The night city buzzed above ground, unaware that beneath its feet, fate was shifting in quiet increments.
Noel kept to the shadows as she emerged from the condemned tunnel, her coat wrapped tight against the damp air. The case with the fragments was secure at her side, but her thoughts weren't on the cold. They were already spinning forward—calculating, testing, preparing.
Two shards.
Two pieces of something ancient, broken, and waiting to be whole again.
But more than that—two awakenings. One tied to memory. The other to instinct and force.
And both had called to her.
Back in the safety of her apartment, she didn't rest. Couldn't. She placed the fragments side by side beneath a protective dome Jack had helped her prototype, shielding their resonance from passive scans. They pulsed together now, like twin heartbeats.
"Still no idea who sent the map?" she asked, fingers tapping her desk.
"No digital trace. No pattern to match. They knew you'd come."
"A test," she murmured.
Jack was quiet for a moment. Then: "Or an invitation."
She looked at the screen, then at the shards. "To what?"
Before he could answer, her tablet pinged—museum server alert. Someone had accessed an old audio file she'd flagged during her initial Spectra research. It had been dormant until now.
She opened it.
The recording crackled, degraded by time and poor storage. But a voice emerged. Male. Gravelly. Familiar.
> "If you're hearing this, you're closer than most. The Crestmont archive wasn't just storage. It was a filter. Only those who could see between the layers would get this far."
> "Spectra broke something. Long ago. And someone's trying to put it back together—wrong."
> "The shards… they don't just remember. They reshape."
The voice cut out with static.
Noel sat back, stunned.
Jack's voice was grim. "That was Calder."
Her breath hitched. "Your mentor?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Another breadcrumb. And another ghost from the past.
....
Noel spent the next few hours cross-referencing every mention of the Crestmont estate she could find in the museum's archived donations and Spectra's encrypted files. Jack helped when he could, nudging her to check older maps, older names.
Turns out, the Crestmont estate was once more than just a crumbling manor on the outskirts of the city—it was a known waypoint for "resonance experimentation" in the 1940s. Code-named Station M-3 in some of Spectra's redacted records, it was allegedly decommissioned.
But decommissioned didn't mean forgotten.
"The last Spectra file to mention it was nearly thirty years ago," Noel muttered, scrolling past degraded scan files. "You think the fragment came from there originally?"
"It's likely," Jack replied. "That place may have been one of the test grounds for prism stabilization. If it resurfaced now, someone wanted you to find it."
Noel stood, tossing her bag over her shoulder. "Then I'm going."
"Wait. Alone?"
"I've handled worse."
"No, you haven't," Jack deadpanned. "This is a memory-grounded site. If the prism tech there is unstable, it could mess with your perception. You'll need to anchor yourself constantly."
"I'll manage," she said. "I have you, don't I?"
He didn't answer, but she felt the pulse of his presence, steady and focused.
....
The drive out to the Crestmont estate took over an hour. The sky had turned the shade of ash by the time she arrived, and storm clouds churned slowly over the trees.
The estate was barely visible from the road—half-swallowed by ivy, shutters hanging like broken wings. The gate had long since rusted through. A carved stone plaque still remained on the fence:
CRESTMONT, 1871
Noel pushed past the gate and followed the overgrown path. Weeds clawed at her boots. The air had that stillness—like something holding its breath.
She reached the front door. The lock had already been broken.
Inside, dust greeted her like fog. Cobwebs laced every corner, and the floorboards groaned beneath her step. She moved carefully, her flashlight sweeping across old portraits, cracked mirrors, and time-worn furniture.
"Anything look familiar?" she whispered.
"No. But that doesn't mean we're safe."
The deeper she went, the more she felt it—that hum. It wasn't sound, not exactly. It was something beneath the walls, the air, the skin. A low resonance, like the fragments.
She found a hallway to the west wing, partially collapsed. A sigil was etched on the wall: twin crescents crossed over flame—the same as the wax seal from the crate.
"There," Jack said. "That mark… that's old. Real old. Could be pre-Spectra."
She reached out and pressed her hand to the stone.
The wall clicked.
A hidden door swung inward with a low hiss, revealing a staircase leading down.
"Of course it's underground," Noel muttered.
She descended slowly. The space below was cold, dry, and lined with stone. At the bottom: an antechamber. Lining the walls were old shelving units—lab tools, rusted memory cores, even a few cracked data cylinders.
In the center, a table. And on it—
A third crate. This one smaller, unmarked, but with the same velvet interior. Nestled inside: a cassette player. And a crystal cylinder.
She turned to the player and pressed play.
A man's voice filled the chamber—low, clear, and tired.
> "If you're hearing this, then the chain is active again. The resonance is rising. The prism is remembering."
Jack inhaled sharply. "Calder."
Noel froze. "This is him?"
"My mentor. My friend. He vanished before they came for me."
> "You can't let them rebuild it. Not fully. Not until the core intent is restored. They tried once—twisted it. Thought they could reshape the outcome. You saw how that ended."
> "If the next bearer finds this, know this: fragments are not just memory—they are echoes of will. You shape them. But they shape you too."
> "And someone… someone inside Spectra already started the rewrite."
....
The tape clicked off.
Silence returned.
Noel looked at the crystal.
"Is this…?"
Jack answered quietly. "That's a storage node. He must've encoded a living memory. It's not a fragment, but it could hold everything he knew."
She picked it up gently, sliding it into a containment sleeve.
"They lied," she whispered. "To you. To everyone."
Jack didn't reply.
But Noel had already made her choice. This wasn't just about power. Or mystery. This was about truth, clarity. About legacy and understanding what was coming.
And she was ready to follow it, no matter how deep it went.
She wasn't chasing ghosts.
She was chasing the reason Jack's voice was in her head.
And whatever had started this… was far from over.