Location: Obsidian Core, Subgrid Level-9
The static was alive.
Ghostbyte sat hunched before the dead terminal, fingers dancing over a keyboard that hadn't been connected to the net in over a decade. Every few seconds, a pulse flickered through the ancient glass screen shapes too fast to catch, too broken to mean anything. At least, to anyone else.
But to him? They were fragments.
Nova crouched nearby, scanning the walls with a palm-reader. Her expression was tight, calculating. This space an old Red Node fallback vault was more myth than map. Not even Revenant had known it still existed. She'd led them here through whispers buried in corrupted Edenfall chatter, a rumor inside a rumor.
"Tell me it's something," Nova said, finally breaking the silence.
Ghostbyte's eyes didn't leave the screen. "Not yet. But… it's trying."
"Trying?"
"To open. Something's knocking, but the key it's using is broken. Or maybe the door is."
Nova stepped closer. Her presence changed the air. Always had. As if the world tilted just a little when she focused on something. She stared at the screen with him, her hand hovering near the interface port.
"Let me try a code-sync," she said. "If this is Matherson's work, maybe it responds to his engram signature."
Ghostbyte hesitated.
Nova's eyes flashed. "You still don't trust me?"
"I don't trust anyone who changes sides midwar without a full dossier of regret."
A smile curved her lips. "That's fair. But this isn't about sides anymore. This is about truth. And Matherson hid something even you missed."
Ghostbyte nodded once. "Alright. Run it."
Nova pressed her hand to the port.
There was no fanfare.
No hum of power.
No visual spike on the meters.
But Ghostbyte saw it.
The screen changed.
Not visibly.
But rhythmically.
The flickers sharpened into something intentional.
Pulses in a sequence too fast for the naked eye. But not for his. His retinal implants parsed the blinks, turned them into audio cues, then into syntax markers.
He gasped.
"It's… not a message," he muttered. "It's a lock. A myth-encoded security layer. Something buried beneath Edenfall's surveillance, even under the Red Node's narrative shield."
Nova leaned closer. "Encrypted with what?"
Ghostbyte's fingers flew. "Mnemonic resonance. It's keyed to remembrance, Nova. Not data. Not code. Emotion."
"That's impossible."
"It was. Until Matherson."
The Past as a Key
The interface shimmered as Ghostbyte fed the initial fragments into a decryptor built from his own grey matter augmented, yes, but mostly raw memory. Matherson's code had never followed traditional rules. It learned from the person trying to break it.
Nova didn't speak as the room filled with projections.
Memories.
Not theirs.
But Matherson's.
A boy at the edge of a burning house.
A voice on a phone whispering, "I know you're alive."
A shattered city, ash-flecked skies, the scream of his sister echoing from nowhere and everywhere.
Then, silence.
And in that silence: a line of code burning into the vault's floor.
Ghostbyte dropped to his knees.
"No way," he whispered.
"What is it?"
"The Echo Lock. It's real. He didn't just store data here. He imprinted part of himself. A living protocol. Not an AI. Not a program. Something older. Something myth-born."
Nova knelt beside him. Her voice was reverent.
"Protocol Mnemosyne was just the surface."
"This is the source," Ghostbyte said. "The blueprint for a new kind of memory. Not stored. Shared."
The Echo Speaks
The vault's core warmed.
The terminal screen darkened.
And then
A figure appeared in the center of the room. Not in light, but in shadow. As if the absence of light had taken shape and chosen to walk.
It was Matherson.
Or what remained of him.
But this was no resurrection. No crude memory playback. This was an echo. A seed of self, cultivated in myth and memory, sustained by belief and loss.
Nova stepped forward.
"Matherson?" she asked softly.
The figure turned.
And smiled.
But said nothing.
Ghostbyte cleared his throat. "If you can hear us… if this protocol is active, we need to know what you hid."
The shadow-Matherson nodded slowly.
Then turned to the vault wall.
Symbols appeared. Glyphs built from language strands neither of them fully understood. Myth-code, etched in memory-form.
Nova's eyes widened. "That's… a map."
"To what?" Ghostbyte asked.
"To the origin of the myth. Not Matherson's past. His future."
The Origin of the Flame
The symbols unfolded, showing a landscape neither of them recognized.
But one word blinked again and again in multiple forms.
Not a place.
Not a date.
A name.
Kaeda.
Nova froze. "His sister."
Ghostbyte blinked. "She died. That's"
"No. That's what they made us believe. But if this protocol is right… if this is where Matherson rooted his myth, then Kaeda is more than a memory."
She stepped back from the projection, heart racing.
"She's the first spark."
Convergence
The echo faded.
The vault dimmed.
But the protocol remained.
Ghostbyte stood in silence, trying to process what it meant. What it risked.
This wasn't just a breadcrumb trail.
It was a challenge.
Matherson had buried his myth not just in stories, but in people. And if Kaeda still lived if she was part of what made the myth grow then every faction, every war, every plan…
Would be obsolete.
Nova looked at him, her voice steel now.
"If Revenant finds this first, it's over."
Ghostbyte nodded. "Then we find Kaeda before she does."
Nova's eyes burned with something Ghostbyte hadn't seen in a long time.
Hope.
Or something fiercer.
Faith.