Darkness was the first thing Elias felt.
Not cold. Not fear. Not hunger. Just darkness—like a heavy cloth draped over the world, smothering sound, thought, and memory in equal measure. He floated in it, weightless and formless, unable to move. There was no direction. No sky. No ground. No sensation.
Just the thick nothingness swallowing him whole.
Then a whisper came—not from outside, but from somewhere inside him.
Coward.
It was faint at first, as though drifting across a long corridor. Elias tried to look around, but there was no body to move, no eyes to open. He was a thought trapped in tar.
Another voice came.
Always the victim. You never get to choose yourself.
And now something took form—something small at first, like a ripple spreading through murky water. A shape emerged in front of him, blurred, kneeling, head bowed.
Then the haze cleared.
It was him.
A younger Elias.
Thin face, dirt smudged across his cheeks. Worn clothes. Scuffed boots. A hollow-eyed stare that spoke of hunger and the unspoken instinct not to complain.
He stood in the alleyway of Orion's undercity—the labyrinth of broken lights and rusted vents that stretched endlessly under the pristine surface world. Somewhere overhead, false illumination flickered, painting the street in pale neon hues.
He recognized the place instantly.
He had lived here longer than he could admit.
People trudged past—workers, scavengers, the ones who looked at the ground rather than the sky. Vermin. The word wasn't an insult. It was classification. Them. Their kind. Everyone born beneath the white city.
The younger Elias adjusted a frayed duffel bag on his shoulder. His eyes scanned the passing crowd—not searching for opportunity, but for authority. For someone to follow. Like a stray dog waiting for a master.
The older Elias—rootless within the dream—felt a tug of disgust bloom slowly.
He remembered this version of himself too well.
The puppet.
The child who waited for someone to give him orders. The child who looked up at the glass tower spires of Orion and believed the people inside were gods.
A voice behind him spoke again.
Look. Watch yourself.
The younger Elias turned a corner and the dream followed him without resistance, pulling present Elias along like driftwood on a current.
He ended up in one of the old industrial docks, where cranes loomed above and broken shipping containers formed tight corridors. Teenagers with sharp eyes and sharp words loitered nearby, sizing up anyone who stepped too close.
He saw it.
The moment that sealed him.
Luke was there—lean, confident, reckless—and standing ahead of him in an argument with three older boys. Luke's clothes were just as worn, but his presence was different. Fire in his posture. Pride in every refusal to bow.
The memory replayed exactly how it had been.
One of the bigger boys shoved Luke's shoulder. Luke shoved back, harder.
Elias, eleven at the time, stood ten feet behind them, hoping someone would step in. Hoping some adult authority would descend from the heavens and end it.
No adult came.
Luke didn't need one.
He fought. He lost.
He bled. He didn't beg.
He looked the three boys in the eye even after they spit on him.
When it was done and the others retreated, Luke stood, bruised and coughing, and wiped blood from his lip with the back of his hand. He saw Elias watching him. He didn't ask for pity.
He simply said:
"If you don't want to rot here, stop waiting for someone to tell you when to stand. You have to do it yourself"
Elias remembered the exact tone—calm, almost annoyed, like someone pointing out a broken vending machine. Ordinary. Obvious. True.
But he didn't stand that day. He followed.
He followed Luke everywhere after that.
To schemes. To risks. To the tunnels. To the plan that was supposed to save their people. To the execution chamber. To beyond the wall.
The scene faded.
Darkness again. But this time, not empty.
A dim reflection of himself hovered inches away—a mirror version formed from shadow. It leaned close in the void, curiosity in its eyes.
"You think you rose because you chose?" it asked.
Elias tried to reply but no mouth formed the words.
The reflection smiled cruelly.
"You rose because he moved forward. You just moved behind him."
The void rippled like water slashed by wind.
"You're a passenger in your own life."
Elias felt a pulse inside his chest—first dull, then boiling.
He remembered the talisman.
Reina's fury.
Silo's fear.
Luke's exhaustion.
And there he was—again—watching them decide while he fidgeted. Watching them argue while he weighed consequences. Watching them confront truths while he preserved silence.
Always reacting.
Always receiving.
Never choosing.
The shadow child—his younger self—materialized again, closer than before. It gripped Elias by the collar, though his body didn't truly exist here. The sensation was nevertheless real—like gravity clamping down on bone.
It dragged him down.
His knees slammed into invisible ground. Shock rippled through him.
He stared into the younger Elias's eyes.
They weren't empty anymore.
They brimmed with contempt.
"You remember your dream?" the child spat.
Elias tried to speak, throat tight.
The child shoved him harder.
"Say it."
The dream.
The one pathetic guiding thought he whispered to himself in cold nights when oxygen was thin and food was scarce:
I want to rise.
Not to lead.
Not to protect.
Not to liberate anyone.
Just rise.
So others would look at him. So someone would see him. So he could matter.
The child let go. Elias hit the floor of the void and felt it vibrate with the impact.
"You never wanted freedom," the child sneered. "You wanted to be seen."
He remembered…the Nova looking down at him.
The quiet awe he felt.
The admiration—even when the Nova signed their death warrants.
Was it betrayal that hurt him…
or something else?
The black expanse around him collapsed inward, shimmering like shattered glass. The child's voice, once singular, multiplied into a chorus—dozens of versions of Elias whispering, mocking, suffocating him with truth.
You waited.
You obeyed.
You followed.
You watched other people try.
You watched the world move while you hid behind motivation borrowed from others.
A crushing pressure formed at the center of the void—like a star condensing. Elias could barely think through it.
Shapes formed in the dark—hands, dozens of hands, reaching, pushing him downward, deeper, into the invisible black floor.
He hit something again—a surface or maybe the idea of one. His bones shook, his breath thundered.
Get up.
He couldn't.
Get up. You're drowning.
He was drowning.
Not in water.
In choices never made.
The darkness swallowed his ankles, his knees, his waist—like sinking tar. His lungs constricted—whether physically or mentally he didn't know.
The child appeared once more—calm now, expression almost pitying.
"You don't get to rise," it whispered. "You never had the courage to climb."
Elias felt the last of the air inside him burn.
He sank deeper.
The last thing to disappear was his head.
The void ate him whole.
He gagged, screaming without sound, thrashing in viscous black.
Until something snapped.
Not around him—inside him.
A pressure burst outward from his chest like a cracked dam collapsing. Rage. Grief. Hunger. A desperate, primal refusal to disappear.
His voice broke through the void—not weak, not shy, not quiet.
It roared.
"I'M DONE!"
The blackness shuddered.
"NO MORE DREAMING."
Everything fractured.
---
He gasped.
Air punched into his lungs like a fist.
He jolted upright.
Sunlight stabbed his eyes.
He coughed, chest heaving, palms scraping rough stone.
The cave ceiling hung above him, broad and uneven. Rays of morning light filtered in through the entrance, painting pale stripes across the ground.
He looked around.
The fireplace still sat there—cold.
The bedroll of ashes remained undisturbed.
Sacks and small containers lined the wall.
Faded carvings marked the stone.
Old tools lay in a corner.
But no people.
No Silo.
No Luke.
No Reina.
No old man.
He was alone.
The silence was too big.
Elias pressed a trembling hand to the stone floor.
The nightmare had been pain—but this was clarity.
He stared into the dim cavern.
He breathed slow.
One more time.
Then he stood.