CHAPTER SEVEN: ORDERS IN ASH
Day 9 – The Mission and the Message
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Nira didn't sleep anymore.
Not the way the others did. Not with dreams. Not with quiet.
She watched them sometimes—how Silas knelt in stillness as if waiting for something that would never return. How Senya curled away from the fire, her rifle always within reach, hands twitching even in rest. How Torren stood like a statue beside the door, unmoving for hours until the darkness shifted just enough to make him breathe again. And Jex—Jex slept like he was falling. Not dreaming. Plummeting.
She envied him that.
Because when Nira closed her eyes, she saw the table.
The one from her mirror.
The straps still felt real. The questions still echoed. "Do you remember what you volunteered for, little girl?"
Her fingers curled reflexively, feeling for a scalpel that wasn't there. She breathed in. Out. Again. Until the phantom pressure faded.
Then she stood and walked.
Ephra Dusk creaked around her. The walls breathed—slow and distant—but alive. Since they had accepted the Evolution Keys, something about the Bastion had shifted. Panels blinked. Screens flickered with buried code. The ruin was... waking.
And something else was waking with it.
She felt it beneath her skin. In the Riftlines that now danced just under her veins.
She reached the central relay—an old holo-node that Senya had reactivated the day before. Its interface hummed faintly, alive with static logic. Data crawled across it like restless insects. Most of it unreadable. Buried in Tribunal ciphers.
But something was new.
A message.
Encrypted. Fresh.
Addressed to them.
Her breath caught. She tapped the node, entered the boot command Senya had taught her.
The screen glitched. Then cleared.
A woman's face appeared.
Judicator Velae.
Her expression was regal. Cold. But not cruel.
"To the Ashbinders," she said, her voice clear through the static, "this is not a warning. It's an opportunity."
Nira didn't call for the others. Not yet. Not until the message finished.
"You have survived what no sanctioned unit has. You have activated the Hollowforge, resisted Echo corruption, and claimed Ephra Dusk. That... makes you valuable."
The Judicator's eyes didn't blink.
"But you are also unauthorized. Unsanctioned. Your Contracts violate Tribunal doctrine. Your Remnants are waking things we no longer control. That makes you dangerous."
Nira swallowed.
"You have seven days to prove your value. We will be watching."
The screen went black.
Behind her, a quiet voice asked, "Was that who I think it was?"
Silas.
He stood in the threshold, eyes sharp despite the weariness under them. His arms were crossed, but not in anger—more like he was holding something in.
Nira nodded. "Velae. She knows. All of it."
He stepped forward, gaze lingering on the holo-node. "She's baiting us."
"Or testing us."
He looked at her, a flicker of something unspoken between them. "It's the same thing."
The others gathered slowly. Senya arrived next, silent as breath. Jex and Torren came from opposite halls, both already armed out of habit. The message played again—Nira let it loop.
When it ended a second time, no one spoke.
Until Senya said, "Seven days. That's how long she's giving us before they strike."
"Unless we strike first," Jex muttered.
Torren's voice was low. "We don't have the numbers for that."
"Yet," Silas said.
The word hung in the air.
They looked at one another—not as survivors now, but something more. Changed. Evolving.
The Ashbinders.
They would not go quietly.
---
By midday, the plan was taking shape.
Senya mapped the surrounding region using what little data the Bastion's system provided. Most of the surface nodes were dead, but the old patrol paths lit up faintly under her interface. Rift tremor signatures. Resource markers. Something like heartbeat echoes pulsing beneath the terrain.
"This place is built over something ancient," she muttered, eyes scanning through layers of corrupted mapping code. "Not just ruins. A deep vein of Riftlight... maybe even a dormant Anchor."
"Could we use it?" Jex asked.
"If we can wake it without waking everything else that sleeps around it—maybe. But we'll need tech, gear, stabilized fragments... things we don't have."
"Yet," Silas repeated.
Senya met his eyes. "We need to raid a depot. One still stocked. Possibly one still guarded."
"The Tribunal's not going to let us gear up in peace," Nira said.
"They don't need to know it was us," Torren offered. The faintest grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Not if we move fast and burn the trail."
"Target?" Silas asked.
Senya pointed to a flickering red marker.
"Edgepoint Echo. Remote depot. Used to be a contract-scrub facility for failed teams. Rumors say it was mothballed after a containment breach. If it's still standing, it'll have supplies, power cores, and probably a few leftover Boon banks."
Jex leaned over her shoulder. "And if it's not still standing?"
She shrugged. "Then we improvise."
---
That night, they gathered for one final scan. The Beacon was dormant. The Bastion was still. For now.
Nira watched as Silas stood before the altar room at the heart of Ephra Dusk—where they'd once seen the fractured mirror of their Remnants. He touched the blackened stone and murmured something too soft to catch.
She didn't interrupt. Not then. Instead, she stood at his side and whispered, "Do you really think we can win this?"
He didn't look away from the altar. "We're not supposed to. That's why we have to."
The Rift pulsed under their feet.
Tomorrow, they would move.
They had seven days.
And the world had just remembered their names.