Vault of Echoes

 The trail curved sharply, leading the trio into a ravine choked with moss and tangled roots. The air felt heavier here, charged with something unseen. When the quake struck—brief but brutal—it shook the ground beneath them like a warning. Trees groaned. A nearby cliff crumbled, revealing the rusted edge of a hatch.

“What is that?” Jas asked, eyes narrowing.

Roman knelt beside it, brushing away dirt and debris. “Looks like... an access door. Military? Or maybe old tech storage?”

With a grunt, he heaved it open. A stale gust of air greeted them, followed by the creak of stairs descending into darkness.

Inside, the space was partially collapsed, metal walls warped from time and tremors. Ivy Mae found a lantern, still functional, and they moved carefully, their footsteps echoing like memories. Amid scattered crates and broken glass, they uncovered a battered filing cabinet wedged under rubble.

Jas pried it open. Inside were journals—handwritten, water-stained, and scorched at the edges. One fell open to a page marked “Sunspot 4079”.

“If you're reading this, then the grid is gone. The data—all of it—they tried to erase everything. Trump’s DOGE Department purged climate archives, space weather records, even our backups. I smuggled what I could here. But when 4079 flared… we didn’t stand a chance. It fried half the hemisphere. Cities burned. Satellites dropped from orbit. I don't know what happened after. I'm alone now. I think... I always will be.”

The handwriting grew more erratic as the entries continued—musings on geomagnetic storms, scattered news transcripts, sketches of auroras like crowns on the horizon.

“He was trying to warn people,” Ivy Mae whispered, holding the journal close. “And they silenced him.”

Did that really happen??

Roman exhaled slowly. “Maybe, History buried in dirt and fear.”

Jas stared at a faded photo clipped to the final page—an old man standing beside a telescope, the sky behind him swirling with color. “This wasn’t just a flare,” they said softly. “This was the beginning of something else.”

Above, the forest trembled again, and dust rained down.

“We stay here tonight,” Roman said. “Read what we can. Maybe the past still has something to teach us.”

And in the faint glow of the lantern, surrounded by whispers of the dead and echoes of the sky, they read deep into the night.