The council chamber smelled like old smoke and fresh lies.
Three levels below Elyria's tallest spire, in a room where even the walls were tuned to law, the Major Families gathered.
The table was long, curved, carved from black stone that hummed faintly when touched. Around it sat representatives from the six great houses, each wearing their colors like armor. Banners hung from the ceiling: Crescendia's three green waves. Ferroline's iron cog. Luma's pale neon ribbon. Gravemont's baroque seal. Verris's low-bass emblem. Aetheris's silver wind spiral.
The air itself was heavy, suppressed, resonating at a frequency designed to keep tempers calm and voices measured.
It wasn't working.
"We convene," said the Crescendia envoy, voice smooth and deliberate, "on the matter of the Sanctum breach. Forty-two dead. Public panic spreading. And an anomaly—uncontained—loose in our city."
Silence.
Then the murmurs started.
The Ferroline general—broad-shouldered, scarred, voice like grinding metal—slammed a fist on the table. "Deploy the Sanctifiers. Lock down the Morrows. Burn out every rat hole until we find him."
"And start a riot?" The Luma representative—slender, immaculate, every word precisely placed—shook her head. "The last purge nearly collapsed the lower districts. We control the narrative, not the streets. Blackout the feeds. Rewrite the headlines. Make him a rumor, not a martyr."
"Law demands justice," Gravemont intoned, old and cold. "Public tribunals. A purge of known sympathizers. The people must see strength."
"The people," Verris said quietly, stroking his beard, "see what we show them. I suggest a counter-investigation. Find the mole. Root out the Cult's network. Kill the problem at its source."
The room went still.
"Mole?" someone echoed.
Verris smiled slowly. "The Cult didn't breach the Sanctum by accident. They had help."
The thought settled over the table like frost.
Vaen's envoy—a thin man with pale eyes and a voice like silk—lifted a hand. The room obeyed.
"Deploy containment teams," he said carefully. "Suppress public channels. And yes—find the mole." He paused, letting the weight of it sink in. "But the boy stays alive. For now."
Ferroline scowled. "He's dangerous."
"He's valuable," the envoy corrected. "Whoever controls him controls a frequency no house currently holds."
The hunger in the room was palpable.
Far above, in a quiet alley near the Church district, a figure moved through the streets with practiced invisibility.
They wore the badge of a Registrar—House of Liturgy. Stacks of paper under one arm. A list of names in a worn leather folder. A pleasant, obedient smile that no one ever questioned.
Tucked in their palm, hidden beneath their sleeve, was a small black crystal. A Nocturne Tag—carved with a spiral so faint most people thought it was just a scratch.
It pulsed faintly, warm against their skin.
They hummed a lullaby as they walked. No one noticed.
The Morrows didn't sleep.
Down here, the air tasted different—oil, fried food, ozone, sweat. Neon flickered against rust. Holograms stuttered next to hand-painted graffiti. Church propaganda blared from cracked speakers, competing with street preachers shouting about the Old Ones and the end of days.
No one was winning.
The Pulseforge sat beneath a collapsed overpass, half-buried in the bones of the old city. From the outside, it looked like a ruin. From the inside, it was alive.
Bass hit like a heartbeat. Bodies moved in rhythm, glowing tattoos pulsing in sync with the music. The DJ—part-chef, part-conductor—stood at the center, hands moving over a soundboard that doubled as a weapon. Drums could shatter stone. Strings could slice through resonance barriers. Breath horns could warp gravity if you played them right.
This wasn't a club.
It was a fortress.
Seraph led Ilias through the back streets, moving fast, keeping to the shadows.
They didn't go to the Morrows first.
She took him to her parents' house—a narrow building in a quiet district, wedged between two larger towers. The kind of place people walked past without noticing.
Her father, Taren Kael, opened the door before they knocked.
Broad-shouldered. Graying hair. Boots that left scuff marks on the floor. He looked at Ilias—really looked—and his jaw tightened.
"You dragged her into this," he said quietly.
Ilias opened his mouth. Closed it.
Taren's expression softened, just slightly. "You keep her safe."
It wasn't a question.
Inside, Seraph's mother, Vera, moved like silk. She'd been minor nobility once—Seraph had her cheekbones, her posture, the way she could cut someone down with a look and make it feel polite.
"We cannot harbor fugitives," Vera said, voice soft, controlled. She glanced at Seraph, and something unspoken passed between them. Old alliances. Old debts.
In the kitchen, she made tea. In the pantry, she made a call.
Taren saw it. Didn't stop her. Just pressed a handful of credits into Ilias's hand and led them to the garage.
A motorcycle. Old. Battered. Sound-dampened engine—illegal, but effective.
"Go to the Morrows," Taren said. "Find the Free Riders. Ask for Reverb. They'll hide you."
Seraph stared at him. "Dad—"
"I know." His voice was rough. Tired. "But I'd rather risk exile than watch them take you."
He looked at Ilias one more time. "When this is over, you come back. You hear me?"
Ilias nodded, throat tight.
They left before Vera came back.
Reverb answered on the fourth try.
The voice came through crackling, layered, broken into static and melody. Sometimes it sounded like a kid. Sometimes like an old machine. Sometimes like music itself.
"Boy with the white hair," Reverb said. "You're singing the wrong song. Go to the Pulseforge. Sit in the back. Someone will find you."
"How do we know this isn't a trap?" Seraph asked.
Reverb laughed—low, distorted. "Because the trap's for you, not us. We survive by being unremarkable. We hold the channels the Church throws away."
The line went dead.
The Pulseforge swallowed them whole.
Sweat. Neon. The low, bone-deep thud of bass that made the floor tremble. Ilias felt the music wrap around him like hands, pulling him in, holding him steady.
For the first time in days, he let himself breathe.
They found a booth in the back, half-hidden by smoke and shadows. Seraph sat with her back to the wall, hand never far from her blade. Ilias watched the crowd—Tuned and Untuned, human and alien, all moving to the same rhythm.
A percussionist with a brass gauntlet adjusted his kit like a soldier checking his rifle. A wind-player—scales along her forearms, ridges above her temples—listened with her eyes closed, swaying.
In the corner, a girl tapped a rhythm against the underside of a table—sharp, precise, coded. She caught Ilias's eye and winked.
And in the shadows, beneath a flickering neon sign, someone watched.
The Registrar. Smiling faintly. Sipping a bitter drink. Humming a lullaby no one else could hear.
The Nocturne Tag in their palm pulsed, warm and patient.
No one noticed.
Back in the council chamber, the Families made their decisions.
Ferroline funded a task force. Luma blacklisted channels. Crescendia called for cleansings. Verris sent letters that would never be traced.
And Vaen—listening to it all through his comm—felt the weight of every choice pressing down like a hand on his chest.
He preferred the boy alive.
Alive meant useful. Alive meant controllable.
Dead meant legend.
And legends were harder to kill.
In the Pulseforge, Ilias's hand brushed a cracked tuning fork hanging on the wall.
It sang faintly, like a memory trying to remember itself.
He thought about Taren's voice. The weight of credits in his palm. Seraph's face when her father told her to run.
He didn't understand duty yet. Or power. Or what it meant to be wanted by gods and hunters.
He only knew one thing:
He didn't want to be alone.
He tucked the fork into his jacket and swallowed hard.
Outside, the bells of Elyria tolled—a city-wide broadcast, somber and controlled. Officials spoke of tragedy. System failures. Investigations underway.
The Silence Directive rolled across every feed like oil, telling people how to be afraid, how to obey.
But in the back alleys, in the corners of the Pulseforge, the truth was different.
People talked in rhythms. Planned in beats. Made jokes in snare drums and bartered in melodies.
And somewhere in the crowd, a man with two-toned eyes made a note and sent it along.
If the Families wanted a mole, they'd have to search a room full of people who traded secrets for survival.
And that—any veteran of the Morrows could tell you—was the hardest place to look.