Edenfall Blackspire, Sub-Basement Omega
The doors to Sub-Basement Omega hadn't opened in sixteen years.
They weren't supposed to.
Not unless Revenant failed.
She'd built this place herself, with one commandment:
If I come here, it means I've lost control.
And tonight, as Protocol Mnemosyne unraveled in her hands, and as a myth began to rise again from the digital ashes, she keyed in her old authorization code:
[REVENANT-R/01:VOWBREAKER]
The system paused for three full seconds almost as if hesitating.
Then it unlocked.
The Prison
The air inside was dry, sterile, colder than the void outside orbit. Light bled in slowly from above, painting circles across the concrete floor.
In the center stood a cell not bars, not plasma, but a cage of silence. White noise poured in like static. The kind that eats thought.
Inside it sat a man cross-legged, eyes closed, hair silver at the edges.
He didn't look up when she stepped in.
But he knew.
"You said you'd never come back," he murmured.
Revenant stepped forward.
"I didn't think I'd have to."
His Name Was Sable
Once, he'd been Edenfall's greatest weapon. Before Revenant. Before even the Directive had a name.
A cognitive assassin.
A myth-shaper turned myth-killer.
Codenamed: Sable.
He'd betrayed her. He'd gone off-grid and begun writing his own legends. Legends that fought back.
She'd locked him here to silence him forever.
"You trained me to break realities," Revenant said. "Now I need you to end one."
Sable finally opened his eyes. They shimmered. Not with data—but with something far older.
"You tried erasing the boy with memory fog. That didn't work?"
She shook her head.
"He's anchoring through belief. Through narrative reinforcement. He's becoming more idea than person."
"And you… you're the only one who ever learned how to kill an idea."
The Deal
Sable stood slowly. His joints cracked like someone unfolding a weapon long buried. "And if I refuse?"
"You won't," Revenant said. "Because if he ascends, you won't be needed anymore. He'll rewrite the mythosphere, burn your legacy to dust."
Sable smiled faintly.
"Still playing on fear. I taught you better than that."
He stepped to the edge of the silence field. "You'll release me?"
"Conditionally," she said. "You stay leashed. Direct feed to my neural anchor. I feel your intent shift I kill you."
He smirked. "Still afraid of your teacher."
She looked him dead in the eye. "You taught me everything I needed to destroy you."
"Now teach me how to destroy him."
Elsewhere — Echoes in the Net
As Sable stepped out of his prison for the first time in over a decade, a quiet tremor pulsed through the mythic substrate of the net.
Ghostbyte paused mid-code, frowning.
Nova blinked. "What is it?"
He shook his head.
"I don't know. Something... old."
"Like a shadow that doesn't match the light anymore."
And far beneath them, Matherson looked up.
A shiver ran down his spine.
He whispered, "Something's coming."
"Something that knows how stories end."