[Oliver’s PoV]

  “You idiot.”

  The voice trembled between anger and relief. “I thought you’d died again.”

  Oliver couldn’t see who it was at first. His vision was still blurred, his eyes stinging. He felt a hand on his chest, first harsh, almost striking, but then softening, trembling.

  Tears fell against his skin.

  “You idiot,” the voice repeated, quieter this time, the words breaking apart with emotion.

  He knew that voice.

  But it didn’t make sense.

  As his vision sharpened, the chaos around him began to take shape. Slowly, his eyes adjusted, and the face before him came into focus.

  Katherine.

  For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

  It had been years since he’d looked at her this closely. Her face was different now. She had changed.

  But right now, she wasn’t the soldier, the general, the hardened warrior she had become.

  Right now, she was just Katherine. The scared girl who had once shared a cell on a Ork's prison with him.

  Her tears slid down her cheeks, leaving streaks through the dust and blood. Her hands trembled, her forehead pressing briefly against his chest as if she needed to make sure he was real.

  Oliver blinked, confusion clawing at his thoughts.

  She was crying for him.

  'For Atlas.'

  The thought twisted in his mind.

  'Why would she cry for Atlas?'

  He couldn’t make sense of it. He shouldn’t have meant anything to her. Yet the tears on her cheeks were real. The pain in her voice was real.

  He turned his head, forcing his blurred eyes to focus on the others, looking for answers.

  Khan stood a few meters away. The mercenary’s usual composure was gone, replaced by an unease that almost looked like fear.

  Beside him, his soldier knelt on the ground, hands clasped tightly. He wasn’t watching Oliver at all. He was praying, thanking some god that he was alive.

  Isabela and Astrid lay nearby, both unconscious. Astrid’s uniform was split open at the shoulder, her wound sealed crudely with blood that had been hardened.

  Mordred sat slumped against a cracked wall, his remaining arm resting across his knee. His expression was a mixture of exhaustion and amusement, the faintest smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.

  And there was Alan.

  He stood a few steps away. His eyes were sharp. They were calculating, locked on Oliver.

  Alan’s brow furrowed as he took a slow step forward, his voice barely a whisper at first.

  “How?”

  Another step.

  “No… that’s not possible.”

  His mind was still fogged with confusion, the world around him a blur of faces. But then, in the corner of his vision, something flickered.

  A notification blinked slowly, as if waiting for him to notice it.

  [New Glitch Acquired]

  Oliver frowned. He hadn’t seen a new glitch in years.

  The text shifted, the lines rearranging themselves into words that made his stomach twist.

  [Warrior’s Way of Life]

  | You have obtained the spark offered by the Warrior Ares.

  | Live the life of a true warrior. No masks, no deceptions.

  | Face your enemies bare-faced.

  He froze.

  For a moment, he didn’t understand what it meant. Then, instinctively, his hand went to his face.

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  His fingers expected to find the surface of his mask. But instead, his fingertips met skin.

  His heart stopped.

  “Shit,” Oliver muttered under his breath. The word escaped before he could stop it.

  The sound of his own voice, unaltered, hit him.

  The disbelief on Alan's face was instant, his expression shifting through a storm of emotions. Confusion, recognition, anger, relief, and something deeper that Oliver couldn’t name.

  He took a step forward, his voice trembling. “It’s… you, isn’t it?”

  Oliver didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

  Alan’s lips parted again, his tone lower now, almost breaking. “Oliver? You… you’re alive?”

  Oliver’s pulse thundered in his ears. He could feel every gaze on him.

  His mind raced. He looked from face to face, searching for any escape, any way to undo what had just happened. But there was none.

  He exhaled slowly, the weight of inevitability settling over him. His hands dropped to his sides.

  There was no point in hiding anymore.

  He swallowed hard. “Yeah,” Oliver said quietly. “It’s me.”

  The words felt heavier than any weapon he’d ever held.

  Alan took another step closer, his expression unraveling. His voice cracked as he spoke.

  “You’re alive.” His fists clenched at his sides. “You’re actually alive. After all this time… after everything…”

  Oliver couldn’t meet his gaze. He looked down, studying the floor beneath his boots.

  “Alan—” he began, but the words caught in his throat.

  Alan kept walking toward him, silent but steady. His right hand was clenched tightly.

  Oliver braced himself. He’d seen that look before. He expected the hit.

  He deserved it.

  But when Alan finally reached him, the blow never came.

  Instead, Alan’s hand unclenched, trembling, and then he pulled him in.

  The embrace was rough, the kind that carried years of sadness and relief tangled together.

  “You asshole,” Alan muttered, his voice cracking. A single tear traced down his cheek, cutting through the grime and dust. “Why?”

  Before Oliver could answer, Katherine stepped back, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.

  “Why, Oliver?” she asked quietly, her eyes searching his face for something.

  Oliver exhaled slowly.

  “It’s… difficult to explain.”

  Neither of them looked satisfied with that answer.

  Oliver exhaled once more. He tried to find the simplest way to explain everything.

  “On my last mission,” he began, his voice steady but low, “I discovered that the Empire was producing Nameless. Turning them into weapons of war.”

  Katherine and Alan froze, but it was Mordred who spoke first, his tone sharp, curiosity flickering behind his golden eyes.

  “Producing?” he repeated, leaning forward slightly. “You mean cloning them?”

  Oliver didn’t answer him. He couldn’t afford to get lost in the details. He just kept talking.

  “They sent a team of Rangers to destroy the evidence, the Children of The Past, and to get rid of me.” He paused, his jaw tightening. “I survived, but after that… I couldn’t show my face. Not while the Empire’s eyes were still on me.”

  “I couldn’t reveal my identity until everything was ready.” Oliver continued.

  Katherine’s voice broke through the tension, soft but demanding. “Ready for what?”

  Oliver looked up, meeting her eyes. His expression hardened.

  “To kill the Emperor.”

  The room stilled. Their breathing was the only sound that filled the silence.

  Alan’s eyes widened. Katherine’s breath caught. Even Mordred’s usual smirk faltered.

  “There’s no point in hiding anymore," Oliver explained. "The gauntlets, even if this planet has no connection, when we leave it will transmit everything. The Empire sees it all.”

  Mordred’s face darkened. The confidence he always carried flickered. He turned his gaze down to his own Gauntlet.

  “That’s impossible,” Mordred said at last, his tone sharp, defensive. “My scientists restructured ours years ago. We’re clean.”

  Oliver shook his head.

  “They think they did. The system is self-replicating. It rebuilds itself. You can change the hardware, rewrite the code, or even destroy the servers. Yet the core protocol is buried deep in the NET. As long as you’re connected, it’s listening.”

  Khan shifted uneasily in the corner, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. Even his soldier, still kneeling in prayer, glanced up for the first time, his lips parting in silent disbelief.

  “The only way to stop it,” Oliver continued, “is to cut the connection entirely.”

  Katherine frowned. “You mean—”

  “Yes.” Oliver’s tone was firm. “Complete isolation. No network. No communication. No link to the NET.”

  “That would cripple us. How do you know all this?” Mordred asked, his voice sharp, suspicious.

  Oliver didn’t answer.

  He didn’t owe Mordred an explanation, and even if he did, he wasn’t about to share the details of how he’d uncovered the Empire’s secrets. Some truths were better left unspoken.

  Alan stood off to the side, staring at the ground. His hands were clenched, his shoulders tense. He looked like a man trying to process too many truths at once.

  Katherine, on the other hand, was calm. Way too calm.

  Her voice came measured, as if she had already accepted the pieces of the puzzle falling into place.

  “It makes sense,” she said, her eyes distant, thoughtful. “It fits with one of my guesses.”

  Oliver blinked, caught off guard. “Guesses?”

  She met his gaze then, her expression unreadable, the faintest hint of a knowing smile tugging at her lips.

  “It’s hard to keep your identity hidden when you keep showing your scars,” she said. “Or when you use your Blue Armor.”

  She raised her arm, and her Gauntlet glowed faintly. A holographic display flickered to life above her wrist.

  “Your synchronization readings,” she continued. There’s only one person who could produce something like this.”

  Oliver sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I didn’t think anyone would bother checking synchronization levels in the middle of a battle.”

  “Maybe not the others,” Katherine said, her tone soft but firm. “But I already had enough reasons to doubt ‘Atlas.’”

  Alan finally looked up, his expression hardened into something focused. His earlier shock had burned away.

  “What’s left to do, then?” he asked. “What do we need to finish before we’re ready?”

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