The Ember Core pulsed—once.
The air in the vault vibrated with ancient force, setting the magnetic containment fields buzzing. Every relic, every sealed weapon, responded. For a moment, even time seemed to pause.
Jalen didn't hesitate.
He grabbed the Ember Core.
Power surged through him—not like a blast, but like memory. He saw flashes of the first Eclipse subjects—those who came before him. Some broken. Some transcendent. All touched by the same light. All consumed by it.
But not him.
He held on.
"Jalen!" Reyka shouted, ducking a plasma blade from one of the Null Sentinels. "We need you now!"
He opened his eyes—and fire exploded from beneath his feet.
The energy stormed outward, wrapping around him like armor. Not the old Eclipse suit—this was something new. Fluid light shaped itself into living flame across his chest and arms, plated in black-core fragments that glowed from within.
The Sentinels hesitated.
And then he moved.
Jalen blurred—his speed enhanced, his fire sharper than before. One Sentinel raised its blade—Jalen caught it mid-air and shattered it with a pulse from his hand. Another lunged—he spun behind it, striking with a shockwave that sent the armored figure crashing into the vault wall.
Ari was a blur of martial fury, moving without powers but with absolute precision, taking advantage of Jalen's chaos. She ripped a baton from one of the stunned Sentinels and knocked it clean across the chamber.
Reyka activated the vault's defense matrix. "I'm rerouting the artifact charge into this sector—we can overload the room, but it'll only give us seconds!"
"Do it!" Jalen shouted, voice layered with new resonance. "I'll hold them!"
Reyka slammed her fist onto the console. "Initiating burst!"
The lights went white.
The core of the vault pulsed—and every relic activated in unison, like a symphony of forgotten power roaring to life.
A beam of compressed Riftlight shot upward, vaporizing the ceiling as it broke into the open sky. The Sentinels recoiled, systems frying from the overload.
Jalen grabbed Reyka and Ari and launched upward into the air, fire streaming behind him as the vault began to collapse into itself.
They landed miles away, on the cliffside, breathless and scorched.
Ari stood slowly. "You're gonna tell me what the hell just happened."
Jalen stared at his hands, still pulsing with Ember light. "The Ember Core didn't just power me. It... remembered me. It chose me again."
Reyka looked out over the landscape. The Rift scar pulsed faintly on the horizon, like a wound that never healed.
"Null's going for that next," she said. "And he's not coming alone."
Jalen turned, face set with a quiet fire.
"Then neither are we."