Deep beneath the ruins of Central Nova, where the city's foundations touched ancient tunnels carved by Rift energy decades ago, a place stirred.
A vault—sealed in secret by the founders of Project Eclipse—long before Jalen Grey ever became a name of legend.
And now, it was waking up.
---
Back in the safehouse, the atmosphere was grim.
Jalen stood shirtless, his armor in pieces on the table, scorched from Null's counterattack. Reyka was pacing, eyes locked on a holographic map of Nova's ley lines. Ari leaned against the wall, arms folded, silent.
"He absorbed my fire," Jalen said quietly. "He didn't just survive it. He used it."
Reyka tapped furiously at her screen. "Which means everything we've got—powers, weapons, tech—it's all just fuel for him."
"Unless," Ari said, "we stop playing by the same rules."
Reyka raised a brow. "Meaning?"
Ari stepped forward, tossing an old, dusty datachip onto the table.
"Meaning we go back to where the Eclipse Project started. The vault. The real one. Not the labs above ground—the one no one was supposed to find."
Jalen blinked. "That's a myth."
"No," Ari said. "It's real. I found coordinates buried in one of the corrupted archives. And whatever's in there… it was locked away for a reason."
---
Twelve hours later.
The trio stood before a monolithic steel door embedded into the side of a forgotten mountain range just outside Nova's collapse perimeter. The door was covered in ancient symbols—some alien, some human. All pulsing faintly.
Reyka was scanning them, brow furrowed. "These aren't just security glyphs. They're binding seals. Rift-tech mixed with Core energy. This place was sealed by the founders and the Core Entity itself."
Jalen stepped forward and placed his hand against the door.
It hissed.
The symbols lit up in a perfect spiral, spinning outward until a low rumble echoed through the valley. Dust exploded upward. Then—silence.
The door opened.
Inside was darkness. Cold. Still.
Then, lights flickered on—dim and blue—revealing a massive chamber of relics. Weapons suspended in magnetic fields. Armor forged from Rift alloys. And in the center, atop a glowing pedestal...
A sphere.
Black as obsidian, yet glowing with swirling light inside.
Reyka approached cautiously. "Is that...?"
Jalen nodded, drawn to it. "The Ember Core. The original prototype. It's... alive."
Suddenly, a loud clang echoed through the vault.
A warning pulse blared.
Reyka spun. "Someone else is here—"
From the shadows above, movement.
And then they dropped—six dark-armored figures, silent and swift, eyes glowing with Null's sigil.
Ari grinned. "About time we got some exercise."
Jalen's hands ignited again.
But this time, the fire wasn't just his.
The Ember Core pulsed—synchronizing with him.
And in that instant, Jalen Grey became more than just the fire.
He became the spark of resistance.