Vitality – Emberhall Arena (Replay Stream)
> "And there it is again—triple parry, phase step, Veil burst. Tell me that's not dev code. Tell me!"
The NeuraStream overlay glitched briefly, then sharpened. Combat footage played again—Cassian's masked silhouette splitting a guild leader's stance open mid-battle.
> "No voice chat. No HUD. No team. Just pure calculated silence."
> "That's not a player. That's a ghost."
> "No—he's what we used to be. Before they monetized legend."
---
Vitality – Fogrest Tavern, Eastern Market Zone
StarViper stood on the upper balcony, watching the crowd below debate loudly, emotionally.
"He's a fabrication!" one rogue shouted. "Edited streams and AI emotes."
Another laughed. "I fought beside someone last week who saw him cleave through a six-stack alone. You calling that fake?"
A hooded figure nearby added, "Doesn't matter if he's real. What matters is that people believe. And belief moves the map."
StarViper shook her head. She'd seen that kind of momentum before—at the start of the rebellion, when ideals were louder than strategies.
It always came with a crash.
---
Vitality – Private Uplink Tower
In a quiet echo node, she replayed archived footage from the Hollow collapse—frame by frame. Not from NeuraStream, but her own capture. Raw.
Cassian had moved like someone carrying a weight the rest of them couldn't see. He didn't strike to kill. He struck to survive.
She froze the clip mid-flicker. His silhouette faded behind the collapsing zone.
She whispered, "What are you really doing?"
Then shut the file.
---
New Cascadia – Central Sector Transit Hub (Real World)
Late afternoon smeared dull yellow light across the fractured glass of the main atrium. StarViper stood beneath a corroded column, coat zipped up, hood drawn low. She was waiting on a courier drop: nonlethal shock modules and two expired stabilizer cells. Not for her.
Then movement caught her eye.
A hooded figure crossed the plaza—tall, fluid, practiced. The kind of movement you don't see much anymore. Not in this city.
They dropped a small package. Stooped. Picked it up. Turned down an alley.
For the briefest moment, the wind pushed their hood back just enough to reveal the edge of a familiar jawline. Shadowed eyes. Calm posture.
Not a face. But something worse.
A silhouette she recognized.
She didn't move. Just stared after him until he vanished.
On the ground where he had stood, the glow of a stabilizer chip wrapper blinked once, then died.
> "Type II compression. High-grade," she muttered. "Nobody carries those. Not unless they're hiding someone who matters."
She crouched, picked up the wrapper, and folded it into her sleeve.
Her breath fogged in the air.
> "Where have I seen you walk like that?"
---
Vitality – Frozen Ember Range, Duskfall Cliff
Cassian sat at the cliff's edge, letting the Veil scroll through combat logs on mute. His most recent stream kills were already clipped and circulating. One showed his back turned mid-fight, walking away as explosions cratered behind him.
Someone had added music.
A fan caption:
> "Ghosts don't bleed. They erase."
He scrolled further.
> "He's the system's flaw."
"He's the code waking up."
"He's a myth we needed."
He turned the feed off.
Stared into the fog.
And whispered, "You don't know what I am."
---
End of Chapter Fourteen