In a secure office two floors above, Director Maren Voss received the call.
"The Amina subject," the voice said. "Dr. Solen reports dormant resonance markers.
Secondary scan triggered a cascade response."
Voss was quiet for a moment.
"Dormant how?" she asked.
"Unknown. Standard compatibility testing showed nothing. But the deep scan activated something. Her recommendation is immediate containment under observation protocol."
Voss stood and walked to a wall of files. She found the one labeled KAELEN AMINA - CLASSIFIED.
She opened it and read.
Kaelen Amina. Age 22. Auditory-structural resonance. Unregistered. Dangerous. Imprisoned.
And below that, a note in her own handwriting from three years ago:
Subject shows signs of hybrid resonance. Primary type is auditory, but secondary markers suggest latent soul-based manifestation. If this activates, containment protocols may be insufficient. Recommend life imprisonment or termination.
Voss closed the file.
"Where is the subject now?" she asked.
"Medical holding cell. They're stabilising him."
"And the notebook?" Voss asked.
Silence on the other end.
"What notebook?"
"The one he carried in. The one from his brother. It wasn't logged during intake."
Another silence.
"I'll check the cell," the voice said finally.
Voss hung up.
She pulled up Theron's file on her screen and read the original report from Damian Korr:
Confiscated item: resonator (marked, potentially keyed)
She zoomed in on the image of the pendant.
The marking was clear. Kaelen's name. Kaelen's signature resonance frequency encoded in silver.
If you are reading this, T, I'm glad.
She had read Kaelen's exact words a dozen times. The notebook had been recovered during his arrest and logged into evidence. She had memorised it by now.
She knew what it meant.
She knew what the three days meant.
And she knew that Theron Amina wasn't dormant.
He was in transition.
The awakening had started, just like it had for his brother.
Just like it would for anyone carrying Kaelen's genetic line.
And in exactly three days—if he survived the process—Theron wouldn't be flareless anymore.
He'd be something that the Compatibility Board had been trying to prevent for decades:
He'd be a full resonance hybrid.
A soul flare.
Voss picked up her secure phone and dialed.
"I need containment protocols," she said quietly. "Maximum security. Terminate access. And Solen—remove all unnecessary personnel from the facility. If he awakens fully, we can't have witnesses."
She hung up and waited.
In the medical holding cell, Theron was screaming.
Not that much from pain, but from the thing inside him that was trying to be awaken.
And in his cell, hidden under the mattress, Kaelen's notebook waited.
Day Three. The breaking. The death of what you were. Sleep through it if you can. Fight it if you must. But when you wake up on Day Four, you'll understand.
You'll be something new.
You'll be what they fear most.
—Kaelen
...
The phone screen darkened. No new alerts. No red flags. Just the soft hum of the building's climate control and the faint pulse of her heartbeat in her ears—which, she had noticed years ago, happened whenever she made a decision that she'd have to justify later.
Maren Voss had made a lot of those decisions.
She pulled up the live feed from Medical Holding again. Four camera angles. All of them showing the same thing: a boy on a bed, restraints cutting into wrists and ankles, muscles rigid with seizure.
Not screaming anymore.
But still, the heart monitor showed his rate climbing. Steady. Methodical. Like his body was systematically climbing a ladder with no top rung.
One-twenty.
One-thirty.
One-forty.
Dr. Eira Solen stood over him, clipboard held loosely at her side. She was watching, not writing. Just watching. Her eyes had that bright, fixed quality they got when she was witnessing something she would probably never see again.
Voss recognised that look. She'd worn it herself, once.
Years ago.
When Kaelen Amina had started to break.
Medical was never quiet, but it was quieter now.
Most of the staff had evacuated. Orders from above. Theron was moved to the isolated wing—the one that had been built after a resonance incident in 2019 had cracked a wall and injured three technicians. Thicker concrete. Reinforced doors. Single entrance/exit.
Designed to contain, not to heal.
Dr. Solen had argued for monitoring equipment—better sensors, more data points. They had denied her request.
Now she stood three meters from the bed, hands clasped in front of her, watching the readouts scroll past on the wall-mounted display.
Neural activity: spiking in irregular waves.
Resonance frequency: unstable, fluctuating between auditory and something else. Something that didn't have a name on the chart.
Metabolic load: critically elevated.
"His temperature is rising," the nurse said quietly. A young woman. First time seeing a case like this. "Should we—"
"No cooling," Solen said. "The fever is part of the process."
She didn't look away from Theron's face.
His eyes were moving beneath closed lids. REM. Not sleeping. Something else.
Something inside.
"Doctor," the nurse said, more urgently now. "His breathing—"
Theron's respiration had changed. No longer the regular, stressed pattern of someone in pain. Now it was ragged. Arrhythmic. Like his body was learning to breathe for the first time and kept forgetting the steps.
Solen finally moved. She checked his pulse at the neck—thin and fast, thread-like—and pulled back his eyelid with clinical precision.
Pupil response: sluggish.
"He's going into hypovolemic shock," the nurse said. "We need to increase the IV—"
"No," Solen said. "No interventions. The orders were clear."
"But if his organs shut down—"
"Then we let them," Solen said flatly. She straightened and stepped back to her observation post. "And we document everything."
The nurse stared at her.
Solen didn't meet her gaze.
In her pocket, her hands clenched into fists. She'd made this choice once before—to watch instead of act. With Kaelen, she'd been younger. She'd told herself she was following protocol.
She was old enough now to know the difference between protocol and cowardice.
But old habits died hard.
So she watched Theron, and she documented, and she told herself that this was necessary.
That understanding came from pain.
That knowledge required suffering.
That she was a scientist, not a savior.
All the comfortable lies.
In the archives of Gallowmere Academy, three floors below everything, Lucas felt it.
Not the hum.
The absence of it.
The feedback loop he'd jury-rigged into the security system—a way to monitor what happened below, to stay alert to when Screening came calling—had gone quiet.
No, not quiet.
Dead.
He'd been reading Kaelen's file when the connection cut. He was still reading it when he realized what the silence meant.
The scanning machine.
They'd turned it on.
Lucas set down the file with trembling hands. Kaelen's face stared up at him from a grainy photograph. Age nineteen. Eyes defiant. Days before his arrest.
If they scan him, it will trigger it early, Lucas remembered. The words from Kaelen's notebook. The part Kaelen had made him memorise, never write down, never speak aloud unless it was in absolute darkness with no possibility of a record.
If they trigger it unprepared, he dies.
And Lucas had let him walk into it.
No—worse. Lucas had coached him to walk into it. Turn yourself in, he'd said. Let them screen you. You'll pass. You're genuinely flareless.
How many times had he repeated that? How sure had he sounded?
Lucas pulled his own copy of the notebook toward him and opened it to the marked page.
Day Three. The break.
What day was it?
He pulled out his phone. No signal down here—too deep, too shielded—but the date glowed on the lock screen.
January 7th.
Tonight's the night. Tonight it will happen again.