The city woke bleeding light.
From the cliffs above Caelun's drowned quarter, Kai watched the quarantine sirens fade into the morning fog. The river had turned silver-gray, reflecting the broken moons like shards of a mirror. Smoke drifted through the skeletons of towers; each plume caught a trace of luminescence, the residue of what had happened below.
His hands still trembled. The fragment rested in a cracked canister beside him, dim now, but warm. It pulsed every few breaths—slow, steady, as if syncing with his heart.
He hadn't slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw those impossible constellations burning across the tunnel walls and heard that whisper again.
The Archive remembers you.
He tried to convince himself it was trauma—the brain playing tricks after the blast—but the warmth at his hip denied it. The thing was alive. Watching. Waiting.
The first patrol drones swept over the ruins before dawn. Their searchlights slid across the rooftops like cold fingers. Kai ducked beneath a rusted bridge girder, pressed his back to the steel, and held his breath until the hum passed.
If the Guild found the fragment, he'd vanish into one of their sealed labs. Nobody ever came back from those.
The fragment's light blinked once, faintly. Kai hissed under his breath. "Don't. Not now."
It dimmed, almost apologetic.
He swallowed hard and glanced toward the horizon. Beyond the smog, faint gold spears of sunlight pierced through the ash clouds—the first dawn he'd seen in weeks. The light didn't feel warm; it felt like judgment.
When the sirens stopped completely, Kai climbed down the maintenance ladder into the old freight corridor. The walls sweated condensation; algae grew in lines where pipes leaked. Far below, he could hear the heartbeat of the city—machinery groaning beneath the weight of survival.
He reached his hideout: a maintenance shack buried in the underlevels, stacked with scavenged gear, oxygen flasks, and maps of the flooded districts. It smelled of metal and burnt ozone.
He sealed the door, drew the canister from his bag, and placed it on the table.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then the fragment sighed.
The air around it shimmered like heat on glass. Symbols—tiny, spiraling constellations—appeared in the dust around it, burning for an instant before fading. Kai stepped back.
"Don't do that," he muttered. "Please don't do that again."
The fragment pulsed brighter. A sound followed—not words, but tones, layered like chords remembered from a dream.
His vision flickered.
He was standing in a vast chamber of glass and iron, thousands of luminous orbs suspended above him like frozen lightning. Voices chanted in reverse, echoing from nowhere.
A single word broke through the static—Kai.
He gasped, stumbled backward, and the vision shattered.
When the world steadied, he was on the floor, sweat-soaked, lungs aching. The canister lay open.
The fragment hovered an inch above the table, spinning slowly.
It cast no shadow.
Kai stared, unable to look away.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
The reply came—not as sound, but as sensation. A memory that wasn't his. Stars being torn from the heavens. Screams. Then silence.
The fragment dimmed again, as if exhausted.
Kai pressed his palms to his eyes. "I should've sold you. I should've walked away."
But he couldn't. He knew, deep in his bones, that if he handed it to the Guild, something far worse would happen. Whatever the Archive was, it wasn't meant to be caged.
He looked up. Through the cracked window, the ashlight of morning had turned the sky a dull bronze. The city's towers glowed like dying embers. Somewhere out there, patrols were already sweeping for survivors. Somewhere out there, the world had just changed—and only he knew it.
Kai reached for the fragment. It pulsed once, faintly.
Warm. Alive.
And in that brief contact, he felt something stir in his chest—like the first note of a song he hadn't yet learned.
The first knock wasn't a knock at all.
It was a vibration—deep, rhythmic, metallic.
Kai froze.
Someone—or something—was in the tunnels.
He slipped the fragment back into its casing and killed the shack's emergency light. The hum of the city faded until only the sound of dripping water and the low growl of machinery filled the dark.
Then came the second sound: boots on steel, deliberate, echoing.
Guild boots.
His heart hammered. The Guild moved like that—measured, unhurried, because they didn't need to hurry. When they came, it was to collect.
He grabbed his satchel, clipped the canister to his belt, and moved for the vent shaft behind the water tanks. It was narrow, sharp-edged, and steep, but it led to the underpipes—his only exit.
As he crawled in, the shack door hissed open.
A voice followed, calm and echoing through a respirator:
"You're not authorized to be here, Diver. Identify yourself."
Kai didn't look back. He climbed faster, scraping his palms bloody on the rust. The air grew hot and heavy with the scent of ozone.
A sudden pulse flared from his hip—brilliant, golden. The fragment, panicking.
Light filled the shaft. The Guildman shouted something, but Kai couldn't hear it; the sound warped, stretched, and shattered like a broken transmission. For a heartbeat, time itself bent.
He fell through it.
When the world returned, Kai was lying in a drainage tunnel lit by the dull red glow of emergency lamps.
His breath came in ragged bursts. The fragment hovered inches above him, humming softly—gentle again, as though apologizing.
"What did you—" he started, then stopped.
The tunnel walls had changed.
They weren't stone anymore. They were… glass? No, not glass—something translucent, shifting. Through it, he saw vague shapes moving, like shadows swimming through a vast ocean of light.
He blinked, and the vision vanished.
Only rusted iron walls remained.
Kai got to his feet, dizzy but alive. "Okay," he murmured, "that's twice you've done something impossible. Once more and I'm—"
He stopped when he noticed the markings.
Someone had drawn symbols along the pipe edges—chalk lines, spirals, constellations. Each one glowed faintly under the emergency lights. They looked familiar, but he couldn't remember where he'd seen them before.
Then it hit him. The same patterns that had burned on the walls when he first touched the fragment.
He reached out and brushed one with his fingertips.
It pulsed.
Suddenly, every marking along the corridor lit up in sequence, like veins igniting.
A low voice whispered behind him.
"You shouldn't have touched that."
Kai spun around.
A woman stood at the far end of the tunnel—tall, wrapped in a tattered cloak lined with copper threads. Her eyes glowed faintly blue beneath her hood.
She wasn't Guild. Too quiet. Too composed.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
She tilted her head. "Someone who remembers what stars used to sound like."
Her gaze flicked to the fragment at his belt. "And you're carrying something that doesn't belong to you."
"It saved me," Kai shot back.
"It chose you," she corrected softly. "That's worse."
Before he could respond, the ceiling above them groaned. A shockwave rolled through the tunnel, throwing sparks and dust.
The woman's eyes widened. "They're tracing it already. Move."
"Who?"
"Everyone."
She turned, sprinting down the corridor, and against every rational thought, Kai followed. The air grew colder as they ran, and somewhere behind them, metallic wings beat in the dark—the Guild's seeker drones.
The woman raised a hand. A circle of sigils burned in the air—spinning constellations. The tunnel around them folded, warped—and suddenly, they weren't underground anymore.
They were standing on a catwalk suspended above a cavern filled with light.
Below, hundreds of fragments floated, chained in place—stars turned into engines. Each one pulsed with a faint rhythm, and together, they hummed a single, sorrowful note that made Kai's skin crawl.
He stared in awe. "What is this place?"
The woman's voice dropped to a whisper. "The Guild calls it the Crucible. But the stars… they call it a grave."
Kai looked down at his fragment. It trembled in its casing—softly, like mourning.
And somewhere above the glow, the city continued to burn.