Ash, Iron, and the Chair That Waits
He woke.
Or maybe he was already awake, and it just hadn't hit him yet. Like when your eyes open, but your mind hasn't caught up. That.
Ash on his hand.
Why…? No smoke. No fire. No burning. Maybe it wasn't ash after all—more like dust, but with purpose.
He tried to sit up. No—more like he leaned. Sitting was too strong a word for what his body managed.
His shoulder scraped against something. Metal? Maybe. Fake metal? It hissed.
His weight should've made it stop, but it didn't.
"Core: Nahr," a voice said—flat, devoid of warmth, like it didn't quite belong.
[Tag Initialized]
[Weight: Active]
[Command: null]
Null. Great. That meant no one had any answers yet. Or maybe they did, but not for him.
His back was sore. Not exactly aching, but a dragging weight—like gravity had it in for him.
Galieya still wasn't humming.
That wasn't right. It was the kind of wrong you feel in the quiet, the pause before something fills it.
He rubbed his neck.
Dry.
He didn't remember feeling dry before. Did Cores even feel dry? Maybe they did now. Maybe that was new.
He tried to push himself up. His body resisted—no pain, just reluctance. Limbs arguing over balance.
His left knee clicked. His right thigh twitched. He ignored them.
Behind him, there was a wall.
He didn't check. He just knew.
He didn't remember seeing it, but he knew it was there. Trench logic, maybe. Some things you just feel before you see them.
Breathing felt … Wronf. Like it belonged to a memory that hadn't quite resolved yet.
He didn't try to stand again—not immediately. He stayed
there, just for a moment. Maybe a few seconds. Maybe longer. Who was counting?
Then he stood. Or half-stood. More like he leaned into standing, as if the rules of posture had changed without telling him.
Everything felt… slanted. Not the floor. Him. Like he was off by a fraction of a degree.
The trench corridor didn't help. Too straight. Too sharp. It felt like it was pretending to be straight.
He blinked.
Something pulsed in his eye.
The HUD flickered.
[Location: Drift]
[Error: Drift]
[.....]
"Loop much?" he muttered. Or something like that.
He turned left. Or right. Or just turned. Directions didn't matter down here.
The corridor stretched. Cracks in the ceiling. A dent in the wall. It felt like it had been familiar once, but not anymore.
He paused.
"I've seen this before, haven't I?" he thought.
"No. I havent' ."
"Maybe it doesn't matter."
He kept walking. Not because it made sense. But because staying still made even less sense.
The trench didn't hum. Not yet. It usually did. Or maybe he just remembered it that way.
Galieya on his back shifted slightly. The strap didn't sit right, as if it had been adjusted wrong in some forgotten memory.
He touched the handle. Not to draw it, just to touch.
It was cold. Not weapon cold—old cold. Like it had been carried by someone else before him.
Maybe it used to belong to someone else. Or maybe that wasn't how it worked. But maybe it was.
His knee made the same noise again. No rhythm to it, just a presence. A tick. Like it wanted to be acknowledged.
He didn't acknowledge it.
The HUD blinked again.
Not bright, just a faint flash. Enough to remind him it was still there.
[PATH ACTIVE - UNCONFIRMED]
What did that even mean? He blinked it away. Orr maybe it blinked itself away.
The corridor didn't change.
Still sharp. Still too clean. Like a hospital dream. Or a memory that only surfaces under anesthesia.
He turned a corner without checking it. Didn't matter which direction. The trench didn't punish you for forgetting things like that. It punished you for noticing too much.
He tried to breathe slower. Failed. Or maybe he just forgot how.
The air felt processed. Filtered. Like whatever used to live in it had been scrubbed away.
"It's fine," he whispered.
It wasn't.
The floor sloped. Down.
Not steep. Just enough to be felt. A slope that didn't ask for permission, just took its place beneath him.
He hesitated at the edge.
He didn't think it was dumb. He just thought pausing there meant something.
His HUD flickered again.
[DESCENT CONFIRMATION: MANUAL ENTRY]
He hadn't pressed anything.
Unless standing counted.
Unless just looking at the slope counted as giving in.
"Stupid," he muttered. Not loud. Not soft. Just enough for the words to hang in the air.
He stepped.
Down.
No slide. No drop. Just gravity. Negotiating with the trench.
Galieya buzzed faintly as he moved.
Not a warning. Not a signal. More like a memory stirring.
He didn't look behind him.
That would've made it real.
The air changed again.
Lower. Older. Like it had been forgotten.
Like it had a memory.
The room opened before he realized he was inside it.
He wouldn't have noticed it before. Or maybe he would've.
But the trench decided when space mattered.
He slowed, though not because he wanted to. His boots seemed to stop on their own, like they were waiting for something.
Vault Chair.
Of course it was.
This one was worse. Arms bent in. Back like a trap. Clamps visible before he got close.
He didn't remember walking toward it.
But now he was closer than he thought.
The HUD didn't blink.
It didn't warn him. Didn't even pretend to care.
He stood in front of the chair—
And did nothing for a moment too long.
Then sat.
Fast. Like ripping off a bandage you hadn't dared look at yet.
The clamps clicked around his forearms.
No pain. Just pressure. A guess at what was coming.
He muttered something. Didn't even hear it.
One word blinked across the HUD's bottom edge:
SHINE
That was it. No details. No countdown. Just that word.
He stared at it. Tried to decide if it was a command or a memoyr.
Nothing answered.
Then something—heat, pressure?—moved up his spine, searching.
A wire looking for a socket in the back of his head.
He gasped. Or didn't. Something between.
Then darkness.
But not sleep.
When it came back, he was already moving.
Walking. Legs moving. No recollection of when he started.
He hated that. The trench loved it.
Walls closed in. Angled like decisions. The floor lost its grit.
The smell? Clean. Too clean. Worse than blood.
Too much clean meant someone—or something—had passed through before him.
Another Vault Chair ahead. Crooked this time. Occupied.
The frame slumped. No motion. Scorch marks across its spine. Bent plating. Still had a Core signature, but faint. No blink.
A glyph floated above its chest.
[YOU ARE PERMITTED TO FORGET WHAT YOU FAILED TO UNDERSTAND]
He stared at it for a moment longer than he should've.
Not because he cared. But because the words wanted him to.
He shook his head. Quietly, "Bullshit."
It felt stupid to say it out loud, but not saying it would've felt worse.
He didn't check the frame again.
Didn't want to know if it looked like him.
He just walked past.
The trench didn't stop him.
It didn't help either.
A panel hissed softly.
Enough to make the air feel thinner.
Another slope.
He didn't smile. But something in his chest felt a little lighter.
Galieya buzzed once, knowing where they were going.
He stepped down.
Not asking questions. Not pretending to care what came next.
The trench knew him too well.
And it liked him best when he didn't hesitate.
The slope didn't feel like down at first.
It felt like permission. Like the trench moved under him to make sure his weight didn't notice.
He kept walking.
Because why stop? He hadn't yet.
Because it was worse when he tried to think about why walking felt easier than standing.
The corridor narrowed.
Not much. Just enough to brush his elbows along the walls.
The metal was quieter here. Almost too quiet. Like it had stopped pretending to be natural.
The light blinked.
Wait—what light?
He didn't remember seeing one.
But it blinked. Once. A yellowish pulse. Then gone.
No HUD tag. No system flag. No glyph trail.
Just the idea of it, lodged in his eyes.
The passage curved ahead, a slow, soft bend that seemed to swallow any trace of direction. The walls here were darker, darker than the usual metal sheen, more like something older—more wornn, or more forgotten. There was no specific color, just the fading remnants of something that had once been gleaming and pristine. Now, it was a gray that blurred into itself, an endless, muted shadow.
He could feel it again, that strange weight in the air. The trench didn't just hold silence—it made it feel like it was waiting for something to slip, like the sound of a misstep or the creak of too much pressure on the walls. No breath. Just... stillness.
His boots scraped against the floor with every step. Not hard enough to echo, just enough to keep the friction alive. The sound felt small, too small for how big the space was. It reminded him of walking through a cave—something vast, something ancient—but in reverse. It wasn't the walls that closed in on him. It was the floor. It felt like the ground was inching upward, wrapping around his feet, trying to pull him deeper into something he couldn't see yet.
Ahead, the darkness of the corridor swallowed the light. The lamps above flickered, not just in the usual way—these flickered like something was inside them, too. He glanced up, caught one of the bulbs just as it buzzed and went out completely. Not a flicker. No fading glow. Just a snap, as if it had forgotten what light was supposed to be.
His hand instinctively went to his side, fingers brushing the edge of Galieya's hilt. Not to draw, just a reassurance. He didn't know what was out here, or if it was anything. But somehow, the empty space ahead of him was starting to feel like something was just beyond the line of sight—watching. Waiting. A faint hum in the air, a vibration too low to register as sound but deep enough to stir in the bones.
The walls curved, tight now. It wasn't claustrophobic—nothing in the trench felt like it could trap you. But it was like the walls were drawing closer on their own, tightening without any order. A single line of light flickered in front of him, not a constant glow but a pulse, like a heartbeat. It seemed out of place, even though the passage was empty. Even though everything in here felt out of place.
The walls changed again, this time abruptly, as if the corridor was pretending it had never been smooth metal at all. The surface was rough now, like stone or crushed gravel—something real, not polished, not uniform. His hand reached out, fingers trailing along the surface.
The feeling was... old. Familiar. Like he had once known it—once run his hand over something like it, maybe in a different time. Something clicked behind his ribs. A memory, faint and distant, but it was there. His fingers traced the jagged edges of something. It wasn't stone. Not really. The texture felt like a thousand discarded things mashed together, glued into one mass.
He let his hand fall, a shiver running through him. He wasn't sure if it was the sensation or just the thought of it, but he felt the memory slipping away away again.
Another step. His boots sunk into the ground a little more with each move, like the trench itself was breathing beneath him, pulling him further in.
Ahead, the passage split into two. One way curved sharply to the left, the other opened into a wider, more open space. But something about the right path—where the lights blinked and where the air felt heavier—caught his attention.
His hand reached instinctively for Galieya again, this time gripping the hilt, fingers curled tight.
It wasn't the path he wanted to take. But it was the path he was going to.
He stepped toward it. The air thickened, like the trench itself had drawn a breath, and the darkness opened up in front of him.