The basilica was not supposed to be alive anymore. Half its roof had caved in years ago, the pews had been stripped for firewood, and pigeons roosted in the rafters where saints once gazed down from stained glass. The air still smelled faintly of burned flesh-remnants from the last purge when the Council's militias had dragged out bodies by the dozen and left them smoking on the steps. And yet tonight, the place was full again. Survivors crowded the nave, their bodies pressed together, wrapped in patched coats and scavenged blankets. Their eyes were hollow, their ribs visible through fabric, but something fierce glowed in their throats.
They were singing but in parables the way non could understand
The sound was uneven at first, ragged with exhaustion, but it grew into something frightening. Not a chant, not a slogan, not a hymn to any sanctioned god. The words were jagged and old, syllables torn from a language that most of them could not possibly understand. Selis sat at the back, her knees pressed against the broken wood of a pew, and felt the hair on her arms lift as the voices swelled. German. She didn't know the meaning, but she knew the weight of it. She had read scraps of outlawed histories, half-remembered fragments of the songs that had been sung when cities burned and nations tore themselves apart. It was not a song of faith. It was a song of endings.
The voices shook the bones of the basilica. Children mouthed the words without comprehension, repeating them after their parents. An old man's voice cracked, and he buried his face in his hands as he sang. A woman rocked her baby to the rhythm, as if feeding the hymn into the infant before milk. Mara stood near the altar, stiff, her lips pressed together. She wasn't singing. She was listening, eyes wide, as if she had seen something walk into the room that no one else had yet noticed.
Selis tasted metal at the back of her throat. The sound wasn't just sound anymore. It was rhythm, precision. Breath aligned. Pauses landed in fractions too perfect to be coincidence. The congregation moved like one lung, inhaling and exhaling on the same count. She gripped the edge of the pew until her fingers hurt. This wasn't just desperation spilling out in song. This was sync. Something was pulling them into time with one another, something not born of human rehearsals.
And then the air shifted.
She felt it before she turned. The basilica seemed to bow around the new weight, not of footsteps but of silence. She looked toward the ruined doorway and saw him.
Ashar Vale.
He walked in without guards, without any mark of rank, his coat plain, his boots worn. His face was pale and carved with lines that hadn't been there before, but there was no weakness in him. He didn't need power on his sleeve. It walked with him. The crowd felt it too. The hymn faltered for a breath, then surged louder as if to drown him. But it was too late. He had already bent the room. Selis felt her pulse slow, her skin prickle. Her body knew him before her mind caught up.
She rose from the pew without meaning to. She walked down the center aisle toward him, past eyes that followed but did not stop her. He didn't move. He didn't smile. He didn't even blink much. He just watched her come, and the silence around him was so complete that she wanted to scream, to fill it, to make it break. But she stopped five feet away, and her voice betrayed her. A rasp, cracked at the edges: "It's you."
It wasn't revelation. It was recognition. The words hung between them like a confession.
Ashar didn't answer. His silence was sharper than any denial, heavier than admission. And in it, Selis understood that he wasn't fighting what was happening in the basilica. He wasn't afraid of it. He had been waiting for it.
The hymn ended like a door slammed shut. The sudden stillness was worse than the sound. No coughs, no shuffling. The silence was thick enough to choke on. Selis's chest tightened. Then the world itself seemed to exhale. The lights died—candles, bulbs, even the faint glow of phosphor strips. All gone at once. People gasped. Someone screamed. Then came the hum.
It rose through the floorboards, through the stone, through their bodies. The air turned sharp, metallic, like blood on the tongue. Selis's knees trembled. The basilica walls vibrated, dust falling from beams. Machines somewhere in the city clicked awake. Screens that had been dead for years flickered with static. Old drones stirred in scrapyards, their eyes glowing faint red. The hymn had been a key, and the congregation had turned it.
The Grid was breathing.
Selis clutched the pew for balance. She spun toward the crowd-faces white, mouths open. Some fell to their knees. Others raised their arms upward, sobbing. Children covered their ears, wailing. Mara backed against the altar, her lips moving, whispering something frantic she couldn't hear. And still Ashar stood as if nothing had changed, as if the rising hum was a sound only meant for him. She staggered back toward him. "Did you know?" she whispered, the words breaking out of her like a wound. His eyes didn't flicker. He didn't nod. He didn't shake his head. His silence was answer enough.
The basilica shuddered like a heart beating once, deep, massive. Plaster rained down. The crowd broke. Panic tore the room apart. Bodies surged toward the doors, screaming, clawing, tripping over one another. Selis stayed frozen in place, staring at him. For one terrifying second she thought he might dissolve into the rising hum, become part of the machine, vanish into it like a man stepping off the earth. But he remained solid. Human. Terrifyingly human. He turned at last, slowly, and walked out into the night. No words. Not a single one.
Selis's throat burned as she whispered after him though no one could hear over the stampede, "You're still choosing this."
Outside, Ashar walked as if the city belonged to him. Screens glowed in the darkness. Terminals flickered alive, spewing broken text. Drones rose unsteadily into the air, scanning for signals. The world was moving. Not by his command. By his silence. He did not look back once. He didn't need to.
Hours later, Selis stumbled into the street. Smoke clung to her hair. Her throat was raw. Behind her, the basilica was half-collapsed from the press of bodies, its roof spitting embers into the night. The city around her was no longer quiet ruin. It was alive, shuddering with the strange new noise of machines waking where no one had asked them to. And in that noise, she felt two presences. The Grid, newly stirred, searching with fresh eyes. And Ashar, already awake, walking ahead of it, patient as stone.
For the first time, Selis wondered which was worse-the machine that did not know what it wanted, or the man who had always known too well.