The air tasted wrong. Ilias sat on a metal bench in the center of a
glass chamber, breathing insomething that had been scrubbed clean
of everything— smoke, sweat, life. Even the echoessounded fake, like
someone had programmed them to bounce at the right angles.
He'd been here for hours. Maybe longer. They'd taken his jacket, his
headphones, even his boots.Left him in a grey jumpsuit that itched and
didn't fit right. The walls pulsed every few seconds— alow, rhythmic
vibration that crawled under his skin and knocked against his ribs from
the inside.He'd tried covering his ears. Didn't help. The sound wasn't in
the room. It was in him.
Outside the chamber, Seraph Kael stood with her arms crossed,
staring at a wall of monitors.Her uniform was clean now. Fresh. Like
the explosion had never happened. But her hands— shecouldn't stop
them from shaking, so she kept them folded tight against her ribs.
"Test Three
,
" she said
, voice flat.
" Resonance Response
.
"
Vaen's voice crackled through the intercom, smooth as glass. " Proceed.
"
She hesitated. Just for a second. Then pressed the button.
The tone started low. Ilias felt it before he heard it—a pressure buil-
ding in his chest, spreadingoutward. Then another tone joined it. Then
another. They layered, soft at first, almost soothing.Then they turned
sharp.
His skin started vibrating. Not shaking—vibrating, like his entire body
had become a tuning fork.He gritted his teeth, hands gripping the edge
of the bench. They'd done this twice already. The firsttest measured
his heartbeat. The second mapped his brain activity, or neural
rhythm, orsomething—he hadn't been paying attention. But this one
felt different. The sound wasn't justmeasuring him. It was hunting him.
Golden light flared across the glass walls. A lattice of lines formed
around his body, scanning himin real time, tracing patterns he couldn't
see.
Vaen's voice echoed through the chamber, detached, clinical. "Subject
9A-11. Basal classification.Resonant output exceeding baseline param-
eters. Increase amplitude by two percent."
The choir swelled. Not real voices— artificial ones. Hundreds of them,
perfectly tuned, blendinginto a mechanical harmony that filled the
air like water rising. And then something inside Iliassnapped.
The lattice cracked. The glass rippled outward, warping like it was
caught in a heatwave. Alarmsblared. The frequency spiked—too high, too
fast—and the sound became a roar.
Ilias screamed. Not in pain. In resistance. A pulse burst from his
chest—raw, white, furious— andthe choir collapsed. Every light died.
When the emergency lights flickered back on, the chamber was
silent. Cracks spiderwebbedacross the glass walls, thin as hair, glo-
wing faintly. Ilias stood in the center, chest heaving, hands still gripping the bench like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
on the other side of the glass, Seraph's face had gone pale. Vaen
just stared. His expressiondidn't change— calm, measured, controlled—
but his fingers trembled slightly as he leaned closer tothe monitor.
" Fascinating
,
" he murmured
.
"He didn't shatter
. He resonated.
"
Seraph turned on him. "He almost died."
Vaen didn't look at her. " Run it again."
"Sir
—
"
" Run it again
.
"
She didn't move. For a long moment, the only sound was the faint hum
of the monitors and Ilias'sragged breathing through the intercom.
Then Vaen straightened, smoothing his robes. "Very well. Terminate
the session. Move him toholding."
Hours later, Ilias sat in a dim cell with walls that hummed faintly,
like they were still digestingwhatever had happened in the test cha-
mber. He stared at his hands. They'd stopped glowing, but hecould still
feel it under his skin— static, buzzing, waiting.
The door hissed open. Seraph stepped inside. No armor this time. Just
her uniform, collar undone,sleeves rolled up. She looked tired. Human.
"You should be dead
,
" she said quietly
.
Ilias smirked, dry. "Yeah. You mentioned that."
"I'm not joking
.
" She sat down across from him
, shoulders tight.
"The
Choir of Glass is calibratedto destroy anomalies. Burn them out before
they can spread. You shouldn't have survived that."
He leaned forward. "Then what am I?"
She didn't answer. Silence stretched between them. outside, the
faint hum of the Sanctumechoed through the walls— always listening,
always recording.
Finally, she spoke. "You don't understand what they're doing here, do
you?"
"Enlighten me
.
"
"The Sanctum isn't a hospital
. It
's not even a church
.
" Her voice dro
-
pped. "It's a harvesting facility.They collect resonance signatures. Store
them. Study them. The Church calls them 'divine echoes.'Some people
call them souls."
Ilias laughed under his breath. " Figures. Even God's got a data center."
She shot him a look—half warning, half reluctant amusement. Then
her expression softened."Why did you survive the crystal, Ilias?" "I don't know"
"But you heard something
.
"
He nodded slowly. "A voice. It said … I shouldn't exist."
Seraph exhaled, long and slow. "Maybe it's right."
He looked at her sharply. "You sound like them."
"No
.
" Her voice was steady now
, but there was something underneath
it—doubt, fear, exhaustion."I sound like someone who's seen what hap-
pens when gods wake up."
Before he could respond, the lights flickered. Deep in the Sanctum's
archive vaults, Arch-LectorVaen watched the footage. Frame by frame.
Light. Pulse. Crack. Feedback. And then—just for 0.7seconds— a pat-
tern appeared in the data stream. Not random. Not noise. A signature.
He isolated it. Ran it through the Church's classified archives—records
that went back centuries,locked behind encryption older than most cit-
ies. The result appeared on the screen.
MATCH FOUND — 99.7% CORRELATION SOURCE: BINARIUN FRE-
QUENCY (CLASSIFIED ERA)STATUS: BELIEVED EXTINCT
Vaen's breath caught. He stared at the screen for a long time, fingers
pressed against the desk.Then he whispered, barely audible: "The Pant-
heon lives."
That night, Ilias couldn't sleep. The cell was dark, but his body still
buzzed faintly, like staticunder his skin. He pressed his hand against
the wall, and it responded—hummed back, faint and low.
He didn't understand it. But he could feel something beyond the
wall. Beyond the Sanctum. Apulse. A rhythm. A presence.
"Child of static
…
"
The voice was faint this time. Almost gone. Ilias froze. "Who are you?"
No answer. Just a faint crackle—like a dying transmission. Then the
lights flickered. Sirens blared.Explosions tore through the corridor out-
side.
The door burst open— smoke, screams, the acrid smell of burnt
ozone. A figure appeared in thedoorway, backlit by red light, holding a
blade that hummed with inverted resonance. Behind them, achant ech-
oed through the halls—fractured hymns sung backward, distorted, wrong.
"THE SILENT FLAME HAS AWAKENED!"
Ilias stumbled back, heart pounding. And he realized—They weren't
here to kill him. They werehere to free him.