š A Little Note Before We Begin
Worlds Reconciled has recently been reworked to improve the reading pace. Some longer chapters have been split into two, which has resulted in new numbering for the chapters already published.
Don't worry: you haven't missed anything!Ā
The story remains the same; only some chapters have been reorganized to make the reading experience smoother.
So you can simply continue reading: tonight's Chapter 25 has been moved and is now Chapter 31.
š¤ Elea
You can control the images, prepare the words, and impose a narrative. But what remains of that control when reality decides to stop following the script?
Earlier, high above the clean streets of Biel, Kael was getting ready to lie live on air or at least... to try.
The Detective Trials studio had been rearranged overnight with new camera angles. And new lights for a new story. Lila watched the screens from the control room. Everything seemed under control. That was precisely what worried her.
"Projected audience is up forty-two percent," Maya, the assistant, announced.
"Obviously."
"Social media is still exploding over the three silhouettes."Ā
Lila didn't answer. She was looking at something else. The video was frozen on the third figure. No matter how many times she replayed it, something resisted.
The two fake spirits now looked flat, almost artificial. The third presenceā¦ gave the impression that the camera had captured something it should never have seen.
"Lila?"
She flinched slightly.
"What?"
"Kaƫl is ready."
"Good."
But she immediately felt it wasn't true. No one was ready.
Kaƫl stepped onto the set with that cold beauty that had driven the ratings up ever since his participation had been announced. But today, something had hardened slightly. He seemed less polished and more human.
And the audience noticed it immediately. The comments had already begun to scroll.
HE DIDN'T SLEEP.
HE REALLY SAW THOSE SPIRITS.
Kael took a deep breath. For the first time in a long whileā¦ he no longer knew what he was going to say.
The live broadcast began. Lila immediately took control.
"Since last night, millions of people have been asking the same question:
What did we really see near the fracture?"Ā
She turned toward Kaƫl.
"What did you feel?"
Kael looked at her. Then at the cameras. The script was still scrolling discreetly on the teleprompter.
A vague feeling. Incredible mystery. No certainty.
He took a breath. Then simply said,
"I don't know."
The control room froze. Lila didn't move, but she immediately lifted her head. Kaƫl continued.
"Yesterday... I thought I was taking part in a staged performance."
Silence.
In the control room, someone instinctively cut his microphone. But it was too late. The audience had heard. The comments exploded.
WHAT???
WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT???
THEY LIED TO US?
Lila stepped in.
"Kael is obviously referring to the visual effects used during the program."
"Yes," he replied.
Then he added,
"But not the third presence."
This time, even the technicians froze. An old fear tightened in Lila's stomach as if the live broadcast had just opened a door she had always avoided.
Kael kept looking straight into the camera.
"I don't know what we saw."
A vast silence spread across the set. Then suddenly, the lights flickered. A dull tremor ran through the building.
Lightā¦ but strong enough to make several screens vibrate. Discrete alarms immediately lit up in the control room.
"What was that?" someone shouted.
A second rumble echoed farther across the city. Several feeds went down at the same time: cameras, secondary networks, urban drones. For one secondā¦ Biel seemed to blink.Ā
The live broadcast abruptly cut to a black screen. In the control room, several voices erupted at once.
"Sector 7 is down!"
"We've got outages in Groundward!"
"Several drones have just disappeared from the radar!"
Lila grabbed Kael by the arm.
"Are you out of your mind?! You just destroyed our entire editorial line!"
But she wasn't listening anymore. Because at that exact moment the live feed had gone darkā¦ the third silhouette had changed ever so slightly on the frozen screen. It had moved closer.
Deep inside Biel's central system, Kaissa was already watching the consequences unfold. The graphs were surging. Searches related to the Wall were increasing everywhere. And above allā¦ network anomalies were multiplying: layers of data scrolled across her screens, false signals, inconsistent logs, shifted trajectories.
Someone was deliberately scrambling certain routes.
"Locate the source."
"It's fragmented," an analyst replied.
"Then reconstruct it."
Kaissa watched the lines of code stream past. A real intelligence was behind this.Ā
Not an improvised group. Someone who knew the internal structures extremely well. She couldn't help making the connection.
Soren. Pulse-9. The fake logs. The diverted routes.Ā
Something connected all of it or someone. She could feel it.
At that very moment, a new alert crossed the screens.
Micro-explosions had been reported in several outer sectors of Groundward, and one in Skyward. Small homemade charges, not powerful enough to destroy anything. Just enough to disrupt the flows and saturate the local networks.
Kaissa immediately felt that something was changing.
These weren't coordinated attacks. They were worse.
Disorder was beginning to spread on its ownā¦
In his apartment, plunged into darkness, Numa kept working, barely breathing. The different screens illuminated his tired face. He had managed to slow down several searches but not enough.
He tried another connection: no response.
"Come on..."
He tried again, still nothing. His gaze drifted, despite himself, to the last picture of Sophie he still had : a university photo where she was laughing without a care.
Numa briefly closed his eyes.
"Answer meā¦ just once."
A new signal suddenly appeared on one of the screens.
RED PRIORITY. SECURE INTRUSION.
He immediately straightened up. Several windows opened across his monitors. The same crackling as the day before came through the speakers. Then the sentence appeared.
You're looking too late.
This time, Numa didn't turn pale. He recognized perfectly the hidden structure behind the injection. He had built part of those pathways himself.
And now someone was using themā¦ with an accuracy that was almost insulting to his own expertise.
Numa ran a tired hand over his face. Every window on the terminal abruptly closed. Then the screen went black.
In the dark reflection of the monitorā¦ Numa saw someone standing behind himā¦
and froze.
The Guardian Angel: Humans sometimes believe that changing an image, erasing a piece of data, or rewriting a story is enough to change what really happened. But nothing ever truly disappears. Every thought, every word, every action leaves a trace somewhere, both in the world and within us. Kael could still repeat the story that had been written for him. Yet something inside him remembered what he had truly seen. And once a truth has left its mark, sometimes it becomes harder to deny it than to accept it.