The city does not forget what notices it.
We move through the administrative tier in measured silence, boots echoing softly against polished metal floors. Glass walls frame the skyline of Virelis, steam drifting between towers like slow-moving clouds caught in gears.
Everything looks the same.
That's how I know it isn't.
The deck stays close, heavier than it was before, but calm. Not dormant—settled. The cards inside it feel aligned in a way that makes my chest ache faintly, as if my breathing has synced with a rhythm I didn't choose.
"That presence," the observer says at last, breaking the silence. "Command is calling it an anomaly cascade trigger."
I almost laugh. Almost.
"They can call it whatever helps them file it," I reply. "It won't change what it was."
"And what was it?" the woman asks.
I stop walking.
They both turn to look at me, the city's distant hum filling the pause.
"A god noticed a ghost," I say. "And noticed me noticing it."
Neither of them speaks for a moment.
"That shouldn't happen," the observer finally says.
"No," I agree. "It shouldn't."
But it did.
We continue down a narrower corridor lined with sealed observation rooms. Inside some of them, analysts work in silence, eyes fixed on scrolling projections. Others are empty, lights dimmed, as if abandoned mid-purpose.
The city is reallocating attention.
I feel it again—a subtle tug, not strong enough to be a pull, but insistent enough to register. It isn't a record forming. It isn't a ghost manifesting.
It's… echo.
"Do you hear that?" the woman asks suddenly.
I nod.
It isn't sound—not really. It's a repetition in the hum beneath the city, a faint delay between action and response that wasn't there before. Like the city checking itself twice before moving on.
"They're hesitating," she says.
"Yes," I reply. "Because they're being watched."
By me.
By something else.
We reach a junction overlooking a lower archive level, shelves of sealed cylinders stacked floor to ceiling behind reinforced glass. Each contains compressed records—events deemed too volatile or incomplete to circulate freely.
The deck vibrates faintly as I pass.
One of the cylinders pulses once.
Then stops.
The woman stiffens. "That wasn't active a moment ago."
"It still isn't," I say. "But it remembers being seen."
I rest my hand lightly against the glass. The pressure behind my eyes sharpens just enough to sting. Inside the cylinder, a shape flickers—indistinct, fragmented, bound by containment protocols layered thick enough to suffocate most things.
Most.
"This isn't a ghost," the observer says.
"No," I agree. "It's an echo of divine observation."
The words feel wrong in my mouth, but they're accurate. When gods notice something unfinished, they don't fix it. They mark it. And marks linger.
The cylinder stills completely, systems reinforcing its seals.
"Command will want this locked down," the observer says.
"They already are," I reply. "They just don't know why."
We move on.
The tug grows stronger the farther we go, threading through my awareness like a distant bell struck once and allowed to ring on its own. I don't chase it.
Chasing invites escalation.
Instead, I let it resonate, mapping its frequency against the weight of my accumulated records. The deck responds subtly, one card shifting deeper than the rest.
"This one's not local," I murmur.
The observer's head snaps toward me. "Define local."
"It's not bound to Virelis," I say. "It's bound to concept."
The corridor opens into a wider chamber, its ceiling lost in shadow. At the center stands a circular dais etched with ancient sigils older than the Crown's current framework—symbols for passage, memory, and return.
I recognize them instantly.
Veil-adjacent.
The air here feels thinner, colder, as if the city's authority weakens slightly in this space. The deck hums in response, not louder, but clearer.
The tug resolves.
At the edge of the dais, a shape flickers into being—not fully formed, not hostile. A translucent figure kneels there, head bowed, hands clasped together in a posture that might once have been prayer.
A ghost.
But different.
It doesn't radiate hunger or fixation. It radiates waiting.
The woman's breath catches. "It's… stable."
"Yes," I say. "Because it's not unfinished."
The figure lifts its head slowly.
I see no face—only an impression of one, blurred by time and belief. The pressure behind my eyes intensifies, but there's no pain in it. Just gravity.
This ghost isn't clinging to the past.
It's waiting for acknowledgment from something that never answered.
"Elias," the observer whispers. "This one feels—"
"Sacred," I finish.
The word settles heavily between us.
The deck shifts. No card emerges. No text appears.
This isn't a record to be completed.
It's a message.
The ghost turns toward me, its presence steady and calm. I feel a faint brush against my accumulated records—not searching, not attaching—measuring.
Then it speaks.
Not aloud.
Directly.
The gods are listening again.
The chamber's lights dim slightly, responding to nothing the city can log.
I swallow.
"How many?" I ask, unsure whether I'm speaking to the ghost or the echo it carries.
Enough, it replies.
The presence withdraws, the figure fading back into stillness as if it had never moved. The tug vanishes with it, leaving behind a silence that feels charged rather than empty.
The observer exhales shakily. "That wasn't hostile."
"No," I say.
"It wasn't unfinished," the woman adds.
I nod slowly.
"It was a warning."
The deck settles at my side, heavier than ever, but steady.
This isn't about ghosts haunting the city anymore.
It's about gods remembering that something new has learned how to witness back.
And they are deciding what that means.
The chamber doesn't release us immediately.
Not physically—nothing blocks the exits—but something about the air resists motion, as if leaving too quickly would be interpreted as disrespect. The dais remains inert, its ancient sigils dull and unresponsive, yet the space feels… attended.
The city's hum thins here.
"This place predates the Crown's current frameworks," the observer says quietly. "Early Veil research. Most of it was sealed after the first failures."
"Failures at what?" the woman asks.
"Listening," I reply.
They both look at me.
"When gods speak," I continue, "it's rarely in words. It's in allowance. In silence that expects interpretation."
The deck shifts slightly, acknowledging the thought without commentary. No card moves. No system text appears.
That worries me more than if it had.
We step away from the dais together, careful not to turn our backs on it too abruptly. The moment we cross the chamber's threshold, the pressure eases—not gone, but relocated, like a gaze withdrawing just far enough to remain polite.
The city resumes.
Lights brighten. Air circulation normalizes. Somewhere above us, a transit line chimes as it departs on schedule.
Normality reasserts itself with practiced efficiency.
"That ghost," the woman says as we walk. "It wasn't anchored to a death."
"No," I say. "It was anchored to devotion."
The word tastes strange.
The observer's expression tightens. "So we're adding religious phenomena to the anomaly stack now?"
"Not religion," I correct. "Authority."
We pass through another checkpoint. The scanners hesitate, then pass us through with minimal resistance. The city doesn't want friction right now.
It wants compliance.
"That presence earlier," the observer says, lowering their voice. "The one that noticed the first ghost."
"Yes."
"And this one?"
I shake my head slowly. "Different."
"How?"
"The first was conceptual, bound to conclusion," I say. "This one is… responsive. It remembers attention given and withheld."
The woman grimaces. "So we've got gods with opinions."
"No," I reply. "Gods with memory."
That's worse.
We reach an overlook where the city opens beneath us in layered complexity. Steam rises in soft plumes between districts, catching the light in amber and gold. From here, Virelis looks almost serene.
It isn't.
I can feel it now—faint ripples moving through the unseen layers, not failures, not records forming, but reactions. Ghosts that would have lingered are thinning. Others are stabilizing into quieter states. A few… are changing.
"You shifted the ecology," the observer says, following my gaze.
"Yes."
"And the gods noticed."
"Yes."
They lean against the railing, exhaling slowly. "Then this is no longer a city-level issue."
"No," I agree. "It's a hierarchy issue."
The deck hums once, low and heavy.
"Command will want constraints," the woman says. "Boundaries. Limits on interaction."
"They always do," I reply. "It won't help."
"Why not?"
"Because attention isn't a resource you can embargo," I say. "Once something learns it can be seen, it will keep reaching."
The woman falls silent.
Below us, a bell tolls—low and resonant—marking a shift change in one of the industrial wards. The sound carries farther than it should, echoing faintly through layers that normally absorb it.
I feel the echo pass through me.
Not painful.
Recognizing.
The observer straightens. "You felt that."
"Yes."
"Another ghost?"
"No," I say. "A response."
"To what?" the woman asks.
I hesitate, then answer honestly. "To the idea that Witnesses aren't passive anymore."
The deck's weight settles deeper into my chest, a reminder that accumulation has consequences. Not immediate. Not explosive.
Directional.
We turn away from the overlook and continue down the corridor, our footsteps softer now, as if the city itself has adjusted to minimize our imprint. I don't miss the irony.
As we walk, a flicker of system text appears—brief, restrained.
[Observation density increasing.][External attention: Non-hostile.]
Non-hostile doesn't mean safe.
"Does this end with gods intervening directly?" the observer asks.
"Eventually," I say. "When ignoring me costs more than engaging."
"And when is that?"
I think of the ghost at the dais. Of the earlier presence measuring closure like currency. Of the way the deck no longer pulls, but aligns.
"When I stop being an anomaly," I reply. "And start being precedent."
We reach a secure transit hub. As the carriage arrives, I feel one last ripple pass through the city—not a forming record, not a ghost—just a subtle acknowledgment.
Something ancient has adjusted its expectations.
Inside the carriage, the lights dim to travel mode. I sit, letting the motion carry us upward. The deck settles beside me, silent and heavy.
I close my eyes briefly.
For the first time since crossing the Veil, I don't feel like I'm reacting to unfinished things.
I feel like I'm being positioned.
Ghosts were the first to adapt.
Gods are next.
And somewhere beyond both, something else is watching—not because it cares about endings, but because it's curious what happens when a Witness learns how to echo.
The carriage slows.
The doors open.
And the city, for all its steam and steel, feels very small compared to what just learned my name.