FINDING HER

Episode 5: Echoes in the light

They sealed the chamber behind them. Jane used a passage from the Ember book to lock the archway with a ward of light—a line of fire stitched into stone.

It took three hours to drag Alan out of the underground.

He hadn't spoken since the Core disconnected from him.

Brad sat beside him in the chapel, watching the sky turn gray through stained glass.

"You saw everything down there, didn’t you?" he finally asked.

Alan nodded slowly. "I saw more than I wanted to. The founders… They didn’t build Lincoln just for learning. It was a vault. A prison. The college was meant to protect the Core… but also keep people away from it.”

Dorothy stood at the back of the chapel with Helena, both watching Violet approach. She hadn’t followed them into the Core—but she knew the price they’d paid.

"You broke the seal," Violet said. "That shouldn’t have been possible."

Jane closed the Ember book with a snap. “We made it possible.”

Violet looked at them with something like fear—and something else, too. Respect, maybe.

"You’ve crossed into something deeper," she said. “And now... others will come looking.”

Helena frowned. “Others?”

“The Ember Order isn’t the only one that knew about the Core,” Violet said. “You think the Ashen Circle was the only rival? There are three more factions buried beneath this college. Some want the Core. Some want revenge. And some just want blood.”

Brad exhaled. “So this isn’t over.”

“No,” Violet said. “You just lit the first signal fire.”

It started raining the next morning. The kind of rain that soaked the ivy on the old stone walls and made the entire college feel like it was sinking back into the earth.

Jane dug into the archives. Dorothy and Helena went through the old library’s restricted shelves. Brad and Alan met with the professor Violet once warned them about—Professor Lyell—who revealed more than they expected.

“There were five founders,” he said, pulling a faded sketch from an ancient leather folio. “Only three are listed in the college records.”

Alan narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“Because two of them weren’t builders,” Lyell said. “They were keepers. They knew what lay beneath Lincoln long before the college was even dreamed of.”

Helena pointed to the names scrawled beneath the sketches. “Who’s that?”

“Her name was Aelith Ward. No one’s seen her writings since 1842. She believed the Core wasn’t just a power source—but a mind. One that could awaken.”

Dorothy shivered. “You mean like… think?”

“More than that,” Lyell said. “She believed it could choose. That it had already chosen before. That it left behind echoes of its previous hosts.”

Alan rubbed his temples. “I felt it. When I was connected. Like… someone else was there. Watching.”

Brad turned pale. “What if it wasn’t just watching?”

Jane looked up from her book. “What if it was waiting?”

That night, they received a message.

It wasn’t delivered by hand.

It came through every screen in the student lounge. Every phone. Every monitor.

One symbol.

A burning eye—black, inverted—and a phrase written beneath it in a language they now recognized from the Core.

“You opened the first gate. Now face what lies beyond.”

Then, silence.

Helena’s phone sparked and died in her hand.

“What was that?” Hank asked, stepping into the room.

Alan whispered, “A warning.”

Dorothy said, “Or an invitation.”

Brad looked out the window. A tall figure in a gray coat was standing at the edge of the courtyard. Unmoving. Watching.

Then it turned and walked into the shadows.

Jane stood slowly, clutching the Ember book. “We may have survived the Core. But something else just woke up. And it knows our names.”

They sealed the door behind them.

The Core chamber was quiet now, as if it had exhaled a final breath. Alan leaned against the wall, pale and shaken, but back. The symbols had faded from his skin. The light from the glyphs no longer danced across the walls.

Brad didn’t say anything for a long time. He just sat there beside him.

“I could feel all of you,” Alan said finally. “Even when I wasn’t myself. You didn’t leave me behind.”

Helena crouched beside them, holding the monocle in her hand. “You’re lucky the Core didn’t take more. It wanted to.”

Alan nodded. “It still does.”

Dorothy approached the old man—once a prisoner of the Ember Order, now a guide. “What is this place really? Why does it need people like us?”

He looked at her with hollow eyes. “Because people like you still believe in something.”

Jane stood over the Ember Book, flipping to a page that hadn’t been visible before. New ink bled into the paper as if from the page itself.

“The third flame reveals legacy. The final trial is not faced, but chosen. What you burn, you carry. What you keep, you bury.”

Brad read it out loud. “It’s not over, is it?”

The old man shook his head. “It never is.”

They emerged from the lower tunnels just before dawn.

By the time the sun rose over Lincoln College, everything looked normal on the surface. Students bustled to classes. Bells chimed from the old tower. But to Alan, Brad, Dorothy, Helena, Jane, and Hank—nothing was normal.

They met at the quad that evening, unsure what to say, what to do. The map Jane held now showed more—additional pathways, new symbols. Some led to other chambers. Others to names.

Names of people still living.

“Eva. Violet. Professor Halberd. Dr. Melrose.” Jane traced them one by one. “They’ve all been part of this. Some are watchers. Others... sleepers.”

“Sleepers?” Brad asked.

“Members of the Order who don’t even know they’re members,” said the old man, who had stayed in the shadows. “Initiated under illusion. Conditioned to obey. They’re everywhere.”

“And now that we’ve disrupted the Core?” Dorothy asked. “They’ll come after us?”

“Not all. But some.”

Helena looked around. “Then we need to be ready.”

That night, a fire broke out in the archives building.

Not large. Just enough to destroy records.

Brad and Jane watched from across the lawn, hidden under an oak tree. Jane whispered, “They’re cleaning up.”

“And sending a message,” Brad muttered.

Violet found them the next day.

She wasn’t hiding anymore.

She met Alan and Brad in the observatory—one of the oldest buildings on campus, long abandoned, its dome cracked but still open to the sky.

“I warned you,” she said. “And now they know you’re awake.”

“You were part of it too,” Alan said. “You passed the first trial.”

“I failed the second. But I never stopped looking. And now… there’s something you need to know.”

She opened a leather pouch and laid out a collection of old documents—photographs, notes, copied glyphs. One photo stood out.

It showed the original founders of Lincoln College, dressed in robes. At the center of the group: a man who looked exactly like Professor Halberd. And another, his face hidden, but wearing a ring.

The same ring Helena had found.

“That’s impossible,” Brad whispered. “That photo’s a hundred years old.”

“No,” Violet said. “It’s older. That image was taken beneath the college. The Core doesn’t just store memory—it preserves time. People don’t die down there, not if the Core wants them to stay.”

Alan stepped back, chilled. “So some of the Order… might still be alive.”

Violet nodded. “And if they are, they’ll come for you.”