Chapter 2 : Thrones are built from bones

Location: Valeburn Underground Sanctuary

Time: One Week After Dante’s Extraction

Atmosphere: Cold. Tense. Air rich with static and unspoken truths. Underground generators pulse like mechanical heartbeats. No one breathes easy.

---

The table was longer than necessary. Ten chairs. Eight filled. One reserved for Naomi. One left open for ghosts.

Jayce Navarro stood at the head. Not because he asked to. But because no one else dared to.

Dante Cross sat across from him—still gaunt, eyes hollow, body trembling under layers of trauma. Yet his voice…

His voice had fire again.

“You’re afraid of me,” Dante said, breaking the silence.

Jayce narrowed his gaze. “No. I’m afraid of what Hollow made you believe you are.”

Eli Navarro leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. “You keep saying they activated your memory. But what does that mean, Dante? Who were you before the empire?”

Dante exhaled, trembling. “Before Project Hollow, I was nobody. A street kid. A mistake. After… I remembered names. Faces. Codes. I remember Jayce’s father signing orders. I remember Naomi fighting him in secret. I remember Eli’s birth wasn’t a miracle—it was a backup.”

Jayce stiffened. “What?”

Dante nodded, eyes bloodshot. “Your mother wasn’t chosen out of love. She was chosen for DNA compatibility. You were meant to lead Navarro Corp. Eli? Eli was meant to take your place if you died. The ‘shadow protocol.’”

Eli stood. “That’s not possible.”

“Naomi found the documents,” Dante said. “She told me everything before she died—or before they froze her.”

Jayce’s fists clenched. “You’re telling me our lives were drafted like contracts?”

Reina, the ex-sniper, slammed her hand on the table. “Then who’s the author?”

Dante spoke clearly. “A man named Tobias Vale. Former Hollow CEO. Current ghost. He ran the Chair Program. Naomi tried to assassinate him once.”

Eli’s voice was sharp. “Tried?”

“He vanished,” Dante whispered. “Or ascended.”

---

Meanwhile, in a Hollow outpost deep beneath the East Sector…

Tobias Vale stood in front of Naomi’s containment pod. Her eyes fluttered behind closed lids, reacting to stimuli. Reacting to fire.

“She’s dreaming again,” said a technician.

Tobias smirked. “Let her. Dreams are blueprints. I want her fear documented.”

---

Back in Valeburn, Jayce stormed out of the meeting.

Eli followed, catching up outside the war room.

“Jayce—”

Jayce turned, eyes aflame. “Do you believe him?”

“I believe Naomi wouldn’t have hidden that file unless it was real.”

Jayce looked away. “All this time… I thought I was leading a revolution. Turns out, I was reading from someone else’s script.”

“Then rewrite it,” Eli said. “Write it in Naomi’s blood if you have to. But don’t walk away.”

Jayce whispered, “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

“You’re Jayce Navarro,” Eli said. “And if you fall, we all fall.”

---

Over the next forty-eight hours, everything changed.

Naomi’s transmission was decrypted.

A warning. A will. A war declaration.

> “The Navarro throne is false. Hollow’s chair is real. And the one who sits upon it doesn’t just control the city. They predict it. They anticipate protests. Engineer riots. Manufacture loyalty. I was their prototype. I failed. But someone else succeeded. He is coming. And he will not ask for permission.”

---

Jayce gathered the operatives at the Cathedral—once a safe house, now a battlefield.

He stood atop the altar. No prayers. Just plans.

“We intercept the Hollow data convoy tonight. We cut their lifeline. We find Tobias Vale and we end the Chair.”

Reina: “And if Naomi dies in the process?”

Jayce: “Then she dies knowing we tried.”

---

That night, in the rain, trucks collided beneath the old Navarro Bridge.

Gunfire erupted. Drones screamed.

Eli and Dante fought back to back—scars glowing faintly beneath Hollow-tampered skin.

Jayce breached the truck’s cargo bay.

Inside: more pods.

Children. Teenagers. Wired into dreamscapes.

Reina’s voice cracked. “They’re building more.”

Jayce nodded. “Not anymore.”

He hit the detonate switch.

---

The explosion rocked Valeburn.

Tobias watched from miles away. “He’s choosing chaos. Predictable.”

Naomi stirred in her pod.

And whispered her first word in four months:

“Jayce.”

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