars overhead.

Wrong stars.

The world was quiet.

She turned to the tunnel.

Smoke still drifted.

No way back.

No rescue.

She buried her face in her hands and let the grief break her.

But something stirred in the dark.

A face.

A name.

Renna.

There’d been no scream. No cry. No body.

Just smoke.

And silence.

And now…

it was following her.