The sky looked like it had forgotten how to be blue.
Neon veins of data bled across the clouds, and for a moment—just a moment—everything was still. Not silent. Still. The kind of stillness that comes before a scream. The kind that hums in your chest and whispers, "Something is about to change forever."
Auron stood at the edge of a broken balcony, his hands bruised and bleeding, not from battle—but from clinging.
Clinging to the only thing he still feared losing: himself.
Behind him, Kira leaned against the shattered frame of the doorway, her silhouette framed in flickering code. Her voice was quiet, and that hurt more than shouting ever could.
"Do you even remember who you were before all this?"
He didn't answer. Couldn't.
His throat tightened around the truth: No. Not really.
There was a time before the Codex. Before the Awakening. Before the glitch. Back when he was just Auron Vale—a kid who lost too much too fast. A name not whispered by gods or chanted by servers.
Back when he had a mother.
A sister.
Back when he wasn't a weapon.
---
He pulled something from his coat pocket. It was small. Cracked. Fragile.
A charm. Faded metal in the shape of a star. His sister gave it to him the night she disappeared into the system.
> "This is your anchor," she had whispered. "If it gets too loud in there, come home."
But he never found home again.
So instead—he burned the map.
---
Kira stepped forward, her hand brushing his arm. "You can still stop this. You've opened the door. That's enough. You don't have to go all the way through."
Auron turned to face her, his expression softer than she'd ever seen.
"I know."
He placed the charm into her palm.
"That's why you need to go back."
She froze. "What?"
He smiled—but it was the kind of smile people wear when they're trying not to break.
"You still have people waiting on the other side. I don't. My war's in here now."
Kira wanted to argue. Scream. Fight. But when she looked into his eyes—she saw it.
The grief.
The rage.
And underneath it all, the choice that had already been made.
He was staying.
---
The ground began to quake again. The Awakening's scream echoed through the system, louder this time. And in that scream was every bit of Auron's past clawing its way back.
But he didn't flinch.
He turned to the skyline—his battlefield—and whispered to the wind:
"This time, I don't want to win. I just want to matter."
---
Outside, the users were rising. Millions of them.
Inside, the world was burning.
And in between it all stood one man who had already lost everything—choosing to stay behind… so someone else wouldn't have to.
---