The settlement was small, no more than twenty structures woven into the crags like roots clinging to stone. Most were built from scavenged alloy and reinforced bone, some reinforced with what looked like Rift-tempered glass. It wasn't beautiful. It was quiet. Still. Intact.
The kind of place that wasn't supposed to exist.
Reven followed the older man, his name was Tarek, through the narrow streets, eyes moving from face to face. Human. All of them. Some bore scars from memory tech, others wore stitched armour that reminded him of old-world military gear. They watched him without fear, but not with trust either. Not yet.
Behind him, Kaela walked like a blade barely sheathed, one hand near her weapon at all times. Lirien was silent but alert, her wings twitching subtly with every new detail she took in.
"You live openly," Reven said as they entered a rounded hall carved into the rock.
Tarek nodded. "We live carefully. The Beast-Kin leave us alone. The Supremes thought us extinct. And the Skyborn..." he glanced at Lirien "...assumed we were too broken to matter."
Lirien met his gaze calmly. "You're not wrong. We thought no one below survived the Collapse. Not fully."
Tarek didn't gloat. He simply looked tired.
"We stayed underground during the Riftfires. The wars. The erasures. We lost generations. But we remembered. That's all we had left."
He gestured toward a low-lit chamber beneath the hall. A round table. Shelves of data-sheets, books, relics—real paper, real ink.
A library.
"You were Archivists?" Reven asked.
"We were everything," Tarek said. "Scientists. Soldiers. Gardeners. Storytellers. Now we're what's left of all of it."
Reven stepped into the chamber, hand resting on the shard at his side. "Then you know what this is."
Tarek stared at the shard for a long moment. Then he nodded.
"You found a Core."
Reven lifted the data-shard from his pouch. "It carries a message. Coordinates. Warnings."
Tarek's expression shifted — just a flicker. Enough to tell Reven he wasn't surprised.
"We've seen one before," Tarek said.
Kaela straightened. "Where?"
Tarek hesitated, then pointed to a locked cabinet across the room. "We've been protecting it for a long time. We thought it might be a trigger… or a trap."
Reven opened the cabinet slowly.
Inside sat a second shard — identical in shape, but darker. Dormant. Sleeping.
"They're calling to each other," Lirien whispered, stepping forward. "This isn't coincidence. It's coordination."
Tarek nodded. "The shards are awakening. And if they're doing that... something else is waking too."
Reven turned back. "The Flameborn."
Tarek didn't speak, but his silence confirmed it.
"They were meant to be weapons," he said finally. "Living fail-safes in case memory manipulation failed. Human minds shaped to store the truth and survive collapse."
Kaela frowned. "You're saying Reven's not the only one."
"No," Tarek said. "He's the first to awaken. But not the last."
They spent the night in the outpost. The people weren't unfriendly, but they kept their distance. Reven wandered the perimeter alone, unable to sleep. Every few steps, the shard in his coat pulsed. It wasn't just reacting. It was scanning. Searching.
He paused at the overlook, staring at the horizon.
Kaela joined him, tossing a dried piece of fruit into her mouth. "You didn't eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"You're brooding."
He gave her a sideways look. "You're watching me too closely."
She didn't deny it.
He spoke before she could. "If I turn into something I can't come back from, I want you to end it."
Her jaw tightened. "Don't ask me for that."
"You're the only one I trust to do it."
Silence.
Finally, she looked out toward the hills.
"Then don't give me a reason to."
In the morning, the council called for him.
There were twelve of them — elders, tacticians, lorekeepers. They didn't look impressed. They looked tired. One woman, cloaked in silver-threaded cloth, stepped forward.
"You carry two shards now," she said. "Soon, you'll have more. And when you do, the world will find you. The Supremes. The Warlords. The Flameborn."
"I know."
"Do you understand what that means?"
"Yes," Reven said. "It means I don't get to run anymore."
A pause. Then she nodded once.
"You're not the last of us, Reven. But you may be the first to be remembered."