Chapter 8: The Lost Ones

Kieran gritted his teeth against the pain in his ribs, steadying himself as the bioluminescent glow from the cracked energy conduits bathed the space in an unnatural blue haze.

Elias stood beside him, clutching a bruised arm, while Rhea knelt over the fallen Wraithborn's body, studying the grotesque fusion of flesh and machinery. None of them spoke. None of them dared.

Then, a sharp whisper echoed from above.

"Drop your weapons."

Kieran barely turned before a cold pressure met the back of his neck—a blade, steady and unyielding. The atrium's shadows shifted, and figures emerged, their silhouettes rigid, their eyes burning with suspicion. Armed with makeshift weapons—some crafted from scavenged tech, others from sharpened steel—they moved like ghosts through the ruins.

The leader stepped forward. A woman, tall and imposing, her presence commanding the room without a word.

But it wasn't her stance, nor the scar across her jaw, that shocked Kieran. It was the lightning coiling around her fingertips.

No gauntlet. No tech. Yet she wielded the storm as if it lived beneath her skin.

"You have three seconds to explain why you're in my city," she said, her voice measured but edged with steel.

Elias stiffened. "We didn't come to fight."

"No? Then you're fools to wander in unarmed. This place is not yours to claim."

Kieran forced his body to still as his mind raced. She moved like a Stormguard. Faster. More controlled. But if she wasn't using a gauntlet—

"I am Kieran Valis," he said, lifting his hands slowly. "Stormguard."

That was a mistake.

A sudden intake of breath rippled through the group. Some whispered. Others tightened their grips on their weapons.

The woman's gaze darkened.

"A Stormguard," she murmured.

Then she struck.

Kieran barely dodged as her fist punched through the air, a crack of energy trailing in its wake. The force sent him skidding back, his boots scraping against the marble floor.

"Wait—" Elias tried, but the woman lunged again.

This time, Kieran blocked it. Their arms met with a concussive burst of force, and the impact sent a shockwave through the room. Pain flared through Kieran's forearm, but he held his ground.

Her expression didn't shift. No anger. No hesitation. Just cold, clinical assessment.

"You don't belong here," she said.

Kieran exhaled, forcing himself to meet her eyes. "Neither do the Wraithborn. And yet we just fought one."

That made her pause.

The others murmured again, their tension shifting, uncertainty cracking through their ranks. The woman let go first, stepping back and studying him.

"Your Spire sent the Wraithborn to destroy us," she said. "And yet, here you are, fighting them?"

"I don't follow orders blindly."

A bitter smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. "No? Then why do you wear their colors?"

Kieran didn't answer.

The silence stretched between them before she finally lowered her hands. "Sylvaine," she said at last. "Commander of the Vareth survivors."

He studied her his heart still pounding. Survivors.

"Then you knew." Said Elias his voice, usually tempered with curiosity, now carried an edge of accusation. "You knew this city wasn't empty."

Sylvaine met his gaze. "And you knew the Council abandoned it."

Elias hesitated as Kieran clenched his jaw.

Rhea, still crouched beside the Wraithborn, finally spoke. "Then why did they leave you behind?"

Sylvaine's expression hardened. "Because they didn't just leave us," she said. "They erased us."

The atrium seemed to shrink around them.

And Kieran knew, then, that the worst of the truth had yet to be spoken.

--

The chamber was cold. Not the kind of cold that bit at the skin, but the kind that settled deep in the bones, sinking into the spaces between thought and breath. It was a remnant of something forsaken.

Kieran's boots echoed against the obsidian floor as he stepped deeper into the underground hall. The walls pulsed faintly with residual energy, the veins of old conduits flickering like dying embers. Whatever power had once coursed through this place was long fading, a ghost of what had been.

Sylvaine walked ahead of them, silent. The other survivors followed at a distance, with a wary look. No one spoke.

Finally, she stopped before a set of towering metal doors, their surface carved with the insignia of the Spire—his Spire. The same sigil that marked his armor.

His stomach tightened.

Sylvaine then pressed her palm against a control panel. With a groan, the doors slid open.

The room was massive, its ceiling lost in darkness. But it wasn't the vastness that held him still. It was the coffins.

Rows upon rows of reinforced stasis pods lined the chamber, each filled with a motionless figure. Suspended in thick, opaque liquid, their faces were barely visible, frozen in expressions of pain, or fear, or nothingness at all.

Elias swore under his breath. "What—"

"The people of Vareth," Sylvaine said, her voice like a heated iron.

Kieran's throat went dry. "They're alive?"

Sylvaine turned to him her eyes colder than the room. "If you call this living."

He stepped closer, pressing a hand against the glass of the nearest pod. The figure inside—a man, barely older than Kieran—floated in eerie stillness. The edges of his skin were lined with something dark like veins of corruption spreading beneath the surface.

It was the same thing he had seen in the Wraithborn.

"They were turning them," Rhea murmured.

Sylvaine nodded. "The Council never planned to save Vareth. They used it." Her jaw clenched. "This city was a test site. The storm barrier wasn't built to keep the Wraithborn out. It was built to keep us in."

Then silence followed. The kind that came before something broke.

Kieran could hear his own heartbeat. He had known the Council was ruthless, but this—this was beyond cruelty. This was systematic. Deliberate.

"They experimented on your people," Elias said. His voice was restrained. "For how long?"

"Years," Sylvaine said. "We didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. The Council's medics claimed they were treating the sick. In reality, they were creating them." She turned, walking past the pods with slow, measured steps. "When the first transformations started, they called it an anomaly. A mistake. But the truth was simpler." She stopped, looking directly at Kieran. "They wanted to see how far they could push before something happened."

"And when it did?" Asked Kieran curiously.

"They left us to rot."

Rhea curled her hands into fists. "So the Wraithborn—"

"They were once us," Sylvaine said. "Not monsters. Not mindless beasts." Her eyes darkened. "The Council made them. And when they lost control, they abandoned them."

Kieran's mind raced, the pieces falling into place like a cruel puzzle. The Spire had fed them lies. The Wraithborn weren't invaders. They were victims. And the war he had spent his life preparing for had never been a war at all.

It had been extermination.

Elias took a slow breath, then turned to Kieran. "You knew."

Kieran flinched. "I didn't."

"Maybe not this." Elias gestured to the room, his expression unreadable. "But you knew the Council was hiding something. You knew they weren't telling us everything. And you still followed them."

Kieran had no defense. No argument.

Because Elias was right.

Sylvaine watched them both, then finally spoke again. "The Council tells your people that the storm protects them. That the Wraithborn are a threat." She gestured around them. "But tell me, Stormguard—who is the real threat here?"

Kieran clenched his jaw, his pulse hammering in his ears.

He had spent his life fighting for the Spire. Training, bleeding, killing in its name. But now, standing in the heart of Vareth's ruin, surrounded by the truth they had buried—

He wasn't sure who the enemy was anymore.

His heart pounded as he turned back toward the stasis pods, each one housing a frozen horror. The opaque liquid trapped their twisted forms in eerie suspension, as if time itself had abandoned them. He could barely see their faces, but the truth was clear: These weren't monsters. They had been people once.

A slow chill crawled down his spine.

"Show me everything," Kieran said, his voice quieter than he meant it to be.

Sylvaine looked at him as if trying to unravel his intentions. Then, without a word, she turned and gestured for them to follow.

They moved deeper into the underground facility.

A door at the end of the hall appeared ahead. Unlike the others, this one wasn't marked with the insignia of the Spire. Instead, its surface was carved with symbols Kieran didn't recognize—spirals and lines, almost like a storm caught mid-surge.

Sylvaine placed her palm against a sensor. With a heavy hiss, the door unlocked.

The chamber was circular, its walls lined with broken consoles and shattered glass. At its center stood a single, intact containment pod. Unlike the others, it wasn't filled with murky liquid. This one was dry, its surface covered in thick cracks, as if something inside had shattered its way out.

Kieran stepped closer. The markings on the glass were strange—streaks that almost looked like claw marks, but more deliberate.

Almost like writing.

"What is this place?" Rhea murmured.

Sylvaine's gaze was fixed on the broken pod. "The beginning."

She moved toward a nearby console, its surface worn but still active. With a few swift motions, she powered it on. The screen came to life, struggling against age, before stabilizing. Lines of data scrolled across it, but Kieran's focus snapped to the faded holo-recording that materialized before them.

The image was distorted, crackling with interference. But the voice that followed was clear.

"Subject Zero shows promising results. Cognitive retention is intact. Motor functions exceed expectations."

A figure in a Spire uniform appeared in the recording—one of the Council's researchers, standing beside the very pod before them. His expression was calm and detached.

"We have successfully weaponized the storm's energy. Unlike our previous test subjects, Zero exhibits full synchronization."

Sylvaine turned to them. "The Wraithborn weren't created by accident. They were engineered."

The holo-image glowed. This time, the containment pod in the recording was occupied.

Inside it stood a humanoid figure, its silhouette barely visible. Its eyes—faintly glowing—were locked on the researcher, unblinking.

Kieran's breath hitched.

Not mindless. Not broken.

Aware.

Alive.

The researcher continued. "Subject Zero is unlike the others. It has retained speech, memory—perhaps even identity. However, the longer it remains in this state, the more… changes appear." A pause. "The others did not survive the process. Zero, however, endures."

A cold realization settled in Kieran's chest.

Elias was the first to say it.

"The first Wraithborn."

Sylvaine nodded. "They didn't lose their humanity all at once. It was taken from them, piece by piece."

Kieran could barely breathe.

The holo-recording crackled again. This time, the figure in the pod moved. Slowly. Deliberately. It pressed a hand to the glass, its fingers tracing strange, intricate shapes.

Writing.

The researcher frowned. "It keeps doing this. We don't know what it means. Some of the others have begun to mimic it, though none can explain why."

The figure's mouth moved, but the audio was corrupted. Only fragments of its voice remained.

"…not… storm… trapped…"

The distortion swallowed the rest.

Then, suddenly, the figure turned its head.

Not at the researcher.

At them.

The image was old. It had been recorded years ago. But for a split second, Kieran felt it.

A nd suddenly the recording cut out.

A cold silence followed.

"Zero wasn't an experiment." Said Kieran. He turned to Sylvaine. "It was a prisoner."

Sylvaine's expression was grim. "And the others? They were its kin."

A sense of unease rippled through Kieran's body. The Wraithborn weren't just victims.

They were the remnants of something far older. Something the Spire had tried to erase.

And something told him they hadn't succeeded.

The revelation of the Wraithborn's origins had settled like a storm on the horizon.

Kieran turned from the darkened holo-console. His mind swam with the information of what they had just uncovered. The Spire had made the Wraithborn. Had taken their own people, twisted them into weapons, and then abandoned them to the storm.

It made him sick.

He looked at Sylvaine. "Why didn't you tell us sooner?"

Her silver eyes locked onto his. "Would you have believed me?"

Rhea shifted beside him, arms crossed tightly. "You let us walk into this blindly."

Sylvaine's mouth pressed into a hard line. "And if I had told you the moment we met? That the Wraithborn were once human? That your own Council did this?" She stepped forward with a steady voice. "Tell me, would you have listened? Or would you have dismissed it as the lies of an exile?"

Elias, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, decided to say something. "You used us," he muttered. "You needed us to see this first. To believe it."

Sylvaine didn't deny it.

Anger sparked in Kieran's chest, warring with the cold dread in his bones. He clenched his fists, trying to steady himself. "You could have trusted us."

Sylvaine gave a humorless laugh. "You don't even trust each other."

Rhea stiffened while Elias averted his gaze.

Sylvaine saw it all.

"You came here as soldiers of the Spire," she said, her voice like distant thunder. "Loyal to a city built on deception. But what are you now?" She took a slow step closer, as if testing them. "Do you still believe in the Council's cause?"

Kieran's first instinct was to say yes. To claim, without hesitation, that the Spire was worth fighting for. That the Stormguard still stood for something.

But the words wouldn't come.

Because now, he wasn't sure.

"The Spire is still our home." said Rhea with a firm stance.

Sylvaine studied her. "And what happens when you return?" She gestured at the ruined holo-console. "Do you think the Council will let you speak of what you've seen here? That they'll welcome you back?"

"So what's your plan?" Said Elias his voice was edged with exhaustion. "Do you want us to turn against our own people? To fight the Spire?"

"I want you to decide what your people truly stand for."Sylvaine challenged them.

A crack of tension split the room.

Kieran took a slow breath, forcing his voice steady. "And if we don't?"

Sylvaine didn't answer immediately as she weighed on the situation. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet.

"Then you should leave."

Kieran's stomach twisted. "You're kicking us out?"

"I'm giving you a choice."

"I have my own people to protect. I can't risk you running back to the Spire and leading them here."

Rhea tensed. "We wouldn't—"

"Wouldn't you?" Sylvaine's voice was calm, but there was something else beneath it."If the Council demanded answers, what would you say? If they ordered you to hunt us down, to silence what you've learned—what would you do?"

No one spoke.

Because deep down, they all knew the truth.

Kieran wanted to believe they would fight back. That they would stand for what was right, not what was easy.

But loyalty was a cage.

And the Spire had built that cage around them since birth.

"We fight for survival here," she said. "For our own. You have to decide what you're fighting for."

Elias rubbed the back of his neck. "So we choose." His voice was rough, quieter than usual. "Stay… or go."

Sylvaine nodded.

Kieran felt Rhea's gaze on him. They had fought together for years, had survived the Stormguard trials, had believed in the same cause.

But now?

They weren't standing on the same ground anymore.

Rhea exhaled. "We need time to think."

Sylvaine nodded once, stepping back. "You have until dawn."

She turned, walking toward the chamber's exit. The doors hissed open, revealing the dim, flickering lights of Vareth beyond.

Before she left, she looked back.

"If you choose the Spire," she said, her voice heavy with meaning, "I suggest you forget what you saw here."

The doors sealed shut behind her.

For the first time since they had set out on this mission. They felt the consequences of this mission as if a line had been drawn.

And by dawn, they would have to decide which side of it they stood on.