— Memory, Rebellion, and the War Before Time
The Fire Core sat silent now, wrapped in layers of shielding cloth. Its faint, pulsing glow barely pushed through—no longer a weapon, just a remnant. A memory.
Shawn hadn't spoken since the explosion.
His fingers drummed absently against his scorched palm. The pain was dull now—bandaged, medicated—but something deeper lingered beneath the surface.
Not just Lara's final word—"Take it."
But Darius's face.
Still flickering in his mind like an afterimage burned into memory.
He brushed the outer cloth of the Fire Core again—warm, barely. No response. Whatever Lara had passed on was nearly spent.
He glanced toward Lindsay.
"You really think Gary's building something? Not just harvesting?"
Lindsay didn't turn. Her voice came low, cold.
"He's not just building— he's rehearsing."
Shawn said nothing.
Outside, the wind picked up—restless and rising.
The night ahead was going to be long.
Shawn placed the ember on the makeshift table.
The moment it left his fingers, a spark from the Thunder Core leapt across the fragment.
A vision struck like a bolt:
Mountains.
A red-lit volcanic crater.
A convoy winding through a narrow pass.
He staggered back. Lindsay caught his shoulder.
"What did you see?"
Shawn's eyes were wide, unfocused.
"Where the Fire Core was really kept," he said, breathless. "Gary's already headed there. And he's not alone."
Dawn crept across the mountain ridge as they reached the volcanic crater. Below, Gary's convoy had formed a tight perimeter.
Lindsay adjusted her scope. "Lee and Kent are with him. I see the Lake, Heaven, and Mountain Cores—wired into some kind of containment array."
At Shawn's side, the Wind Core feather stirred, responding to a pressure he couldn't see.
"They're not guarding the site," he said quietly. "They're waiting."
The ground gave a low tremor.
From the volcanic crater's heart, Lara rose—unstable, flickering like a faulty signal.
She hadn't come to fight.
She'd been summoned.
Gary stepped forward, holding a device that made Shawn's Core pulse in protest—a compact version of the array they'd seen before.
"He's reprogramming the guardians," Lindsay muttered.
Gary loomed over Lara's fading form, her fiery essence already sealed inside a containment unit.
And then—gunfire erupted.
Revolutionary Guard soldiers scrambled into formation, weapons raised.
Their target?
"Lara?" Lindsay's voice wavered.
She drifted forward, light leaking from her with each step.
The flames that once blazed bright now sputtered in shades of blue and black.
Her movements were stilted, unnatural—like a marionette under foreign control.
Where she passed, the earth didn't scorch.
It withered.
Turned to dust.
"She's corrupted," Shawn said, his Thunder Core rising with warning heat. "Gary didn't just take the Fire Core. He rewrote her."
Electric tension surged through him.
He clenched his fists.
They couldn't stop Gary here.
Just then, a woman stepped forward from the dark like a memory surfacing. Her silver hair stirred as if by invisible currents, and moonlight clung to her skin as if defying the darkness.
Her eyes absorbed the last fragments of light.
"It's too late," she said.
The words vibrated in Shawn's teeth—not a threat, but a statement weighted with centuries of waiting.
Lindsay raised her pistol. "Who the hell are you?"
The woman didn't flinch. Her gaze remained on Shawn, studying him with an unsettling calm—part curiosity, part... pride?
"Gary has four Cores," she said softly. "The Water Core will be his fifth."
Beside them, Lindsay's wrist display blinked to life, casting a trembling holographic map into the air.
"Gary's convoy reached Blackridge Lmpact Crater seventeen minutes ago," she said, breath catching, sweat glinting in the pale glow.
The Impact crater pulsed like an open wound.
At its center, four armored transports formed a perfect square—far too precise to be coincidence.
Each bore a containment cauldron, rune-sealed and thrumming with restrained power:
—The Lake Core thrashed inside a crystalline chamber, its fury crashing like tidal waves.
—The Fire Core glowed dimly, buried under layered restraints, still dangerous—still defiant.
—The Heaven Core sparked and cracked with stifled lightning, barely kept in check.
—The Mountain Core sat dense and immovable, pressure building like a slumbering fault.
But beneath a slab of meteorite at the Impact crater's heart, something else pulsed—veins of glowing blue energy running through ancient copper pipes, converging into a shape too familiar.
"The real Water Core," Shawn whispered. "The Lake Core was just bait."
Across the divide, Gary smiled through the rising haze—a cold, blade-sharp grin.
He raised one hand—and the blue energy surged, flowing into a waiting container.
Shawn's throat tightened.
The cold deepened.
"And you?" he asked.
The woman's voice returned—layered now, as if carrying echoes of others: Lucy. Quinn. Even Gary.
"I am what remains when gods go to die."
From her coat—shifting subtly between military and ceremonial—she drew a shard of yellow stone. It pulsed in an unnatural rhythm.
The Earth Core.
The moment Shawn touched it, his Thunder Core exploded with light.
The Earth Core flared in his hand, heat and smoke curling upward like incense.
It wasn't resisting.
It was merging.
The two Cores harmonized with a deep, strange vibration, resonating through his bones.
11:59 PM.
The door exploded inward before they could seal it.
Quinn staggered in, collapsing hard against the floor.
"You're chasing shadows," he gasped.
Lindsay rushed to him, but he shoved her away with surprising strength.
"The Cores you've been chasing—they're not real," he choked out. "They're echoes. Imprints."
Shawn gripped the Earth Core tighter. "What are you saying?"
Quinn locked eyes with him—wild, glassy, unshakable.
"The real Fire Core was never Lara. The real Water Core isn't in that crater. And those Cores you're holding? Earth. Wind. They're shadows too."
He coughed violently, trembling.
"They were the first guardians. The ones who refused to be captured when the Order Conclave rose."
His voice dropped, nearly a whisper.
"They are the Soul Kin. As are the five Core bearers. That's what you've been witnessing—not theft, not conquest. A remembering."
Gary didn't have five Cores.
He had five prisons.
And the true guardians? They were still out there.
Somewhere.
Shawn glanced down at the countdown on his device:
2031.07.01 | 19D:018:11:27
Only nineteen days left.
Time was running out.