The train carved its way through white silence.
Outside the window stretched an ocean of snow and broken stone, the sun a pale disc behind the clouds. Inside, forty soldiers sat in perfect rows, helmets in laps, rifles stacked between their knees. The only sound was the rhythm of the wheels— a slow, iron heartbeat.
Kael watched frost creep along the glass. Each bump in the track sent a vibration through the carriage floor— a faint echo of the Lattice, the Empire's network that ran beneath every city, road, and shrine. Even out here on the frontier, the pulse could be felt if you knew how to listen.
Rheon sat across from him, reading from the Manual of Harmonized Engagements."Rule one," he said, not looking up, "Maintain resonance integrity during confrontation."He glanced over the page at Kael. "You understand what that means?"
Kael kept his voice neutral. "Don't let your heartbeat slip."
"Exactly." Rheon tapped the manual. "If you fall out of sync during combat, the Lattice can't support you. You'll hit like a drunk."
Seris, half-asleep beside Kael, muttered, "And if you stay too in sync, it'll fry your nerves. Happens all the time."
Rheon ignored him. "The Lattice gives us reach. We fight as one body."
Kael nodded, filing the words away. We fight as one body— and if one limb rebels, the body cuts it off.
The train stopped at an outpost built into the side of a glacier. Signs read Station Frostline—Resonant Stabilization Zone. A handful of priests waited on the platform, robes stiff with ice, their hoods lined with silver thread that glowed faintly in time with the earth beneath their feet.
"Detachments A through D, report for orientation!" an officer shouted. "You're entering a fracture field. Keep your bands tight and your minds tighter."
The recruits filed out into air so cold it sliced the lungs. Kael tasted metal when he breathed.
Seris leaned close. "Fracture field?"
Rheon answered before Kael could. "A place where the Lattice misfires. The ground hums wrong, the air bends light. Shrines in those zones start 'singing' off-key." He looked toward the priests. "That's why we're here—to tune it."
Kael's stomach tightened. He'd heard about such places from Liora: sites where too much death or memory made the Lattice rebel against Imperial rhythm. The Empire called them fractures. The Guild called them wounds.
1. Orientation
Inside the command tent, warmth returned with the smell of oil and damp leather. A map was spread across the table, pinned by knives.
Captain Corvan— the same Adept who'd led their drills— stood at its head. His fork-tuning staff rested against the table.
"This," he said, pointing to a black mark on the map, "is Shrine N-29. Two days ago it began emitting dissonant frequencies. Villagers report night tremors, livestock deaths, and auditory hallucinations. Standard signs of lattice instability."
He looked over the room. "You are here to restore harmony."
A priest stepped forward, voice low and clipped. "Remember: a fracture is not evil. It is an echo left behind when human emotion accumulates unchecked. Grief, rage, guilt—all leave residue. The Renewal cleanses such impurities, but until then, we maintain the lattice through your discipline."
Seris whispered, "So basically we're exorcists with rifles."
Corvan's eyes flicked toward him. "If you speak again without permission, medic, I'll have you recalibrated."Seris shut his mouth.
Corvan continued, "Procedure: establish perimeter, deploy pulse anchors, perform resonance chant in triple rhythm. Any civilians resisting removal will be pacified with sub-harmonic waves. Dissonant structures are to be demolished."
Kael raised a hand. "Demolished? The shrine?"
"Anything that cannot be tuned," Corvan said. "The Empire builds anew after each Renewal."
2. March to N-29
They left before dawn. The path wound through frost-bitten pines and shattered stone. The cold made every breath visible— small clouds that disappeared too fast.
At noon, Seris began humming under his breath— the Imperial training song, the one every recruit learned to keep step. Kael realized he wasn't humming the rhythm exactly; he was lagging by a quarter-beat, just enough to stay himself. Kael matched it quietly.
Rheon heard them and shook his head. "Stay on tempo. The Lattice favors precision."
Seris whispered back, "Precision gets you killed when the ground shifts."
The ground did shift. A low rumble rippled underfoot, followed by a faint shimmer in the snow ahead— like heat mirage, but blue.
Corvan raised his hand. "Fracture boundary. Masks on."
The soldiers pulled respirators over their mouths. Thin metal discs inside the filters vibrated, stabilizing local air pressure—a standard resonant dampener. The Empire's solution to everything: drown the noise with a stronger song.
Kael felt the shift as they crossed the boundary. The hum beneath the snow no longer matched the cadence drilled into them. It stuttered, like a heartbeat missing a note. The air tasted sharp, electric. His Lines stirred under his skin, confused but alert.
3. The Shrine
Shrine N-29 was little more than a stone platform with three pillars and a cracked statue of a faceless figure. Around it, the village huddled half-buried in snow. Windows were boarded, doors chained. The only movement came from banners flapping weakly in the wind.
A woman stepped from one of the houses, clutching a rosary of bone beads. Her eyes were wild. "You shouldn't have come! The earth remembers!"
Corvan raised his fork. "All units, hold line. Pacify."
The fork rang—a deep, clear note that vibrated in the teeth. The woman fell to her knees, clutching her head. The snow around her rippled as if struck by invisible rain.
Seris flinched. "That's—"
"Standard resonance suppression," Rheon said tightly. "She'll wake up."
Kael said nothing. He watched the way the sound bent the air and realized the fork wasn't just calming her—it was rewriting the local frequency, forcing every particle to obey. The Lattice's hum steadied around the shrine, but the stillness felt wrong, sterile.
4. Tuning the Shrine
Teams unpacked small tripods tipped with crystal rods—field anchors. Each emitted a counter-tone calibrated to Imperial harmony.Corvan's voice carried over the wind. "Anchor pattern delta. Tri-spiral formation."
Rheon handed Kael a rod. "Drive it in deep, twist clockwise, let it hum. The resonance will catch."
Kael knelt by the snow, pressing the crystal into frozen soil. The moment it touched earth, he felt something resist— a pulse beneath the ground that did not want to be aligned. It was slower, heavier, almost human. He forced the rod down anyway. The vibration fought back, crawling up his arm.
"Problem, Vance?" Corvan called.
Kael swallowed. "Soil's dense, sir."
"Force it."
He did. The hum broke with a pop. The resistance vanished, replaced by the steady blue of Imperial rhythm. Around him, other anchors lit in sequence. The air smoothed.
Then came the scream.
It didn't come from any throat. It came from the shrine itself— a long, metallic shriek that made snow lift from the ground. The statue cracked down the center. Lines of light spider-webbed across the pillars.
"Fracture surge!" Rheon shouted.
"Stabilize!" Corvan barked.
Kael grabbed another anchor, slamming it into the ground. The light pulsed back and forth, fighting between blue and red. For an instant, Kael's own Lines flared through his gloves— red lightning snaking into the soil. The ground quieted.
Corvan turned, eyes narrowing. "What did you just do?"
Kael straightened. "Counter-pulse, sir. You said stabilize."
The Adept studied him for a long second, then nodded slowly. "Effective. Don't improvise again without order."
"Yes, sir."
5. Aftermath
By nightfall the shrine was silent. The priests declared it harmonized. The villagers were herded into the chapel for "evaluation." Corvan's men burned the cracked statue and set a new Imperial sigil over the ashes.
Rheon watched the flames. "They'll sleep easy tonight."
Seris muttered, "If sleep means forgetting."
Kael stood apart, feeling the faint red ache in his palms. He knew the Lattice hadn't quieted; it had merely yielded. The hum beneath the ground now carried a scar, and his pulse recognized it like an echo of its own.
When Corvan dismissed the unit, Kael lingered by the ashes. The heat made the snow hiss. He crouched, touching a shard of the statue. It vibrated faintly— not with Imperial blue, but a deep, stubborn crimson. The earth remembers, the woman had said.
He pocketed the shard before anyone saw.
6. Campfire
They bivouacked on the edge of the fracture field, tents arranged in concentric circles like a miniature Lattice.
Rheon cleaned his rifle in silence. "You handled yourself well, Vance."
"Thanks."
"Corvan's watching you."
"I noticed."
"Don't give him reason," Rheon warned. "A man who improvises in a resonance field is a danger."
Seris smirked from across the fire. "Or a problem-solver."
Rheon shot him a glare. "We're soldiers, not philosophers."
Kael poked the fire. Sparks drifted upward, each flickering out on a different rhythm. "Sometimes those are the same thing."
Neither answered.
Above them, the aurora shimmered faintly— threads of green and red light rippling across the sky. In Guild texts, Liora had called that Lattice bleed, when the upper layers of the network brushed the atmosphere. The Empire called it beauty. The Guild called it pain made visible.
When Kael finally lay down, he couldn't sleep. The shard in his pocket pulsed faintly against his thigh, matching his heartbeat.Each thump carried a whisper of the voice beneath the shrine, the one that had screamed when the anchors bit deep.
You can tune stone, it seemed to say, but you can't tune memory.
Kael closed his hand over it until the glow dimmed. Tomorrow they would move to the next fracture, another wound to cauterize in the name of order.
He stared at the tent's ceiling, feeling the Empire's rhythm pulsing through the frozen ground.For the first time, he understood what Liora had meant:the world wasn't dead. It was simply forced to breathe on command.