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Chapter 7 - To see the unseen

In a prison where mold spores rained down from the ceiling, two prisoners of revolt were placed in opposite corners—there was only one who was dragged to the center and tied to a cold metal chair.

His bruised body was spent, with undeniable signs of having been beaten, but his eyes still refused to fade away.

Naiv, from the shady background, spoke softly:

"Make this be the start. I do not need all of it… but the spark that ignites what remains."

Zoreem moved forward, carrying nothing but a small metal scalpel with rusty edges. Kneeling before the prisoner, he placed his hand upon the man's arm in a fatherly fashion and said gently:

"Pain does not convince you… pain peels away deception."

He activated his special resonance.

The knife entered the skin slowly—a barely bleeding cut, but the hurt was like a metallic insect gnawing bone. The prisoner's backbone braced, his head shook—but he did not cry out.

Zoreem smiled and thrust the knife into his shoulder at an angle, pressing with slow lethality. Nerves flared. Pulsars became embers. The pain was not so much pain—it was betrayal in his own body.

Zoreem whispered:

"Do you feel it? It isn't my hand betraying you… it's your own."

The prisoner screamed, from wells he didn't know he had.

Zoreem extracted a fine needle, lifted the trembling eyelid with his fingertips, and said:

"Do you know that resonance can make this… a dart in your eye? We won't pierce it… only touch it."

He touched only the surface, but the eyelid spasmed as if had been hit by electric current. The prisoner gasped, screamed, then screamed again.

"They. six only! The others fifteen! But. the key ones are six. the rest are frills!"

Zoreem nodded and wiped sweat off his brow quietly, as if he was undergoing a ritual. He turned to Naiv and addressed him softly:

"Well done."

And then he turned once more to the prisoner, thrust the scalpel under the lower side between nerve and skin, slowly, going right… left. The vibration made each pulse bounce like a stab in the heart.

The prisoner wheezed and stuttered with trembling lips:

"The gathering was in the sewers east, near the drainage canal… but they'll move it, naturally.We dread leaks. I don't know anything more, we know only a little!"

Zoreem removed the scalpel and rose. He showed no tiredness, only cold.

Naiv, recording the facts, wrote:

"Six chiefs. fifteen cells. and a location soon to relocate. That's enough to singe their root."

The captive was pulled off, bleeding, his face pale. He wasn't murdered… but no assurance of living existed.

Elsa addressed Naiv:

"Zoreem's power… its actual damage seems insignificant, but the man spoke after minutes. He's always looked mysterious. terrible in an indescribable way."

Naiv did not look at her while he was talking:

"It's not the pain that matters… but how it's shaped."

Elsa continued:

Zoreem's resonance is not bodily torture but a whole sensory experience—transforming the lightest touch into earthquakes of agony. His resonance does not cause pain—it magnifies it. A minor scratch can feel like his chest is tearing apart; the flutter of an eyelid can become internal nerve rending.

Not just that: Zoreem's resonance even extends to "pain archiving," in which he brings back old hurts and relays them in the victim's body as if fresh-damaged. A long-fractured bone or an abandonment moment when he cried—comes back full force, as if the wound never healed.

A touch or a look…and then the "sensory poem" begins, in which pain is written on the victim's bones as effectively as on paper.

Evenings the map lay covered on the wall, red threads between tidily numbered points. Naiv stood before it not batting an eye, muttering to himself.

Mir entered holding a thin folder in her hand:

"We confirmed the position of sewers east. No sign of anyone there, but new prints. and a piece of cloth with a symbolic sigil—three dots over a line."

Naiv took up the cloth, drawing in a deep breath as if it retained the smell of secret fire, before saying:

"This symbol. is greater than a message. Not just for the resistance, but for us."

Zoreem said:

"Logical. They knew someone would crack. What we have is no shock to them."

After a moment of silence, Naiv went on:

"They're watching our reactions… just as we watch their footprints."

He then fiddled with the map and revealed a glass board at the back with a list of suspect names, activities, and hasty faces.

"This… is not enough." he stated.

Then he spoke to Mir:

"We have to violate one of our own laws: reveal our presence briefly to cooperating civilians. Use them as bait and give the observer a chance to close the distance."

Elsa protested:

"We're spinning fear itself. now we'll plant doubt that we're vulnerable?"

Naiv retorted coldly:

"Fear is not enough unless people believe that they are seeing it. They ought to sense a ghost controlling them… and I don't want ghosts—I want an open system."

That night, new rumors circulated in the Eastern district:

"One guard was broken in the cell… seen screaming: I saw them… but they didn't see me."

Occupational talisman symbols were drawn at the market entrance, and an established collaborator disappeared under suspicious conditions.

While that was happening, the observer was perfecting his plan.

In a dingy place in the city basement, the observer's team huddled in a dim lamp.

One said:

"They found out our old place."

The observer replied icily:

"Expected. We don't lose by retreat… but by repetition."

He then unfolded a hand-tinted map with symbols that only the privileged few could comprehend.

"The new plan is simple. We leave a decoy path that would lead them to the old slaughterhouse… while we withdraw the rest through the southern canal."

Someone asked:

"And if they discover the trap?"

The observer replied:

"They'll know it only when too late."

Meanwhile, Naiv had set his own plan in action.

He picked three collaborating civilians, making them look like part of the resistance—making them go through more easily and taking them through targeted neighborhoods. One of them had a pouch with an encoded note.

What no one was aware… was that the note was carrying Naiv's particular resonance, i.e., it was being tracked.

That night, when the woman in disguise went by a secret meeting place, resonance signals flashed on the surveillance room.

"There is someone… behind the north wall."

A search party was dispatched.

But when they broke into the establishment… they found an empty room, and written on the wall in sloppy script:

"You followed us, true… but you did not understand why our faces cannot be seen. We are not fleeing… we choose the final scene."

Beside the wall was a small cage with a live rat wearing a minute cloth mask.

Mir whispered:

"They're ridiculing us."

Naiv did not smile. He merely said:

"Time is running short for them… when they start mocking, they're afraid."

In the basement, crossed eyes.

Elsa asked Zoreem:

"Do you think we're surrounding them?"

He answered in a calm manner:

"We're dancing with them… the only question is: who stops first?"

Naiv looked up at the map and began to delete the sewer point.

He then whispered:

"Next… will be deeper."

In a run-down, cramped room across from it, a single candle threw a faint light on the observer's face. A small pen rested in his right hand, which tapped it against the table in rhythmic beat.

Around him sat his inner circle of the six who spoke only to each other in commands. Quiet reigned; no one spoke in his presence, no one questioned the unspoken.

Someone spoke:

"They've started eating doubts. The rest of the public falls under either hysteria… or blind devotion."

The watcher remained silent for the moment. Then his voice appeared—whether low or whispered, he couldn't tell:

"Panic is not our enemy… it is the tool we use slowly."

He stood and went to a little wooden box, taking out a gray cloth and a shattered pendant. He looked at them for a very long time, then said:

"I thought that this war would be a silent one. Now… I must shift the tune."

Someone approached and asked:

"Will you shift the location?"

The witness consented:

"No—I'll change the rhythm."

That night, new graffiti were discovered on walls—written in blood, with scribbles like a child's disease, which states:

"Silence is not peace… it is anger in disguise."

"If you can't find the killer, maybe you are."

"They fell… because they believed the system protects them."

Nearby, cryptic messages were slipped into sacks of flour stamped with black wax and knotted words:

"If someone screams in the middle of the city… who will hear?"

"Watch out for your shadow… it may belong to someone else."

And then the observer returned to his unit and wrote on a tiny piece of paper:

"You have to watch out not to go down the path that will kill you."

He rolled it up and got someone to insert it in the jacket of one of Naiv's men.

That morning, while that man was putting on his shirt… the paper fell out—and silence fell.

In the basement, a resistance member asked:

"Are we losing?"

The observer, slowly closing his notebook, replied:

"The real loss… would be them realizing all we've accomplished and still we remain. So long as they wonder… we live."

He looked at the melting wick, the candle, and said:

"Brand our old homes… and trace our faces onto all the shattered mirrors."

Night fell, and nothing but wind was heard.

But the observer… did not rest.

Because he knew:

"In a war governed by uncertainties… he controls the next opportunity."

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