School felt… strangely normal.
That was the first thing I noticed as I walked through Ironwood's gates again. No alarms. No drones hovering lower than usual. No agents pretending to be teachers. Just noise—laughing, shouting, lockers slamming, the mundane chaos of students who had no idea how close their world was to changing.
Lina walked beside me, her steps light, her posture relaxed. Sometime ago, she still carried tension in her shoulders. Now, after months, she moved like someone who had finally learned how to breathe again.
People stared. Of course they did.
They always did when I walked past. Whispers followed like shadows. Some looked at me with awe, some with fear, others with something closer to curiosity. I ignored all of it. I always did.
Lina didn't.
She puffed her cheeks slightly, clearly annoyed on my behalf, and stepped a little closer to me as we walked. I noticed. I just didn't comment.
Classes passed quickly. Too quickly.
By the time the final bell rang, I realized something unsettling—I hadn't hated today. That alone made it dangerous.
We left together, slipping out before the crowd thickened too much. The sun was lower now, warm and soft, casting long shadows across the road outside the school.
Neither of us spoke at first.
Then Lina broke the silence.
"…It's been a while," she said casually.
I glanced at her. "Since school?"
She shook her head, a small smile forming. "Since it's just been you and me."
That made me pause.
We stopped near a small park not far from my house. It was quiet here—empty benches, rustling trees, the distant sound of traffic muted by distance. A place people passed by without thinking twice.
We sat.
For a moment, Lina just swung her legs lightly, staring ahead. Then she spoke again, softer this time.
"I missed this."
I turned to look at her properly now. "This?"
"Yeah," she said. "Just… us. No plans. No emergencies. No governments doing something insane."
I almost smiled.
She laughed, then suddenly froze.
Her eyes widened a fraction.
"…I mean—!" She straightened, her face heating up fast. "Not like that— I didn't mean it that way— I just meant—!"
She turned away sharply, hands clenched in her lap.
"I mean, it's nice. That's all. It's just nice."
The blush on her face was unmistakable.
I said nothing.
Not because I didn't hear her—but because pretending I hadn't was kinder.
We sat there in silence again, but it wasn't awkward. The kind of silence that didn't demand to be filled. The kind you could rest in.
The wind brushed past us. Leaves rustled overhead.
For a brief moment, the Axis State didn't exist.
No Saints. No phases. No androids.
Just Lina. Just me. And a fragile calm I knew wouldn't last—but was grateful for all the same.
I leaned back slightly, closing my eyes.
If this was the quiet before the storm…
…I'd let myself have it.
I stayed there longer than I meant to.
The sun dipped lower, painting the sky in orange and fading gold, and for a while neither of us spoke. Lina leaned back on the bench, hands braced at her sides, eyes following the clouds like she was trying to memorize something fragile.
"You know," she said eventually, quieter now, "things don't feel heavy anymore."
I opened one eye. "That's new."
She smiled. "Yeah. It is." Then, after a pause, "I think… being able to understand what I am helped. Not wondering anymore. Not being scared of myself."
I nodded. That made sense. Truth always did that—hurt first, then stabilized.
She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. "You've been quieter lately."
"I'm thinking."
"That's not new either," she said, amused. Then her smile softened. "But you're thinking elsewhere."
She wasn't wrong.
"I'm trying to keep things like this," I said. "As long as I can."
Her expression shifted—gentler, but sharper too. "You always talk like it's something you're borrowing."
Because it was.
Before I could answer, my phone vibrated once in my pocket.
I didn't check it immediately.
Lina noticed anyway. Of course she did.
"…Is it bad?" she asked.
"Not yet," I said.
That seemed to satisfy her. She stood, stretching her arms overhead, then looked at me with a small, playful grin. "Walk me home?"
I stood as well. "Of course."
We walked slowly, side by side. No rush. No urgency. Just footsteps on pavement and the faint hum of the city preparing for night.
At her door, she hesitated.
"Neo?"
"Yes."
"…Thanks. For today."
I met her eyes. "Anytime."
She nodded, smiling once more before heading inside.
I waited until the door closed.
Then I checked my phone.
One message.
DAMON
[The data transfer is complete. Aurelian kept his word.]
A second vibration followed immediately after.
W.I.S.D.O.M
[ANALYSIS COMPLETE.]
[PHASE TWO HAS A CRITICAL DEPENDENCY.]
[RECOMMENDATION: YOU SHOULD SEE THIS IMMEDIATELY.]
I looked back at Lina's house one last time.
Then I turned toward home.
The quiet was over.
⸻
They called it Crown-Null.
That was the name they let exist.
What they didn't let exist—what they buried so deep it barely qualified as data—was what Crown-Null was protecting.
W.I.S.D.O.M didn't dramatize it.
It never did.
[DATA THREAD UNLOCKED.]
[CORE OBJECTIVE IDENTIFIED.]
[DESIGNATION: APEX SAINTS.]
I stared at the projection.
Six containment chambers.
Six silhouettes.
Humanoid. Still. Perfectly aligned.
[COUNT: SIX.]
[POWER CLASSIFICATION: SAINT-LEVEL.]
[LOYALTY STATE: ABSOLUTE.]
I didn't breathe.
Not because I was afraid.
Because for the first time in both my lives—
I was surprised.
They weren't replicas.
They weren't constructs like the abomination.
They were… something else.
Refined.
Stabilized.
Wrong.
"These aren't Saints," I muttered.
[CORRECTION.]
[THEY ARE SAINT-CLASS ENTITIES.]
[POWER SOURCE: NON-NATIVE.]
Foreign energy.
Not of this world.
The file kept going.
Years ago—long before the first Saint reawakened, before the Axis State ever admitted anomalies were real—they had discovered it.
A portal.
Not a tear. Not an accident.
A stable, open gateway to a strange dimension.
A place saturated with energy so dense it warped causality itself.
They didn't know what lived there.
They didn't care.
They only cared about what they could take.
That place—according to their own research—was where all bio-marked individuals unknowingly drew power from.
Not directly.
Not consciously.
But instinctively.
Like a root system buried beneath reality.
And Saints?
Saints were nodes.
Anchors.
Living convergence points.
The government didn't worship that truth.
They dissected it.
They learned how Sainthood worked.
Then they decided they didn't need us anymore.
The files shifted.
Darkshore Union archives.
Aurelian's early reign.
I saw it clearly now.
When Aurelian took control of the Darkshore Union, he uncovered traces of a coming war—an undeclared one. The previous government had been preparing to clash with the Axis State over an "energy source."
They never disclosed what it was.
So in other to find out, Aurelian made the Axis Government look elsewhere.
He threatened them with Judgment.
Not as an attack.
As a statement.
And it worked.
The Axis State pulled its attention inward—fortifying leadership, increasing surveillance, protecting symbols instead of secrets.
That gave him the opening.
He raided their facilities.
Stole everything.
But this—
This file—
He didn't take it.
He copied it.
Left it untouched.
Because if it vanished, they would panic.
And panic would accelerate everything.
That was when he saw it.
The portal.
The experiments.
The truth behind Crown-Null.
The Apex Saints.
Six artificial Saints, engineered with foreign dimensional energy, bound by command architecture instead of will.
No past lives.
No choice.
No rebellion.
They weren't meant to fight Saints.
They were meant to replace us.
I leaned back slowly.
For the first time in both my lives, my thoughts fractured—not from fear, but from sheer, unfiltered curiosity.
A place beyond reality.
A dimension where power itself originated.
A portal still open.
Still hidden.
Still active.
My shock faded almost immediately.
Replaced by something sharper.
Focused.
Obsessive.
"Where are you," I whispered.
[QUERY ACKNOWLEDGED.]
[SEARCHING FOR PORTAL LOCATION…]
The Axis government thought they were building a leash.
They thought they were preparing the future.
What they didn't understand—
Was that they had just shown me the one thing I couldn't ignore.
Not the Apex Saints.
Not Phase Two.
The door.
And once I found it—
Nothing they built would ever be enough again.
⸻
[TRACKING ATTEMPT FAILED.]
[SIGNATURE INCOMPATIBLE.]
[OVERRIDE DETECTED.]
[SOURCE: UNKNOWN DIMENSIONAL LAYER.]
The projection collapsed in on itself, static tearing through the interface like something was pushing back.
I frowned.
"Again."
[REATTEMPTING…]
[ERROR.]
[ERROR.]
[ERROR.]
The room felt colder.
Not physically—conceptually. Like the space itself didn't want to be understood.
"Why?" I asked quietly.
[THE POWER SIGNATURE DOES NOT BELONG TO THIS REALITY.]
[IT IS ACTIVELY REWRITING OBSERVATION PARAMETERS.]
I exhaled slowly through my nose.
So it wasn't just hidden.
It was refusing to be seen.
A pause followed.
Then—
[RECOMMENDATION.]
[UNLOCK SEAL—STAGE FIVE.]
[PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS INCREASE: 73.4%.]
I leaned back in my chair hard enough that it creaked.
"No."
The word came out heavier than I intended.
Stage Five.
I remembered what it represented—not power, not knowledge, but continuity. The point where the separation between who I was now and who I had been before started to blur.
Stage Five wasn't just strength.
It was alignment.
It meant remembering why I chose certain futures.
And I didn't want that.
Not yet.
Not ever, if I could help it.
I ran a hand down my face and stared at the ceiling.
"I wanted a normal life," I muttered. "I still do."
[ACKNOWLEDGED.]
[WARNING: DELAY MAY INCREASE RISK EXPOSURE.]
"I know."
Silence followed.
I stayed there longer than necessary, thinking—not about the portal, but about myself. About how every step forward felt like a step backward into a version of me I'd tried to bury.
Eventually, I leaned forward again.
"Table Stage Five," I said. "For now."
[CONFIRMED.]
I turned my attention back to the files.
Because I hadn't asked Aurelian for this data just to chase curiosities.
I was looking for a date.
Crown-Null's internal timeline scrolled past my eyes.
Development milestones. Resource allocations. Prototype failures.
Then I found it.
A marker buried beneath layers of redacted commentary.
PHASE TWO: PUBLIC DEPLOYMENT WINDOW
STATUS: SCHEDULED
DATE: ████████
I stared at it.
So that was it.
Not an activation.
Not a test.
A statement.
They weren't waiting for Saints to move.
They were going to move first.
⸻
The next day, we met on the roof.
Ironwood's rooftop was quiet at lunch—wind, concrete, and the distant hum of a city pretending nothing was wrong.
Lina sat cross-legged near the edge, chin resting in her hands. Eli leaned against the railing, arms folded, eyes sharp.
I told them everything.
The portal. The dimension. The Apex Saints. The leash disguised as protection.
I didn't soften it.
When I finished, silence stretched between us.
"…Six," Eli said finally. "They made six."
"Yes."
"And they're loyal?" Lina asked quietly.
"Conditioned," I corrected. "There's a difference."
She swallowed. "That's worse."
Eli ran a hand through his hair. "So let me get this straight. They claimed they've found where our powers come from, siphoned it, and decided the solution to Saints… was to replace them."
"Yes."
"And you're saying they're not active yet?"
"Yet," I confirmed.
Lina looked at me then, eyes searching. "Neo… what aren't you telling us?"
I hesitated.
Just for a moment.
"…There's a way to track the portal," I said. "But it would cost me something I'm not ready to give."
Eli frowned. "Cost you how?"
I didn't answer that.
Not yet.
Instead, I looked at the city below us—peaceful, ignorant, fragile.
"They've set a date," I said. "And when Phase Two goes public, nothing stays quiet anymore."
Lina's hands clenched in her lap.
Eli straightened.
The questions came after that.
Too many. Too fast.
But beneath all of them, I felt it—the same thing I'd felt since the night the abomination fell.
The future wasn't waiting.
It was accelerating.
And sooner or later, I was going to have to decide—
How much of myself I was willing to become again to stop it.