2 hours ago in the dump
The marrow vents ran beneath the megacity like veins under burnt skin—steaming, narrow, alive with the metallic thrum of turbines far above.
Kojo led the way through the pipes, shoulders scraping rust with every step. Each drip echoed like a countdown. Behind him, Ilias moved soundlessly, face streaked with ash and grime, every motion measured, controlled.
"Remind me again," Kojo muttered, voice low and rough, "why we always end up crawling through somebody's digestive system?"
"Because," Ilias whispered, not looking up, "you're too loud for the front door."
Reverb's voice crackled softly in their ears. "Focus. Two guards ahead. Thermal sweep in eight seconds. Stay low."
Kojo grinned despite himself. "Relax, Reverb. I'm smaller than a bad idea."
He wasn't.
When they reached the grated exit, steam rolled out like breath from a dragon's throat. They slipped into the shadows of the prison's underbelly—a labyrinth of cracked tiles, flickering lights, and the kind of silence that made your ears ring.
The air smelled of ozone and disinfectant—like a place that hated the idea of life.
Kojo crouched behind a broken pillar, eyes scanning. "You smell that?"
Ilias frowned. "What?"
"Freedom." Kojo's grin widened. "Fried freedom. Like when Mama used to cook that red jollof back home. The smoky kind, you know? The kind you eat with cold water because it burns your throat, but you still can't stop."
Ilias almost smiled. "You're describing pain."
"I'm describing perfection."
Reverb cut in, voice sharp. "You two done fantasizing about food we can't afford? Remember where we are. Move."
They moved. The deeper they went, the louder the silence became. Every step was swallowed by it. Every breath seemed to echo back—smaller, more fragile, like the walls were listening.
The cells they passed were empty except for ghosts of sound. A faint tapping. A cough. A prayer half-remembered, trailing off into nothing.
Then came the hum. Deep. Steady. Human.
Ilias froze. "There."
In the corner cell sat a man with silver in his beard and iron around his wrists. His eyes lifted when the lock clicked open—disbelief first, then recognition.
"...Ilias?"
His voice was paper—soft, cracking at the edges.
Ilias knelt, cutting the cuffs with a resonance blade Seraph had given him weeks ago. The metal hissed and fell away. "We're getting you out."
Taren Kael looked at him—really looked—and something like relief broke through the exhaustion. "You came."
"Of course I came." Ilias helped him to his feet, steadying him when his legs nearly gave out. "Seraph would kill me if I didn't."
Taren almost smiled. "She would."
Kojo's gaze swept the hallway, sharp and tense. "No alarms yet. Maybe Reverb's hacking actually worked for once."
"I heard that," Reverb muttered through the comms.
Then came the whisper. It wasn't from Reverb. It came from behind the glass—a flicker of black, the outline of a man watching them through the static glow of a dead surveillance drone. His face was obscured by shadow, but his presence was unmistakable. Wrong. Like he existed slightly out of sync with the world around him.
Reverb's voice turned flat. "Did anyone else just—"
"Yes," Ilias said quietly, eyes locked on the figure. "We saw him."
Kojo's hand went to his weapon. "That's a Cultist, right?"
No one answered. The figure didn't move. Just watched. Like he was waiting for something. Or counting something. Or remembering them. Then he was gone. Not walked away. Gone. Like he'd never been there.
"Shit," Kojo muttered.
"Move," Ilias said. "Now."
They moved fast after that—Taren supported between them, feet splashing through runoff and pooled water. The air crackled. The alarms finally caught up. Red lights bathed the hall in pulse-beat flashes.
"Here we go!" Kojo shouted as drones swooped in from the ceiling, scanners sweeping. He ducked behind a pillar and fired. Sparks burst like fireflies, raining metal shards.
Ilias's movements were clean—almost beautiful. No wasted motion. No hesitation. Just precision. He spun, staff igniting with a low hum, and swung. The resonance wave tore through two drones at once, shattering them mid-flight. He hit the control panel, fingers moving fast. Doors slid open like obedient beasts.
They slipped back into the marrow vents—smoke and alarms behind them, the city above rumbling like a god waking up.
They reached the extraction point by dawn—a stretch of broken highway turned into neutral ground, hidden beneath rusted overpasses and forgotten by the city's surveillance grid. The underbelly glowed orange behind them, half-swallowed by fog and smog.
Kojo dropped Taren beside an old freight truck, breathing hard. "She's not here."
Reverb's drone hovered overhead, lens flickering. "Signal lost. She hasn't checked in for three hours."
Ilias's face darkened. "She was supposed to be here. She never misses a checkpoint."
Taren coughed weakly, leaning against the truck. "What happened?"
"Don't know yet," Kojo said, reloading his rifle. "But we're about to find out."
Then one of their runners—a kid from the Jacks, no older than fifteen—came sprinting through the mist, boots splashing in puddles.
"Boss!" he gasped, skidding to a stop. "The girl—Seraph—she's trapped in the inner districts. With her mother. And someone else."
"Who?" Ilias asked, voice tight.
"Some kind of... Maestro. The family sent him."
Kojo's jaw clenched. "So that's it. They're dragging her back into the cage."
Silence settled over them—heavy, cold. Taren's eyes opened fully for the first time since the rescue. His voice was hoarse but firm. "Don't... let them take her."
Ilias looked at him. At the bruises. The scars. The iron marks on his wrists where the chains had been. "We won't," he said quietly.
Kojo looked toward the horizon—the megacity's towers shimmered like tuning forks, their spires vibrating with distant thunder and the hum of a thousand resonance grids. "Alright," he said, checking his weapons one last time. "We stash the old man. Keep him off-grid."
The runner nodded, helping Taren toward a hidden transport waiting in the fog. Taren looked back at Ilias one last time. "Thank you."
Ilias nodded. "Tell her I'm coming."
"She already knows."
When they were alone again, Kojo loaded his rifle, hands moving with the practiced ease of someone who'd done this a hundred times. "So," he said. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Yeah."
"Bad idea?"
"The worst."
Kojo grinned—wide, reckless, the kind of grin that belonged to someone who'd stared death in the face and decided to buy it a drink first. "Perfect."
They turned toward the city's burning glow—two figures swallowed by dawn, walking straight into the storm.
In a chamber deep beneath the Morrows, where no light reached and no sound escaped, Maestro Quiet stood before the black monolith. His eyes glowed faintly in the dark, reflecting something that wasn't quite light.
"They move," he said, voice layered with harmonics that shouldn't exist in human speech. "The one who will become the Silent Flame and the Resonant Beast. Together."
An acolyte knelt nearby, head bowed, face hidden beneath a hood. "Shall we intervene?"
Voiced void smiled—slow, patient, hungry. "No," he whispered. "Let them fight. Let them bleed. Let them sing their defiance while they still can."
He placed a hand on the monolith. It pulsed once, dark and rhythmic, like a heartbeat made of absence. "When they are broken," he said, "when their hope has shattered and their strength has failed, we will offer them silence. And in their desperation, they will accept."
The acolyte said nothing. There was nothing to say. Voiced void will was the Entity's will. And the Entity's will was inevitable.
The chamber fell silent again, but it was a different kind of silence now. Not peaceful. Not empty. Waiting. Like the pause between a blade being drawn and the moment it cuts flesh.
Above, in the burning city, two brothers walked toward a war they didn't know they couldn't win.
And below, in the dark, something ancient smiled.