The dawn over Future Pride never came.Only a dim twilight lingered — a city shrouded in smoke and silence, where sunlight refracted through fractured towers and ash danced like ghosts.
The once-luminous skyline was now a graveyard of innovation.Holo-billboards glitched with the remnants of propaganda, playing Helios Core's last broadcast on a loop:"Order through innovation… Hope through—"Static.
The Young Sparks moved through the ruins like shadows of a lost age.
Blitz led the way through the wreckage of Sector 7, his body crackling with exhausted lightning. Each spark from his gauntlets lit paths for refugees trudging through collapsed bridges and broken rails."Keep close!" he shouted over the storm of dust. "The sensors are dead, but the ash still burns hot!"
Behind him, survivors clutched whatever remained — holographic photos, broken flame pendants, hope held together by trembling hands.
Blitz didn't speak of Ronak. Not aloud. But every time his lightning flickered against the city's dead skyline, he felt like he was trying to call the flame back — even if it meant burning himself out.
In the sanctuary of Sector 3, Nira sat beneath a cracked glass dome, surrounded by those too weary to fight.The air glowed faintly from small, suspended embers — sparks of her telekinetic flame, floating like golden fireflies.
She closed her eyes, her voice steady but soft:
"The flame isn't gone. It just changed shape.You don't need to see it to feel it.Breathe… and find your inner light."
Children sat around her, mimicking her calm gestures, their palms faintly shimmering with warmth.Her "Inner Flame Meditation" had spread through the broken districts — not as a power, but as healing.It was how the Order of the Unburned was born: not an army, but a promise.
Far from the sanctuaries, Echo operated in silence.From the shadows of the old communication grid, he intercepted transmissions — Helios remnants, warlords, scavengers trading stolen flame tech.
His gift, Spectral Mimicry, allowed him to infiltrate their networks by mimicking voices — sometimes even Noctis's, which haunted him most of all.He had learned to weaponize identity.He had learned to speak as ghosts.
A voice flickered through his comm-link one night —
"Sector 12. Sublevel 4. Pulse reading confirmed. Not Helios tech… it's alive."
Echo froze. He enhanced the frequency, filtering through distortion.The signal wasn't mechanical.It was rhythmic.It was… a heartbeat.
Deep below, in the lower ruins of Sector 12, Kai lay in the shadows. His once-brilliant mind had dulled under the weight of guilt and synthetic decay. The Cinder Core embedded in his chest still pulsed with unstable crimson light — a reminder of what he chose to become.
He spent his days dismantling Helios scrap, trying to reverse-engineer salvation, to undo the damage that could not be undone.Sometimes he swore he could hear Ignis's voice echo through the static of his machines — not in words, but in warmth.
Then, one night, his scanners picked up a faint resonance — not flame, not plasma, but something in between.It was steady. Alive. Familiar.
"It's not gone…" Kai whispered, trembling."The Core… it's reforming."
Aboveground, the Order of the Unburned grew stronger. They rebuilt what they could — lighting torchlines through the ruins at dusk, symbols of unity burning across rooftops.
Yet fear lingered.Whispers carried through the streets like prayer:
"A silver flame burns beneath the city…""The Ignis Core still beats underground…"
And in the depths of the old Helios crater — beneath steel, glass, and forgotten gods —a soft hum resonated through the molten rock.
Light pulsed. Once. Twice.Gold and black intertwined — no longer separate.
The Ignis Core breathed.Not reborn. Not rebuilt.Evolving.
The fire had died to teach them to live.Now, from the ashes of tomorrow — it was learning to rise again.