Epigraph
"The Choir doesn't need to kill you. It just needs you to listen." Redacted Ascendancy internal memo.
Aiden woke to silence.
Not the usual one, their was no snoring, no rustling, and no hushed whispers of conversations in the dark. Just dead air, heavy and strong.
He sat up slowly. The barracks lights were still, dim, pre-dawn setting. Around him bunks were occupied but everyone was awake, sitting, and staring at the empty bed three raws down.
The girl who had always been praying was gone.
Her sheets were stripped. Her locker stood open, empty, like she had never existed.
Kieran's voice came from the bunk beside him, low and rough. "They took her an hour ago. Didn't say anything... Just came in with stretchers and...that was it."
Aiden's throat felt dry. "Any clue of why she was taken?"
"Yeah," Kieran rubbed his face. "Kept saying something about the song calling her home. Then she started clawing at her own ears."
Across the room Jace was sitting with his knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them. He looked smaller than usual. "That makes three three this weak."
Three.
Aiden hadn't realized. He'd been too focused on his own problems, his own instability. But now that he thought about it, yeah bunks had been emptying. Quietly. No announcements, no explanations.
Just gone.
"Where do they take them?" Someone asked. A boy with a bandaged arm, voice shaking slightly.
Nobody answered because nobody knew. Or if they did then they weren't saying.
Reva's voice cut through the other side of the barracks. "Does it matter? They're gone. Focus on not joining them."
Harsh but she is not wrong.
The door hissed open. Guards filed in, rifles slung across their backs. One of them barked. "Up! Formation in ten!"
People moved. Slowly at first, then faster when the guard repeated himself louder.
Aiden pulled on his boots, laced them tight. His hands were steadier today than yesterday. Small victories.
Kieran lined over as they lined up. "Hope you're doing okay bro, you have been rustling in your bed a lot recently."
Aiden's jaw tightened. "Yeah I'm okay, just the trial that's wearing me down."
The lie came easily. Too easily.
Kieran studied him for a second the nodded. "Good, I'm still recovering from those weights."
They were marched to a different hall this time- larger, more open. The ceiling stretched high overhead, reinforced steel beams crisscrossing like a ribcage.
Instructor Kael stood at the center, hands behind her back. Behind her, a holo-screen flickered to life, displaying a map Aiden didn't recognize. Broken continents. Red zones marked with symbols he couldn't read.
"Embers." Kael said. No preamble. "You've survived the trials. That makes you useful.... Barely."
She gestured to the map. "This is what remains of Earth. Only twelve percent land is habitable, the rest is waste. Territories lost to the rift incursions. Portals open daily. Some stay open for hours. Others collapse within minutes, what comes through varies."
The map zoomed in on one of the red zones. Shapes moved across it, too big to be human.
"Riftborn," Kael continued. "Creatures from dying worlds, pushed through by the entities we call the Choir. Some are animalistic others are intelligent and both want what we have left."
She tapped the screen. A new image appeared: humans, but wrong. Eyes glowing gold, skin marked with patterns that looked carved rather than tattooed.
"Heretics," Kael said, and the word landed like a curse. "Humans who listened to the Choir and didn't resist. They serve the invaders now. Sabotage, espionage, terrorism. They're more dangerous than the Riftborn because they look like us."
A murmur rippled through the group.
Kael's gaze swept over them, cold. "Some of you will hear the Choir. It's not a question of if but when. The whispers come for everyone eventually. If you hear them, report it immediately. If you don't you become what we hunt."
Aiden felt his pulse spike. He kept his face neutral, but his veins flared brighter for half a second before he forced them dim again.
Kael didn't seem to notice. Or if she did, she didn't comment.
"In three weeks," she said, "you will be deployed to a controlled rift zone. Training exercise, real enemies but manageable numbers. If you survive, you will advance to Kindle tier."
Kindle the next step.
Kael's expression hardened. "Normally, Embers train for three months before field deployment. You're getting three weeks." She let that sink in. "The Western Front collapsed two days ago. We lost four Pyre-class Ascendants and an entire battalion. The Choir opened a major Rift, and we don't have enough bodies to hold the line."
Silence ceashed6down on the room.
"Humanity is losing," she said bluntly. "We need soldiers. Fast. So you'll be rushed through, thrown into combat before you're ready, and expected to survive anyway." Her gaze swept across them. "Some of you won't make it past your first deployment. That's acceptable. Because the few who do will be worth a hundred regular soldiers."
Someone in the back whispered. "We are just numbers."
Kael heard it. "Yes you are. But numbers are all we have left."
She gestured to the holo-screen showing Earth's map. Most of it was red. The safe zones-the Citadels-looked like tiny islands in an ocean of blood.
"Every week, we lose ground. Every month, another settlement falls. The Ascendancy is the only thing standing between humanity and extinction. You are the Ascendancy now. Act like it."
The weight of it pressed down on them. Not just the fear of dying, but the certainty that they would die. The only question was when and how many they'd take with them.
"But before that." Kael continued, voice returning to it's usual steel, "you need to learn what you're capable of. Your enhancements are no longer uniform. Specializations are beginning to manifest. Strength. Speed. Durability. Sensory acuity. Some of you will develop anomalies- abilities we can't predict or classify."
She gestured to the guards. "You'll be tested daily. Pushed until you break or adapt. We don't have time to coddle you. Dismissed."
The next two weeks blurred together.
Training was relentless. Combat drills, endurance runs, live-fire exercises with weapons Aiden barely knew how to hold. Some days he felt strong, coordinated, capable. Other days his body betrayed him-enhancements misfiring, strength flickering in and out like a dying light.
The Choir whispered constantly now. Not loud, but persistent. A low hum beneath every thought.
You are cracking.
Good.
Cracks let the light in.
He learned to ignore it. Mostly.
Reva continued to dominate every test. She moved like violence had been programmed into her bones-efficient, brutal, never wasting energy. During a sparring session, she put Cade on his back in under ten seconds.
Cade, to his credit, laughed it off. "Lucky shot."
"Luck's got nothing to do with it," Reva said and walked away.
Aiden noticed she was faster now. Not just quick inhumanly fast. Her specialization was emerging. Speed and precision.
Cade's was obvious too. Strength. He'd stopped using the training weights after he bent one in half by accident. Now they gave him reinforced equipment that still looked too light in his hands.
Jace turned out to be durable. He took hits that should've broken bones and just shrugged them off. "It's like my skin's thicker," he said once, pocking at his arm. "Doesn't even bruise anymore."
Kieran's specialization was harder to pin down. He wasn't the strongest or fastest, but his reflexes were getting sharper. He'd dodge things before they happened, like his body knew half a second ahead of time. "It's weird," he told Aiden after a drill. "I just feel whereare going to be."
Aiden's own specialization remained a mystery. Some days he was strong, others fast, sometimes his senses went haywire and he could hear conversations three rooms away. No pattern. No consistency.
During one evaluation, a technician frowned at his readings. "Your neural resonance keeps spiking. It's like your body can't decide what it wants to be."
"Its that bad?" Aiden asked.
On the eighth day, another candidate disappeared.
This time it was someone from Cade's usual group-a guy who'd been performing well, no signs of instability. He'd been on watch duty overnight. Morning came and his post was empty. They found him two levels down, curled in a maintenance shaft, whispering to the walls.
".....coming home.... almost home....the bridge is forming..."
They dragged him away. He was smiling.
That night, paranoia settled over the barracks like fog. People stopped talking to each other as much. Eyes lingered too long on anyone who seemed distracted. Trust eroded.
Aiden caught Reva watching him once during a drill. Not hostile, just... assessing. Like she was trying to figure something out.
When their eyes met, she didn't look away. "You hear them yet?"
His heart skipped a beat. "What?"
"The whispers everyone hears them eventually. Kael said so." She tilted her head slightly. "You seem like the type to keep it quite if you did."
Aiden forced himself to breathe normally. "I don't hear anything."
She held his gaze for another moment, then shrugged. "Good, keep it that way."
She walked off but Aiden felt her suspicion lingering on him.
Kieran slide behind him. "She scary."
"Yeah."
"Also possibly the only person here who could actually kill a Riftborn solo."
"Yeah."
Kieran nudged him. "You sure you doing okay, you know you can take a break."
Aiden wanted to tell him. About the Choir, about the whispers that never stopped, about the visions he sometimes saw-flashes of white corridors and golden light. But what would that accomplish? Kieran would report it, or worse, wouldn't, and then they'd both be suspect.
"I'm fine," Aiden answered.
Kieran didn't look convinced, but he let it drop.
By the end of the second week, the numbers were shifting.
Fifteen Embers had started in their group. Now there were eleven. Four disappeared-taken in the night, removed during evaluations, gone without explanation. The barracks felt emptier. Colder.
Kael addressed them during a morning formation, her voice cutting through the tension.
"Some of you are wondering where your fellow candidates went. The answer is simple: they failed. The Choir compromised them, or their bodies rejected the enhancements, or they simply weren't strong enough." She paused. "This will continue. Not everyone makes it to Kindle. Accept that now."
Cade spoke up, which was rare during formation. "What happens to them? The ones who got compromised?"
Kael's expression didn't change. "Reclamation. Their biomass is repurposed. Nothing is wasted in the Ascendancy."
A chill ran through the group. Not horror exactly- they'd all suspected something like that. But hearing it confirmed was different.
"Gear up," Kael said. "Tomorrow you have live combat trials. We're bringing in captured Riftborn. Low-tier, but still lethal if you're careless. Prove you can kill, or you won't deploy."
She turned and left. The guards ushered them toward the armory.
That night, Aiden couldn't sleep.
The Choir was louder than ever, threading through his thoughts like smoke. He pressed his hands over his ears, but it didn't help. It was inside.
Three weeks.
The bridge will be tested.
Do not break yet.
He sat up, breathing hard. Around him, others slept-or pretended to. Jace was curled on his side, face pressed into his pillow. Kieran muttered in his sleep, something about food.
Across the barracks, Reva was awake too. She sat on the edge of her bunk, cleaning a knife she'd been issued earlier. Her movements were methodical, precise.
She glanced up, met his eyes.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then she went back to her knife.
Aiden lay back down, staring at the ceiling. His veins pulsed faintly, blue light flickering in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Tomorrow they'd fight something real. Something that wanted them dead.
The thought should've terrified him.
Instead, he felt almost relieved.
At least Riftborn were honest. They didn't whisper. Didn't pretend. They just tried to kill you. He could work with that.
Outside, alarms blared in the distance-another breach somewhere in the Citadel's outer zones. Common enough that nobody even stirred anymore.
The world was ending.
And they were being forged into weapons to hold it together.
Aiden closed his eyes and waited for dawn.