CHAPTER 2
The smoke tasted like copper and burnt ozone. Ilias coughed, wiping ash from his face. His ears
were still ringing from the blast, a high-pitched whine that wouldn't stop. Around him, the wreckage
smoldered—twisted metal, shattered stone, the skeletal remains of what used to be someone's
home.
Drones drifted overhead, their search beams cutting through the haze. Scanning. Recording.
Probably streaming it live to a million feeds with ads for emergency insurance playing in between.
Confrontation with Seraph Kael
Seraph Kael hadn't moved. She stood three meters away, resonance blade still ignited, eyes
locked on him like he might explode at any second.
"Who are you?" she asked. Her voice was steady, but her knuckles were white around the hilt.
Ilias didn't answer. He couldn't look away from the crystal. It sat in the center of the blast crater,
half-buried in rubble, pulsing faintly. The glow wasn't constant—it flickered in rhythm. One beat.
Two. Three. The same rhythm as his heartbeat.
"It's alive," he whispered.
Seraph took a step forward. "I said back away."
"I'm not—"
The Warp and Silence
The air bent. That was the only way to describe it. Not a sound, not a light—just a warping of
space itself, like someone had grabbed the world and twisted it sideways. Every piece of broken
glass around them lifted off the ground, suspended, trembling.
Seraph's blade flickered. Her eyes went wide. "What the hell—"
Then the silence hit. Not the absence of noise. Something deeper. A vacuum. A stillness so
complete it felt like the universe had stopped breathing.
The crystal cracked. Light burst out—white, blinding, silent—and swallowed Ilias whole.
When he opened his eyes, he wasn't in Elyria anymore. He was floating. The ground—if there
even was ground—felt distant, intangible. The space around him was black, but not empty. Faint
harmonies drifted through the void like smoke, layering over each other in patterns he almost
recognized. Shapes flickered in the distance: cities made of sound, machines that sang, figures too
large to be human.
And then a voice spoke. Not out loud. Inside his head.
"Child of static… why do you listen where others worship?"
Ilias spun around—or tried to. There was no up, no down. Just the voice, pressing against his skull.
"Who are you?"
"A fragment. Left behined "
"The Source?" His voice sounded small here. Thin.
"No. The Source sleeps. But its song… continues."
One of the lights in the distance moved closer. It formed a shape—vaguely humanoid, wearing
something like a mask of glass and circuitry. Its face shifted with every word, patterns rearranging
themselves like living code.
"You should not have heard me. You and the others should not exist."
Ilias's breath caught. "Others? What do you mean, others?"
The figure tilted its head. "When they come for you, they will not come for what you are. They
will come for what you will awaken."
"Wait—"
The sound collapsed. The light shattered. Reality snapped back into place like a rubber band
pulled too tight.
Ilias woke with a gasp, lungs burning, body screaming. He was lying on something cold and
metallic. A medical slab. Sterile white walls. The faint hum of machinery. Church symbols etched
into the ceiling. His hands were restrained.
"—shouldn't be alive," someone was saying. A man's voice. Calm. Clinical. "No basal survives
direct resonance exposure. Not at that magnitude."
"Unless he's not basal." That was Seraph. Her voice was tight, controlled, but there was
something underneath it. Doubt? Fear?
Ilias turned his head, vision swimming. Two figures stood near the door, silhouetted against the
harsh light. Seraph, still in her scorched uniform. And a man in white robes, hands clasped behind
his back like he was posing for a portrait.
Arch-Lector Vaen. Ilias recognized him from the propaganda feeds. One of the Seven
Conductors—the Church's inner circle.
"Good to know you're talking about me like I'm not here," Ilias croaked.
Vaen turned, and for a moment, Ilias saw something flicker across his face. Not surprise. Hunger.
"You touched the crystal," Vaen said. Not a question.
Ilias nodded slowly. His throat felt raw, like he'd been screaming.
"And you heard something."
"Yeah." He swallowed. "It spoke to me."
The room went silent.
Seraph's hand moved to her blade. Vaen's expression didn't change, but his eyes sharpened.
"Seal this floor," Vaen said quietly. "No communication. No reports. This incident does not exist.
Seraph frowned. "Sir, with respect, that's not protocol—"
"That's exactly protocol," Vaen interrupted, voice still smooth, still calm. "Especially when the
anomaly talks back."
He looked down at Ilias, and this time, there was no mistaking it. He was looking at a thing, not a
person. A problem to be solved. Or a tool to be used.
"You're coming with us."
The transport was black, unmarked, and moved in silence. Ilias sat near the window, wrists still
bound, watching Elyria slide past in streaks of neon and smoke. The explosion had made the feeds
already—every screen they passed showed the same headlines in rotating loops:
"CULT OF SILENCE STRIKES AGAIN — 42 DEAD"
"CHURCH VOWS SWIFT RESPONSE"
"RESONANCE ANOMALIES SPREADING ACROSS LOWER DISTRICTS"
The music that usually hummed beneath the city—constant, reassuring, almost
invisible—sounded different now. Louder. Sharper. Like it was listening.
Seraph sat across from him, arms crossed, staring at her badge. There was a crack running
through the enamel now, thin as a hair. She traced it with her thumb, over and over.
Finally, she spoke.
"What did it say to you?"
Ilias didn't look at her. "That I shouldn't exist."
She met his eyes. Cold. Calculating. But beneath that—something else. Something uncertain.
"Then why do you?"
He didn't have an answer for that.
Far below the city, in a hollow chamber where even sound refused to linger, Arch-Lector Vaen
stood alone. The cathedral was empty, vast, lit only by rows of tuning pillars that pulsed faintly with
green light. The symbol of Crescendia glowed on the floor beneath his feet—three concentric waves,
rising.
A hologram flickered to life behind him. Tall. Hooded. Face obscured by silver static.
"You found the anomaly?"
"Yes, Your Grace." Vaen's voice echoed softly. "A basal defective who survived direct contact with
a Source fragment."
"Impossible."
"I thought so too. Until I ran the frequency signature."
A pause. The hologram leaned forward slightly, static rippling.
And?"
"It matches an archived resonance. One we haven't seen in eight centuries."
The figure went still.
"That can't be. Binariun's frequency was erased from all records. Scrubbed from every timeline."
Vaen's jaw tightened. "It wasn't erased. It was dormant."
The hologram's voice dropped, almost trembling.
"Then the Pantheon…"
"Is waking up," Vaen finished quietly.
He looked up at the symbol glowing above him—the three waves of Crescendia, rising, always
rising.
And for the first time in decades, Arch-Lector Vaen felt afraid.