The night after Reverb's message, the Pulseforge felt different.
Not the crowd—same bodies, same laughter, same bass rattling the floor. It was something underneath. A tension in the air, like the world was holding its breath.
Ilias sat in the booth Reverb had mentioned, back to the wall, eyes on the door. Seraph sat across from him, hand resting on the hilt of her blade, fingers drumming a slow, steady rhythm.
"You look like you're waiting for someone to die," Ilias said.
"I'm waiting for someone to try," Seraph replied, voice clipped, precise. Upper-tier Elyria accent—every syllable a blade.
"You ever just… relax?"
"No."
He smirked. "That's because you've never heard real music."
She gave him a look that could've cut steel. "And this—" she gestured at the room, the sweat, the chaos "—this counts as real?"
"It's alive," Ilias said. "Up there, your music obeys rules. Down here, we break them until they sound honest."
That earned a faint, reluctant twitch at the corner of her mouth. Almost a smile. Almost.
"You Morrows always think rebellion is originality."
He leaned back, grinning. "And you Elyrians always think polish is purpose."
For half a second, she looked like she might laugh.
Then the music stopped.
Not faded. Not shifted.
Stopped.
The bass cut. The lights flickered. A sub-harmonic pulse rolled through the room—low, deep, felt more than heard.
The crowd didn't panic. The regulars knew what this meant. A frequency shift. A coded signal.
A man appeared on the upper walkway—slender, skin faintly translucent, tech glowing beneath the surface. His voice rode the silence like smoke.
"Free Riders welcome the Untuned and the bold," he called. "Tonight's code: Speak your sound. Claim your space."
Seraph raised an eyebrow. "That's Reverb?"
"No," Ilias said. "That's just the frontman."
A low, layered laugh rolled through the sound system—metallic, modulated, broken into pieces.
"Frontman's for show," the voice said. "I'm the echo in your ear, kid."
Reverb.
The crowd shifted, energy rippling through bodies like current. Ilias felt it on his skin—not danger, but recognition. Reverb wasn't in the room. Reverb was the room. Woven into the comms, the soundboards, the resonant tech in the walls.
"You brought company," Reverb said, voice coming from a speaker beside Seraph's head. "Highborn, huh? Brave. Or stupid."
"She saved my life," Ilias said.
"I said stupid, not wrong."
Seraph muttered something that might've been a prayer or a curse. Ilias couldn't tell which.
"Your name's on every channel now," Reverb continued. "Council's not just sending hunters—they're buying frequencies, shutting down networks, seeding false images. You're officially a myth."
"I don't want to be one."
"Too late. Myths don't ask permission."
The lights flickered again—blue, red, white.
Then someone screamed.
The wall near the entrance warped.
Not exploded. Not cracked. Warped—like reality bent inward, collapsing on itself.
A frequency bomb.
The kind that didn't destroy. It unmade.
Glass shattered. The air bent sideways. Sound folded in on itself, twisting, breaking, dying.
Seraph was on her feet, blade ignited, eyes scanning. "Sanctifiers?"
"No." Reverb's voice was tight, distorted. "Something else. Frequency signature unknown. Kid—move."
Ilias shoved Seraph behind the table as the wave hit.
The music turned to static. The lights blew out. And for one long, impossible second—
Silence.
True silence.
Every Tuned person in the room gasped—not from fear, but pain.
Their bodies depended on vibration, on resonance, on the constant hum of the world around them. And now there was nothing.
Vacuum.
Ilias felt his pulse stutter. His chest seized. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think—
And then something inside him snapped.
He didn't think.
He sang.
Not words. Not melody. Just sound—raw, layered, furious. A frequency burst that tore through the silence like broken glass.
The bomb's residue cracked. Shattered. Sound came rushing back—too much, too fast, flooding the room like a tidal wave.
People stumbled. Gasped. Stared.
Seraph's blade trembled in her hand, eyes wide. "What did you just do?"
"I—" Ilias's voice was raw, ragged. "I don't know."
Reverb's voice crackled back through a dying speaker. "You're not Tuned, kid. You're something else."
The crowd parted like water.
Some looked terrified.
Others looked reverent.
In the far corner, beneath the flickering emergency lights, the Registrar stood perfectly still.
They smiled faintly, pressing a hand to the Nocturne Tag in their pocket. It pulsed warm, glowing red.
They lifted a comm bead to their lips and whispered:
"He's awake."
Then they slipped into the crowd and disappeared.