POV: Slum Child (Lore Interlude)
Location: Sector 11 Slum Rings, Block D3 Rooftop
Time: Forgotten
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Sector 11's slum rings barely held power after sundown.
A single solar panel powered the entire corridor of Block D3. Beneath its flickering light, a boy sat cross-legged on a cracked plastic mat, reading from a scorched slate. The writing on it glowed faint violet—some lines unreadable, others burned in place like they didn't want to be forgotten.
"They called it the Outer War, didn't they?" the boy whispered.
The scavenger beside him grunted. Thin arms, thick gloves, one eye replaced with a Federation reject-lens.
"Hush, boy. That's not bedtime reading."
"But it says here: 'When the stars cracked, knights still stood.' That's… cool."
The old man's shoulders tensed. He muttered, quieter now.
"That's not a story. That's a warning."
The boy kept reading.
"When the veil of time shattered in Fracture Bloom, only ash remembered what steel had forgotten."
"The last knight of the Ashvault Accord stood alone, as gods choked on their own names."
"Twelve stood with the first Godslayers. Three returned. One still walks."
The slate glowed hotter—only for a moment. As if the words had waited centuries to be read again.
The scavenger looked over, voice grim:
"They weren't saints, those knights. They were anchors. They held the ground while the gods burned the sky."
The boy whispered:
"Only one flame survived the void of name…"
"Myth?" he asked.
"No," the old man said.
"They were real."
The boy blinked at the next codex entry.
It didn't read like history.It read like law:
Knight's Vow Codex – Ashvault Variant (Era V, Obsolete)
Vow of the Final Guard:"None pass while I stand. And I will stand until my bones are ash."– Grants aura anchoring, earth-bonded endurance. Break it? Your aura cracks forever.
Vow of Silence Given:"Words are weapons. I have given mine to the dead."– No words = no weakness. Speak selfishly? Your aura vanishes for days.
Vow of the Fracture's Mercy:"To sever is mercy. To linger is cruelty."– Disables powers without killing. But if used in vengeance… you bleed from within.
The boy paused over a jagged, half-burned entry in the margin.
The lines didn't follow the Knight Codex format.
They were scrawled like a warning. Or a prophecy.
"No throne. No name. Only fire that walks."
No vow title.
No oathmark.
Just a note beside it:
"UNVERIFIED: Possibly predates Ashveil's codex. Aura-reactive without bond signature. Suspected Godslayer inheritance fragment. DO NOT RECITE."
The old man leaned over, brow furrowed.
"That one's not a Knight's vow, boy. That's what Knights feared to swear."
The boy swallowed hard.
"…Then why's it here?"
The scavenger didn't answer.
But somewhere in the recursion static nearby, a symbol sparked faintly—
as if listening.
Then the boy's fingers hovered over the final fragment.
One line. Burned in jagged script:
"The Knight's Aura is not what they wield. It's what they swear."
The old man pointed skyward.
"Era V didn't end with peace. It ended with a ledger of names too dangerous to say out loud."
"And now?"
"Now the Federation trains techborns. The Godslayers burn their own names. And the real knights…"
He looked across the ash-drenched rooftops, where no cameras dared flicker.
"…the real ones never stopped swearing."
Far beneath Sector 11's decommissioned spire ruins, Order Echo–Rift listened.They didn't preach.They remembered.
"We fracture… so the next may heal."
And on a forgotten rooftop, the slate blinked one last time.
"When recursion fails, the anchor will remain. Not crowned. Not chosen. Just… waiting."
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The boy looked toward the street, wide-eyed.
A woman was watching him.
She wore no armor.
Just a dark coat… and the echo of memory in her gaze.
Then she wasn't there.
And somewhere across the city,a flame lit behind someone else's ribs.
Not theirs.But meant for them.
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"The gods bled last. The knights bled longer."— Recovered Line, Ashvault Fragment 1.1, Hollow Star Archive
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