The Pulseforge was breathing.
Not living—breathing. Like the building itself was trying to remember how sound worked, sucking in air through cracked speakers and bleeding it back out as static.
Broken glass glittered on the floor. Neon signs flickered, colors pooling like spilled paint. Someone coughed. Someone else whispered a prayer to Binariun—God of the Wire—begging the circuits to wake up.
Ilias sat slumped against a table, vision swimming, throat raw like he'd screamed himself hoarse. Every breath tasted like copper and ash.
Seraph knelt beside him, one hand on his shoulder, the other on her blade. Her eyes kept darting to the door, the exits, the shadows where people watched and whispered.
"Stay with me," she said. Her voice was steady, but her hand trembled.
"What—" His voice cracked. He tried again. "What happened?"
"You sang." She said it quietly, like she was still trying to believe it. "But it wasn't tuning. It was something else. Like you tore the silence apart."
Reverb's voice crackled faintly through a dying speaker overhead. "Kid, you just punched a hole through physics. Every scanner in Elyria felt that."
Seraph's jaw tightened. "So the Council knows."
"Council. Sanctifiers. Half the Tuned elite." Reverb's tone darkened. "You didn't just light a beacon. You fired a flare into the face of God."
She cursed under her breath. "We need to move."
"No." Ilias struggled to his feet, legs shaking. "We need to understand—"
"Later." She grabbed his arm, steadying him. "You want understanding? Stay alive long enough to get it."
Reverb's voice hardened. "She's right. Resonance Hunters will be here in under an hour. I'm opening a back channel. Head to the freight tunnels, east end. Move. Now."
The lights flickered back on—just enough to illuminate the faces still staring at them. Tuned and Untuned. Some looked at Ilias like he was a miracle. Others like he was a bomb that hadn't finished exploding.
He felt every pair of eyes burning through him as Seraph pulled him toward the exit.
Outside, the air tasted like metal and ozone.
The Morrows stretched out below them—scattered lights, broken tech, people moving like ants through the cracks of the city. Above, Elyria's spires glowed cold and distant, beautiful and cruel.
They moved fast, keeping to the shadows. Seraph led, blade still drawn, every muscle coiled tight.
"I thought you said you weren't Tuned," she said finally.
"I'm not." Ilias's voice was still raw. "At least… I wasn't."
"Then what are you?"
He opened his mouth. Closed it. "I don't know. But it didn't feel like a song. It felt like—"
"Instinct," she finished quietly. "Like something that was already inside you. Waiting."
They stopped at an old elevator shaft, half-buried in rubble. The entrance was hidden behind a rusted grate, covered in graffiti and years of neglect.
Seraph pried it open. "This leads to the old freight tunnels. Most of them are dead now. That's what makes them useful."
A low rumble echoed through the air—distant, rhythmic, mechanical.
Hunter drones.
Reverb's voice came through again, barely a whisper across a hacked comm line. "Too late to hide. You'll have to outrun them. I've patched your route. Follow the markers—old Untuned sigils. They'll guide you to an off-grid substation."
Seraph drew her blade. It shimmered faintly, humming at a frequency only she could hear. Cold silver. Sharp as silence.
"Can you still use your voice?" she asked.
Ilias swallowed. His throat ached. "Guess we'll find out."
They dropped into the shaft.
The tunnels below were dark, lit only by faint, flickering emergency lights and the glow of old graffiti—frequency codes, sigils painted by Untuned families decades ago. Symbols of resistance. Songs sung in silence.
As they landed, the sound of the drones grew louder. Closer.
Seraph pressed two fingers to her temple, focusing. "Two. Maybe three. Tight formation."
Ilias looked around. The walls were covered in faded markings, half-erased by time. "The Untuned lived down here?"
"Used to." Her voice was tight. "Most went dark when the Council outlawed unregistered resonance. But their songs are still here. If you know how to listen."
He crouched, touching one of the sigils. It pulsed faintly beneath his palm—warm, alive, almost recognizing him.
The air shifted.
The tunnel hummed.
Seraph stepped back. "What did you just do?"
"I think—" He stared at his hand. "I think it listened."
The drones appeared at the far end of the tunnel, beams cutting through the dark, engines whining.
Seraph raised her blade. "We fight."
"No." Ilias stood, eyes narrowing.
He exhaled—slow, deliberate—and the sigils along the tunnel walls flared to life. Golden light traced the old symbols, forming a lattice, a field.
The air warped.
The first drone hit the harmonic wave and shorted instantly, metal shrieking as it crumpled.
The second tried to recalibrate. Too late. The tunnel amplified Ilias's pulse, rebounding sound in waves until the drone imploded, collapsing inward like a crushed can.
The third turned and fled.
Silence fell.
But this time, it wasn't empty.
It belonged to him.
Seraph stared at him like she was seeing something ancient, something that shouldn't exist.
"You just turned dead code into a song."
Ilias smiled weakly. "Guess I'm getting the hang of it."
She exhaled—half awe, half fear. "You're dangerous, Ilias."
He looked up toward the faint glow of Elyria, barely visible through the cracks in the tunnel ceiling.
"Then I guess I finally fit in."