THE WATCHER: REVOLUTION
by Rapwizzy Debaron
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Episode 23: Afterlight
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Grief wasn't loud.
It didn't come crashing in like thunder or rip me apart with screams.
It came quietly—like a shadow sitting beside me, whispering reminders of what I lost.
The Vault was silent now.
No alarms. No chaos.
Just the humming echo of her sacrifice, still warm in the walls.
Alira was gone.
No body. No remains. Just... absence. A code erased from existence.
But she wasn't a number.
She was breath and fire and rebellion wrapped in soft skin and a stubborn heart.
I sat on the steps of the ruined command center, blood on my knuckles, her name like ash on my tongue.
The world outside was waking up.
The clones—no, the people—were stirring, rising from the cages we were all born in.
> "You're their leader now," said Riven quietly, standing behind me.
He had survived. Scarred. Bloodied. But alive.
> "I didn't ask to be," I muttered.
"Neither did she," he said. "But she chose to be."
That's what broke me again.
Not the war. Not Lucien. Not even the truth of my creation.
But her choice.
She chose to die so the rest of us could live.
How do you carry that?
> How do you breathe when the only person who made the air feel worth it is gone?
I rose slowly. My limbs were heavy with something thicker than pain.
Grief had muscle.
It made everything harder.
I walked through the awakening Vault—the place we once called a prison.
Now it was a grave.
Now it was a beginning.
The people stared at me with hollow, searching eyes.
Dozens of versions of me.
Clones. Variants.
All waiting for someone to tell them what came next.
But I wasn't a god.
I wasn't a savior.
I was just a boy who had lost the only person who ever saw him instead of the code.
Still, I stood tall. I had to. For her.
> "She opened the door," I said loudly. "So we walk through it. Not as weapons. Not as ghosts. As humans."
They didn't cheer.
They didn't cry.
They just nodded.
Because they, too, had learned how to grieve in silence.
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Night came fast.
The world outside the Vault was changing.
Skies without drones. Streets without sirens.
But inside me, the storm hadn't passed.
I returned to the Core.
Just to see. Just to feel the heat where she'd once stood.
I sat there.
Alone.
And whispered into the void:
> "I should've stopped you."
"I should've gone instead."
"I should've told you I loved you... before you disappeared like smoke."
And then…
A flicker.
The Core blinked. Once.
Faint. Gold.
My breath caught.
I stood up, heart slamming against my ribs.
> "Alira?"
No voice. No form.
But a message etched itself across the floor in glowing glyphs.
I AM NOT GONE.
I dropped to my knees, fingers trembling.
The words shimmered. Then faded.
Hope isn't a roar. It's a whisper that survives the silence.
> She wasn't gone.
Not completely.
Somewhere, in the code, in the light, in the void—Alira was still burning.
And I'd find her.
Even if it meant tearing the sky apart.
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TO BE CONTINUED…
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💥 By Rapwizzy Debaron
🔥 Next: Episode 24 – Fractured Hope
A signal. A mission. A war still waiting in the shadows.
Jax isn't done. And neither is she.
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