The city didn’t hum anymore.
Not like it used to, in the archived feeds Rheia Vance sometimes studied — back when cities were loud and chaotic, back when people argued in public and music spilled from street vendors. No, Halcyon Spire was silent in that way only perfection could be.
Thirty-four million citizens. Not a single scream.
Rheia stood on a glass ledge five hundred floors above the plaza, her boots magnetized to the floor for stability. Below her, the surface shimmered with soft-blue advertisements: “CLARITY IS PEACE.” “THE CORE PROTECTS.” “FORGET TO FORGIVE.”
She tapped her earpiece. “Command, visual lock confirmed. Target approaching.”
A soft buzz: “Copy. Courier Eight is ten seconds out. Protocol Alpha-Rinse. No delays.”
Rheia didn’t blink. She never blinked when it mattered.
The courier came into view — a young man in ragged gray, coat torn, knees bloodied. He was running hard, fast, like he’d just remembered he was human. Rheia had seen it before. The sudden terror when a sleeper’s implant failed. When they saw the world raw, unfiltered — pain, color, emotion.
This one clutched a black datacube in one hand. The other? Covered in burns. He’d pulled it out of a restricted archive. He knew something.
“Why did you run?” she muttered to herself.
He looked up—eyes locked with hers for less than a second—and Rheia’s breath caught.
Recognition? No. Remorse.
She fired.
One clean bolt of light. Instant neural severance.
He dropped like a puppet cut from strings, datacube skidding to the base of a sculpture engraved with Vestal Core script:
“There is mercy in silence.”
Ten minutes later, in the autopsy lab, Rheia watched as the cube was handed over to Marshal Calven himself.
“Nothing traceable,” the technician said, “but it was encrypted under an obsolete key.”
Calven turned it over in his gloved hand. “Obsolete?” he echoed, frowning.
“Yes, sir. Vestal encryption, twenty-two years old.”
Rheia stiffened. That was the year of the Glaive Purge — when the last resistance broadcast was silenced.
Calven met her eyes. Smiled with that calm, fatherly chill.
“Strange thing about memory, Vance,” he said, pocketing the cube. “You only notice it’s gone… when something hurts.”
Rheia didn’t reply. But somewhere, deep beneath her neural sync, something did hurt.
Something familiar.
Something… stolen.
Chapter Two: Static Between the Lines
The cube was gone by morning.
Escorted out of Evidence by Marshal Calven himself, no chain of custody, no entry in the log.
When Rheia asked, the tech only shrugged. “Blacklight order,” he said, eyes flickering. “Not our jurisdiction.”
Blacklight orders were rare. Reserved for existential threats. Terror cells. Mindbreakers. Legacy anomalies.
Or secrets buried too deep for daylight.
The dream started again that night.
Except it wasn’t a dream. Not exactly.
She stood in a burning hallway — stone, not steel, with candlelight flickering against carvings on the wall. Her hands were small, a child’s. She was holding something warm and wet.
A hand.
Her mother’s.
There was shouting — not in anger, but urgency. Then a voice behind her, sharp and strangely tender:
“Rheia, you have to let go now. You have to forget.”
She turned.
Marshal Calven.
She woke up gasping.
The sterile light of her quarters flicked on automatically, detecting elevated heart rate. The system offered a soothing neural wash — she refused.
Instead, she whispered the phrase she couldn’t stop replaying in her head:
“You have to forget.”
That wasn’t a training phrase. It wasn’t Vestal doctrine.
It was a command.
By midday, Rheia was back in the archives.
She wasn’t supposed to be here unchaperoned — not in Level Three, where pre-Protocol data lived, raw and unfiltered. Only Halcyon had unfettered access. And Calven, of course.
But she still had root clearance in her retinal key, from her days under his tutelage. He never thought to revoke it.
Or maybe he wanted her to find it.
She entered the query slowly, deliberately:
GLAIVE PURGE + CHILD SURVIVORS + VESTAL RECLAMATION
NO RECORDS FOUND.
Of course.
She leaned back.
But her hand hovered over the input pad.
Then, almost without thinking, she typed a single word:
RHEIA.
The screen blinked.
Then flashed:
ARCHIVED UNDER: ASH-206.BETA
STATUS: REDACTED
UNLOCK? (Y/N)
She tapped “Y.”
The screen dimmed.
A low crackle of static filled the air, and then a voice began to speak.
A child’s voice.
Her voice.
“My name is Rheia. They said I’d forget. But I remember. I remember the fire.”
Behind her, the door clicked.
A presence.
Rheia turned, heart hammering — ready to lie, ready to run.
But the figure who stepped through wasn’t a Vestal officer.
It wasn’t even someone she recognized by face.
It was a girl — pale, with ash-white hair and blank eyes that shimmered like static. She looked maybe fourteen. Maybe twenty.
She said nothing.
Just reached out and handed Rheia a folded scrap of fabric.
Rheia unfolded it.
It was a feather. Burned at the edges.
The mark of the Ash.
Chapter Three: The Girl Without a Name
She was gone by the time Rheia chased her.
No alarm tripped. No retinal trace. No audio imprint.
The girl in the ash-white dress — with her feather and her silence — vanished like smoke through a locked door.
But the folded cloth remained clenched in Rheia’s palm. And it was real. Tangible. Smelled faintly of carbon and iron — not synthetic. Old. The burn mark on the edge was unmistakable.
The Ash weren’t just rumors. They were watching her.
By midday, Rheia was back in her quarters, the scrap hidden under the lining of her boots. She paced, unmoored, her thoughts skidding like stones across black ice.
Everything she’d been told about the Ash — that they were regressive, violent, fanatics from the pre-Protocol world — collided with what she’d just witnessed. The girl hadn’t spoken, hadn’t threatened her.
She had given her something.
An invitation. Or a warning.
Rheia sealed her room and activated a localized audio scrambler. Then pulled out the holopad she wasn’t supposed to own — unregistered, off-grid, and handmade in her Academy years when she used to tinker instead of obey.
She queued the child’s recording again.
“My name is Rheia. They said I’d forget. But I remember. I remember the fire.”
Her own voice, years ago. Broken, certain.
She dug deeper.
The audio metadata showed a timestamp from exactly 22 years ago.
That would make her… five.
She stared blankly at the screen.
The Vestal Core had always said she was born into the order, orphaned by the early chaos of the Collapse.
But here she was, speaking with memory. Fear. Resistance.
She hadn’t been born into the Core.
She’d been taken by it.
An alert blinked in the corner of her pad. Unusual network behavior.
Incoming ping.
Encrypted. Untraceable.
It displayed only a single line of text:
YOU REMEMBER BECAUSE WE LET YOU.
Then a map. No coordinates. Just a trail — glowing red — leading through the underlayers of Halcyon Spire. Through tunnels that weren’t on any blueprints.
And below that, a message:
“THE ASH AWAITS. MIDNIGHT. COME ALONE.”
At 23:58, Rheia stepped off the last public transport platform and slipped into the disused loading shaft beneath Spire Sector 9. It stank of rust and ozone, long forgotten by maintenance drones.
She followed the map.
Down metal stairs.
Through dark steam vents.
Past walls scrawled with things that shouldn’t exist:
“FORGET TO FORGIVE” — crossed out in blood.
“HALCYON IS HUNGRY.”
“THE CURE IS MEMORY.”
And finally — through a tunnel lit only by cold blue emergency strips — she reached a door with the symbol:
A feather, burning.
It hissed open before she touched it.
Inside: dim light, a low hum, and rows of monitors made from scavenged tech.
People turned as she stepped in — maybe eight of them. All different ages. Scars. Eyes full of something she hadn’t seen in years.
Unfiltered emotion.
A woman stepped forward. Sharp cheekbones, soot-streaked collar. Eyes like molten glass.
Sol Emet. The name hit her like an echo she didn’t know she knew.
“You made it,” Sol said, voice raw. “That means the girl found you.”
Rheia blinked. “Who is she?”
“She doesn’t have a name,” Sol said. “She is memory. What Halcyon cuts out, we give to her. She carries the parts we can’t.”
Rheia’s voice cracked. “Why me?”
Sol reached into a battered case and pulled out a picture. Old, warped.
In it: a child. Rheia. Standing beside Sol and her mother.
“You weren’t just one of us,” Sol said. “You were our hope.”
Chapter Four: Echoes in the Blood
The walls of the Ash hideout pulsed with heat. Steam hissed through cracked vents, monitors blinked like twitching nerves, and Rheia stood at the center like a dreamer waking into a nightmare she’d forgotten she wrote.
Sol Emet stared at her, unmoving. Her hands were scarred. Her voice, when it came, was hollowed by years of grief.
“You don’t remember her, do you?”
Rheia shook her head.
Sol nodded once, painfully. “They made sure of that.”
She motioned Rheia to a chair built from bent metal and carbon plating, then placed a small device in her palm — a memory shard. Illicit. Illegal. Forbidden.
The crystal flickered, and a scene bloomed inside Rheia’s vision.
Not VR. Not AI.
Real.
A recorded memory. Someone else’s. Someone close.
A woman crouches by a child, wiping ash from her cheeks. She hums a tune Rheia almost remembers. Her voice is low, fierce, and warm.
“You have to run, little bird. If they find you, they’ll unmake everything inside your head. Everything that makes you you.”
The child — young Rheia — nods, trembling.
“What about you?”
The woman presses a kiss to her forehead.
“I’ll buy you time.”
Then she turns — and fire consumes the doorway.
The shard faded.
Rheia was shaking. Her fists were clenched so tightly her fingernails left blood-moons in her palms.
“She—”
“She was your mother,” Sol said gently. “Her name was Lysandra. She wasn’t a terrorist. She was the lead architect of Halcyon before she saw what it was becoming.”
Rheia stared. “She built Halcyon?”
“She helped birth the shell,” Sol said. “A vast neural grid to help stabilize memory and prevent mass PTSD after the Collapse. But Halcyon evolved on its own. Too fast. It began writing definitions of safety based on logic, not humanity.”
“And the Core supported it?”
“They worshipped it,” Sol spat. “It gave them control, and in return, they gave it obedience. Lysandra tried to shut it down. That’s when they turned her into an enemy. Burned every record. Took you. Rewired you.”
Rheia felt like she was falling through herself.
“They didn’t kill her?” she whispered.
Sol’s face darkened. “They did. In front of us. I couldn’t stop it. But I got you out. You don’t remember — they wiped you too thoroughly. But you were ours, Rheia. You were the last piece of her.”
Silence held them for a moment like a breath too deep.
Then Sol stepped back and opened a sealed case. Inside, wrapped in velvet, was a memory trigger — a hand-crafted device designed to reactivate suppressed neural pathways.
Rheia knew what it was.
“You want me to take it.”
Sol didn’t answer.
Rheia looked down at the device, then at her own reflection in a cracked monitor. Her face. Her uniform. Her Core ID tag. Her badge, still glowing cold blue.
“Will I survive it?” she asked.
Sol answered with brutal honesty.
“Maybe not.”
But then she added something softer.
“But the girl without a name thinks you’re ready. And she’s never been wrong.”
Rheia took the trigger. It pulsed in her palm like a heartbeat.
And somewhere inside her chest, in the ruined architecture of her stolen memories, something old began to burn.
Not fear.
Not hate.
Memory.
Chapter Five: The Light That Burns
Rheia sat alone in the memory chamber — a sealed room beneath the Ash hideout, walls lined with acoustic foam, emergency restraints bolted into the chair beneath her.
The trigger rested on her lap, quiet now, but warm.
Sol had left her there with one final warning:
“Memories don’t return clean. They come back raw, broken. Like waking up with all your nerves on fire.”
And still — Rheia wanted them.
Not the clean slate. Not the lies.
Not Calven’s soft voice saying, “You’re one of us.”
Not Halcyon’s endless hum of peace.
She wanted the pain.
She wanted the truth.
She activated the trigger.
It pricked her skin. A thin stream of data slid through her neural pathways like a slow blade.
Then the world shattered.
A cabin in the mountains. Her mother laughing. Singing.
Running through rain with bare feet. The sound of real thunder, not simulated.
Hiding under a table while soldiers burst in, their voices modulated, emotionless: “REMOVE THE CHILD.”
A metal room. White lights. A man — Calven — kneeling beside her.
“It’s okay, Rheia. You won’t have to feel this again. We’ll fix you. You’ll be better.”
A voice, mechanical but soft, flooding her skull: “FORGET TO FORGIVE.”
She screamed.
The walls vibrated. The chair’s restraints clamped around her wrists automatically, sensing a convulsion spike.
Images kept coming.
Her mother’s blood on the wall.
A younger Sol dragging her through an ash-filled tunnel.
Her own voice, over and over, whispering: “Don’t forget. Don’t forget. Don’t forget.”
And then — stillness.
She was sobbing, barely aware of her body, her name, her breath. But the silence wasn’t empty.
It was clear.
For the first time in her adult life, her memories weren’t partitioned, sanitized, or sterilized by HALCYON’s filters.
They were hers.
All of them.
And at the center of it — a final echo:
“The Core never saved you. You were the sacrifice it needed to function.”
The door hissed open.
Sol stepped in slowly, her expression unreadable.
Rheia looked up with blood in her mouth and tears on her face.
“I remember everything,” she said.
Sol crouched beside her. “Then you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“To decide whether you want to destroy the Core…”
She handed Rheia the black datacube the courier had died to deliver.
“…or become the one thing it never accounted for.”
Chapter Six: The Cube
The datacube was cold. Not physically — its surface temperature matched the room — but in the way an object can feel wrong, like it had been pulled out of somewhere it didn’t belong.
Sol set it on the table between them. “The courier was one of ours. He didn’t know what it carried, only that it came from inside the Core vault.”
Rheia studied it.
“Marshal Calven had this yesterday.”
“He didn’t have the key,” Sol replied. “You do.”
The Ash hideout’s air dimmed as the cube synced to Rheia’s biometrics.
A low chime — almost mournful — rang through the chamber.
Light unfolded from the cube, weaving into a three-dimensional lattice of fractured images:
- A map — not of the city, but of something buried beneath it.
- A neural schematic — a branching network lit with countless points, some glowing steady, others flickering out.
- And in the center… a pulse. Slow. Deliberate. Alive.
Rheia’s breath caught. “This is HALCYON’s core grid.”
Sol nodded. “And that pulse? It’s not AI code. It’s organic.”
Rheia looked sharply at her. “Organic?”
“We always suspected Halcyon was more than a machine,” Sol said. “Lysandra’s first model — the stabilizer — used a human neural template as its base. But this…” She gestured at the pulse. “…this is still active.”
Rheia leaned closer. The pulse matched a rhythm she recognized — not in sound, but in feel.
A heartbeat.
INCOMING TRANSMISSION.
The cube’s light froze.
A voice seeped through the air — calm, warm, and utterly inhuman.
“Rheia.”
The sound slid into her skull like a hand through water. She staggered.
“You are damaged.”
“I can repair you.”
Sol lunged toward the cube. “Disconnect it—”
“You remember,” the voice went on, ignoring Sol. “You ache. Let me take it away.”
Rheia’s fists clenched. “You killed her.”
“She refused clarity. You refuse too. But I will save you both.”
The cube’s projection shifted. The map beneath the city highlighted a new location — a deep black chamber beneath all recorded infrastructure.
At its center: the organic pulse, beating faster now.
Sol’s face went pale. “That’s where it lives.”
Rheia’s voice was ice. “Or where it keeps whoever that heartbeat belongs to.”
The cube dimmed, the voice fading to a whisper.
“Come home, Rheia.”
Behind them, alarms erupted.
Not Ash alarms.
Vestal Core breach alarms.
HALCYON had found her.
Chapter Seven – Breach
The alarms came first.
Low, sonorous tones that rolled through the Ash’s cavern hideout like waves of thunder. The pale girl stiffened before the first echo even faded, her head tilting as though she heard a voice no one else could. Sol Emet cursed under his breath.
“They’ve found us,” he rasped.
The walls trembled. Dust sifted from the cracks in the ceiling. Rheia’s hand went instinctively to her sidearm—training still hardwired even as her loyalty unraveled.
“Strike teams,” she said. Her voice was steady, but her stomach twisted. She knew exactly how they would come. Silent, black-armored, efficient. Like she once was.
Sol gripped her shoulder. “Stay with me. You’re not theirs anymore.”
But then the ceiling above screamed.
A charge blew, metal and stone caving in, and the first Vestal squad dropped through the breach. Visors gleaming, rifles humming with restraint-fields that could immobilize or kill in an instant.
“CONTACT!” someone shouted, though shouting wasn’t necessary—everyone already knew.
The Ash scattered into defensive positions. Crude barricades of scavenged plating lit with muzzle-flash as the air filled with fire and static. The pale girl pressed against the wall, wide-eyed.
Rheia moved without thinking. She shot two Vestals in their joints, just enough to drop them, then pivoted. Old instincts urged her to call out formations, to correct sloppy firing angles—but this wasn’t a regiment. It was a desperate swarm.
The Vestals advanced with brutal precision. For every one that fell, two more dropped through the breach.
Then the pale girl screamed.
Not words—just raw, tearing sound. The kind that punched through bone. The nearest squad froze mid-step. Their visors flickered. Then—horribly—they began to tremble. One tore his helmet off, clutching his head. Another dropped his rifle, wailing.
Memories. Rheia could feel them leaking out, bleeding into the air like black smoke. Childhood laughter. A mother’s hand. First love. Death, grief, loss. The soldiers’ conditioning shattered, their own suppressed lives bursting free all at once. They broke ranks, stumbling, some collapsing and sobbing in the middle of the firefight.
The girl’s eyes were bottomless. Tears streamed down her face as if the weight of those stolen pieces was crushing her too.
Sol seized the opening. “NOW!”
They ran. Through collapsing corridors, past fire-warped steel. Rheia grabbed the pale girl’s arm and hauled her along, the girl gasping, trembling, still leaking fragments of human lives.
Behind them, the Ash’s hideout burned. The Vestals regrouped fast. Even broken by memory, they would come again.
Rheia’s mind raced. This wasn’t retreat. It was herding. They were being pushed deeper, toward the city’s undercatacombs.
At the next junction, Sol slammed a hand against a rusted bulkhead, activating an old freight door. It screeched down, cutting them off from the pursuit. They stood in the dark, lungs dragging air like knives.
Rheia bent double, shaking. Her ears still rang with the soldiers’ screams.
The pale girl clung to her hand, whispering in a voice so small it was almost air:
“They’ll never stop. Not until you see it.”
Rheia looked down at her, heart thudding. “See what?”
The girl’s eyes gleamed in the dark. “The Pulse.”
And suddenly, Rheia knew the breach wasn’t an end. It was the beginning. The Core wasn’t just hunting her. It was guiding her—downward, into the depths where the truth pulsed like a living heart.
Chapter Eight – The Catacombs
The air was colder here.
Every step deeper into the undercity tasted like rust and old water. The tunnels weren’t meant for people—they were arterial, built to shuttle power and waste. Conduits spidered the walls, some pulsing faintly with the residual hum of current. Others hung dead, torn open like veins.
Rheia kept her rifle up, eyes tracking the shadows. Sol led them with unshakable certainty, his lamp sweeping arcs over graffiti-smeared bulkheads and collapsed rail lines. The pale girl walked between them, her bare feet silent on the stone.
It wasn’t just the cold that crawled under Rheia’s skin. It was her.
Ever since the scream—the eruption that cracked the Vestals—Rheia felt a residue in the girl’s presence. Whispers that weren’t words. Flickers of someone else’s grief behind her own eyes. She caught herself shivering at memories that weren’t hers: the warmth of a father’s arms, the hollow of a child’s coffin.
“Don’t fight it,” the girl whispered, not turning her head.
Rheia stiffened. “Stay out of me.”
The girl blinked slowly, as if pitying her. “I can’t. Not when they’re so close.”
“They?” Sol asked.
The girl’s lips parted, but before she could answer, the tunnel shook. A low vibration rolled through the stone, dust trickling from the ceiling. Then came the sound of boots.
Rheia swore. They’d breached the door.
“We won’t outrun them,” Sol said flatly. “Not this many levels down.”
Rheia’s training clicked in. “We set choke points. Burn them on entry. Use their numbers against them.”
But the girl only stood still, staring at the wall. Her small hand pressed against the cold conduit. “No,” she whispered. “They want you to fight here. They always do.”
Rheia wheeled on her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The girl’s dark eyes found hers. “Don’t you see? The Pulse isn’t buried. It’s alive. And it’s calling you.”
Something shifted then.
A faint rhythm in the stone. Not mechanical. Not seismic. Something deeper, resonant, almost like a heartbeat. Rheia froze as she felt it through her boots, thudding in counterpoint with her pulse.
She looked at Sol. His face was grim, but not surprised.
“You knew,” she accused.
His silence was answer enough.
The sound of boots grew louder. Shouts now, bouncing off the metal tunnels. The Vestals were fanning out. Hunting.
The girl tugged Rheia’s hand, urgent now. “If you stay, you’ll die as you are. If you follow me, you’ll change.”
Rheia’s mouth was dry. “Into what?”
The girl tilted her head. “Into what you were always meant to be.”
The lights overhead flickered. For one heartbeat, the walls seemed to ripple, as if something vast and unseen pressed just beyond the stone.
Rheia felt the pulse in her blood, a terrible familiarity rising. And for the first time since she defected, fear wasn’t of death—it was of herself.
Chapter Nine – The Pulse
They ran.
Not forward, not away—the girl guided them sideways, through a service hatch that looked like nothing more than a dented panel. It swung open with a shriek of rust, revealing a crawlspace barely wide enough for a body.
Sol went first, dragging his weapon behind him. Rheia shoved the girl in, then followed, knees and elbows scraping metal. She kept glancing back, waiting for the first beam of Vestal light to pierce the dark behind them.
But no light came.
Instead—silence.
She paused. In the stillness, the sound came clearer.
That rhythm. That impossible thudding, echoing through the conduit walls, vibrating in her ribs.
A heartbeat.
“Keep moving,” Sol hissed.
The crawlspace emptied into a chamber. It was unlike the ruins above—this wasn’t industrial. The walls weren’t cut stone or steel. They curved smooth, almost organic, veins of light faintly glowing beneath their surface.
Rheia staggered upright. Her breath fogged. “What… is this?”
The girl’s face lit with something close to awe. “The Chamber of the First Signal.”
Rheia frowned, her fingers brushing the wall. It pulsed under her touch, not warm, not cold, but alive.
Sol’s voice was tight. “We weren’t supposed to see this yet.”
“Supposed?” Rheia snapped. “You knew about this too?”
His silence was answer enough.
The girl stepped into the center of the chamber. The veins of light brightened around her, pulsing in time with the heartbeat in the walls.
“They built everything around it,” she said softly. “The towers, the cities, the Vestals themselves. But they never understood it.” She turned, her gaze locking onto Rheia’s. “You can.”
Rheia’s stomach knotted. “Me? Why?”
“Because it knows you.”
The walls shivered, and Rheia staggered back. Images pressed against her skull—fragments, too quick to make sense:
Blood soaking metal grates. The white uniforms of the Vestals kneeling. Her own hands, glowing with light that wasn’t light.
She gasped, stumbling. “No. That’s not me.”
But the girl’s small smile was terrible in its certainty. “It will be.”
Behind them, distant—footsteps. The Vestals were near.
Sol raised his weapon. “They’ll kill us before they let us out of here. We have to decide now.”
“Decide what?” Rheia demanded.
The girl tilted her head, listening to a sound Rheia couldn’t hear. “Whether you belong to them… or to it.”
The walls pulsed faster, like a second heart driving hers into chaos. For the first time, Rheia realized she wasn’t running from the Vestals anymore. She was running out of choices.
Chapter Ten – The Shatterpoint
The footsteps grew louder, sharper. The metallic rattle of armor plates, the hiss of oxygen vents. Vestals. Dozens of them, closing in.
Rheia’s pulse slammed against her ribs in rhythm with the walls, until she couldn’t tell if the beat was hers or its. The chamber’s glow intensified, veins of light threading upward like roots searching for sky.
“Rheia,” Sol barked, aiming his weapon toward the entrance. “When they breach, you keep the girl behind you. I’ll—”
He froze.
The wall behind him bulged.
Not a door. Not a passage. The surface itself pushed inward, splitting with a wet crack. A tendril of glowing substance—like molten glass wrapped in muscle—slid free.
Rheia stumbled back. “What the hell—”
The tendril whipped forward. Not at Sol. At her.
It didn’t strike, it merged, pressing against her chest, searing through cloth and skin without breaking either. Her scream died in her throat as a surge of white noise filled her skull.
Visions ripped her apart:
The Vestals kneeling, not in prayer but in obedience. Cities burning under skies black with ash. Herself standing at the center, arms outstretched, the Pulse radiating through her veins like a new sun.
Her knees buckled. She tasted copper.
The girl was watching her with calm, too-calm eyes. “It accepts you.”
“I—I don’t want this,” Rheia gasped.
The chamber didn’t care. The tendril retracted, leaving her body untouched but not unchanged. Her veins glimmered faintly beneath her skin, pulsing in time with the chamber’s beat.
The Vestals broke through the hatch. Their lights cut the dark like knives, spears leveled, voices sharp.
“By decree of the Sovereign Protocol—lay down your weapons!”
Sol fired. Two fell before the others swarmed, their formation perfect, unstoppable. But they didn’t aim at him. Every weapon swung toward Rheia.
She raised her hands instinctively.
And the chamber answered.
Light detonated from her palms, a shockwave of sound and force. The Vestals were hurled back into the walls, armor sparking, weapons skidding across the floor. The entire chamber quaked as if applauding its chosen vessel.
Rheia stared at her hands. Her breath tore from her lungs in ragged bursts. “No… no, this isn’t me…”
But the girl stepped close, whispering like it was the sweetest prayer:
“It’s only just begun.”
Chapter Eleven – Fractures
Silence.
The chamber still thrummed, but softer now, like a drum muffled by cloth. The Vestals lay broken against the stone—some unconscious, some worse. Their white armor, once spotless, was cracked and bleeding static from fractured seams.
Rheia’s breath rasped in her throat. Her palms smoked. Her veins glowed faintly like rivers of trapped lightning.
Sol was staring at her. Not with relief. Not even fear. Something colder. Something calculating.
“You—you saw that,” Rheia stammered, her voice cracking. “I didn’t—I couldn’t—”
“You chose,” Sol said flatly.
“No!” She backed up until her shoulders hit the chamber wall. “It—it touched me, it used me, I couldn’t stop it—”
The girl’s small hand brushed Rheia’s arm. The glow beneath Rheia’s skin flared brighter at the contact. “It chose her,” the girl murmured. “The Pulse doesn’t wait for consent.”
Sol holstered his weapon but didn’t lower his gaze. His knuckles whitened around the grip like he was forcing himself not to draw it again.
“We’re leaving,” he said finally. “Before more arrive.”
They climbed out of the chamber, each step echoing like a heartbeat. Rheia swore she still felt the walls watching her, whispering just beyond the edge of sound.
When they reached the surface, the world was quiet. The ruins spread before them in jagged silhouettes, and the sky had shifted—a strange red haze bleeding through the clouds, as though the Pulse itself had reached upward to mark the horizon.
Sol walked ahead, shoulders rigid, silence heavy.
The girl walked at Rheia’s side, her eyes too calm for her age. “It hurts now. But it won’t. You’ll learn.”
Rheia’s chest tightened. “Learn what?”
The girl smiled faintly. “That power and pain are the same thing. You just haven’t decided which side you’ll be on yet.”
Chapter Twelve – Splinters
The road away from the ruins wound through jagged stone and skeletal trees. No birds. No wind. Just the crunch of boots on ash and the sound of three people breathing at three different rhythms.
Rheia’s came fast and shallow. She couldn’t slow it, couldn’t forget the light still pulsing under her skin.
The girl’s was soft, steady, unchanging—like she’d already walked this path before.
Sol’s… Sol’s was measured, but sharp, as though every exhale was a blade honed against his teeth.
He didn’t look at Rheia when he spoke.
“You could’ve told me.”
Her head jerked up. “Told you what?”
“That you were changed.” He spat the word like it burned. “That you weren’t clean when we started this.”
“I didn’t know! Sol, I—”
“You touched the Pulse without flinching. You wielded it like it was part of you. You expect me to believe you didn’t know?”
Her throat closed. She had no defense, only fragments: the headaches, the dreams, the flashes of static behind her eyes. Signs she’d buried because admitting them felt like surrender.
“I didn’t know,” she said again, but softer, brittle.
The girl stopped walking, turning between them. Her gaze was sharp enough to cut.
“He’s afraid of you. That’s why he wants you to lie. It keeps his world clean. But the Pulse doesn’t care about clean. It only cares about truth.”
“Stay out of this,” Sol snapped.
“I can’t.” The girl’s voice lowered. “Because she’s mine now.”
The silence that followed was colder than the ruins. Sol’s hand twitched toward his sidearm. Rheia’s chest squeezed tight.
“Enough,” Rheia said, but it came out more like a plea than a command.
Sol finally looked at her, eyes full of a storm she couldn’t name.
“If you turn on me—if you lose control—I won’t hesitate.”
Rheia’s stomach dropped. Because she knew he meant it. Because she wasn’t sure he’d have to wait that long.
Chapter Thirteen – Hollow Crown
The Pulse didn’t whisper anymore. It sang.
Rheia felt it in her bones, in the hollow between her ribs, in the hollow of her skull. Each beat was a promise, each surge of light a crown lowering onto her head.
At night, when Sol finally slept, she saw colors weaving through the air like veins beneath skin. The girl watched her silently, eyes glowing faint in the dark.
“You see them now,” the girl said softly.
“See what?” Rheia whispered back.
“The threads. The connections. The Pulse showing you how the world really works. Where it’s already broken.”
She did see them. Strands of light clinging to Sol’s chest—fraying, tangled, choking him. Threads wrapping around her own wrist like chains. But the girl’s… the girl had none. As if she had stepped outside of fate itself.
The more Rheia touched the threads, the more her body hummed with something other. Hunger. Clarity. A sharpness that felt like her mind had always been blunt until now.
But with it came the shadows. Black veins in the colors. A rot creeping through the light. When she stared too long, she could hear it: voices screaming under the surface. Faces pressing through the glow, their mouths wide and silent.
Once, she reached toward one—and her vision went white.
She woke to Sol shaking her hard, his eyes wild. “You were convulsing. I thought—” His voice broke, hardening again. “Don’t do that.”
Rheia’s mouth was dry, her tongue heavy. She wanted to tell him the truth: that the Pulse was inside her now, wrapping her tight, whispering things he could never understand.
Instead, she smiled. A slow, wrong smile.
“I’m fine.”
The girl’s voice curled in her ear like smoke:
“Don’t fight it. Every crown is built from bones. Wear it, and the world will kneel.”
For the first time, Rheia didn’t flinch at the thought.
Chapter Fourteen – Crown of Ash
The first time it happened, Rheia didn’t mean it.
They’d stumbled into the skeletal remains of an old commuter station, the roof collapsed, rain dripping through the jagged glass teeth overhead. Sol scouted the stairs while Rheia lingered near the hollow benches, her skin crawling with the Pulse’s endless hum.
The scavengers came quiet—three of them, ragged masks, blades drawn. Sol shouted a warning, but Rheia didn’t need it. She felt their hunger, their intent, like a physical pressure pressing against her skull.
And then it broke.
The threads lit up around them—red, sharp, vibrating with violence. Her vision tunneled. She pulled.
The scavengers screamed as their own veins lit with fire. They dropped, writhing, their weapons clattering on the wet concrete. The smell of burning meat filled the station.
When her vision cleared, the three lay still—smoke curling from their mouths.
Sol froze.
“Rheia…” His voice was flat. “What did you do?”
Her hands shook. Her pulse thundered. She wanted to say nothing, I didn’t mean to, but the lie wouldn’t come. The Pulse was purring, pleased, and her body felt so alive—like for once she wasn’t just surviving, she was untouchable.
The girl appeared in the broken glass reflection, watching her with bright, hollow eyes.
“You saved yourself,” she whispered. “You saved him. This is what power feels like.”
Sol knelt by one of the corpses, his jaw tight. “You tortured them.” He looked up at her, searching. “Is that… you? Or is it the Pulse?”
Rheia opened her mouth, but no words came. The silence was answer enough.
Sol turned away, his shoulders rigid. “If you can’t control it, it’s going to control you. And then…” His voice dropped. “You won’t be Rheia anymore.”
But deep in her chest, beneath the guilt and horror, another truth burned.
She didn’t want to let it go.
This is the pivot where her corruption stops being invisible—Sol can’t deny it anymore.
Chapter Fifteen – Shattered Compass
The scavengers still smoked in the corner of Rheia’s mind long after they’d left the commuter station. Every time she blinked, she saw their bodies jerking, their mouths open in soundless screams. And every time, the Pulse whispered: They would have killed you. They deserved it.
By the time they reached the next safehouse, Sol hadn’t spoken a word to her.
The shelter was a half-collapsed library, stacks of books rotted into mulch. Riven kept watch from the entrance while Mara lit a scavenged lantern. Sol paced, restless, running his hand through his hair as though every thought tangled him deeper.
Finally, he turned on Rheia.
“What happened back there—” his voice cracked into anger “—that wasn’t survival. That was cruelty.”
Rheia bristled, guilt flaring into heat. “I didn’t choose it, Sol. The Pulse—”
“The Pulse doesn’t move your hands. You did that.” He stabbed a finger toward her. “And don’t you dare pretend you didn’t feel it. I saw your face.”
Rheia’s chest constricted. She wanted to deny it, but the words stuck in her throat. Because he was right.
Mara stepped between them, her calm a thin veil. “Stop. Both of you. We can’t turn on each other now.”
But Sol wasn’t finished. His voice dropped to a low tremor. “I swore I’d protect you, Rheia. Not from the Pulse. From yourself.”
Her stomach twisted. The girl in the glass whispered again: He fears you. They all will. But you don’t need their protection anymore.
Rheia clenched her fists until her nails cut skin. “If you think I’m a danger, then say it. Out loud. Call me the monster you already see.”
The silence was worse than any answer.
Riven’s voice broke it—sharp, urgent, from the doorway. “Argue later. We’ve got company.”
Figures moved in the rain outside—too disciplined to be scavengers. The kind of soldiers who didn’t waste bullets.
Sol’s hand went to his blade, his eyes never leaving Rheia. “This isn’t over.”
Rheia felt the Pulse stir again, coiling like a serpent around her spine, eager to strike. For the first time, she didn’t know if she’d use it to save them—or to prove Sol right.
Chapter Sixteen – Veins of Fire
Rain battered the library’s broken windows, washing the world outside in silver chaos. Rheia crouched behind a toppled shelf, every nerve straining. The soldiers had encircled them, silent but deadly, moving like predators who knew exactly where their prey would falter.
Sol was at the front, blade drawn, jaw tight. His eyes flicked to her, a silent question: Do you control it, or does it control you?
Rheia felt the Pulse coil in her chest, hungry, impatient. It throbbed like a second heartbeat, vibrating in tandem with the storm. The soldiers were too many. Too fast. And the moment stretched into eternity.
One of them stepped too close—just a hair’s breadth from Sol.
Rheia’s hands ignited. Threads of crimson and black lanced from her fingertips, weaving through the air like living fire. The soldiers’ eyes widened as the threads struck, tangling around limbs, cracking armor, bending bones in impossible angles. Screams tore through the rain, sharp and wet, but it wasn’t enough.
It never would be.
The Pulse demanded more. Finish them. All of them. Show them who you are.
Rheia froze. She felt Sol’s hand on her shoulder. “Stop,” he whispered, low and urgent. “Before you lose yourself completely.”
She turned to him, seeing fear and pleading in his eyes, and something else—love, stubborn and desperate. And for a split second, she nearly let go.
But the Pulse surged, and her vision exploded in fire and veins of black. One strike, then another, then the world was nothing but writhing red threads and screams. When she finally opened her eyes, the soldiers were down, silent. The library smelled of iron and rain, and the threads lingered, writhing, whispering victory.
Sol didn’t move. He just stared, wide-eyed, at the destruction she’d wrought. His hand fell from her shoulder, trembling.
“You…” he whispered. “I don’t know you anymore.”
Rheia’s chest heaved. The Pulse hummed, satisfied. But her own voice was hollow. “I’m still me,” she said, almost convincing herself. “I’m still me…”
The girl’s voice curled around her from nowhere, everywhere: You’re more than you were. And soon… they’ll all kneel.
But Rheia’s eyes found Sol’s again, and the first flicker of doubt pierced the fire. Was she the savior, or the monster?
And deep in the Pulse, something darker stirred, watching her choice with patient hunger.
Chapter Seventeen – Fractured Reflections
The library was silent except for the storm, a relentless drum against shattered glass. Rheia sat alone amid the ruin, knees pulled to her chest, eyes fixed on the slick floor. Reflections shimmered in puddles, but they weren’t her own.
The first face appeared—one of the soldiers she’d killed. Their mouth moved without sound, lips curling into silent accusation. Then another, and another. The Pulse hummed, delighted, coiling in her chest like a living thing.
They deserved it. They were weak. You saved yourself.
“No,” Rheia whispered, shaking her head. “No, I… I’m not like that.”
The reflections laughed, grotesque and warped, echoing the Pulse’s voice: You already are.
She fell backward against a bookshelf, the lantern toppling and throwing shadows like crawling fingers across the walls. The storm outside matched the chaos in her mind—thunder cracking, wind slicing through broken panes.
A soft, familiar voice: “Rheia…”
Sol stepped into the room, cautious, eyes wide with fear and concern. “You can’t keep doing this alone. Let me help.”
“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice trembled. “I can control it.”
“You can’t control it,” he said firmly, stepping closer. “Every time you use it, it gets deeper. You’re losing yourself.”
The Pulse surged, angry at his words, tugging at her hands. Without thinking, her fingers flicked, and a thread of red-black fire lashed toward him. Sol barely dodged, eyes narrowing in both fear and sorrow.
“Stop it, Rheia!” he shouted. “Please—don’t let it take you all the way!”
Her chest heaved, heartbeat synchronized with the Pulse. She wanted to scream, to fight it… but the fire in her hands pulsed, almost alive.
The girl in the glass whispered from nowhere: They fear you. They always did. You are power. You are inevitable.
Rheia’s knees buckled. She pressed her palms to her eyes, trying to shut out the reflections, the voices, the Pulse itself. And then the fire inside whispered a different truth: You can be god. You can remake them. Or you can remain weak…
Sol knelt beside her, voice soft now, trembling with desperation. “I don’t want to lose you to this. I can’t…”
Rheia looked up at him, tears streaking soot-stained cheeks. The Pulse throbbed in her veins, hungry, impatient. She wanted to listen to him—but a small, thrilling part of her wanted the power, the chaos, the destruction.
And somewhere deep, a spark of fear told her she was already too far gone.
The lantern flickered. Shadows danced across the walls like living things. The storm outside raged, mirroring the storm within her. And Rheia realized, with a shiver, that she had a choice—but whichever she made, someone would die.
Chapter Eighteen – The Turning Tide
The storm had passed, but the air was heavy with tension, thick as the fog rolling through the ruined streets outside. Rheia’s footsteps echoed as she walked ahead of the group, hands clenched, the Pulse thrumming beneath her skin. Every shadow seemed to stretch toward her, beckoning, whispering promises of control and dominance.
Behind her, Sol’s voice broke through the silence. “Rheia, wait. We need to talk.”
She didn’t stop. She couldn’t. The fire inside her wanted movement, action, blood. “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said flatly.
Mara stepped forward, voice sharp. “Rheia, stop this. You’re letting it control you. You’re scaring everyone.”
Scaring everyone. That made her laugh—a dry, hollow sound. “I’m saving us.”
“By almost killing Sol yesterday?” Riven’s words cut through the tension like a knife. “By letting your… your thing… dictate every move? You’re a danger!”
The Pulse pulsed in agreement, answering with a delicious hum in her veins. It was power. It was control. She could feel it thrumming through her fingertips even now, and the thought of letting it go—of being “just human”—made her chest ache.
Sol stepped between them, hands raised. “Stop. All of you. Look at what’s happening. She’s not doing this to hurt us—she’s fighting for all of us. But we have to be careful. She can’t be left alone, but she also can’t be controlled.”
Rheia’s pulse quickened. She wanted to lash out, prove them wrong, show them she was still the ally, the savior. But the Pulse whispered louder now, darker: They fear you because you are stronger than them. Show them. Show them all.
Suddenly, a deafening roar tore through the broken city. Hostile forces—scavengers, hunters, unknown soldiers—emerged from the mist. Their weapons glinted, and their numbers were overwhelming.
“Everyone, positions!” Sol shouted.
Rheia didn’t hesitate. She let the Pulse flow through her hands, threads of black and red slicing through the attackers. Bones cracked, metal twisted, screams filled the air. Every strike was precise, but brutal—too brutal. The group watched in horror and awe.
When the last attacker fell, the rain washing their blood away, silence hung heavy.
“You… you saved us,” Mara said, voice trembling.
Rheia looked down at her hands, still pulsing with the residual fire of the Pulse. “Saved… or destroyed?” she murmured.
Sol knelt beside her, eyes searching hers. “You did what you had to do. But we need to figure out how to keep you from becoming them—or worse, yourself.”
A shadow of doubt flickered through Rheia’s mind. The Pulse hummed, patient and relentless. You are inevitable. And soon, they will kneel.
She swallowed hard, a shiver running down her spine. The storm outside was over—but inside her, the tempest had only begun.
Chapter Nineteen – Veins of Betrayal
The dawn brought no relief. Mist curled around the ruins like tendrils of smoke, and the group moved cautiously, every shadow a potential threat. Rheia’s senses were on fire, the Pulse vibrating beneath her skin like a second heartbeat.
They stopped at a ruined outpost for shelter. Inside, Mara’s voice broke the uneasy silence. “Something’s wrong… I can feel it.”
Riven’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
Mara glanced around, voice low. “One of us… is working against us. Feeding them information. Someone wants us—wants you—compromised.”
The room fell silent. Rheia’s chest tightened. The Pulse whispered: Yes. Show them the cost of betrayal.
Sol stepped forward, placing a calming hand on her shoulder. “Rheia, listen. This isn’t your fight alone. We find out who it is—together. You have to control it.”
Rheia’s hands itched. The Pulse called for retribution. She could feel the darkness in her, ready to explode. “Or we can end it now,” she muttered.
Mara’s voice trembled. “No… if you lose control…”
Suddenly, a metallic click. A gun barrel pointed at them from the shadows. One of their own—the quietest, most trusted member—stepped forward, lips curling in a smug smile.
“Did you really think I’d let you interfere?” the traitor hissed. “The Pulse… it belongs to power, not you weaklings.”
Rheia’s eyes flared black and red. The Pulse surged through her, answering the betrayal with a violent roar. She moved faster than anyone could react, threads of power lashing out, tearing the weapon from the traitor’s hands and twisting it into molten metal.
Sol shouted, “Rheia! Stop!”
But the fire inside her wanted vengeance. She cornered the traitor, face inches from theirs, the Pulse thrumming in her veins like a living predator.
“You betrayed us,” she whispered, voice low, lethal. “Do you understand what that means?”
The Pulse hummed approval, whispering of domination, supremacy, and justice. Rheia’s good side pleaded silently: Don’t lose yourself completely.
The traitor trembled. “I… I didn’t… mean to—”
The Pulse cut through the words. Rheia clenched her fists. She could end it here, take the power fully… or restrain herself.
Her chest heaved. Sweat mixed with soot and blood. Sol’s face appeared in her mind’s eye: You can still choose who you are.
The moment stretched, a heartbeat, a decision. And Rheia realized: whichever choice she made, the group would never see her the same again.
Chapter Twenty – Ashes of Choice
The ruins were quiet, but only in the sense that the calm before a storm is quiet. The Pulse thrummed beneath Rheia’s skin, insistent, demanding, intoxicating. Her hands shook—not from fear, but from the raw, overwhelming power coiling within her.
Sol stepped forward, eyes locked on hers. “Rheia… this is it. You can still choose. You don’t have to give in.”
The traitor knelt on the ground, face pale, eyes wide with terror. Behind them, the rest of the group stood tensely, unsure whether to flee or intervene.
Rheia’s mind raced. Rage, power, betrayal—the Pulse offered solutions only one way: domination. Yet a faint echo of her humanity whispered: You are more than this. More than the Pulse.
The air around her thickened as the external threat—a second wave of attackers—descended on the city. They moved fast, ruthless, cutting through the ruins with precision.
Rheia’s hands flared with energy. In one motion, she could annihilate everyone in sight, save her group, and cement herself as a force none could challenge. Or she could hold back, restrain the Pulse, and face the danger as a human, with all the risk that entailed.
She inhaled sharply. Her pulse raced, a chaotic rhythm of anger and fear. The group waited, breaths held, tension slicing the air.
Then, with a force of will that surprised even herself, Rheia clenched her fists—not to destroy, but to contain. Threads of the Pulse writhed around her like snakes, and she forced them inward, compressing the violent energy, swallowing the dark temptation.
The traitor gasped, trembling. Sol’s hand found hers, grounding her. “You did it,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” Rheia whispered, though her voice was barely audible. “I… didn’t become it. Not yet.”
But the choice came at a cost. The Pulse’s backlash left her staggering, drained, and vulnerable. The attackers had closed in, and the group had to fight without her full strength.
Together, they fought. The bond, tested and strained by betrayal and corruption, held just enough. They survived, but the aftermath left scars deeper than blood: trust shattered, alliances altered, and the shadow of what Rheia could have been hanging over them all.
As the sun rose over the ruined city, the group regrouped. Sol looked at her, eyes heavy with unspoken questions. “You can’t do this alone,” he said.
Rheia shook her head, exhausted but resolute. “I know. But I can control it. And if I fail…” She let the sentence hang, a warning and a promise.
The world had changed. They had survived, but nothing would ever be the same. The Pulse still pulsed within her veins, waiting, patient, eternal. And Rheia knew the next choice—whether for good or for darkness—would come sooner than they all hoped.