#The thorned path
#019
The night was colder beyond the tunnels.
Juno pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders as they crossed into the outskirts of Sector 7—an abandoned industrial zone twisted with rusted towers and forgotten smokestacks. The stars above were barely visible, smudged behind centuries of smog. But for once, they weren't alone in the dark.
Marrow led them through silent alleys, his limp barely noticeable beneath his cloak. Every few blocks, he paused, tilted his head like he was listening to something only he could hear.
"You're sure this is where Thorn went into hiding?" Eden asked.
Marrow nodded. "My last trace puts him near the Old Verge—what's left of the rebellion's sanctuary before the fall. But it won't be easy."
"Why not?" Asher asked.
Marrow stopped. "Because Thorn doesn't want to be found."
He pointed to a wall. Painted crudely in faded red ink was a symbol: a spiraling rose wrapped in chains.
Juno felt something shift in his chest. The mark felt… familiar. Like a dream half-remembered.
"What is that?"
"A warning," Marrow said. "You don't knock on Thorn's door unless you're willing to lose something."
They passed under the mark.
No one spoke for a while.
Eden kept her hand close to her weapon. Asher walked beside Juno, eyes scanning the rooftops. And Juno… he couldn't stop thinking about the phrase Marrow had said back in the node:
People choose to forget.
What did that mean for him? For his brother?
What did he choose to forget?
They reached the edge of the Verge just before dawn.
It wasn't much—collapsed shacks, shattered statues, broken roads swallowed by weeds. But the atmosphere was heavy. The kind of silence that didn't feel empty, but guarded. Like someone was watching from just beyond the broken windows.
Marrow stopped at a gate. "From here, we split."
Eden turned sharply. "Split? Are you joking?"
"He doesn't trust groups. If you come at him united, he'll think it's a Bliss trap. You want to talk to Thorn, you go alone. Each of you."
Asher scoffed. "How will we even find him?"
Marrow stepped aside and pointed toward the overgrown ruins.
"You won't. He'll find you."
Juno's pulse quickened.
"This is insane," he whispered.
Marrow turned to him. "You want to awaken a man who traded pieces of his own soul to protect what was left of the truth? Then you better show him why you're worth remembering."
Juno looked at Asher.
He smiled faintly, trying to ease the tension. "Guess we walk into the mouth of history now."
And so they did.
Each of them stepped through the gate in different directions, swallowed by the Verge.
Juno walked past hollow homes and shattered relics, his feet crunching over dry leaves and old memory chips. There was a rhythm in the ruins, like the place itself breathed. Like it still remembered what had been taken.
He passed a shattered mirror, half-buried in the dirt.
His reflection stared back at him—only it wasn't his.
A younger version. Wide-eyed. Unscarred.
He gasped and stepped back.
When he looked again, it was just him.
He turned away and kept walking.
In the distance, he heard footsteps.
Slow. Deliberate. Behind him.
He turned—nothing.
Then the voice came.
"Do you know your name?"
He spun around.
There, sitting atop a broken fountain, was a man wrapped in shadows.
He hadn't even seen him arrive.
His cloak was torn, heavy with dust. His face was hidden behind a cracked porcelain mask. But the presence—the weight of him—felt suffocating.
Juno swallowed. "Yes."
"No," the man said. "You know what they told you. I asked if you knew your name."
He stared at him, pulse racing.
"Are you Thorn?"
Silence.
Then the man tilted his head.
"I was."
Juno stepped closer, slowly. "We need your help."
The masked man chuckled. It was the sound of someone who had seen too much, survived too long.
"Everyone who says that dies."
"But we're different," Juno said. "We sent the transmission. We woke the silence."
The man's body shifted. Barely. But it was enough.
"You… what?"
"We exposed the Auction," he said quickly. "We have names. We found Calder's records. We even crossed the Divide."
For a long moment, the man didn't move.
Then he stood.
And took off the mask.
Juno's breath caught.
The man looked young. No older than thirty. But his eyes… they were decades older. One was completely white, the other sharp and golden like a predator's.
"I buried those records with the last of my people," he said quietly. "You had no right to dig them up."
"We had every right," Juno said, standing straighter. "People are still being sold. Still being forgotten. If you really cared about protecting the truth, you'd be fighting with us, not hiding."
The man stared at him.
And then, quietly, he smiled.
"A voice that remembers," he said. "It's been a long time."
He looked down at his hands.
"You're right. I gave up the war. But maybe… the war hasn't given up on me."
He looked at him again.
"What's your name?"
"Juno," he said.
He nodded.
"I'm Thorn. And if you're serious about breaking Bliss…"
He pulled something from beneath his cloak—a jagged, crystalized soul key, still glowing faintly.
"…then you're going to need this."