(Sera's POV.)
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Thirteen Years Ago
Somewhere above the Mariana Trench
The air inside the transport ship was colder than it needed to be. sterile, artificial, like the silence that followed a grave mistake.
Sera sat alone in the observation bay, watching streaks of water ripple past the dome-like windshield. Out here, deep beneath the sea's skin, Earth felt distant. Muted. Almost irrelevant.
The report still flickered on her lap.
| Subject: DAE. Age 12.
| Compatibility: 93%
| Affinity: Unknown
| Classification: Tier Z (Unregistered Origin |Carrier)
| Status: Unawakened
She remembered the moment the alert hit the Blackridge network like a ghost signal from a forgotten frequency. A ping from one of the old scanners buried in a decommissioned monitoring hub somewhere in South Asia.
A child.
Unregistered.
Off the grid.
Too quiet.
Too late.
And worse….
The ring had chosen.
And so, she was sent.
She hadn't known what to expect.
A threat? A disaster waiting to happen? Another volatile gene-carrier whose powers might rupture before containment?
She had prepared for resistance. Hostility. Another cleanup mission. Another erased town.
What she found… was a boy.
Sitting on a rooftop.
Alone.
Eating half-melted ice cream with a plastic spoon.
Quiet. Small. Sad.
Just a boy.
Sera leaned back against the seat, closing her eyes. The memory clung too tightly these days.
She had been so much younger then. A new instructor. Fresh from her own awakening. A prodigy. A weapon. A ghost collector.
She had seen too many like him.
Gene-carriers locked in basements. Sold to the black market. Abandoned in clinics after "accidents." But Dae… he wasn't just another number. It wasn't just the compatibility percentage.
It was the silence in his soul.
He didn't cry, didn't scream, didn't even ask "why."
Just stared at her when she said, "You'll forget all of this."
With eyes that whispered: Good.
Six Years Ago
Blackridge Records ~ Internal Memo
CLASSIFIED >> INSTRUCTOR ACCESS ONLY
Notes on SERA LARKIN – Faculty Level II
Status: Active
Role: Indoctrination & Retrieval
Codename: Nightwake
Psychological Assessment:
Loyal, hyper-functional, emotionally compartmentalized. Shows resistance to direct empathy protocols. Displays signs of delayed grief processing, especially surrounding subject: EVAN KOR.
Instructor Kor presumed deceased during the Obsidian Breach.
Romantic attachment: CONFIRMED.
Risk level: Medium (Only if memories resurface).
Recommendation: Keep mission parameters clear. Restrict exposure to emotionally volatile subjects.
Sera never saw the full file. Pix did.
He deleted the last paragraph.
Present Day
Blackridge Dome Observation Deck – 02:37 AM
She stood, arms folded tightly, watching the bleeding Leviathan drift through the deep ocean, its coils glowing like dying constellations.
The entity's mark still pulsed on the dome.
Not a crack.
A burn.
A memory.
Behind her, instructors scrambled.
Pix flickered erratically.
Protocols rebooted.
Students comforted.
But she remained still.
Her eyes didn't watch the guardian.
They watched the boy.
Dae.
The one who had screamed.. not in fear.
But as if he'd heard something that once knew him.
She remembered that night clearly.
He was unconscious during transport, curled up by the wall, fists clenched, the ring glowing dimly like an ember refusing to die.
Kairoth.
She hadn't seen that ring since…
No.
Not now.
Her hand brushed her jacket's inner seam—where a rusted chain still lay folded.
Evan's.
The one she never threw away. The one they never returned whole.
One Week Ago
Blackridge Archives – Forbidden Wing
That was when An came to her.
He shouldn't have been there.
But he stood in the entryway like a shadow, his eyes unreadable, his tone… too calm.
"Instructor," he said, voice quiet.
"You're thinking about activating the failsafe. Caldera, right?"
She turned too fast, ready to snap, but stopped.
It was An.
The boy too smart for his own safety.
The one who never asked questions aloud. only answered them before you did.
"You accessed sealed protocols?"
"No," he replied. "I remembered them."
She froze.
"What did you say?"
He held up a data shard. non-regulation. Old. Reconstructed.
"I don't know how. It's like… pieces came back. Like I knew something I never read."
"That's impossible."
"Isn't everything here?"
She stepped closer.
"You could be erased for this."
He smiled softly. No fear. Just resignation.
"I'd rather be erased than let the academy burn."
"You're just a boy."
"So was he, when you took him."
Silence.
"The seal's already weakening," An said. "The breach isn't random. It's remembering him. Dae. The one the system forgot."
He paused. Then handed her the shard.
"If you trigger Caldera… it'll take something from you."
"What?"
He didn't blink.
"Me."
She stared at the shard for a long time after he left.
It was encrypted in a language no one spoke anymore.
But one symbol kept blinking:
KOR.E7
She never told him what it meant.
Three Days Ago
She activated Caldera.
And An vanished.
No records. No remains.
Just an anomaly pulsing deep within the Vault core.
But she wasn't done.
Sera accessed a secondary failsafe—Protocol Mnemosyne.
A restricted subroutine used only in cases of catastrophic memory contamination.
"FORGET TO PROTECT," the system whispered.
It required biometric override and emotional clearance. She gave both.
And when the sequence ended…An was gone.
From dorm logs.
From surveillance feeds.
From hearts.
A blank space now lived between Kio and Rea.
A chair always unclaimed.
A silence no one questioned.
Because they couldn't remember.
She had made sure of it.
"They'll be safer that way," An had whispered before stepping into the breach.
"Let me be the memory you never lost—because you never had it."
Present – Dome Observation
The Headmaster joined her at the railing.
"You knew what he was."
"Yes."
"You brought him anyway."
"Yes."
"Do you regret it?"
She didn't answer.
Then.
"No."
A pause.
"But I'm starting to."
Five Years Ago
Maintenance Sector 7
This was where Evan kissed her for the first time. Clumsy. Soft. Surprising.
And stupid.
Because two weeks later, he volunteered for the Obsidian Breach.
And all that returned was a half-melted bracelet and an encrypted ping that no one ever decoded.
Until An's shard.
Until KOR.E7 blinked back to life.
That night, Sera sat in her quarters with a cracked glass of something ancient.
She didn't drink to forget.
She drank to remember.
An's voice.
Evan's laugh.
The dome's scream.
The ring's pulse.
"He's not just the key," the voice whispered in her dreams.
"He's the door."
And if the door opens too soon…
Blackridge won't survive it.
To be continued in Chapter 16: The Ones We Leave Behind