Chapter Seven: The Blood That Remembers

  The dust from the old temple still clung to their boots when Rizer stepped back into the cavern. His fingertips trembled, not from fear, but from something older, a sensation beneath the skin, like static trying to crawl its way out of his bones.

  Elias followed, quieter now. His eyes were distant, as if still seeing something in the glowing mural they'd uncovered, the one etched into obsidian with symbols that pulsed like a heartbeat. A mural of humans, not as prey, but as warriors. Energy bending from their hands, eyes aglow, lifting stone and flame as if they were just parts of the earth.

  “They painted us like gods,” Elias whispered.

  “No,” Rizer said, voice rough. “Like what we used to be.”

  They weren’t alone in their shock. Behind them, the other survivors still murmured in disbelief. Word had spread fast through the camp: the temple was human-made, predating even the first known settlements on Tartarus. And it spoke of something long buried, psionic power. A gift. A weapon. A responsibility.

  Commander Hale paced at the center of the chamber, hands behind his back. His voice, when it came, cut through the haze like a blade. “We've already tested the theory. The readings from the site match genetic anomalies in three of you, Rizer, Elias, and...” He turned to face the group. “Mira Darin. The scavenger girl from Outpost 12.”

  Mira blinked, stunned. She had no family here, no lineage to claim. She looked like she'd spent half her life in soot, and the other half in silence. But now, the gaze of an entire rebellion rested on her.

  Rizer glanced at Elias, then back at Mira. The truth settled in his stomach like fire: they weren’t the only ones. But they might still be the first to fully awaken it.

  Later that night, the sky on Tartarus was a tapestry of dark purples and ash-blues. Fires flickered low, and soldiers whispered around them, not out of fear, but reverence. Something had shifted. The world had tilted, and they were standing at the edge of something vast and holy.

  Rizer sat with Elias outside the barracks. Elias held one of the old bracelets Kiera made, thumb brushing the worn threads. It glowed faintly now, ever since the temple.

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  “Do you feel it too?” Elias asked.

  Rizer nodded. “It’s like… every time I breathe, something is pushing back. Testing me. Waiting.”

  “I think it’s her,” Elias said, voice almost a whisper. “Kiera. I think when she said ‘survive,’ she didn’t just mean live. She meant become.”

  Rizer didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. The stars above blinked, and the flames crackled like old voices returning.

  Meanwhile, on Gaia-9 — the world that hadn’t burned — the mood was quieter. But no less urgent.

  Children recited alphabets in reinforced domes while their instructors kept one eye on the sky. Civilians worked soil reconditioning fields by hand, tending crops that would become hope for the next generation. And inside the steel halls of the Central Dome, high-ranking officials debated whether to send support to Tartarus, or sever the connection entirely to preserve what was left.

  But they weren’t all cowards.

  Among them was a boy named Toma Reed, 14, brilliant, disabled, and confined to a mobility pod since birth. But he had a mind like a scalpel and a tongue sharper than most soldiers’ knives. He’d been decoding intercepted Odryix transmissions on his own, building a hidden archive of battle strategies and weak points.

  “They think we’re rebuilding?” he once said. “I’m rewriting the goddamn rules.”

  Toma would matter soon.

  So would Saera, the widow who smuggled banned history books to kids under curfew.

  So would Briggs, the ex-guard who kept training new fighters in abandoned hangars, whispering tales of Rizer like he was already a myth.

  They were Gaia’s sparks. Waiting.

  But back on Tartarus, Rizer stood beneath the stars with his fists clenched. Mira stood beside him now. Elias too. They were the beginning of something sacred, not just resistance.

  A return.

  The temple had whispered a final phrase, decoded only hours ago by the linguists:

  “When the blood remembers, the earth will answer.”

  Rizer looked toward the horizon. Toward Earth. Toward the pain that had birthed him, and the war that had stolen her.

  “I remember,” he whispered.

  And the air around him pulsed, a low, tremuring hum. The ground beneath his boots shifted ever so slightly.

  The blood had remembered.

  War was coming again.

  And this time, it wouldn’t be one-sided.