MEMORY START

I. The Sound of Ice

The North Atlantic is a cruel teacher.
It whispers one lesson over and over, until you learn it—or die trying.

Everything breaks.

Ships. Men. Beliefs.

Even the sea itself fractures under the cold.

It was winter again when the Morrigan drifted into the ice fields north of Newfoundland, the wind slicing through canvas and bone alike. The Templar flag above me cracked like a whip, its red cross stark against the pale.

I stood at the helm, breath freezing in the air, watching as icebergs loomed like silent cathedrals around us. My crew moved with the rhythm of survival, faces half-hidden under frost and fear.

They called me Captain Cormac now. Some whispered Templar dog. Others, the Assassin hunter.

They were all right, in their own way.

The Brotherhood had cast me out, and I them.
And now, I hunted what I once was.

But beneath the hatred, beneath the certainty, something restless stirred.

A voice I could not silence.

“You are an anomaly,” it whispered. “A man unfit for either world.”

II. The Mission

We’d been tracking a sloop bound from Boston to the Labrador coast — a small vessel, but dangerous. Word from our informants said it carried an Assassin courier named Owen O’Rourke, a former comrade of mine from the early days in New York.

Owen had been one of the first to call me traitor.

Now, rumor claimed he’d found a Piece of Eden fragment in the wreckage of an old temple off the coast — the same kind of power that had destroyed Lisbon, that had shattered my faith and my bones alike.

I couldn’t let him reach Achilles.

When the lookout called down — “Ship to starboard!” — my pulse quickened. The sloop was there, half-buried in fog, its sails trimmed tight against the wind.

“Ready the cannons!” I barked. “Fire on my mark!”

The Morrigan roared. Cannonballs tore through the fog like thunder, striking wood and canvas. The sloop veered hard, splinters flying.

But instead of fleeing, it turned toward us.

Brave fool.

We grappled. The ships collided, hooks biting into timber. My men shouted as we leapt across the gap, pistols cracking, blades flashing.

I found Owen on the quarterdeck, saber drawn, eyes wide with disbelief.

“Saints preserve me,” he muttered. “It’s true. You live.”

“Aye,” I said. “And you won’t, unless you surrender that relic.”

He sneered. “Still the Templar’s lapdog, then?”

“You’d rather I let the world burn?”

He charged. Steel clashed, breath steaming in the cold. For a moment, I saw the man I once called brother — the one who had trained beside me under Achilles’ watch.

Then I saw Lisbon again — the quake, the light, the screams.

My blade struck true.

Owen fell to his knees, clutching his wound. The golden shimmer of the fragment spilled from his coat, tumbling onto the deck between us.

“You don’t understand,” he gasped. “Achilles… he’s found another one. This is no accident. It’s a pattern.”

“A pattern?”

He coughed blood. “The temples… they’re linked. The world’s veins… running beneath us. You can feel them, can’t you? The anomalies…”

His eyes widened — not at me, but at something behind me.

Then he was gone.

Not dead. Gone.

III. The Anomaly

Light consumed the world.

For a heartbeat, the deck vanished beneath my feet, the wind stilled, and I found myself standing in a void of glass and sound. The sky fractured — threads of gold and white forming spirals that reached forever.

And there, in the center, floated a vision.

A city — ancient, impossible. Towers of light stretched toward a sun that wasn’t a sun, but a sphere pulsing with energy. Voices echoed through me, too many to count, speaking in tongues I half-understood.

One voice rose above the rest.

“You walk upon our echoes,” it said. “The earth remembers your trespass.”

“Who are you?” I demanded.

“You are the fracture — the anomaly that resists both fate and faith. You would stop what must be. But the world cannot be saved by denial.”

“I saw what your power did,” I said. “Lisbon burned for your arrogance.”

“Not ours,” the voice replied, fading. “Yours.”

Then the light shattered.

IV. Return to Ice

I woke on the Morrigan, half-frozen, my men gathered around.

“Captain!” cried Gist. “You vanished! One moment you were there, the next—”

I sat up, the cold cutting deep. The fragment was gone. No trace of Owen, no blood, no body.

Only scorch marks on the deck where the relic had fallen.

“What happened, Shay?” Gist asked quietly.

“An anomaly,” I said, voice hoarse. “And something I’ll not soon forget.”

He frowned. “Should we report it to the Grand Master?”

I hesitated. Haytham Kenway trusted results, not questions. And I had too many of the latter.

“No,” I said finally. “Not yet. We’ll sail north. There’s something out there — a pattern, Owen said. I mean to see it.”

V. The Vault of Glass

The charts led us to a stretch of frozen coast where no sane sailor ventured — cliffs of black rock rising from the sea, riddled with caverns.

As we anchored, I felt it again — that hum beneath my boots, faint but alive.

The same vibration I’d felt in Lisbon.

I took a lantern and descended alone.

The cave twisted deep into the earth, its walls shimmering faintly, as if the stone itself remembered light. In the distance, something glowed — a pulsing amber orb, half-buried in ice.

A First Civilization device.

The same pattern of energy Owen had spoken of.

When I touched the ice, it pulsed — once, twice — then melted away in silence. The orb hung there, suspended in nothing. Symbols flared across its surface, shifting faster than thought.

And then, once more, a voice.

“You were not meant to see this.”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said aloud. “But I won’t look away.”

“You would destroy to preserve. You call this wisdom.”

“I call it survival.”

The orb’s light dimmed. “You are the weapon that forgets its purpose.”

Pain seared through my skull — memories not mine flooding my mind: cities falling, oceans swallowing continents, figures of light screaming into eternity.

When I could breathe again, the cave was dark. The orb was gone.

But its words lingered.

VI. Shadows of Faith

Back aboard the Morrigan, I stood at the prow, watching the horizon fade into twilight.

If the Brotherhood had known what the relics could do, if they’d seen what I had, they’d have burned every map, sealed every vault.

But Achilles had believed he could master the power.
And in his arrogance, he’d doomed us all.

Still… part of me wondered.

If these relics were not meant for men, why did they speak in voices we could understand? Why leave them where we could find them?

Was I stopping catastrophe — or delaying revelation?

I thought of the voice calling me an anomaly.

Perhaps I was.

Perhaps I always had been.

VII. The Templar’s Creed

When I finally reported to Haytham, his eyes narrowed at my description of the anomaly.

“A vision,” he said. “How very Assassin of you.”

“I’m telling you, sir, it was real. The relics are connected. There’s something larger beneath all this.”

“There always is,” he replied, dryly. “And it’s never our place to worship it. The Assassins drown themselves in symbols. We shape the world with action.”

He leaned forward, his voice low. “Remember that, Shay. You are not a philosopher. You are a weapon. The finest kind — one that thinks just enough to obey.”

His words stung more than they should have.

Was that all I’d become?

A blade wielded by one ideology against another?

Or perhaps that was what I’d always been.

VIII. The Blizzard

Two nights later, a storm caught us near Greenland. Ice and wind slammed into the Morrigan like a fist. The crew shouted over the roar, ropes snapping, sails tearing.

And through the chaos, I saw it — a shape in the mist.

Not a ship. Not ice.

A sphere of light, hovering just above the waves.

It pulsed once, and the wind shifted. The storm seemed to bend around it, the sea itself bowing in silence.

I gripped the helm, jaw tight. “Hard to port! Keep her steady!”

The Morrigan turned, groaning, barely escaping the pull of the light. For a moment, the world froze. Then the sphere imploded — gone in an instant.

When the calm returned, half the crew crossed themselves.

“What in God’s name was that?” Gist whispered.

“An anomaly,” I said again.

And this time, I almost laughed.

Because maybe that’s all any of us are — distortions in someone else’s design.

IX. The Letter

Weeks later, in Halifax, I found a letter waiting for me.

No seal. No signature. Only a single line:

“The pattern begins where faith ends.”

Inside was a map — hand-drawn, marked with coordinates deep in the Arctic Circle.

I burned the letter, but I memorized the map.

Because part of me still wanted to know.

Not for the Templars.
Not for Achilles.
For myself.

X. The Truth Beneath

We reached the coordinates months later, after storms and silence. The land there was not land but glass — ice so clear it reflected the stars from below as well as above.

At its heart, another vault waited — smaller, circular, humming faintly.

I stepped inside.

No light greeted me this time. No voice. Only a mirror of frozen water.

When I looked into it, I saw not my reflection, but Lisbon again — the quake, the screams, the light. I saw the men I’d killed. The Brotherhood I’d betrayed.

And I saw the world as it might have been — free of Assassins and Templars both.

A world without purpose. Without creed.

And I understood.

The anomaly was not in the relics. It was in us.

Humanity — forever reaching for power we could not hold, mistaking control for salvation.

The Isu had not failed.
We had.

And I was the proof.

XI. Return

I sealed the vault behind me and turned toward the horizon.

The world was still spinning, still bleeding, still broken.

But for the first time, I didn’t feel anger. Only acceptance.

Perhaps this was the Templar’s truth, or perhaps it was mine alone:

We are not gods.
We are not saviors.
We are anomalies — born of chaos, shaped by choice.

I walked back to the Morrigan through the falling snow.

Above me, the aurora burned — green and gold, dancing like fire upon ice.

And for a moment, I could almost hear the voice again, soft and distant.

“Even anomalies have purpose.”

XII. Epilogue

Years later, when they call me traitor, zealot, or fool, I think of that voice.
Of Owen. Of Achilles.
Of the light beneath the ice.

The Assassins sought freedom.
The Templars sought order.
But neither saw the truth that waited in between.

There are no perfect systems.
No eternal beliefs.
Only men — fragile, fallible, forever chasing answers buried too deep to reach.

If I am an anomaly, then I am content to be one.

For the anomaly is what proves the pattern real.

Requiescat in pace.

MEMORY END