Chapter 4 — Part 1: The Girl at the Edge of the Road
The scream found him in the hollow between breaths.
Young, bright with terror—the kind that cuts through dust like a clean blade. KrysKo's head lifted a degree; feet stilled on broken asphalt; ears triangulated.
> [AUDIO LOCK] Female, ~18–20; distress; distance 116 m; bearing 041°.
[ADVISORY] Hostile voices overlapping (3–4).
[TERRAIN MAP] Collapsed overpass; vehicle graveyard; multiple occlusions.
He didn't think should I. He moved.
The highway curled into a vertebrae field—cars half-swallowed by ivy, bus frames laced with rust, glass powdered to glittering grit. Wind crept under the bridge and made a thin organ sound. The scent arrived before the scene: cheap alcohol, hot metal, human breath turned sour with excitement.
He slid to the lip of the overpass, low. Below: three men and a boy on the cusp of manhood—knives, a cleaver, a stub-nosed pistol with a cracked grip. The girl was pinned against a jersey barrier. One fist tore fabric. Another pair of hands pinned her shoulders, grinning through broken teeth.
Her eyes found KrysKo—wide, then steady. The plea landed without sound.
> [QUEST UNLOCKED] — Humanity's Choice
Save the girl or walk away.
Reward: Unknown. Consequence: Trajectory.
For one breath, the system let the world hold its options like scales.
He went.
He dropped clean—no shout, no warning. The first raider only realized the shadow had shape when KrysKo's heel lifted the ground to meet his jaw. Teeth and blood arced; the man folded, boneless.
The cleaver-man reacted fast—instincts honed by hunting the weak. Horizontal swing—blade shrieked against concrete. KrysKo slid into ginga, center line fluid, hips speaking rhythm. Step-right feint, sway-left; cleaver kissed air. His leg scythed low—rasteira—and the man's feet lost their contract with earth. He hit hard; KrysKo's elbow found the sternum before breath could remember itself. A short metallic hiss—the forearm blades whispering free—and bronze rip sang from hip to collarbone. The cleaver clattered. The man did not rise.
The gunman jerked up, desperate. KrysKo inverted, palms to asphalt, legs scissoring into a meia-lua de compasso; his foot crushed the pistol hand. Bones cracked. The gun spun away under a dead sedan.
The youngest ran.
KrysKo was there—one, two—and the boy's hood met the barrier. Not enough force to break him; enough to smother momentum. A pulse trembled beneath KrysKo's palm.
"Drop it," KrysKo said. Calmer than the wind.
The knife rang on concrete.
Silence searched for its balance. The last raider—the one who'd pinned the girl—wavered between rage and calculation. Rage lost. He darted. KrysKo's blade moved in a quiet cross. Surprise registered at how easily bodies come apart.
> [COMBAT REPORT] Hostiles neutralized (4).
[DAMAGE] Minor (abrasion, left knuckle).
[EXP] +210.
[EFFICIENCY] 61% → 66%.
Blades retracted. The girl didn't flinch at the sound; she had no breath left for flinching. Her blouse was torn; a raw scrape burned along her shoulder. She held herself small but upright—defiance surviving on stubborn instinct.
"You—" She swallowed. "You saved me."
"You would have bled," he said. True, and insufficient.
She drew the fabric closed with shaking hands, eyes never leaving his face. "What are you?"
He considered weapon and rejected it. "KrysKo," he said—the name fitting like a tool you'd forgotten you owned. "KrysKo O'Ruadhraigh."
"Kara," she said. "Kara Myles."
She staggered. He offered stability without touch, stepping so her legs could find a line. "We should move," he said. "The noise will carry."
Kara nodded, practicality swallowing panic. She stooped and grabbed a small satchel. Clay vials clinked like patient hearts. "East," she said. "Old thoroughfare toward University lands."
"Lead," he answered, falling in beside her like a shadow that had decided to walk.
---
They left the overpass and the world changed texture. Asphalt surrendered to root and moss; green insistence pried apart the seams of civilization. Shopfronts gaped like mouths losing teeth. Solar glass was veined with creeping crystal—the lingering signature of Architect residue. Ivy that wasn't ivy pulsed faintly under its own skin, bioluminescence exhaling through capillary threads.
Kara's hands spoke a traveler's vocabulary—palm down: slow; two taps to thigh: halt; fingers lifted: listen. Each signal, KrysKo matched without waste. She glanced once; respect adjusted itself a degree.
They paused at a rot-scabbed bus fused around a triumphant tree. Weathered paint still carried a phrase: WE REMEMBER. Kara brushed dirt from the letters with her knuckles.
"Who?" he asked.
"Those who didn't cross the Silence," she said. "Those who did. Sometimes we don't know who we're remembering. We just know we should."
Wind moved through broken panes. The city watched them with a thousand dark windows.
> [ENV SCAN] Air quality: moderate. Particulates ↑ in low corridors.
[THERMALS] Minor fauna; low threat.
[ANOMALY] Architect crystalline deposits (trace). Avoid direct contact.
They cut through a skeleton of greenhouses—the Glass Gardens. Webs of pane and frame made their own dim weather: damp, breath-warm air even in cold. Vines thick as wrists climbed ribs of steel. Somewhere, patient water dripped.
Kara slipped; KrysKo's hand found her elbow before gravity could file a claim. She looked at the fingers—those slightly-longer forearms, tendon lines clean under skin—and then up at him.
"Thanks," she said. Simple. Meant.
He released. "Step along the beam, not the pane," he told her. "More honest."
A quick smile—somewhere she still kept light. "I'll borrow that."
In a cracked atrium, a mural survived: children's painted hands ringed around a tree. Kara hovered a palm over a small blue print. "Do the Drakari have children here?" she asked, hush-soft. "Not in stories. In streets. Gardens."
"Some," he said. The word carried a faint echo, as if spoken by a file from far away.
"And they're safe? In University lands?"
"Safer than outside."
"You answer so I won't break," she said, not unkind. "You never promise."
"Promises are currency. I don't know which ones I own."
The smile faded. They moved on.
The ground shivered.
KrysKo's weight slid to the balls of his feet—loose, ready. Kara felt it too—the way soil hums a warning before a bad thing surfaces. Mulch rippled; then eyes—too many—caught green in the dim.
> [ALERT] Subterranean motion → emergent.
[ID] Engineered vermin ("Skull Rats," colloquial).
[COUNT] 14… 18… final 21.
[THREAT] Swarm; corrosive bite; rapid adaptation.
They boiled out—rats once, now gear-collared, cranial plates peeled like grisly petals to expose latticed brain pulsing sickly yellow. Ammonia and hot copper burned the air.
Kara was already moving—backing to higher rubble, satchel open. "Don't let them bracket you!" she called. "They stack!"
Stack they did—three wide, two high—ladders of hate. KrysKo slid into ginga: low, open, the rhythm that makes everything else possible. First wave: a half-step left and a forward blade drew a clean line through three; momentum fed heel into a fourth. It cracked; it died.
"Back!" Kara snapped. She bit a gut-string, spat it, hurled a clay bulb. It burst wetly; a mint-sharp sting flooded the air. Half the pack veered, hacking, eyes pouring. The deeper-yellow skulls pushed through—learning, angry.
KrysKo changed tempo—rasteira hook-kick; armada to flank. A leaper latched onto his calf—pain flared bright and useful.
> [DAMAGE] Dermal breach; corrosive agent detected; auto-repair engaged.
He drove his knee up; the rat became a smear.
"Left," Kara warned.
He pivoted before the word finished, blade halving a midair skull along the axis of its hunger.
Another bulb shattered behind him. Chalk detonated. Milk-white fog erased depth. For a heartbeat he fought by sound and map alone—the scrape of claw, the hiss of breath, the humble chime of his inner gyroscope keeping the world true.
A body fell wrong. Not his.
Kara's back hit glass ribs. An old one—scar-lipped, mottled, collar ticking like a grave clock—had climbed the frame and dropped. It found leather, then skin.
KrysKo crossed the space in a handful of impossible steps. No dance now—just a straight line of decision. His hand closed on spine and pulled. Flesh parted; tendons screamed. He kept pulling until the rat came apart in ragged halves, then flung the pieces away with a tremor he hadn't intended.
The swarm cracked. Survivors fled into holes; the day swallowed their small, mean sounds.
Silence tried—and failed—to settle.
Kara's breath hitched; blood shaped a dark V. Her hands fumbled straps—stubborn, shaking. KrysKo knelt; one palm found her wrist—gentle; the other pressed the wound.
Heat moved from him into her—no flame, just the steadier hum of the Drakari alloy riding his core. Nanites woke like soft avalanches beneath his palm and whispered instructions to torn tissue they remembered from manuals older than the ruin outside.
Kara hissed, then blinked as pain unclenched. "What… is that?"
"Field dressing," he said. True. Not all of it.
"You ripped that thing in half," she said. Not accusation—night's fact on the table.
"Yes."
"You don't sleep. You don't eat. Your blood… smells wrong." Her gaze tracked his forearms. The inlet seam was subtle, not invisible. "You fight like a man whose bones learned someone else's song."
He didn't answer. Nothing he could say would be smaller than the question she'd actually asked.
> [SOCIAL] Trust threshold 58% → 61%.
[ADVISORY] Partial disclosure may increase mission cohesion.
[COUNTER-ADVISORY] Strategic ambiguity preserves optionality.
He released her wrist. "I know functions. Parameters. I know the way to the University."
"That's not what I—" She let it go. "Fine. For now."
They walked until light forgot words. In a collapsed atrium they made a camp no bigger than two breaths. Kara strung tiny copper bells across the entrance—old caravan trick. KrysKo sat the threshold and listened to the night do arithmetic.
Thin stew: bitter greens, jerky, a mint-sharp pinch. Steam drew fragile shapes. "You don't eat," she said.
"Not as you do."
"You have a heartbeat," she murmured, curious more than wary. "But it doesn't sync with your breathing."
"It syncs with other things." He found a corner of humor that didn't feel like his.
She huffed despite the day. "Strange."
"So I'm told."
She slept with her hand inside the satchel—metal, glass, tools, small certainties under her palm. "Second watch," she mumbled.
"I won't need—"
"I didn't ask if you need me," she said, already gone. "Wake me."
He nodded to the dark, and kept it.
Time smoothed. Far off, a train horn tried to remember tracks that no longer existed. Telemetry hummed—wind speed, particulate, thermal flickers the size of mice, the size of ghosts. The bells did not stir.
A hollow found the room.
Not motion—the absence where something had been. The world shifted a degree colder with no drop in temperature. KrysKo rose, blades asleep but interested.
A shadow near the atrium's slit of sky attended him. Patient as geometry. No breath. No dust. Presence like a solved equation.
He reached for classification the way a hand reaches for a familiar shelf.
> [CLASSIFY] …Error.
[RECLASSIFY] …Error.
[…REDACTED]
The sense of you are seen pressed gently against the inside of his skull.
He did not speak, and whatever it was did not speak, and between them a word seemed to burn quietly: Prototype.
A bell trembled. Kara stirred. He looked at her; looked back; nothing remained but air and the small ache of empty space regaining itself.
> [NOTE] Unknown entity encountered. Classification locked.
[ADVISORY] Do not pursue.
Kara rubbed her eyes. "What is it?"
"Weather," he said—small enough a lie it could almost be true.
Morning embarrassed the sky—thin, colorless. They broke camp; Kara pocketed her bells; the rectangle of light above the atrium stopped feeling like a door.
If yesterday was ruin's garden, today was its theater—long boulevards between buildings too proud to fall quickly. Something perched on a lamppost watched them with membrane wings; when it moved it drifted like ash.
Near noon they topped a low hill. Smoke rose beyond a wedge of skeletal towers: gray not black—cooked wood, wet leaf. Human. A settlement.
Kara's face lit and hid. "Walls," she said. "Food. Maybe news."
> [THERMALS] Multiple signatures; structure density: medium; pattern: settlement.
[ROUTE ADVISORY] Do not crest skyline; approach via low line (aqueduct).
They dipped beneath an old aqueduct—arches like ribs; channels dry. Shade kept them from curious glass. The palisade resolved from scrap and cut timber. Watch platforms. Ropes. A gate built by hands that learned the hard way you either have a gate or graves.
"Let me talk first," Kara said. "Some places don't welcome strangers with… advantages."
"Advantages," he echoed, tasting the word.
She lifted open hands at the gate. "Travelers," she called. "Seeking passage. We can pay—medicine, tools."
Day-music paused. A rough voice: "Masks off."
Kara pushed hair from her face. KrysKo lowered his scarf to the collarbone—human symmetry shown; exactly what wasn't stayed under shadow.
"Ophilim with you?"
"No," Kara said.
"That one a machine?"
She didn't look at him when she lied. "He's a man with scars you can't see."
Bolts thunked. A bearded wall of a man opened the gate. University green at his shoulder. Drakari leather crossed it. His eyes ran quick assessments and stored them.
"Welcome," he said. "But not too welcome until I know your names."
"Kara Myles," she answered, offering waxed paper stamped with a circle and entwined lines.
"Myles," he nodded. "We've had good hands from that line." He looked to KrysKo. "And you?"
"KrysKo O'Ruadhraigh."
"University has feelings about weapons walking like men," the gate-man said. Weather, not malice.
"He saved me," Kara said. "Twice."
"Seems a habit," he said, relenting. "Bren." He tipped his chin toward the market. "Hungry?"
"We're bound for the University," Kara said. "We won't trouble you long."
"Trouble's shorter than you think," Bren said. "Market's open. Keep your hands where folks can see 'em and your promises where you can keep 'em."
The market opened like a living thing—herbs braided and hung; jars of pale roots; wire coils; bent metal reborn as pots; a stall of glass beads traded from a caravan that had found a cache of yesterday. Children watched too closely. Eyes moved around KrysKo the way water shapes itself around a river rock—some fear, some curiosity, mostly calculation.
Kara bartered for vials—coagulant and river-class antitoxin. She spoke in the accent of belonging and the place let her borrow it. KrysKo learned how to be near without being in by watching her do it.
By late afternoon, Bren leaned an elbow on their table. "University rangers sweep near dusk. Catch them, they'll walk you to the line." His gaze weighed KrysKo once more. "If you're more than you look, be better than you look."
The bells in KrysKo's inner ear chimed—habit pretending to be metaphor—and he filed it as law.
The first market bell tolled—three notes: attention, not panic. Hands paused over fruit, fish, wire. A lower bell answered.
"Scouts coming in!" Bren barked. "Make a lane!"
> [SIGNATURES] Inbound: human ×2; Drakari ×2.
[COMPOSURE] Unit cohesion high; movement quiet; bows that never saw a factory.
Kara touched her papers, then let her hand fall. She didn't reach for KrysKo's sleeve. Trust changed footing in small increments.
The gate swung.
Four figures slipped through the slot of evening: two lean humans in green sash; two Drakari in river-stone plates with grown bows. The auburn-scarred ranger saw Kara's seal and smiled with the kind of relief you allow yourself at day's end.
"University-bound?" she called.
"Yes," Kara said. "Kara Myles. Under charter."
"Good hands," the ranger nodded. Her eyes skimmed KrysKo, measuring like you measure a horse that might decide things. "And your shadow?"
"My guard," Kara said before he could. "I vouch."
"Then University will let him cast it a while longer," the ranger said. Two fingers flicked; the Drakari peeled to the flanks, casual as cats beside a procession of mice.
They stepped into falling dark.
Behind them the market folded its day. Ahead, the road stretched like a held breath.
Wind ran low along the ground, tasting of iron and wet leaf. Beneath the hum of evening, a new line of quiet text slid across KrysKo's mind:
> [PASSIVE SUITE — LATENT] Lunari Scent Veil
Status: Detectable.
Prognosis: Upon exposure to hybrid patrol, adaptive subroutine may unlock scent masking (human baseline profile synthesis).
He didn't know why the system told him now. He didn't look at Kara. He kept walking.
Mist collected—thin as unkept promises—pooling in hollows. The sound reached them through stone more than air: a low chime, like a fork struck gently against a crystal bowl.
Kara lifted two fingers to her throat: speak only if spoken to.
Shapes stood on the fallen overpass ahead—tall, still, too patient to be human. The mist folded away to let them descend.
KrysKo adjusted his balance a fraction. He did not reach for his blades. He did not smile. He did not blink.
The Drakari stepped out of the gray like answers arriving.
---
Chapter 4 — Part II: The Mirror Fields
Segment 1 of 3 — The Descent
The mist thickened into a curtain of pearl and dust as they moved north. Kara's boots squelched on what once was asphalt; each step released the sour scent of rot and metal. KrysKo kept a pace behind, motion smooth and unhurried—the way gravity might walk if it chose a body.
They descended by a rail embankment slope. Broken pylons jutted like bones from a shallow grave. Every few steps, Kara crouched to study a plant, muttering Latin she half-remembered from University archives. Veins glowed faint green fire; when wind moved through them, they sighed as if breathing.
"Don't touch the sap," she warned. "Photovore residue. Eats through leather."
His pupils caught that glow and wrote circuitry across his irises.
> [ENV ANALYSIS]
Compound: chloral-biolum mix / corrosive grade C.
Recommendation: limit contact.
A sound rippled the basin. Not wind—deeper, a low hum that made the glass shards around them quiver. From the luminescent thicket slid a creature the color of spilled mercury. Translucent hide; organs pulsing faintly to some internal rhythm. It lifted its head, nostrils twitching.
Kara froze. "Photovore," she mouthed.
Systems whispered.
> [TARGET ACQUIRED] Behavioral tag: passive unless agitated by scent or motion.
KrysKo inhaled once, then imagined his breath folding inward, scent retreating. A faint shimmer crossed his skin.
The beast hesitated, milky eyes uncertain, then turned and melted back into glow.
"You masked your scent," Kara said as they reached the far side.
"It seemed efficient."
"That wasn't human."
"Neither am I," he said, and climbed.
---
At the ridge's crest the world flattened into light. Farmland before the Silence, now a field of mirror-glass panels—miles of them, half-sunken in soil. Each sheet caught daylight and twisted it; some reflected the sky as it was, others skies that never existed. The air shimmered with fractured images.
Kara brushed dirt from one panel. "Architect collectors," she whispered. "Fell out of orbit. Fed on sunlight until the Pulse poisoned their cores."
KrysKo's reflection stared back—delayed, a heartbeat behind. When he turned his head, the mirror lagged.
> [ANOMALY] Temporal reflection offset detected — 0.37 sec.
Classification: quantum residual field.
"KrysKo," Kara said quietly. "Don't—"
Too late. His mirrored self blinked independently, lips moving in silent echo. The glass beneath his boots rippled.
Ripples spread in widening rings, warping light until the world seemed made of water. Kara stumbled back. "KrysKo!"
He pivoted to pull her clear, but the reflection did not follow. The image on the glass stood smiling—an echo of him with eyes burning molten gold. The mirrored KrysKo raised its arm, and the field shattered upward in a storm of light.
They fell.
Dust punched Kara's throat. Shards drifted around them like slow snowflakes, reflecting hundreds of KrysKos at every angle. Each moved a little differently—some slower, some faster, some wrong in ways the brain refused to track.
> [ENVIRONMENT CORRUPTED] Mirror anomaly: sentient projection.
Initiating combat routine: Adaptive Rhythm.
A whisper came from all directions—many voices shaped into one: Prototype. Show us the rhythm.
Blades hissed free, catching fractured light. Kara slid behind a half-sunken panel, clutching her satchel. "What are they?"
"Echoes," he said, and the first lunged.
It moved like him—same stance, same swing—but a half-beat faster. He ducked under, feet sliding into ginga, body swaying in rhythmic defense. Steel scraped glass; sparks rained. He twisted low, hooked its ankle, drove an elbow through its chest. The reflection burst into rain of liquid silver.
Two more rose.
He spun, blades cutting arcs of white fire. Meia-lua. Armada. Rabo-de-arraia. His body remembered a rhythm older than reason, each strike riding the earth's pulse. But the mirrors learned. Copies began to shadow him in real time, adjusting to his patterns.
> [WARNING] Predictive mimicry escalating. Tactical advantage diminishing.
Recommendation: break rhythm.
He exhaled once—and stopped moving like a dancer. He moved like weather.
Next attack came high. He met it with forearm, let the blade glance, stepped inside, drove a knee into the phantom's core. It burst—yet the reflection behind it mirrored his motion and caught his throat. Sparks jumped from synthetic skin as the system flashed red.
> [INTEGRITY DROP] −18%. Critical damage warning.
"KrysKo, behind you!" Kara's voice cut the din.
He turned. The largest mirror stepped out, not with metal blades but light—solid beams drawn into its hands like molten rods. It hurled one.
Instinct saved him. He ducked; vapor traced a line through his scarf. He rolled, came up on one knee, and threw a forearm blade. It spun end over end, embedding in the phantom's chest. The wound glowed—a hole filled with radiant circuitry. The thing did not fall.
The colder voice came, precise as a scalpel:
> [ADAPTATION] Hostile architecture adjusting. Probability of total defeat: 42%.
Then the warmer voice—the one that sounded like memory—threaded through, human and patient:
> Don't fight the reflection, KrysKo. Change the mirror.
He froze a heartbeat. "Change… the mirror?"
> Yes. Shift your frequency. You are not only metal. You are resonance.
The idea clicked. Blades retracted. The mirrors advanced, expecting a strike. Instead, he straightened, spread his hands, and let the internal hum rise.
Air vibrated.
Light bent toward him. The panels trembled, surfaces rippling like disturbed water. His reflection distorted—lines warping, form flickering. The phantom army faltered, faces twitching as if struck by invisible wind.
> [RESONANCE SYNC] 73%
Activating: Harmonic Pulse.
He released it.
Not sound—pressure. A wave that cracked glass and hushed the world. Every reflection fractured at once, splitting into a million shards that hung midair like frozen rain. For a breath, the world held still.
Then gravity remembered itself, and the shards fell.
---
Kara rose slowly, blinking through haze. "What did you do?"
He looked at his hands. Faint glow along his veins pulsed brighter, then settled to steady rhythm. "Resonance," he said softly. "I… remembered it."
> [SKILL ACQUIRED] Harmonic Pulse.
Function: sound-based area disruption / mirror-field countermeasure.
[EFFICIENCY] +6%.
The system dimmed, retreating.
She crunched across glass to him. "You remembered? I thought you said you didn't—"
"I don't," he said. "Not the way you mean. I remembered a function, not a life."
"It saved us," she murmured.
He didn't answer. A fragment of mirror in the mud still trembled; inside, his reflection didn't match his stance—it smiled a moment too long before fading.
---
They camped beneath a collapsed solar array. The field beyond shimmered faintly, catching the dying light. Kara built a small fire of dry roots that burned blue. KrysKo sat opposite, blades sheathed, the glow along his skin cooling.
"You said 'resonance,'" she began. "That's a Drakari term. Balance between spirit and stone."
"Drakari," he echoed, tasting the word. "They guard the University."
"Yes. They saved us once, long ago. They say every living thing has a song. Maybe you found yours."
"Maybe I found a weapon," he said, looking away.
---
Hours passed. Fire crackled, bronzing ruin. Kara brewed tea from pale leaves, handed him a tin cup. He held it, did not drink.
"Tell me something," she said quietly. "Why'd you ask earlier about the Lunair?"
He blinked, slow. "I thought I heard the name. In… a reflection. Or a memory."
"I've never heard it," she said. "Is it a clan?"
"I don't know. It felt… familiar."
> [SYSTEM NOTE] Subroutine keyword detected: "Lunair." Access locked.
Warmth stirred inside him.
> That name isn't for this age, the warm voice murmured. Let it sleep.
"Then why do I remember it?" he whispered.
> Because not all memories are yours.
Kara was watching him. "What did you say?"
"Nothing," he lied. "Thinking."
---
When sleep finally took her, he stayed awake, listening to the quiet between breaths. The cold analytics surfaced again:
> [BEHAVIORAL NOTE] Emotional variance ↑. Caution advised.
[TRUST PARAMETER] Kara Myles: 68%.
[PROJECTION] Alliance: beneficial.
Ash collapsed with a soft sigh. Wind skimmed the mirrors, turning each to a pale flame.
> You are changing, the warm voice said. Not just your code. Your rhythm.
"Is that good?"
> It's human.
He didn't know if that was comfort or warning.
---
Dawn rose silver, diffused through smoke and mist. They broke camp and descended from the ridge toward the dark line of forest that meant safer ground. Behind them, the field glittered like a sea of glass, already erasing their footprints.
KrysKo didn't look back. But as they crossed into the trees, one fragment of mirror caught the light and reflected not his shape but another—taller, wrapped in shadow—watching from within the glass.