VEX AND THE VAULT
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CHAPTER THREE: VEX AND THE VAULT
Days 4–5
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The fourth day began with silence.
Not the calm kind, but the waiting kind. The kind of silence that sinks into your bones and makes you feel like something is holding its breath.
Silas stood in the ash and stared at the sky. The rust-red haze hadn't shifted since dawn—if you could even call it that. There was no real sunrise here. Just that dim, endless twilight. The Hollowforge sky stayed locked in eternal dusk, painted with streaks of molten gold and ember light, like the world itself had forgotten how to move forward.
Behind him, the others woke one by one.
Grin was the first to complain.
"This is the worst camping trip I've ever been on," he muttered, brushing ash from his face. "No food. No fire. No marshmallows. We're getting scammed."
"You've been on a camping trip?" Nira asked, not bothering to look up as she reassembled her wrist-brace, the pieces clicking softly.
"No. But I've read the manuals."
"You can read?" Torren rasped, his voice hoarse from disuse. He'd spoken only twice the entire morning. Once to confirm the direction they were heading. Once to tell Grin to shut up.
Silas half-smiled at the exchange. It wasn't warmth—not yet—but it was movement. It was survival.
Senya was already ahead of them, eyes fixed on the horizon. Her coat fluttered in the dry breeze. She turned slowly and pointed without a word.
Silas followed her gaze.
A structure rose in the distance—half-sunken, cloaked in ash and stone. Obsidian metal glinted between gaps in the broken hillside, carved with symbols that squirmed when you looked at them too long.
Nira inhaled sharply. "That's not just a ruin."
"Vault?" Silas asked.
"Worse," she said. "Tribunal-designated Containment Class. No Beacon. No Recall Gate. Just locked shut and left to rot."
"Why?"
"Because something inside is still alive."
Torren frowned. "Then why are we going in?"
Senya answered for all of them. "Because this Trial isn't what we were told. And we need answers."
---
The Vault's entrance was cracked open. Not wide—just enough for one body to squeeze through sideways. It looked like someone had forced it.
Silas slid in first, moving carefully. The air inside was cold. Not cold like temperature—cold like disuse, like sterility. It didn't belong here.
The corridor was narrow, lined with damaged conduit tubes that hissed faintly. Light flickered overhead. Old glyphs pulsed a warning, shifting every time you blinked.
Then—
Click.
"Don't move."
The voice came from behind. Silas felt the barrel of a rifle press against his neck.
"You take another step and I'll drop your spine through your gut."
He raised his hands slowly. "I'm not Tribunal."
"That's what the Tribunal always says."
Footsteps behind them—Grin first, then Nira, Torren, and Senya. Grin cursed under his breath. Nira's brace clicked into place.
"Relax," Senya said, voice calm. "I know who you are."
The pressure against Silas's neck didn't ease.
"Senya Veilborn," the voice said flatly. "Of course you'd survive."
The rifle lowered.
A woman stepped out from the shadows. Tall. Lithe. Eyes burning faintly with Riftlight, skin gray-toned, scars woven like tattoos across her arms and neck. Her armor was old. Tribunal-issued—but customized, patched over with scavenged plating. On her back, a massive rifle hummed softly.
Ashen Vex.
Silas had only heard the name once before—from a dying Echo near the Drop Zone.
Exile. Murderer. Warden of the Outer Veil.
She didn't look like a war criminal. She looked like someone who had stopped caring whether she lived.
"You're early," she said. "Candidates don't usually reach this point until Day Six."
"We're overachievers," Grin said, then flinched as she looked directly at him.
"You don't wear control glyphs," she murmured, stepping past them. Her eyes scanned their arms, shoulders, necks. "That's impossible."
"They didn't activate," Nira said. "They didn't… bind."
"Then you're broken," Vex replied.
"Broken?" Silas asked.
"Or chosen. Either way, it means the Forge likes you more than they do."
She turned and walked deeper into the Vault.
They followed. No one questioned it.
---
The control room was dark and still intact, filled with rusted monitors and ancient Beacon tech. Most of the displays were dead. A few still twitched with life. Vex moved through it like she'd built the place.
"This isn't a Trial," she said, dropping a cracked data core onto a console. "It's a harvest."
They listened.
"The Tribunal sends waves of Candidates into the Hollowforge every cycle. They're told it's a test of merit. Strength. Worth."
"It's a lie," Senya said, already knowing.
Vex nodded. "It's not about passing. It's about breaking. The ones who survive aren't rewarded. They're processed. Formatted into tools."
Silas clenched his fists. "Why?"
"Because the Forge doesn't create soldiers. It creates Remnants. And the Tribunal needs more."
Silas remembered his Boon flaring, uncontrolled. Remembered Torren turning feral, molten and blind. Grin's laughter during battle. Nira's empty stare in her sleep. His own nightmares.
"Then what are we?" he asked.
Vex turned to him. "Unfinished weapons."
---
While Vex dumped corrupted logs into the console, Torren and Grin explored the lower halls. Silas stayed behind, watching Senya speak softly with Vex near an old terminal.
Nira approached quietly and nudged his arm.
"You good?" she asked.
"I don't know," Silas admitted. "Nothing makes sense."
She sat beside him, pulling her knees to her chest. "I triggered early too, remember? First day. Thought my Boon was broken."
"Is it?"
She smirked faintly. "Probably. It screams at me sometimes."
Silas didn't smile.
"Hey," she added, more seriously. "We're still breathing. That's gotta count for something."
Before he could respond, a shriek cut through the Vault.
Then a second.
Torren's voice echoed from below. "Echo! Echo!"
Silas was already running.
---
They found Grin bleeding on the stairwell, clutching his side. His blade was buried halfway into the floor, twitching. "It came out of the wall," he hissed.
The creature was not like the other Hollows.
It was plated—silver and bone, with three arms and no legs, crawling on the ceiling like a spider. Its face was a spinning disc of teeth.
Nira fired a bolt. It missed. The creature blinked sideways—phased through the air like water—and landed behind her.
Silas felt the Fragment ignite.
He let go.
Shadow exploded from his body.
The hallway darkened. The Echo shrieked and charged, its limbs dissolving in and out of form. Silas threw a hand forward. Shadow tendrils burst out of the walls and speared it mid-air. It screamed, flickering, then surged again.
Senya stepped in front of it.
Her voice was a whisper.
"Sleep."
The creature shuddered.
Blood poured from its open mouth. Its body spasmed. Then it collapsed.
The Vault fell silent again.
Vex appeared moments later, rifle in hand—but the fight was already done.
She looked at the Echo. Then at Silas.
"It reacted to you," she said.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because your Remnant is older than theirs. And it remembers."
---
They left at nightfall.
Vex didn't come with them—not yet.
"There's more buried in the sublevel," she said. "Fragments the Tribunal tried to erase. I need them."
"Will you survive?" Senya asked.
Vex smiled thinly. "I don't die easy."
Silas looked at her one last time. "You're not like them."
"No," she said. "I'm worse."
Then the Vault's doors sealed behind her.
---
They moved toward the Riftline in silence.
Each step felt heavier now. Each breath more precious. But they had answers.
The Trial wasn't a test. It was a crucible.
And the fire was only getting hotter.