Opening – The Smoke Clears
The battlefield lies quiet.
Cindervault's gorge, once a thunderous front, is now a graveyard of broken mechs, shattered towers, and scorched earth. The skies no longer blaze. The rewrite pulse has passed.
But its aftermath lingers.
Kaelen stands amid the wreckage. Not in triumph, but in silence. Rubble shifts. Someone moans. A memory fragment sparks in the air—an image of a child's drawing, flickering like static.
The dead are still dying.
The Rescued
Across makeshift triage zones, former Hounds are being stabilized. Some are lucid, terrified of what they've done. Others are catatonic—brains overwhelmed by conflicting identities.
One woman, still in Hound armor, holds Seren's wrist tightly.
Hound (quietly):"I remember… her. My daughter. But I also remember burning villages. Which one is me?"
Seren (soft):"Both. But you get to choose who comes next."
Not all make that choice. Some beg for death. Others beg for forgetting.
Political Fallout
Back at Cindervault Command, the Awakened leadership is fractured:
Calyra wants full quarantine. She believes the rewoken may relapse.
Taryn urges integration—but only those who pass strict memory screening.
Kaelen, supported by Seren, argues for rehabilitation through shared memory bonds.
Kaelen:"We fought to give them back their minds. We can't punish them for what Zarxes made them forget."
Calyra:"And if they remember how to kill?"
The debate stalls.
For the first time, the Awakened are not unified.
Rhoan's Burden
Rhoan watches from the command deck as patrols drag in wounded—his armor still smeared with dust and blood.
He lost a third of his forces. He doesn't say a word.
But later, he finds Kaelen alone. They share a moment of quiet.
Rhoan:"You won the battle. But we all lost something else."
Kaelen:"In war, we always do."
Rhoan:"Yeah. But this time, we also found something."
He hands Kaelen a shard—a recovered memory node from a fallen Isu terminal. On it: encrypted fragments of Vael'Ruun's final design.
The Changed Ones
Not all who were freed return to the light.
One former Hound—"Jalen," the first success—wanders the medical wing, whispering warnings.
"Some of us didn't come back. Some of us came wrong…"
Kaelen begins to suspect that Zarxes built failsafes into some minds—corruption seeds waiting to activate.
And one freed soldier vanishes during the night—taking a plasma weapon and a stolen map.
Seren and Kaelen exchange a grim look.
Seren:"The war didn't end. It just got more complicated."
Closing – The Flicker of the Future
That night, Kaelen watches the stars rise above Cindervault.
He holds the recovered node, wondering what Vael'Ruun's true plan was—and whether he was meant to activate it. Or to stop it.
In the distance, faint flashes still light the horizon.
Zarxes is regrouping.
And memory, it seems, is far from safe.