-Narrator's POV*
Long ago—fifty, perhaps even ninety-eight years past—Sector 7 burned.
It wasn't the kind of fire that flickered with warmth, nor the kind that danced in hearths or whispered from candlelight. This fire devoured.
It roared from the sky and crawled across steel streets, it melted warships and smothered screams. It came not from nature, but from the collapse of certainty. The fall of one who had stood against the impossible.
His name was Veynon Aleria. Star of Sector 7. The Seventh Flame. Defender against the Darkborn tide. And in his final moments, he became legend.
Yet no one tells his story. History buried it. The other sectors moved on. Documents were sealed. Monuments were left untouched. Sector 7 was written off as "lost to corruption, disorder… silence."
But the truth has not died.
It dreams.
And the dream always begins the same.
Veynon stood at the highest tower of the Aetherian Citadel, blood streaking down his cheek, the sky boiling black above him. Aliens with no name surged through broken streets, silent and merciless. His lance sparked with fractured energy, and the ground trembled beneath his boots.
"Come then," he said, voice steady despite the storm. "If you would take my Sector… burn for it."
The sky cracked open, and they descended.
Then—
A flash.
A scream.
And silence.
-Third-Person POV
"Ahh—!"
Shiraku woke with a jolt, gasping, her tiny fingers clutching the frayed sheet that barely covered the rusted bedframe she shared with Filea.
The ceiling above her was a patchwork of broken tiles and exposed wire, a humming light sparking every few seconds like it couldn't decide whether to die or not.
"Again?" Filea asked from the corner, his back to her. He was crouched beside a busted drone core, poking into it with a screwdriver he made from broken armor plating and an old keycard.
"Y-Yeah," she said, voice still trembling. "The fire… and the man. He always stands there. He always falls."
Filea didn't turn. "Then it happened. Probably. Just no one wants to talk about it."
Shiraku hugged her knees, staring at her toes. "But… it feels too real."
Filea didn't respond for a while. He muttered something in machine-speak—click-click, tone up, shift-wire, invert node—and the drone's eye flickered to life before sparking out again.
"Machines don't lie," he finally said. "Dreams are just compressed memory. Someone remembers. Maybe you're just… remembering it for them."
He paused.
"...Or maybe you're connected to it. Don't ask me how. I just know."
She looked at him. "You're weird."
"Thanks."
Outside their metal shack, Sector 7 groaned. Once a paradise of polished domes and sky trains, now it was rotting infrastructure, pipe leaks, and drones cannibalizing each other for spare parts. No leaders. No soldiers. Only scavengers, orphans, gangs, and the ghosts of war.
The two were only six. But six-year-olds don't get to be children in Sector 7.
Shiraku's ears twitched. "Someone's coming."
"Hm?" Filea perked up. "Heavy boots. Four of them. Bad rhythm. Probably hungry."
He stood, tucking his screwdriver behind his belt.
"You good to run?"
Shiraku grinned faintly. "Always."
And like that, the dream ended—for now.
But deep in the rusted bones of Sector 7, past the drones and broken cities, past the sky where Veynon once flew—
Something was watching.
Something that remembered.