The wind shouldn't have spoken.
Kael Ardent crouched behind the twisted remains of a war-mech, its rusted plating groaning as the storm picked up. He tightened the scarf over his mouth, not to block dust—but to stop himself from speaking. One word was all it would take. One syllable to kill something.
The storm moaned across the ruins of Helios Row, carrying more than sand.
It carried voices.
Faint. Whispering. Like the hiss of steam leaking from a broken pipe. But Kael knew better. These weren't echoes of the wind—they were the kind of voices that listened back.
He lowered his pack to the ground, careful not to let it clink. Something inside pulsed softly. Once. Twice. Like a heartbeat.
Kael glanced at it. The dagger was still glowing. Still warm. Still alive.
He hadn't meant to find it.
He had been scavenging in a sinkhole, searching for clean copper wire or salvageable tech. Instead, he'd found a corpse that wasn't quite dead—a body fused to blackened stone, bones curling around something that pulsed with light.
A dagger. Strange metal. Black as the space between stars. He should have left it.
But it had spoken to him.
"You're not safe here, Silent One."
Kael froze. The voice wasn't out loud. It was inside his mind.
He pressed a hand to his temple. The last time he'd heard a voice in his head, he'd been half-dead from hunger, three days outside the city with cracked lips and a fever. But this wasn't a hallucination. He could feel the speaker. Like it was watching him from behind its own eyes.
"You carry me, but you don't listen? How rude."
Kael unslung the dagger. Its edges shimmered faintly in the dusk. The voice came again, softer this time, amused.
"Pick me up. Or don't. Either way, the Resonants already know you're here."
Resonants. He swore silently. Of course they did. Of all the things that could still survive in the Wastes, it had to be them—twisted humans bonded to Echoes, half-dead and fully insane.
Kael gritted his teeth and moved. He slipped along the side of the mech, staying low, moving without sound. His feet knew where to step. Every scavenger in Helios learned how to be a ghost, or died trying.
But even ghosts left footprints in the dust.
Behind him, the storm shifted.
Figures emerged—long-limbed, skin stretched too tight, mouths sewn shut with silver wire. The lead one tilted its head, and Kael felt it. The pressure. Like sound pressing inward. Searching for noise.
They don't hunt by sight, he reminded himself. They hunt by vibration. Speech. Breath. Sound.
And Kael's curse wasn't just deadly—it was loud in all the wrong ways.
One of the Resonants twitched.
Kael reached for the dagger.
It pulsed in his hand. Cold, like touching winter steel.
Then—movement.
Too fast.
The nearest Resonant lunged, claws extending, silent as death.
Kael swung.
He didn't think. Just moved.
And something tore.
The dagger didn't cut. It ripped. The air bent. The storm folded in on itself. The Resonant split apart—not cleanly, but in strands, like thread pulled loose from cloth. Its Echo wailed and dissolved into nothing.
Silence followed. The other Resonants backed away.
Kael stared at the weapon. Its glow dimmed, flickered, then steadied.
"That," the voice said, sounding pleased, "was refreshing."
He realized then: this dagger wasn't just alive. It was awake.
And worse—
It liked him