Chapter 105 – The Fracture of Hope
Ash fell like snow.
Grey flakes drifted lazily across the fractured sky, each speck a memory burned, a moment lost. The battlefield was quiet now, the kind of silence that follows only after something sacred has been broken.
Erevan stood at the edge of the shattered Nexus, the ground beneath him riddled with fractures—deep glowing scars etched into stone and spirit alike. His fingers twitched at his sides, the aftermath of channeled force still echoing through every nerve. Even now, the last remnants of the Keeper's presence lingered like a fading scream caught in the fabric of space.
He hadn't just destroyed a being. He had undone a node of the Tower's will.
And it terrified him.
Not because of what he had done—but because of how familiar it had felt.
Behind him, the others moved slowly through the debris, recovering, helping each other to stand. Yuren's arm was wrapped tightly in bandages made from a torn cloak. Serah leaned against a cracked column, her breathing uneven. Their gazes kept flicking to Erevan, as if waiting for him to say something. To lead.
But his thoughts were far, far away.
He could still hear the Keeper's last words—You cannot kill what does not exist. A whisper that had not sounded like fear, but like prophecy. It gnawed at him like cold iron against bone.
"Was it really dead?" Erevan murmured to himself.
"You mean the Keeper?" Serah's voice came beside him, quiet, yet steady.
He didn't turn. "It shattered. But it didn't feel like victory. It felt like we let something out. Or maybe… like we stepped into a trap and didn't even know it."
Serah was silent for a while. The wind blew her hair across her face, strands catching in her lashes, but she made no move to brush them away. "You're always looking forward, Erevan. But sometimes, even when we don't understand what we've done, the only thing we can do is take the next step. Even if the ground is broken."
Erevan finally looked at her. There was blood dried at her temple, her armor cracked, yet her eyes were calm. She had seen enough darkness to know it didn't always come with a warning.
From behind, the sound of soft humming caught both their attention. Nyara was walking through the wreckage with slow, careful steps, her fingers trailing against the broken walls like she was reading the ruins. Her voice, almost musical, carried just loud enough to hear.
"The Nexus sang once," she said without looking up. "A long time ago, before the Chains anchored it. It was meant to be a sanctuary node—before the Tower corrupted it."
Erevan furrowed his brow. "You sound like you remember."
"I don't," she replied. "But I feel it. Like a distant echo inside me." She paused, and then turned to face him. "Whatever we destroyed, Erevan, it wasn't the end. It was a doorway."
He already knew that. He had felt it in the heartbeat beneath the rubble, in the pull behind his eyes that told him something larger had begun to stir.
Yuren approached then, with a new urgency in his step. "We've got movement on the outer edge. Scouting echoes from the Tower's automated retrieval units. They're coming to erase what we did. Or maybe to salvage it."
"They'll want to cleanse the memory," Erevan muttered. "Burn the data before it spreads."
"We can't stay here," Yuren continued. "If we linger, we'll get caught between two suppression waves. We need to move before the Reclamation Protocol activates."
Erevan didn't hesitate. "How long until it hits?"
"An hour. Maybe less."
That was all he needed to hear.
He turned back to face the group. Rebels of different origins, former enemies, forgotten wanderers and architects alike, all bound together by one thing—they remembered. And in the Tower's eyes, that made them dangerous.
"We head west," Erevan said. "There's a dormant transit node near the fallen Singularity Gate. If we can reactivate it, we'll get to the Heart faster than the Chainborn can respond."
Nyara tilted her head. "And if it's not dormant—but corrupted?"
Erevan gave a tired smile. "Then we do what we've always done."
"We survive?" Serah asked.
He shook his head. "No. We rewrite."
There was a flicker of something in her gaze then—fear, maybe. But also pride.
They moved quickly.
The terrain had changed, twisted by the unraveling of the Nexus. Once-stable paths warped with each step, the remnants of suppressed code bleeding into reality like watercolor over parchment. Erevan's boots crunched over crystalline memories—shards of lives devoured by the Tower and left to rot.
The silence among them wasn't emptiness. It was reverence. Every one of them knew what they had lost to come this far. And what more they'd have to lose.
They reached the shattered arch of the Singularity Gate within the hour. What had once been a stable portal now flickered like a dying thought, glitching in and out of sync with their plane.
Erevan stepped forward, his hand glowing faintly with residual energy. "It's listening," he said. "But barely."
"You can reach it?" Yuren asked.
"I can try." Erevan knelt beside the control glyphs, fingers dancing over faded runes. "If this node still has access to the old archive keys… I might be able to bypass the lockdown."
Behind him, Serah kept watch, her blade unsheathed. "We won't have long. They'll be on us soon."
Erevan pressed his hand against the glyph.
And the world shifted.
A low hum, like the sound of a thousand voices whispering in unison, filled the air. The glyphs pulsed once, twice—then flared open like an awakening eye.
"Got it," Erevan whispered.
But then, just as the portal stabilized, something pulsed in the distance.
A presence.
Cold. Watching. Ancient.
Nyara turned sharply. "They're coming. But it's not a Reclamation Unit. It's something else."
Erevan rose slowly, the breath caught in his throat.
Something beyond the Tower. Beyond even the Chainborn.
A memory that hadn't yet happened.
He met Serah's eyes, then Yuren's, and finally Nyara's.
"Everyone through the gate," he said quietly. "Now."
They didn't ask questions. They trusted him.
As the last of the rebels vanished through the flickering light, Erevan turned once more to face the horizon—where the sky had begun to peel like torn parchment, revealing something glowing, red, and impossibly vast.
Then he stepped through the gate—
And the world behind him collapsed into silence.
Author's Note:
Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying the journey so far, don't forget: 10 power stones = 2 bonus chapters, and 1 review = 1 bonus chapter! Your support is what keeps this rebellion alive—let me know your thoughts in the comments. See you in the next chapter, fellow memory-keepers.