The basement air felt old in a way the lobby never did—wet concrete, rust, cardboard gone soft. Kael kept his phone angled low, the flashlight beam sliding over stained walls, and tried not to imagine the light dying.
Jae followed close enough that Kael could hear his breathing.
"You hear that?" Jae whispered.
Kael paused on a landing. The building ticked and dripped: a pipe cooling somewhere, water moving behind a wall. Far above, muffled shouting bled down the stairwell and got swallowed.
"Pipes," Kael said.
Jae didn't look convinced.
Echo did. It gave Kael a quiet map of tension in concrete, the steady baseline of rebar holding weight. Not safety. Stability.
At the bottom, a metal door waited with a faded sign: PARKING / STORAGE. The push bar was tacky with old paint.
Kael's hand hovered.
Above them, the lobby door thumped once, like someone testing it. Jae flinched.
Kael pushed the bar.
The door swung inward with a stiff groan, letting out cold air and the smell of oil. The garage was darker than it should've been. Emergency strips blinked red in tired pulses along the walls. Somewhere, a speaker hissed with a half-dead broadcast: "…repeat… shelter—" then static.
Their footsteps echoed.
Kael hated that immediately. Echo made it sharper—every sound came with edges.
They started down the ramp.
Open car doors. A stroller tipped on its side. A sneaker in the lane like someone stepped out of it mid-run. The concrete held scuff marks like memory.
Halfway down, a figure stepped out from behind a pillar and raised a hand.
"Don't come closer," the man said.
Kael stopped and angled the light down. Mid-forties, beard, heavy jacket. One hand held out, the other pressed to his chest. Light leaked faintly through his fingers like he'd tried to hide it and failed.
Kael's mouth moved before he could stop himself. "How old are you?"
The man blinked. "What?"
"Twenty or older?" Kael repeated, softer.
"Forty-six," the man said, and the number came out like a confession.
Echo registered the shift in him—the glow feeding on fear, fear feeding on glow.
"My son's nineteen," the man added, staring past Kael at nothing. "He's upstairs."
Jae swallowed. "Damn."
Another small tremor ran through the garage. The man flinched; his glow surged.
"Sit," Kael said. "Back against the wall. Look at me, not your hands."
The man's eyes flashed. He wanted to argue. He also wanted not to vanish. He slid down the pillar, breathing hard.
"Name?" Kael asked.
"Luis," he muttered.
"Luis, stay here," Kael said. "Don't chase anything."
Luis laughed without humor. "Yeah. Sure."
Kael kept going. He didn't like leaving him. He liked the alternative less.
The lower level opened wider, thicker pillars, a service corridor along the back wall. A small group clustered near a storage cage: three adults and a kid. Not a crowd—space between them, the tense politeness of strangers sharing air in a disaster.
An older woman sat on a crate like her joints had made a decision. Her hands were wrapped in a scarf, but faint light bled through the knit.
A tall man with a shaved head turned when Kael approached and held a palm up. "Stop."
"We live upstairs," Kael said.
"How old?" the man asked immediately.
"Twenty," Kael said.
"Same," Jae muttered.
The man's eyes flicked over them. "Then keep your… whatever… away from us."
The older woman's gaze cut sharp. "Trev. Enough."
Trev's jaw worked. He stepped aside like it cost him.
The kid—thirteen, maybe—clung to the older woman's arm. Dry-eyed, too awake. She stared at Kael like he was part of the new weather.
"You changed?" she asked.
Kael didn't like the question. "We don't know."
The girl's mouth tightened. "My mom told me to run downstairs. Her hands started glowing." She swallowed. "She said not to look back."
The older woman—Marta—pulled the scarf tighter around her hands. "What's your name?"
"Kael."
"Jae," Jae said.
"Marta," she replied. She nodded once, like names made a circle you could stand inside.
A tremor rolled through the building, stronger. Somewhere above, something crashed and kept falling. The emergency lights stuttered.
Echo spiked. Not just the tremor—something else. A pressure building up the ramp. An adult voice, close, breaking.
A scream echoed down.
Kael moved without asking. "Up."
Trev grabbed his sleeve. "No."
Kael tore free and jogged toward the ramp. Jae followed, cursing under his breath.
Halfway up, Kael slowed and listened. Heavy footsteps—running, uneven. And beneath it, that folding sensation like air being sucked through a pinhole.
A man stumbled into view around the bend, suit jacket torn, sweat shining. His hands glowed bright white, strobing too fast.
"No," the man gasped. "No, no—"
He saw Kael and grabbed his sleeve like Kael was a railing. "Help me."
The man's skin was hot. Current-hot.
Kael's vision flashed with his panel:
[WARNING: UNSTABLE ASCENDANT]
Jae shouted, "Kael, let go!"
"I can't stop it," the man choked. "It's tearing—"
The glow inverted, sucking inward.
Kael's spine went cold. "Jae—down. Now."
Jae hesitated a fraction, then ran.
Kael backed away. The man clung tighter, nails biting fabric.
Kael pushed Echo into the glow—small, steady interference, like trying to keep a pot from boiling over.
For half a second, the strobe slowed. The man's breathing caught.
Then a sharp impact sounded above—metal on concrete—and the man's eyes went wide.
The fold completed.
That heavy-door sound.
The man vanished.
Kael stumbled, grabbing the wall. The flashlight beam caught only empty air where a body had been.
A fragment hovered there, pulsing raw and bright. The air around it buzzed like feedback.
Kael's panel populated line by line:
[DIVINE FRAGMENT FORMED]
[FRAGMENT: UNCLAIMED]
[REQUIREMENT MET: 1/1]
[HIDDEN ORIGIN: UNSEAL AVAILABLE]
His sternum hummed toward it like hunger he didn't choose.
Footsteps pounded up the ramp behind him—Trev, Marta, the others, pulled by the scream.
Kael stared at the fragment.
He could take it. The system wanted him to. The building felt like it was leaning him forward.
He stepped back instead.
"No," he said, voice shaking. "Not here."
Trev reached the bend and stopped dead, eyes locking on the light. Want sharpened his face so fast it looked like a different person.
"Move," Trev said, quiet and ugly. "That's power."
Marta pushed past him, breathless, scarf-wrapped hands held tight. "Back up."
Trev didn't look at her. "Marta—"
"Back," she repeated, and the glow inside her scarf brightened, warning.
Trev hesitated.
Kael seized the gap and shoved Echo into the space around the fragment—just enough interference to make instinct recoil, to make the air feel wrong. The fragment drifted up the ramp, away from reaching hands.
Trev flinched. "What the—"
Kael's chest ached from the effort. Low output still hurt when you tried to hold back hunger—yours or someone else's.
"Down," Marta said, to everyone this time.
They retreated to the lower level. Marta herded them into the service corridor lined with storage cages and old bikes. "Sit," she ordered, and people listened because fear loves structure.
Jae dropped to the floor and pressed his palms to his face. "That man just—"
"Don't," Kael muttered.
Jae's laugh cracked into something wet. He wiped his face hard. "What are we supposed to do?"
Marta sat again, slower. Her scarf hands trembled. "We stay alive tonight," she said.
Kael stared at his phone light reflecting off concrete. His panel hovered at the edge of his vision, too calm:
[HIDDEN ORIGIN: UNSEAL AVAILABLE]
Jae leaned close, voice low. "You moved it. You did something."
Kael looked up, hard. "If you start believing I can fix this, you'll run toward stupid. I can't."
Jae's jaw tightened. "So I'm supposed to act like you're not different?"
"I'm supposed to keep us breathing," Kael said. "That's it."
Footsteps resumed, descending slow enough to be deliberate.
A woman came into the red blink of the emergency strip, hands empty, palms out. Mid-thirties. Dark hair tied back. Boots that had actually seen weather. She looked tired, not frantic.
Her eyes skimmed Marta's scarf, Trev's shoulders, Nina's grip—then landed on Kael. "You," she said. "Echo."
Kael's stomach tightened. "Who are you?"
"Lina," she replied. "Not your enemy. I heard a collapse up there. Heard you interfere with the fragment."
Trev's jaw flexed. "He moved it."
"And you wanted it," Lina said, like she was naming weather.
Marta didn't blink. "Age."
"Thirty-four."
A tremor ran through the garage; the emergency strips stuttered. Echo caught movement on the ramp—multiple people, fast and uneven.
"People are coming down," Kael said.
Marta snapped, "Nina—behind me."
Three adults rounded the bend, one older man half-carrying a woman whose hands glowed faintly through clenched fingers. Another adult behind them kept glancing back up the ramp like something followed them.
"We need help," the older man panted. "She started—"
The woman stared at her palms. "They're not mine," she whispered.
Kael felt the fold beginning—pressure tightening, air warping. The glow in her fingers stuttered, feeding on attention.
Lina moved first. She slid into the woman's line of sight and lowered her voice. "Sit. Back to the wall. Look at me. Breathe with me."
"I can't," the woman choked.
"Yes you can. In. Out."
The woman dropped to the concrete, chest shaking. Her glow flickered, then steadied a fraction as her gaze latched onto Lina's face instead of her hands.
"Give her space," Lina told the older man without looking away. "If you crowd her, she panics."
He backed off, ashamed and scared.
Marta's voice cut through, blunt. "This is not a shelter. If you came down here to spread panic, keep moving."
The group hesitated, then obeyed—pulling back, watching.
Kael's attention snapped to the skinny adult at the edge of them, eyes fixed up the ramp. The fragment's pull sat in him like a hook.
"Don't," Kael said.
The skinny man's pupils were blown wide. "Somebody has it."
"No," Kael said. "Nobody should."
The man moved anyway—toward the ramp.
Kael grabbed his jacket from behind. The man swung; his fist clipped Kael's cheekbone, making his head ring.
Jae surged forward, hands half raised.
"Hands open," Kael snapped.
Jae froze, staring at his own fingers like he was afraid they'd explode.
Lina lifted two fingers. The skinny man's momentum checked abruptly. He stumbled, furious, then realized he couldn't push through.
"Sit," Lina said.
He dropped to the concrete, chest heaving, rage shaking under his skin.
Marta stared at Lina. "Thread."
Lina nodded once. "Thread."
Kael swallowed blood and looked up the ramp. The fragment still pulsed out of sight, patient.
He also felt something else now—steady vibration above the chaos, coherent and controlled. Not these people.
Lina followed his gaze. "Someone else is down here," she said quietly. "Not lost. Looking."
Trev's voice went thin. "For what?"
Lina's eyes flicked to Kael. "Fragments. And the people who can move them."
Jae's voice cracked. "So what do we do?"
Marta didn't hesitate. "We move again. Deeper. Smaller."
Kael scanned the garage with Echo—service corridors, maintenance doors, narrow spaces where footsteps would announce themselves.
"Maintenance rooms," Kael said.
Lina met his gaze—acknowledgment, not trust. "Good. Because when the hunter comes down that ramp, you don't want to be standing in the open."
They moved.
Nina stayed glued to Marta. Lina kept the glowing woman anchored with quiet breathing cues. The older man hovered uselessly, then followed because he didn't know where else to put himself.
Kael and Jae brought up the rear.
"I can't feel my hands right," Jae whispered.
"Keep them open," Kael murmured. "Don't panic."
They cut between cars into a service corridor lined with storage cages and old bikes. Kael found a heavy metal door marked MAINTENANCE ONLY, slightly ajar.
Echo tasted emptiness beyond it.
"In," Kael said.
They filed into a cramped room of cleaning supplies and a flickering emergency light. Kael shut the door gently and pushed the smallest interference into the latch; the lock settled with a soft click.
Inside the maintenance room, the heat of bodies made the air go damp fast. Kael's flashlight threw hard shadows on shelves stacked with mop heads, bleach bottles, a box of contractor trash bags that someone had ripped open and never closed again.
Nina stood with her back to a shelf like she'd been told not to touch anything in a museum. Her eyes kept flicking to Kael's face, then away, as if looking at him too long might summon something.
Trev paced two steps, stopped, paced two steps again. He kept rubbing his palms on his jeans like he could scrub the wanting off. Every time his gaze drifted toward the door, his jaw tightened.
Marta sat on an overturned bucket. Her scarf-wrapped hands rested in her lap, trembling just slightly. She stared at the floor like she was bargaining with it.
The older man—his name hadn't even been asked—hovered by the mop sink, helpless. The glowing woman leaned against the wall, eyes closed, breathing with Lina's quiet count.
"In," Lina murmured. "Out. That's it. Don't fight it."
Jae stood near Kael, hands open at his sides like he was afraid to put them in his pockets. Sweat beaded at his hairline despite the cold. His gaze kept darting to Kael's cheek where the punch had landed.
"You're bleeding," Jae whispered.
Kael wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and tasted iron. "It's fine."
Trev stopped pacing. "Why didn't you take it?" he asked Kael, and there was accusation in the question he tried to hide.
Kael met his eyes. "Because people turn into animals around it."
"We're already animals," Trev snapped. "We just pretend we're not."
Marta's voice cut in, quiet but sharp. "Not all of us."
Trev's shoulders rose. "You think being noble keeps you here? You think—"
A soft sound interrupted him: a faint metallic tick from the door latch.
Kael's spine went cold.
Echo sharpened without permission. Footsteps outside, slow and deliberate, stopping right in front of their door. The vibrations were smooth, coherent—no panic in them. Whoever stood there wasn't afraid of collapsing. Whoever stood there had learned.
Lina's head lifted. Her face went still. She put one finger to her lips.
Everyone froze.
Even Trev.
Silence stretched long enough that Kael could hear Nina's shallow breathing and the slow drip from a leaky pipe behind the shelves.
Then a voice came through the door, calm and close, like someone speaking into your ear on purpose.
"I know you're in there," it said. "Open up."
No threat. No shout. Just certainty, like the door was a formality.
Kael didn't move.
The voice continued, amused. "You can keep holding your breath. It won't change what you are."
Kael felt the hum behind his sternum answer, faint and angry, like a dog hearing its name called by someone it didn't trust.
Outside, the footsteps shifted a half-step, the way someone shifts when they decide they have time to do this properly.
Lina mouthed, don't.
Kael kept his palms flat against his thighs to stop them from shaking, and listened to the building carry that calm voice down the corridor like it belonged.
Jae's fingers twitched once, tiny, like a match trying to catch. He looked at Kael, eyes pleading for instructions.
Kael's panel flashed in the corner of his vision—too polite, too clinical:
[HIDDEN ORIGIN: UNSEAL AVAILABLE]
Like it was offering him a solution wrapped in someone else's death.
Kael stared at the door until the letters blurred, and forced himself to choose the only thing he could control.
He stayed still.