[Oliver's PoV]

  A few years earlier

  The air was thick with the scent of scorched metal and blood. The underground chamber trembled with distant detonations, each one closer than the last.

  Darius’s body lay crumpled on the fractured floor, half of him gone; torn apart by the blast that had ended the fight. His armor flickered before dissipating into energy.

  Oliver stood over him, chest heaving, his vision wavering in and out of focus. His right arm hung at his side, shattered from the last exchange. The armor across his abdomen was utterly destroyed, yet it held most of the damage. Pain pulsed through him with every heartbeat. He had some broken ribs, maybe a punctured lung, but he was still standing. Barely.

  'They must have destroyed the elevator,' he thought bitterly, forcing himself to breathe through the pain. 'Even if I made it there, I’d never reach the surface in time.'

  He sank to one knee beside Darius, the strength in his legs fading. Dust rained down from the cracked ceiling as another explosion shook the ground.

  'I never thought it would end like this,' he admitted to himself. 'Buried alive along with clones raining from the ceiling.'

  Still, even with death circling close, Oliver continued moving forward. There was always another step, another move to make. He refused to let despair take him.

  Reaching for what remained of Darius, he pried open the shattered gauntlet. The metal hissed faintly as it released its seal.

  'I can’t leave this behind.'

  Inside, nestled amid the wreckage, were two crystals. One small, its glow faint and shadowed; a Black Crystal. The other was larger, alive with a deep violet radiance, the Purple Crystal.

  'He could have started with the Black Armor,' Oliver thought grimly, his mind replaying the fight in fragments. 'Maybe even get me to drop my guard.'

  He slipped both crystals into the inner pocket of his torn armor. The memory of the Green Crystal’s challenge still haunted him. No, now was not the time to test another. One mistake here would mean instant death.

  Oliver turned his gaze down the endless hall. Somewhere beyond the smoke lay the cloning laboratory.

  'Maybe there’s another exit,' he thought, forcing himself to move. 'If the upper levels collapsed, they must have built a fallback route. Something for rescue teams.'

  He pushed himself upright, his whole body whined in protest. Every step felt like dragging a mountain, his lungs burning with each breath. But he walked on, because stopping meant dying here.

  Each second stretched thin, the silence between explosions filled only by the rhythmic thud of his boots and the distant roar of destruction.

  'Almost there,' he told himself as the faint light of the laboratory came into view beyond a veil of smoke. 'Almost there.'

  He was less than ten steps away when the world tore itself apart.

  A blinding flash erupted ahead, followed by a roar that devoured all sound. The shockwave hit him like a hammer, hurling him backward through the air. He crashed hard, the impact rattling through his broken ribs, his visor cracking with a spiderweb of fractures.

  The laboratory was gone, consumed in a fiery collapse that sent debris everywhere. The ground split open, and from above, the ceiling began to give way.

  Then came the second explosion. And the third.

  One after another, detonations rippled upward through the structure. The cloning equipment ruptured, tanks bursting like glass under pressure. Shattered machinery and half-formed bodies rained from above, falling through the smoke in a grotesque storm.

  Oliver shielded his head as fragments of steel and shattered glass clattered around him.

  The world around him had become a ruin of fire and shadow.

  Oliver dragged himself forward, his fingers scraping against the scorched floor until he reached the remnants of a wall. He slumped against it. His breathing was shallow, each inhale a battle.

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  'I can,' he told himself, the thought barely coherent through the haze of exhaustion. 'I can rest.'

  He let his eyes fall shut.

  For a fleeting moment, the war ended. The pain, the explosions, the reek of death, all of it faded into the distance. In its place came memories, fragile and golden.

  He saw his mother first. Her smile was radiant, her voice soft as she greeted him after school. He could almost smell the faint trace of her perfume, the warmth of her embrace.

  Then his father. He was bent over a table, helping him with a school project. The man’s laughter echoed through their home as he told stories about the stars, pointing at constellations through the window. The two of them were watching cartoons together.

  He remembered his life. Not the battles, not the ranks, or the armor. The quiet, ordinary moments that had built who he used to be. Yet even those memories began to slip away, dissolving like mist.

  When he opened his eyes again, the world was dimmer, quieter. He felt no fear, no panic. Only a strange, heavy calm. He had made peace with it. With the end.

  Lowering his head, Oliver waited for the next explosion. His armor began to dissolve. Golden sparks of energy drifted from his body like embers, fading into the air.

  As the last traces of the Green Armor vanished, the full weight of his injuries came crashing down. The pain, once held at bay by the suit’s systems, returned in an overwhelming flood. It was as if every nerve in his body screamed at once, a tidal wave of agony that tore through every muscle, every bone.

  Oliver’s voice broke into a raw, unending cry. The sound mingled with the thunder of distant detonations.

  And through the chaos, through the fire and the pain, he heard it.

  A single, distinct sound.

  Clink.

  A small piece of metal hitting the floor. Through the haze of smoke and falling debris, Oliver spotted it. A small metallic card was lying half-buried in the dust beside him.

  He reached for it with trembling fingers, the motion sending sparks of pain through his arm. When he lifted it, the card’s surface caught the dim light, revealing etched markings.

  'The card,' he realized, his heart sinking. 'It doesn't work.'

  It was supposed to be their escape route, their lifeline.

  'We needed Lian to make it work,' Oliver thought bitterly. 'Without him… there’s no way out.'

  He exhaled shakily, the breath rattling in his chest. Still, some stubborn part of him refused to surrender. Maybe it was instinct, or maybe it was the last flicker of hope refusing to die.

  Without expecting anything, he pressed his hand against the cold surface of the card.

  The reaction was instantaneous.

  The world folded in on itself.

  Darkness swallowed everything as reality shattered like glass. The air twisted, his body pulled in every direction at once. He felt his mind stretch thin, the universe breaking apart into hundreds of fragments. Then, just as suddenly, it stitched itself back together.

  When the world reformed, the silence was deafening.

  Oliver gasped, blinking against the rain that pelted his face. The floor beneath him was no longer steel but soil. He looked down, his fingers sinking into the cold mud.

  The underground facility was gone. The smoke, the fire, the collapsing walls; all replaced by open sky.

  He was sitting in the middle of a storm.

  The heavens roared with thunder, lightning tearing jagged lines through the clouds. Sheets of rain poured down, chilling him to the bone.

  'Great,' he thought, the corner of his mouth twitching in grim amusement. 'At least I’m alive.'

  But even as he said it to himself, another thought crept in. 'Or maybe I’m hallucinating. Dying somewhere back there.'

  He shifted, forcing himself to sit upright. The pain was still there, sharp and real.

  Through the curtain of rain, he saw something in the distance. Structures, small and worn. A settlement, maybe. Crude shelters leaning against the wind, their lights flickering weakly through the storm.

  Hope stirred faintly in his chest.

  Then movement.

  Oliver froze.

  Someone was walking toward him.

  At first, it was just a silhouette, its outline distorted by the storm’s fury. Lightning split the sky, illuminating the figure for a heartbeat, and Oliver blinked hard, convinced his mind was playing tricks on him.

  A pair of bare legs. A bright orange shirt. 'Were those floral shorts?'

  'I’m hallucinating,' Oliver decided grimly. 'Definitely hallucinating.'

  The figure came closer, the rain cascading off his broad shoulders, until he was standing only a few feet away. The man knelt on one knee. His eyes had a faint red glow.

  “The chief sent me,” the man said, his voice calm, deep, and oddly steady against the roar of thunder. “He said you’d be arriving soon.”

  Oliver stared back, too weak to respond. His mind raced, trying to assemble the fragments of understanding that refused to fit together.

  'Where am I? Who’s the chief? Who are you? And why in the hell are you wearing floral shorts?'

  The questions piled up, but none were asked. All he could manage was a faint, rasping sound that barely counted as breath.

  The stranger studied him for a moment longer, then nodded as if confirming something to himself. “I’ll take you to him,” he said. “Can you stand?”

  Oliver let out a weak, humorless laugh in his head. 'Not a chance.'

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