WARRIOR OF LIBERATION

"You thought fire was the start.

But it was the patch — not the program."

— Unknown, Pre-Flame Archive Fragment

📍 Location: Emberfield – 92 Days After the Rebellion's End

The sky was calm.

Too calm.

Sei could feel it — like a silence waiting to break.

He stood alone near the ruins of the Heartforge crater, where the Thirteenth Chain had once held the world in place.

No more code.

No more orders.

Just open sky, and beneath it… a quiet unease.

Mina walked up beside him.

"Everything's working, but people are reporting… flashes."

"Flashes?"

"Like moments where they forget things. Entire days. And then suddenly remember again."

Sei's hand twitched.

His flame — once bright with purpose — flickered. Weakly.

"I haven't felt the Echoform since the NULLFLAME battle," he admitted. "Not really."

Suddenly, a voice crackled from the rebel communicator — an old, dusty device not used since the war:

"Commander… we've found something."

Static. Then clearer.

"There's… a vault beneath the Flamegrave. But it's not part of the system. It's older."

ALERT: UNSCANNED STRUCTURE DETECTED – NO FLAME SIGNATURE

Design Tag: SOURCEFIRE_VAULT_01 // Status: Sealed // Age: Unknown

Sei froze.

"Solen mapped that whole region. There was nothing there."

Mina looked at the scan and said what Sei was thinking:

"That thing was never lit by fire."

📍 Location: Subterranean Ruins – Level Zero

Hours later, Sei, Mina, and two scouts descended into a dimly glowing tunnel.

The walls weren't made of stone.

Not fireglass.

Not flameforged alloy.

But code.

Hard-etched into the walls like a fossilized operating system.

At the center was a sphere.

Smooth. Cold. Floating mid-air.

No flame.

But a pulse — like a heartbeat made of data.

Words flashed across its surface:

"SOURCEFIRE PROTOCOL: CYCLE 0.00.0000 READY."

"REQUESTING PRIMARY HOST."

Sei stepped closer.

And without warning —

it scanned him.

Flame Signature Detected: ANOMALOUS

Name: SEI — Soul-Originated Firebearer (Illegal Classification)

Verdict: OBSOLETE SYSTEM

Initiating: Memory Dissolution Countdown.

10… 9… 8…

Mina screamed, pulling him back—

Too late.

The sphere flared, not with fire… but light.

Pure white code ripped through the room—

And Sei vanished.

📍 Location: Unknown Memory Construct – Time Unstable

Sei opened his eyes in a world with no flame.

Everything around him was static. Blue-white. Frozen in algorithmic patterns.

At the center of the sky hovered a shape —

A faceless humanoid, wrapped in code.

It spoke:

"Welcome to the protocol, Flamebearer."

"You ended your world…"

"…and woke ours."

TO BE CONTINUED…

📘 Chapter 2 Tease: SAGE of the Forgotten Light