The Stillness Before

Location: Ember Vale | Time Since Edenfall's Collapse: 143 Days

Nova woke to the sound of breathing. Not hers. Not Matherson's.

It came from the children outside huddled in one of the canvas shelters near the fire pit. Some of them talked in their sleep. Some whispered to each other, tracing myths in the dirt with charcoal fingers.

None of them had lived through the Siege of Greyglass. None had seen Revenant's skyburners black out the northern ridge. None had heard Elira Vale scream through flame.

But they knew those things.

They remembered them like stories passed down through blood, not pixels.

Myth-memory.

And Nova knew enough to feel the shift.

Something was changing again.

She stepped outside, cloak wrapped tight. The morning air was sharp. Too quiet. There should've been more noise. More transmission clutter. More distant uplinks from allied outposts. Even The Ember Record was unusually still, its stream of stories slowed like a heart waiting for a second beat.

Matherson was already awake, standing by the edge of the crater where it had all started. Where memory had burned so hot it had collapsed time itself.

He didn't look at her when he spoke.

"It's waking up, isn't it?"

Nova didn't ask what "it" meant.

She felt it too.

The Myth That Refuses

They'd hoped, after Edenfall fell, that people would stop needing stories like weapons. That memory could be used to build, not to fight.

But the hunger was still there.

People wanted something larger than themselves. A force to lean into. A shape to assign to chaos.

And in the absence of Edenfall's narrative machine, something else had begun to take root.

Not in daylight.

In deepnet static.

In half-corrupted old Edenfall servers.

In the whispers that carried no authors.

Nova turned toward Matherson. "We still don't know what it is. Palimpsest went quiet after its transformation. But before that… it tried to reach us."

Matherson exhaled slowly. "It remembered Elira."

"And now something else is remembering too. Something twisted."

A Decision That Isn't a Decision

They walked together back toward the Archive tent passing a circle of children drawing symbols in the dust.

One paused and looked up. "Are you him?" she asked.

Matherson froze.

Nova answered for him. "He's just someone who remembers."

The girl frowned. "But he was the fire, right? My brother says the sky cracked because his eyes opened."

Matherson knelt, level with her. "What if I told you the fire was always there? I just stopped looking away."

The girl nodded solemnly. "Okay." And went back to her drawing.

Inside the Archive, Ro was waiting.

Her face was paler than usual. Her eyes ringed with shadows. She looked like someone who hadn't slept since before the war ended.

She handed Nova a datapad.

"We got a burst transmission from the eastern spine. Archive node 17. It's… not one of ours. But it's using our structure. Our framing. Our myths."

Nova scrolled through the lines. The language was familiar Ember's cadence, the phrasing of hope. But it was wrong.

Too absolute.

Too clean.

"It's retelling the myth," Ro said. "Not sharing it. Rewriting it. Making Matherson into something fixed."

"A god," Matherson muttered.

Ro didn't answer.

Because they all knew what that meant.

The Hollow Crown

They sat in silence after that. The fire in the archive crackled low, and outside, the wind howled down the valley.

Matherson looked at Nova. "If I go back in into the deep net, into what's left of the Red Node I won't come out the same."

Nova's voice was calm, steady. "That's why you left it in the first place."

"So the story could belong to someone else."

He nodded.

"But if this new thing this false myth takes root, it'll bury everything. It'll turn my sister's name into code for a lie."

"Then we need to ask," Nova said gently, "if your presence will stop it. Or feed it."

Matherson stared into the fire. "So we let them fight it?"

Nova hesitated.

Then: "Maybe they need to. We can guide them. We can tell the truth. But if we step in, we give it gravity. We make it real."

"And myths… myths don't die easy."

What Memory Remembers

Later that night, Matherson went alone to the crater's edge.

He placed his hand to the earth, where once a house had stood.

He whispered his sister's name. Not to resurrect her. Not to weaponize her.

Just to remember her.

And the earth answered not with words. Not with power.

But with stillness.

He stood and looked out across the valley.

In the distance, fires burned.

Some would be warmth.

Some would be war.

And maybe that wasn't his to decide anymore.

He turned back toward the village.

Nova stood waiting, arms crossed. She didn't smile. She didn't ask.

He nodded once.

"Let's teach them the real story."

And then let it be theirs.