Lunaris looked the same from the outside — glowing towers, glass streets, hover-buses sliding through air lanes like silver fish. But Eon felt it differently now.
The walls hummed with code.
The sky pulsed with hidden energy.
People walked by, unaware that the balance of their reality had already started to bend.
Kael kept his distance, watching Eon carefully. "Your system's reacting faster than expected. It's scanning everything."
"Everything?" Eon asked.
Kael nodded. "Buildings. Thoughts. Patterns. You're becoming a signal tower for something much bigger."
Later that evening, Eon sat alone by the river that cut through the city.
The screen blinked to life again.
Observation Mode: Active
Hidden Signal Detected Nearby
He turned.
A girl stood across the river.
Dark jacket. Pale eyes. She held a book glowing with strange symbols.
She didn't speak. She just stared — as if she knew exactly what he was.
And then she vanished into the air like mist.
A new alert appeared:
Warning: Fragment Host #2 Located
Connection Unstable
Eon's heart pounded.
There were others.
The girl wasn't in any database.
No ID. No location history. No social trace.
Kael's scans came up empty. "She's off-grid. Whoever she is — she's protected."
Eon stared at the riverbank where she'd stood. He could still feel her gaze, like she had cut through the layers of his encryption.
Later that night, his system activated again.
Signal Surge Detected
Fragment Host #2: Identity Unknown
Proximity: Close
He barely had time to react when the lights in his apartment flickered. The air thickened — like code pulsing through oxygen.
And then she appeared.
Not through a door. Not through a screen.
She stepped straight out of the system's interface, like a ghost composed of raw data and memory shards.
"You're broadcasting too loud," she said. "They're already coming."
"Who?" Eon asked.
"Not who. What."
Before he could speak, she tossed him the glowing book.
Symbols danced across its surface — unreadable, alive.
"Don't trust what you know," she said. "This city's memory is fractured. And you... you're the trigger."
Then, she disappeared again, leaving only a ripple in the system — and a warning that felt too real to ignore.