The world came back to him in fragments—sound before light, pain before breath. Kael Arden opened his eyes to a ceiling made of rusted metal, its edges dripping condensation like the veins of a dying beast. His chest ached with every inhale, his ribs wrapped in stained bandages, and the air smelled of antiseptic and smoke. Somewhere nearby, a machine hissed rhythmically, like it was trying to mimic life.
He tried to move, but the weight of his own body kept him down.
Alive. That word felt wrong in his head, like it didn't belong to him anymore.
Last he remembered, fire had swallowed the world. Dante's voice. Sera's scream. The tower collapsing above them in a storm of glass and concrete. He'd pushed her through the hatch, told her to run. Then nothing—just darkness and heat and the memory of her name burning in his throat.
Now… this.
"Don't," a voice said softly from the corner. "You'll tear your stitches."
Kael turned his head slowly. A woman stepped into the flickering light, tall and slim, her dark hair braided tight. She wore a medic's coat that had seen better days, the insignia of a defunct relief corps stitched to the sleeve.
"Where—" His voice cracked, rough and dry. "Where am I?"
"Safe," she said simply. "For now."
He narrowed his eyes. "That's not an answer."
She smiled faintly, but it didn't reach her eyes. "You're outside the city. South ridge. A village called Velden. You've been here for three weeks."
Three weeks. The words didn't fit. "Who are you?"
"Dr. Irena Voss," she replied, adjusting a monitor beside him. "You were pulled out of the blast zone by one of our scouts. You're lucky to be breathing."
Kael let the silence hang for a beat, studying her face. She didn't look like a rescuer—too calm, too precise. He'd seen that look before, in people who always had an agenda.
"Who sent you?" he asked finally.
"No one," she said. "At least, no one you'd recognize."
That wasn't comforting. Kael shifted, ignoring the pain stabbing through his side. "The city. Havencrest—what happened?"
Her expression changed then—something between pity and resignation. "Division Nine is gone. The tower's ruins are sealed off. Most of the eastern district's under reconstruction. They're calling it a victory."
He almost laughed. A hollow, bitter sound. "A victory," he repeated. "And the casualties?"
"Thousands," she said quietly. "Including… Kael Arden. At least, according to every official record."
Kael went still. His name. His death.
He wasn't supposed to exist anymore.
"Good," he muttered. "Let them think that."
Dr. Voss tilted her head. "Is that what you want? To stay dead?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he looked at his reflection in a broken piece of glass on the table beside him. His face was pale, thinner, a scar slicing down his temple to his jaw. His eyes—still the same steel-grey—looked older, colder. He'd died in that tower, one way or another. Whatever survived wasn't the same man who'd walked into the fire.
"Irena," he said finally, testing her name. "Why help me?"
She hesitated, then said, "Because you're not the only one who lost everything that night."
That was all she gave him before turning away, the door creaking shut behind her.
Kael lay there listening to the rain patter against the tin roof. The sound reminded him of Havencrest—of her. Sera Donovan. The fire in her eyes. The way she never stopped fighting, even when everything burned around her. He wondered if she'd made it out. A part of him knew she had. She was too stubborn to die.
He closed his eyes again and let exhaustion take him.
Days passed in a blur of painkillers and silence. Dr. Voss treated his wounds, changed his dressings, and kept her distance. Kael started walking again, each step a war. The outside world looked nothing like the one he'd left behind—Velden was quiet, fog-covered, surrounded by mountains and old factories swallowed by moss. A place time forgot.
But something wasn't right.
Each night, power flickered across the horizon. A pulse of light, faint but rhythmic—too controlled to be lightning. Too familiar. He recognized that pattern. Division Nine's encrypted frequency. The failsafe system. Someone was still running it.
The dead don't rebuild, Kael thought. The dead don't send signals.
He began watching. Listening. His soldier instincts sharpened again like blades pulled from the dust. And one night, while checking the perimeter, he found her—Dr. Voss—outside the barn, speaking softly into a comms device. Her tone was low, urgent.
"...Yes, he's stable. No, he doesn't remember much yet. I'll keep him here until we know if the programming—"
The branch beneath Kael's boot snapped.
She froze. Turned.
Their eyes met.
He didn't hesitate—crossed the distance in a breath and pinned her against the wall, his forearm pressing her shoulder. "Who are you talking to?" he demanded.
Her pulse fluttered, but her expression stayed calm. "You shouldn't be walking this far."
"Answer me."
Her gaze hardened. "You're not ready to know."
Kael's grip tightened. "Try me."
Her silence was all the confirmation he needed.
Division Nine wasn't gone. And whoever she worked for wanted him alive for a reason.
He released her, stepping back. "If you're lying to me—"
"I'm not your enemy, Kael," she said quickly, straightening her coat. "But there are people who will be, if they know you're awake."
"Too late for that," he said.
He turned toward the hills, the fog swallowing his outline. "I'm done hiding."
By dawn, he was gone.
Dr. Voss found his bed empty, the bandages stripped away, the window open to the cold. She stared out into the mist and whispered, "Then may the city forgive us both."
Kael reached the outskirts of Havencrest by nightfall. The skyline shimmered beneath clouds of ash and neon. Construction drones hummed overhead, patching over wounds that would never heal. He moved like a ghost through the lower streets, every corner flooded with propaganda—REBIRTH THROUGH UNITY. THE NINE IS GONE. TRUST THE NEW ORDER.
He almost laughed again. Every empire rebuilt itself with the same lie.
In a narrow alley, he stopped. A digital billboard flickered to life, displaying the face he thought he'd never see again—Sera Donovan. Her eyes, fierce and defiant, stared out from beneath a headline: The Voice of Truth: Donovan Exposes Final Secrets of Division Nine.
His chest tightened. So she lived.
She'd made it out.
And she'd turned his death into her crusade.
He watched the screen until it looped, then disappeared into the fog.
Hours later, in a quiet apartment far above the city, Sera Donovan jolted awake. Rain whispered against the windows. On her desk, her comms terminal blinked—a new message, untraceable, its subject line empty. She frowned and tapped it open.
Only one sentence appeared:
The fire never ended. Look beneath the ruins. – K
Her heartbeat stuttered.
No one else could've used that encryption signature. No one alive.
She stared at the message, her mind spinning, a hundred possibilities clawing at her chest.
Was it real? A trick? A ghost in the network?
But deep down, she already knew the truth.
Some ghosts don't fade. They find their way back through the smoke.
She stood, grabbed her coat, and looked out over Havencrest.
The city burned quietly beneath her, alive in all the wrong ways.
And somewhere in that chaos, Kael Arden was walking again.