The battle with Gallows was over, but its echo still clung to them. The forest carried the memory—splintered trees, churned mud, the taste of ash still on the air. Each of them bore wounds, but none heavier than the weight Titan had revealed in that final, golden glare.

  And for Lior, the silence between each step screamed louder than any battlefield.

  His side still burned from Gallows’ knee. Every step tugged at bruises and cuts, but the ache was nothing compared to the weight in his head.

  Titan’s eyes still haunted him—golden, unyielding, not flickering like his own, but steady, absolute. An Awakening. Strength on a level he could barely comprehend.

  And he—he hadn’t even been able to touch Gallows. Not once.

  The group pressed through the mist in silence. Titan led, every stride deliberate. Carter’s drone buzzed faintly at the rear. Rei’s mask hid her expression, unreadable as ever.

  Ayasha kept her distance. She hadn’t spoken to him since he’d snapped at her after the battle, when she’d tried to help him up and he’d torn his arm away.

  Her silence only added to the weight of everything that happened.

  Finally, Lior forced himself closer.

  “Ayasha… about earlier. I shouldn’t have—”

  She didn’t slow. Her eyes flicked his way, cool and guarded, before returning to the fog ahead.

  “You hurt more than yourself when you do that, Lior,” she said quietly.

  His chest tightened. He opened his mouth to answer—

  —and then the mist peeled back like a curtain.

  Steel doors taller than towers opened. Their camouflage of vines and moss tore free in sheets.

  Inside the hollowed cavern… it waited.

  A shadow of black steel, sleek and angular, like a predator crouched in the dark. Its hull drank the dim light, every line sharpened to a lethal edge. The sight of it froze them where they stood.

  Carter’s voice dropped into awe. “The Revenant…”

  Ayasha’s eyes widened despite herself, breath catching in her throat. “That’s… not what I expected.”

  Cael adjusted his glasses, voice breaking with quiet wonder. “That isn’t a jet. That’s a phantom.”

  Carter ran a hand across the cold metal as they stepped closer, a faint smirk tugging with pride. “Can’t be tracked. Can’t be heard. Built for one thing—vanishing.”

  Titan stood at the base of The Revenant, arms crossed, his silhouette sharp against the steel. His tone was low and heavy. “Board it,” he said. “We leave in ten.”

  The trio hesitated, still staring like the machine might vanish. Titan’s single eye cut toward them, steady and unblinking.

  “There will be answers,” he said at last. “But you’ll listen. And you’ll carry the weight of what you hear.”

  His gaze lingered on Lior—long enough to sting, not long enough to soften.

  The Revenant’s doors yawned open with a hiss—PSSHHHT! Inside, darkness stirred; strips of pale light flickered to life—TIK-TIK-TIK — VVVRRMMM—illuminating the interior like a sleeping giant waking.

  Panels lined the walls, faint blue glyphs coursing along data streams. Seats folded seamlessly from the sides, as if grown from the metal. Overhead, projected constellations rippled, casting cool starlight across the cabin. It didn’t feel like a machine. It felt alive.

  Carter slowed, his smirk faltering into something closer to awe. “Well,” he muttered, half breathless, half sarcastic, “guess they’ve been busy the last sixteen years. You could build a city with the upgrades crammed into this thing.”

  He drifted toward the cockpit, fingers brushing smooth consoles until he reached the pilot’s chair. Slowly, almost reverently, he lowered himself into it. His excitement returned—unguarded. “Feels like home.”

  Rei slid into the seat beside him and leaned back, arms folded. She gave him a long, slow roll of her eyes.

  Carter chuckled. “What? You expected me not to enjoy this?”

  For a moment, silence filled the cabin. Then Titan’s voice broke it, low and unshakable.

  “Your father carried more than any of us,” he said, gaze fixed on Lior. “And it’s time you knew the weight he bore.”

  The undertone of the engines faded beneath his words.

  “Years ago…”

  A mountain arena shrouded in mist. Two cadets collided in a storm of fists and grit—one broad and immovable, the other sharp and unreadable. Titan remembered the sting of Echo’s strikes, precise as blades, the way their bodies slammed into stone until neither could stand.

  “We were saved on the same day.”

  The names were etched in Titan’s mind. Me, Echo, Xun, and Kaito. Four boys stood in a line before the Veritas compound, uniforms pressed, eyes hollowed by training. Silence was their only comfort. Orders, their only language.

  “Trained as weapons,” Titan said aloud, dragging the memory into the present. “No comfort. No questions. Just orders.”

  Lior leaned forward unconsciously, chest tight.

  “Echo… he chose the deadliest job Veritas had. Deep-cover infiltration.”

  Another vision formed. Echo, older now, in a black uniform, standing silently behind one of Potestas’ leaders—the U.S. sector head, strongest of the Seven. His face betrayed nothing. He was stone given flesh.

  “He became the personal bodyguard of the U.S. sector leader,” Titan said. “Every day, surrounded by enemies.”

  His voice deepened. “He moved like a ghost through their corridors—steel walls, flickering lights, death at every turn.”

  “I heard how he pulled data no one else could touch. Laboratories. Niches. Secrets Potestas never meant anyone to know.”

  “That’s how we were able to rescue so many children,” Titan continued. “He uncovered the majority of the facilities we know today.”

  Ayasha sucked in a sharp breath. Even Cael’s composure cracked, his hand tightening around his glasses.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Echo…” Titan’s voice lowered, just a fraction. “Echo believed in something better. He believed the future could be rewritten.”

  The weight of his words settled over them. Lior couldn’t meet his gaze. Ayasha and Cael exchanged a glance—hope and doubt tangled in silence.

  From the cockpit, Carter leaned back lazily, voice dry. “He’s laying it on pretty thick back there, don’t you think?”

  Rei didn’t move from the viewport, arms crossed. Her reply was clipped, unyielding. “There’s no more time for spoon feeding. He’s had sixteen years of that. Either he grows now… or he dies now. It’s up to him.”

  Carter let out a low whistle, then smirked. “Drop the front, Rei. You know as well as I do… he was more of a son to you than any of us.”

  For the briefest second, Rei’s mask of steel cracked—her lips twitching into a faint smirk before she turned away.

  Silence reclaimed the cabin, broken only by Lior’s question.

  “…Then why did people say he had no Niche?”

  Titan didn’t answer right away. His single eye fixed on Lior, unblinking. The question hung there, heavy as stone.

  Carter broke the tension with a swivel in the pilot’s chair, hands flicking over glowing switches. “Hate to interrupt the bedtime story,” he drawled, humor laced with urgency, “but unless we want Gallows knocking on the door, maybe we save the therapy session for the sky?”

  He shoved a lever forward. The lift glided upward in silence, the steady HUUUUMMMM underfoot the only sign of motion.

  Carter grinned wide, stretching both arms across the console like he was hugging it. “Forgot how smooth this ride is… Didn’t think they could make her smoother than before. Oh, how I’ve missed you. Did you miss me too, sweetheart?”

  Rei exhaled through her mask, rolling her eyes.

  He flipped another switch. The Revenant gave a sudden WHUMMM! Outside, the hull shimmered—blending with the clouds, the trees, the mist itself. From a distance, it vanished.

  “Stealth mode,” Carter said, settling back into the chair.

  His smirk faded as his hands steadied on the controls. Even he couldn’t joke his way past what hung between them.

  The low vibration of the Revenant filled the cabin—THRMMM… THRMMM…—steady and unrelenting.

  Lior’s question still hung in the air. “Then why did people say he had no Niche?”

  Titan’s eye fixed on him. For a long moment, it seemed he might let the question hang forever. Then his voice cut through the cabin, low and deliberate.

  “Because his eyes never changed. Not once. No glow. No proof. So they called him skilled—nothing more.”

  His gaze drifted. “But I knew better. I sparred your father more times than I can count… and I never beat him. Not once. Every move I made, he was already there, waiting. It felt like he was inside my head—as if he’d studied me like a book the night before and memorized every page.”

  Titan’s jaw tightened. His hand rose almost unconsciously to his cheek, brushing the long, pale scar that ran from his ear toward the corner of his mouth.

  “Even Brock had his doubts about those rumors,” Titan continued. “Him and I both believed the same thing: no man alive without a Niche could move the way Echo did. No man could fight like that and be ordinary.”

  His tone darkened. “There was a time, when we were around your age, we were sent on a mission. We expected soldiers—nothing more. But waiting for us inside that facility was a Rank One Agent.”

  His fingers lingered on the scar. “I was arrogant then. I believed I could take anyone… except Echo. That day, I learned I was wrong. This scar is what he left me with. His next strike would’ve ended me.”

  Titan’s eye narrowed as though replaying the moment in real time. “And then Echo appeared. He came up behind me, silent as shadow. In seconds, he cut through the fight. In less than a minute, he did what I couldn’t—what even Brock couldn’t fathom. He brought down a Rank One. With no flicker in his eyes. No glow. Just precision. Relentless. It was like he had already lived through the fight before.”

  Titan’s voice grew quieter, but sharper. “When Brock and the lieutenants fled with you as an infant, they contacted me one last time. Brock said he would reach out if he ever needed anything. That was the day he revealed his hand.”

  A beat.

  “Activation and Awakening… all at once.”

  Silence pressed heavier than the hum of the engines.

  “He sacrificed himself to give you to Brock. And then… he stayed behind.”

  Titan’s eye flicked toward the floor. “Later, through captured agents and scraps of Potestas intelligence, I learned the truth. It took three Rank Ones to bring him down. Three. And even then, none of them left unscarred.”

  The silence that followed was almost unbearable. Titan’s voice sank into it, steady. “That was your father, Lior… Echo.”

  His single eye didn’t waver. “The strongest man I’ve ever seen.”

  He let the weight hang before continuing. “No one could touch him. Not in Potestas. Not in Veritas.”

  The cabin seemed smaller, every word pressing tighter. “All of these feats… everything I’ve told you… happened before he was even twenty-one years old.”

  Lior sat frozen, the words digging into his chest until they felt like a weight pressing down on him.

  Before he was twenty-one…? Stronger than Titan. Stronger than Rank Ones. Stronger than anyone. That was my father…

  His fists tightened in his lap. The ache in his ribs, the sting of failure against Gallows, the haunting glow of Titan’s Awakening—all of it coiled inside him.

  And me? I couldn’t even touch Gallows. Not once.

  Outside, the forests of central Canada fell away, swallowed by endless sky. Inside, Titan’s words lingered, heavy as iron.

  But slowly—almost reluctantly—the weight began to ease.

  They weren’t looking over their shoulders; the stealth systems cloaked them in a quiet so complete it felt like even the storm couldn’t reach them.

  For the first time in days, they slept—not half-awake, not bracing for footsteps in the dark—but deeply.

  Hours passed in silence.

  Lior stirred first. He shifted upright, hand brushing across his ribs. His gaze lifted to the viewport—and froze.

  “…Ayasha,” he murmured, nudging her shoulder.

  She blinked awake, brow furrowed, then stilled as the clouds peeled back. Cael sat up next, rubbing at his eyes until his glasses caught the light.

  The island emerged.

  It wasn’t a sanctuary.

  It wasn’t hope.

  Rising from the Atlantic like a scar, the Veritas compound sprawled across a man-made rock, towers of black steel stabbing the sky. Solar barriers shimmered like a cage of pale fire, and defense turrets ringed the perimeter with cold precision.

  On the landing platforms below, soldiers stood in lines of black armor and sealed headgear, rifles slung tight against their chests.

  They didn’t stand like guardians.

  They stood like wardens.

  Cael pushed his glasses up, eyes narrowing as he tried to take it all in. “…It still doesn’t compute. The scale, the design, the technology… the funds. Where does it all come from? An organization that’s supposed to not even exist—and yet they can build this?”

  Lior said nothing, his chest tightening as the Revenant swept lower.

  The closer they came, the less this place looked like a fortress of salvation, and the more it resembled a prison carved from steel.

  Beside him, Ayasha’s expression hardened. Her eyes didn’t leave the compound, but her words came quiet, meant for him alone.

  “To be honest… I never wanted to see this place again.”

  Her voice carried an edge, not of fear, but of memory.

  “Veritas kept us alive, sure… but it stripped away everything that made us feel alive. We weren’t children here—just blades they kept sharpening.”

  She paused, her reflection caught against the glass. Slowly, her gaze slid toward him, locking with his.

  Something unspoken lingered in her eyes before she exhaled and turned back to the view.

  “…But you,” she continued softly. “You reminded me I was more than that. That’s why I swore to protect you. Not because Veritas asked me to… but because I owe you. For giving me something I hadn’t felt since I was taken.”

  Lior’s breath caught, throat tight, the weight of everything he didn’t know how to say.

  Outside, the fortress loomed closer. The storm of questions it carried loomed closer still.

  Titan’s voice cut through the cabin, unyielding. “This is where your new chapter begins. Everything you’ve ever known—forget it. Nothing you’ve lived until now will prepare you for what waits here.”

  As the Revenant descended, the air inside the cabin grew heavier. Ayasha’s words lingered.

  It stripped away everything that made us feel alive. No fear in her voice—only truth.

  He exhaled slowly, fingers curling against his knees. It wasn’t just her words—it was the shape of them, sharp enough to stay lodged in his thoughts.

  Outside, the fortress drew near. The questions pressed harder, raining through his mind without end.

  For the first time since the Revenant had lifted into the air, Lior found himself wondering—

  What is freedom, if even salvation feels like a cage?

  End of Chapter 16

  But with every answer comes a deeper question: what does Veritas have in store for the boy prophesied to end the war that’s raged for decades?

  When Lior steps out, he’ll be leaving behind the life he knew and stepping into a life he never asked for.