Chapter 2 – "Ash Protocol"
Part 1 – "Whispers in the Bone Market"
The night was deeper than Kael had expected. No neon battalions patrolled the sky, no drone buzz filled the air—just the distant drip of water leaking through broken pipes and the sigh of the city settling into its own rot. It smelled of mildew and rust. He tasted burnt plastic in his throat, remnants of his suppressed panic.
They climbed up through collapsed infrastructure—shards of concrete and twisted rebar and cables coated in fungal webs. Kael stumbled onto the ground level of the Sprawl's fringe—a dilapidated zone that pulsed with suppressed life. Faint, amber lights lined corridors between vendor shacks and rusted transport pods. Makeshift shelters drifted between broken walls like driftwood stuck in a broken current.
Vireya paused beside him. Cloaked by shadow and street-lamp flicker, she surveyed the environment with the poise of a displaced monarch.
"This was where the Sprawl met the Citadel's second wall," she said, her voice lower than reading whisper. "A buffer zone. Now it's forgotten."
"Buffer or borderland, it all feels the same once people stop policing it," he muttered. The glyph on his skin flared against the sleeve of his coat as though it sensed its host's anxiety.
Vireya's eyes flickered to it. "Your bond is reacting to the environment."
He adjusted his coat. "Thanks, but I'd rather it didn't."
They moved onward—between vendor carts crusted in grime, where vendors hawked nerve rewires and black-market talismans. One vendor trailed them, whisper-singing promises of removal clinics and "memory cleansing", flicking a syringe like a blade.
Kael glared but kept walking.
"Hide," Vireya whispered, tugging him toward a low doorway marked in faded glyphs. Inside, the air felt dryer—a sealed auction hall carved into an old chapel.
They stepped over the threshold, and it felt as if the noise of the Sprawl was shut out.
The building had once hosted blessings. Now it housed whispers of bloodbone and biotech. Pews had been flattened into display blocks. Broken stained glass lay underfoot, refracting the cold candlelight that flickered from bone-waxed pillars. The vaulted ceiling supported veins of flickering mag-chords that glowed like nerve arcs.
Kael took a moment to inhale—then realized he'd held his breath.
At the far end of the hall, beneath a shattered arch, a pale figure stood.
Marion Vex.
Only one half of their face was visible—a flawless porcelain mask carved in the shape of a serene smile. The rest was hidden beneath gossamer ceramic filaments woven into flesh and chipped gray flesh beneath. Their robe, architecturally layered scraps of old Clade fabric, drifted like detached wings.
"Kai'l and… Vireya," the figure said—alighting on his name with gentle emphasis. "Thank you for coming."
Kael didn't respond.
Vireya nodded once, elegantly. "You summoned us."
Marion inclined their head. "Yes. I have… information."
"About the bond?" Vireya asked softly.
The figure's masked gaze flicked to Kael. "About everything."
Marion spread slender fingers. Codex drones drifted forward—tiny orchids of skull and silver, each projecting a floating hologram around them: contracts, charts, blood orders.
Kael's holo sparked to life: a network map showing tracked Protocol resonance. One node flashed at them—"Class‑V anomaly detected: Location unknown".
He stepped forward. "You know about the bounty."
Marion nodded. "A flier was released. Unsanctioned blood-bonded pair—marked for capture or termination."
He glanced back at Vireya.
Her face remained unreadable.
"Who sent it?" Kael demanded.
Marion's voice dripped around the mask. "Not Ember. Not a single recognized Clade. A masked coalition."
He frowned. "An independent hit-team?"
Marion tapped a glyph-etched table beside them—a carved plank of bone-metal scratched with ancient sigils. The lights shifted, projecting data into the air.
"Look." A rectangular holo showed a banner: Code Name: Black Rose Protocol. Subtext: Targets: 1. Vireya Nocturne. 2. Human subject assigned L1-KAEL.
Kael's stomach dropped.
"L1?" he said. "Heard that before."
"The Primeclade designated their Warden with that prefix."
Vireya's voice was soft as dusk: "They know who I am."
"And," Kael interjected sharply, "they know who I am."
Marion scanned Kael's expression—body coiled, head tilted forward slightly. "They know more. There's a reward on your head that dwarfs Ember's sanction."
Kael clenched his fists.
"And they know you're bonded." Marion turned to Vireya, voice low. "This is unprecedented. An unsanctioned bond with a Warden."
Vireya's cloak shifted. "I will not return to Citadel."
Marion nodded.
"As of three hours ago, Vireya Nocturne was declared sealed asset with no recovery priority. Now—she's a fugitive. The bond makes her unstable protocol. They want her—and you—dead or captured."
Kael let the implication settle. "So what now?"
Marion smiled behind the mask. "I have a path forward."
They followed Marion down a hidden stair—a spiral of vaulted steel beams and ribbed stone.
Kael pulled Vireya's cloak around himself. "Does this help me feel any less cursed?"
She didn't answer.
They descended five flights to a subterranean chamber—ancient catacombs beneath the chapel.
Barrels of distilled ash lined the walls. Candles burned their ends like watchmen. In the center stood an altar made of vitrified glass and bone-stripped metal.
"This…" Marion said, eyes glowing in the low light, "is the entrance to the Ash Vault."
Vireya opened her mouth.
Marion held up a hand.
"One at a time. Let Kael ask first."
Kael swallowed.
"Let me ask." He stepped forward. "What's in here?"
"Primeclade data-banks. The Ash Protocol. Made to either reverse or reinforce new bonds. We haven't known it survived."
Kael felt the glyph on his spine throb.
"And I hear it could…" he swallowed, "erase someone like me?"
Marion's masked face didn't express emotion—but the room did. The candles flickered, the ash stirred. The air pulsed with the gravity of what he implied.
"It could restore you to baseline. Or cause an irreversible error."
"Kael." Vireya's voice softened. "If we do this, it risks both of us."
Marion nodded. "Yes. But it also gives you a chance."
Kael swallowed again.
"Chance at what?"
"Choice," Marion said, voice quiet. "Between becoming a weapon—or losing yourself."
Kael turned away, eyes drifting to the candles. Each one seemed to burn with a fragment of moonlight.
He murmured, more to himself than to them: "I never asked to break a vault... or wake a queen."
Vireya moved beside him, placing a cool hand on his arm.
"I didn't ask to be revived."
Kael looked at her.
"Yet we're here."
They shared an odd moment—silent but heavy with unsaid apology and recognition of shared dangerous path.
Marion retreated behind an altar, pulling aside a bone-panel. Gears whirred. A hidden entry swung open, revealing a dark stair shaft leading deeper.
They followed.
The air grew cooler as they descended.
Kael slowed, fingers brushing the glyphs carved into the walls—sigils that drifted in and out of view, barely-imprinted sleep in the stonework.
"How far down?" he asked.
"Three levels," Marion said. "Keep watch for Inquisitors."
Kael slid a hand across Vireya's back. The glyph there shimmered under his palm—alive. "We'll hold them off," he vowed. "Till I decide."
Marion paused.
"And if you decide he's too dangerous?"
Vireya didn't hesitate: "Then you kill us."
Marion inclined their head. "With pleasure."
The stair ended in a blast door carved with Primeclade glyphs.
"Ready?"
Kael nodded once.
They passed through.
Past that door lay choices neither of them were sure they were ready to make.