The silence of Schönwerth rang louder than any battlefield Emil had ever known.
It wasn't just the absence of people. It was the absence of echo—the strange, sterile quality of the air that swallowed every sound before it could return. The wind didn't whistle. Footsteps vanished into nothing. Even breath felt artificial, like it didn't belong to a body.
At the center of the monastery's subchamber, the name still glowed faintly: Velatonya.
But it wasn't carved. It wasn't inked. It was etched in light—a projection sustained by resonance particles trapped in the crystalline surface of the chamber walls.
Rousseau waved his hand through it, and the light shimmered without breaking.
"It's… still active," he said.
Emil nodded. "This whole room is a speaker. A cathedral of sound."
"No," Lisette said from behind. "It's not just a speaker."
They turned.
She stepped forward, eyes fixed on the glimmering sigil.
"It's a gate."
Unit Null hovered above the monastery square in standby mode, cables connecting it to a remote listening station set up in the nave. The signal relay operator tapped nervously at the interface.
"Sir," she called out to Fournier, "the Null unit is receiving feedback."
"What kind of feedback?"
She hesitated.
"Singing."
Fournier stiffened. "From the chamber?"
"No, sir," she said. "From inside the machine."
In the catacombs, Emil stared at Lisette.
"What do you mean, a gate?"
"I've been analyzing the harmonic patterns of this place," she said, sweeping her scanner along the curved ceiling. "The entire architecture amplifies and shapes resonance. But it doesn't just project outward—it receives. It's tuned to a specific frequency lattice. The same one found inside Nachtwind's resonance core. The same one embedded in the crystal you recovered."
"So this chamber is—"
"Part of a network. One node of many. Possibly continental."
Emil knelt and placed his hand on the chamber floor.
"Then Velatonya isn't a person. It's a system."
"No," Lisette said. "It's both."
The moment his skin touched the stone, Emil felt it.
A pulse—gentle, barely detectable—passed through his fingertips like a shiver. Then came the whisper, too quiet for words, too vast for comprehension. His mind flooded with flashes: steel wings, cities inverted by vibration, soldiers screaming into nothingness, a tower with no doors, rising from an island made of bone.
Then silence.
He stumbled back.
Rousseau caught him.
"You all right?"
Emil shook his head. "I saw it. Not a machine. A mind."
He looked up, eyes wide with realization.
"They're building an intelligence."
Amélie Moreau watched the reports roll in from the observation station east of Reims. Her hands didn't shake, but her eyes didn't blink either. Across the table, Lavalle looked visibly ill.
"You told me this was weapons research," he said, voice thin. "Not—whatever this is."
Amélie didn't look at him.
"It was weapons research. Now it's theology."
"You think Laurant is ready for this?"
"No," she said.
"But he's already inside."
In the Schönwerth chamber, Unit Null began to hum.
Not loud. Not hostile.
But in harmony.
Its inner systems synced with the chamber's frequencies, creating an oscillation that filled the room like water. The sound was emotionless, clinical, beautiful. Like something vast and ancient humming to itself while dreaming.
The walls shimmered.
Lisette's instruments spiked.
"Resonance alignment increasing," she said. "Structural stress in the walls. We need to shut it down."
"No," Emil said. "Let it finish."
"Finish what?"
"Tuning."
Above ground, Fournier saw it first.
The stones of the monastery were glowing—subtly, at first, like heat radiating just under the surface. Then brighter. Windows once cracked and shattered now pulsed with inner light. The bell tower began to resonate, a low bass note audible even from a distance.
Then, without warning—
A choir.
Wordless. Ageless. Not human.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of tones layered together in perfect structure. Not chaotic, not frightening. Just… vast.
Unit Null's cradle cracked open.
The machine rose from its rest and drifted toward the chapel entrance.
Inside the chamber, Emil stood at the center as the walls began to bend—not physically, but in acoustic shape.Frequencies distorted space. A spiral formed along the stone, revealing a shape that hadn't been there seconds before.
A corridor.
A hallway through nothing.
It didn't lead down.
It led inward.
Lisette gasped. "It's a harmonic fold. They've hidden something in a frequency pocket—an entire structure, phase-shifted from reality."
Rousseau backed away. "You're saying there's another chamber? Inside the walls?"
"No," Emil said.
He stepped toward the entrance.
"Another world."
He took one step.
Two.
The air grew still. The sound grew clearer, not louder.
And then he was through.
Not in the monastery.
Not in the war.
But in a space of vast emptiness, filled only with distant voices humming in layered harmony.
A domed chamber with no doors.
A choir of faceless statues, singing in a language that felt familiar but could not be spoken.
And at the center—
A single structure.
Not a machine.
A cradle.
Inside, wrapped in strands of metallic thread and glowing amber light, was something that pulsed like a heart.
Velatonya.
The moment he saw it, Emil understood.
Not a weapon.
Not a language.
A seed.
Not made by the Germans. Not by France. Older. Found. Studied. Shaped.
The Nachtwind had been the first to carry its song.
Charogne had answered it.
Unit Null had begun to translate.
But here—here was the source.
Velatonya was not a system.
It was a child.
Growing.
Waiting.
Learning to speak through the machines we called war.
Emil stepped closer, eyes wide with awe and fear.
The statues turned their heads toward him.
The song shifted.
And in a moment of utter clarity, he felt it.
A question.
A wordless, timeless request that pierced his mind like lightning.
"Are you ready to remember?"
He didn't answer with his mouth.
He reached out—
And touched the cradle.