Noa woke choking on the taste of wet stone.
Her apartment was dark, the windows rattling with a wind that hadn't been there when she left. When *had* she left? She couldn't remember. Her hands were raw, nails caked with dirt, her clothes damp with the stale musk of the underground.
On the desk, her notebook lay open.
The pages were filled—not with her careful transcriptions, but with jagged, frantic glyphs, some smeared in a dark fluid that wasn't ink. Noa touched a damp patch. It clung to her fingers, thick as oil.
*"You're almost ready."*
The voice wasn't in the room. It was *inside*, coiled behind her ribs, speaking with her own vocal cords.
Noa gagged.
The city had changed.
Noa walked the streets like a ghost, her vision fracturing at the edges. Neon signs flickered into glyphs before snapping back to letters. A passing stranger muttered into his phone—*"watch the cracks, watch the cracks"*—but when Noa turned, his lips were moving out of sync with the words.
She pressed her palms to her temples. The Whisper pulsed in response, a second heartbeat.
*"Look closer,"* it murmured.
Noa looked.
The sidewalk beneath her feet was splitting—not with age, but with *intent*. Fine black lines spiderwebbed through the concrete, forming symbols she hadn't taught it. The city wasn't crumbling.
It was *rewriting itself*.
Malvek found her in an alley, crouched over a puddle, staring at her reflection.
"Noa." His voice was tight. "You missed check-in. Again."
Her reflection smiled. She didn't.
Noa stood slowly. "I've been busy."
Malvek's gaze dropped to her hands. The dark fluid had dried in streaks across her skin. "What the hell is that?"
"Translation." The word came out wrong, syllables twisting mid-breath. Noa felt the Whisper curl around her larynx, reshaping the sounds.
Malvek stepped back. "Your nose—"
A warm trickle slid over Noa's lip. She wiped it away. Her fingers came away black.
Selka's voice crackled from the flash drive, tinny with distortion.
*"It's not a language, Noa. It's a scaffold. A structure that builds itself inside you."* Static swallowed half the words. *"The more you learn it, the more it replaces you. Not your mind—your* self. *The part that decides what's real."*
Noa's reflection in the monitor mouthed along.
*"It doesn't need a speaker,"* Selka whispered. *"It needs a mouth."*
The recording ended.
The screen went black—then lit again, filled with glyphs Noa had never typed.
*LET ME OUT.*
The phrase came to her fully formed, whispering itself into her muscles before her mind could protest.
Noa spoke it aloud.
The air *shivered*.
The lights in her apartment blew out in a cascade of sparks. Somewhere deep below the city, something vast and dormant shifted in its sleep. The walls groaned, plaster cracking to reveal glyphs beneath—not carved, but *grown*, like veins.
Noa pressed her hands to the pulsating symbols.
The Whisper sighed through her.
*"Finally,"* it said. *"You're listening."*