The silence felt heavier than ash.
Silas stood at the edge of the rift where Jaden had fallen unmoving, wings glitching out of sync with reality, his hoodie smoking like the last breath of a dying machine. Light cracked off him in jagged patterns, casting shadows that didn't match his shape.
None of them spoke.
No one dared to move too fast. Like if they made the wrong sound, the celestial timebomb in front of them would finally go off.
---
The rift still glowed faintly, like a wound that hadn't clotted. Niko stared into it with wide eyes. Rowan scribbled furiously in his notebook, fingers trembling just slightly. Kael sat cross-legged on a broken barrier, tossing a pebble into the dirt, over and over again.
Aya was the first to speak.
"We can't keep doing nothing."
Rowan didn't look up. "If we go in blind, we might all get erased. Glitch zones scramble divine energy and human perception."
Kael threw the rock harder. "Yeah? And sitting here doing math won't make Jaden magically climb out either."
"Enough," Aya said. Her voice was quiet, but solid. "This isn't helping."
---
Silas twitched his first movement in over an hour.
Everyone turned toward him.
The ground beneath his feet had cracked. Thin veins of golden light split from his heels outward like an error message crawling through the world's skin. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. He looked... stuck. Like grief had short-circuited his entire existence.
He had always been chaos barely restrained sarcastic, smug, annoyingly divine. But now, he was a creature of loss. A deity on the edge of collapse.
"He's not stabilizing," Rowan muttered. "We need to suppress him before he disrupts the rest of the zone—"
"No," Aya said, stepping between them and Silas. "He doesn't need suppression."
She looked around at the others. Her tone softened.
"He needs to remember him. We all do."
---
They made camp inside a ruined metro tunnel, its entrance covered in black vines and glitching warning signs. The shelter was cold. Not from wind or weather, but from absence. Jaden's absence.
Aya sat closest to the fire, watching the flame sputter and hiss as if it, too, wanted to give up.
He was just gone. No time to say goodbye. No moment to hold on. Just a flicker, a tear, and silence.
She hated it.
Hated how loud the silence was now that his voice was missing from it.
She closed her eyes.
And let herself fall backward into memory.
---
Flashback : The Second Collapse
It had been a brutal day. Supplies were low. Morale was lower. The sky wouldn't stop flickering, and the only water they'd found was sludge-colored and possibly alive.
Aya had injured herself trying to scale a collapsed stairwell to scout for medicine. Her ankle had rolled. Her elbow bled. She barely made it back to camp without crying.
But she smiled anyway.
She smiled because they needed her to. Because if the medic broke, everything else would follow.
Only Jaden noticed.
He didn't ask questions. Didn't call her out.
That night, while the others rested, he knelt beside her. Quiet. Intent. He had a dented thermos in one hand, and a look on his face like he'd been turning over a thousand worries all day and decided this was the only one he could fix.
He poured her a cracked mug of hot water. Dropped in crushed leaves from his stash.
"It's not tea," he said, awkwardly. "But it helps."
It was bitter. Too strong. Too warm. She drank every drop.
Later, she'd find a splint beside her bedroll. Handmade. Imperfect. Real.
He never made a speech. Never asked for thanks.
But from that day on, she looked at him differently.
Not as a teammate. Not even just as a survivor.
But as someone who gave her permission to keep hoping.
---
Back in the present, Aya opened her eyes.
Her hands were warm.
Too warm.
She looked down and ash was blooming.
Tiny vines were rising through the cracks in the concrete beneath her, glowing green and gold. Life, impossibly stubborn, unfurling from soot.
Kael's jaw dropped. "Uh. Aya? You're photosynthesizing."
Rowan straightened in his seat, wide-eyed. "That's not normal. That's... that's a metaphysical reaction. Your emotion triggered a natural override in the zone's decay script."
Aya barely heard them. Her gaze was fixed on the small flower blooming by her boot—fragile and beautiful. A miracle in the wreckage.
"He made me want to keep growing," she whispered. "Even when everything else burned down."
---
Across the camp, Silas finally moved.
His wings folded in.
The static around him faded, just slightly. His eyes, once glowing white, flickered with the faintest shade of blue.
He looked at Aya not with his usual smirk, not with celestial detachment.
But with something raw. Something human.
"I can't hear him," Silas rasped, voice hoarse. "It's too quiet without him."
Aya stood and crossed to him, carefully placing her palm over his chest, over the cracked glow trying to break through.
"You don't have to hear him," she said gently. "Because we remember him. And we're going to carry him back."
Silas didn't speak. But his wings pulsed once. Not in pain. But in recognition.
End of Chapter 12
Author's note:
Julie will be proud of me