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[indent][sub][COLOR=slategray][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [color=lightgray][I]Hall of Memory[/I] - [I]Ruins beneath Gateway City, WA[/I][/color][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=slategray][b]Occupation #1.01:[/b][/COLOR] [I][color=lightgray]Starborn Fallout[/color][/I][/right][/sup][/indent]
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[color=slategray][b][color=00583C]"You feel it too, don't you? The air's gone wrong down here."[/color][/b]
Dust drifted down in shimmering spirals, catching the pale emerald glow of Alan Scott’s steps as he moved deeper into the substructure. The Hall of Memory hadn't existed on any modern map for decades—not since the Agency sealed it off under layers of urban reconstruction and federal silence. Beneath cracked columns and defunct containment pylons, forgotten sigils still pulsed faintly with the residue of warding spells. This place once held power. Now it trembled with warning.
The Sentinel's cloak whispered along the stone as he approached the ancient nexus point, a jagged breach in the earth still scarred from when the Reach bomb detonated above. He crouched, gloved fingers brushing along the edge of a glowing fracture.
[b][color=00583C]"Fractures don't just appear in bedrock. This is fallout."[/color][/b]
The Starheart flickered to life within him—at first reluctant, then urgent. It remembered this place. More than that, it remembered something waking here. Not a weapon. Not a spell.
A [i]seed[/i].
[b][color=00583C]"No wonder the Guardians wanted it buried."[/color][/b]
In the years since merging with the Starheart, Alan had grown accustomed to whispers. But this was no whisper. This was [i]pulling[/i]—a magnetic resonance in his bones, a phantom ache in his chest, drawing him toward something that pulsed just beneath reality. A soul-rhythm. Something familiar. Something broken.
He stood tall once more, emerald flame curling along his shoulders, flickering like breath from some mythic furnace. The old world—science and sorcery divided—was ending. The new one, born of Reach invasions and mutated metahumans, was a child still gnashing its teeth in the dark.
And he, a relic of both, was its accidental father.
[b][color=00583C]"Fragments of me are waking up in children who have no idea what they are. And the Agency is hunting them because they can't control it."[/color][/b] He clenched a fist, and the earth trembled lightly in response.
His ring flashed with a series of arcane glyphs. Six anomalies detected within the last thirty-six hours. All within twenty miles. All teenagers. All missing.
[b][color=00583C]"I made a vow: no more hiding. If this is my fault..."[/color][/b] He narrowed his gaze, the glow intensifying around him, burning bright in the darkness.
[b][color=00583C]"Then I'm going to make damn sure no one pays the price for my silence ever again."[/color][/b]
He turned from the breach and vanished in a blaze of runes—headed for the surface, where smoke always waited.
The fallout had begun.
And this time, Sentinel would not stand in judgment.
He would stand in fire.
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