Shayne

Chapter nine: The Missing name

The library beneath the tower was darker than the hallways Shayne had passed. Not dark in the sense of light—though the flickering sconces cast a haunting amber—but dark in the way a graveyard might feel at midnight. Every shelf was tightly packed with leather-bound volumes, some so ancient their spines had cracked and peeled like scorched bark. Dust floated like ash in the air. The silence was so thick it pressed against his ears.

Miss Revah motioned for him to keep walking. Shayne obeyed, still reeling from her earlier words:

“The girl’s name was Serah. You loved her once, before the cleansing. Before the Accord took your memories.”

He didn’t remember her—yet the name ignited something in his chest. Something hollow. A scar, perhaps, shaped like a girl he couldn’t see. Every beat of his heart thudded against that wound like a bell toll.

“Why did you bring me here?” he asked finally, watching her thin frame drift between the shadows. “What is this place?”

Miss Revah didn’t look back. “This was the last unburned archive. They missed it in the fires. Probably thought it was already dead.”

“And what’s here that I need to see?”

Her voice was dry. “Not what you need to see. What you need to remember.”

They turned a corner, and the temperature dropped. Shayne paused. There, sealed behind thick glass in a sunken alcove, was a single book on a stone pedestal. It was bound in crimson leather, the spine scorched but intact. Gold letters glittered across its face, written in a language he didn’t know… yet somehow understood.

The Registry of the Forgotten.

Shayne stepped forward, pulse accelerating.

“What is this?” he whispered.

Revah’s voice was low and reverent. “Every subject scrubbed by the Accord. Every mind washed. Every name deleted. The Accord called it erasure. But we called it Sheol.”

Shayne blinked. “Sheol?”

“It means the place of the forgotten dead,” Revah replied. “In the old tongue. They took your name, your past, your connections. Buried them here.”

Shayne pressed his palm to the glass. The book pulsed faintly. Almost warm.

Revah glanced at him. “Only one who survived the Vault of Flame can open it.”

“I… survived?”

“You didn’t just survive, Shayne. You escaped. That’s why they keep chasing you.” She looked at him then, her eyes suddenly raw. “You’re not a man. You’re a spark. If they don’t snuff you out, you’ll light a fire they can’t contain.”

Shayne swallowed the lump rising in his throat. He didn’t feel like fire. He felt like splinters—jagged, unfinished, full of echoes.

“Open it,” Revah said.

He hesitated. Then slowly, as if drawn by a force deeper than instinct, Shayne pressed his palm flat against the glass. The air snapped. A faint c***k zipped across the surface. The glass shuddered once—and shattered like ice.

The book thudded forward. Dust swirled.

Shayne reached out with shaking fingers and opened it.

The pages inside were parchment-thin, covered in ink that shimmered like oil. Hundreds of names were listed in columns, each followed by glyphs and dates. Some had been struck through. Others had glowing sigils beside them. He flipped page after page, faster now, eyes scanning for something familiar.

Then he froze.

M-27: MARROW, SHAYNE (TWIN RECORD: MARROW, SHILOH)

Status: Deleted. Soul-link disrupted. Resurrection protocol aborted.

Memory Signature: Flamebound.

He stared at it, his breath catching.

Twin…?

He touched the ink, and the moment he did, a white-hot flash exploded behind his eyes. The room disappeared. Time dissolved.

He was underwater.

Not physically—but his mind sank into the memory like a drowning man slipping beneath waves. Everything came in fragments. A burning building. A girl screaming. Hands pulling him away. And then a flash of silver light, like a gate closing behind him.

He heard her voice. The one they called Serah.

“Shayne! Don’t forget who you are! They’ll try to make you forget, but your soul knows. Find the symbols. Find the flame—”

Then silence.

When he came to, he was kneeling on the cold floor, hands gripping the open book, breath ragged.

Revah knelt beside him. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

He nodded weakly. “I had a twin… Shiloh.”

Revah’s expression turned grave. “They separated you two during the Trials. You were never meant to survive without each other.”

He struggled to his feet, still shaking. “Where is she now?”

Revah looked away. “No one knows. Some say she’s dead. Others say she was converted. But if she’s alive…”

Her eyes narrowed.

“…she’s the key.”

Hours later, Shayne stood on the balcony outside the archive, staring out at the bleak skyline. Black towers jutted into the night, blinking red eyes of surveillance drones sweeping the air. Beneath it all, the Accord’s propaganda pulsed across holo-screens: Order. Unity. Obedience.

He clenched his fists. His name. His sister. Serah. The Vault of Flame.

Each piece twisted tighter into the knot in his chest.

Behind him, Revah spoke softly. “You don’t have long. Now that you’ve touched the Registry, they’ll trace the psychic echo.”

“So what now?” Shayne asked. “What’s the next move?”

She held out a slim data shard. “There’s a man named Elias Creed. He runs a hidden transmission tower beneath the Old Metro. He can decode Flame signatures. He’ll help you trace the others.”

“Others?”

“Not just you were erased, Shayne. There are more like you—those who heard the Voice and survived the fire. The Accord calls them anomalies. But we call them…” Her eyes gleamed.

“…the Remnants.”

That night, Shayne slipped through the narrow alleys of Sector Delta, hood pulled low. Every corner hummed with drones. Sirens moaned in the distance. But all he could think about was the name in the book.

Shiloh.

His twin.

Alive—or worse.

He pressed the data shard to a scanner panel at the edge of a crumbling wall. A door hissed open, revealing a freight elevator reeking of oil and rust.

As he stepped inside, a faint voice echoed in his mind.

Find the symbols. Find the flame.

The elevator ground to a halt in the belly of the Old Metro. The walls here were older—pre-Accord infrastructure, untouched by years of regime sanitization. Shayne stepped into the corridor, flicking on a wrist-light Revah had given him.

Faded murals lined the tunnels—faces with eyes scratched out, wings scorched black, altars left shattered. Everything looked desecrated, like something sacred had once lived here and been hunted down.

He heard a scrape ahead. Shayne dropped instantly, heart thudding.

A shadow moved across the corridor. Then a voice—deep, low, unreadable.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Shayne rose slowly, hands visible. “I’m looking for Elias Creed.”

Silence.

Then the shadow stepped forward—and out of it emerged a man wrapped in a long leather coat, his right eye replaced with a glowing tech lens, his face lined with age and something harder.

“I’m Creed,” he said. “And you’re the boy who broke the Vault.”

Creed didn’t shake his hand. Instead, he scanned him with a device Shayne didn’t recognize. The moment it beeped green, Creed’s tone shifted.

“You’ve got it bad,” he muttered. “Flame signature’s still pulsing. No wonder they’re hunting you.”

“You can help me trace others like me?”

Creed nodded. “I can. But you’ll need to give me something first.”

Shayne frowned. “What?”

Creed’s cybernetic eye whirred as it locked on his face.

“Your real name.”