Chapter 32: Ghost Frequencies
The rain hadn't stopped since the collapse.
It fell like ash, gray and silent, coating the fractured skyline in a dull metallic sheen. Kael moved through the ruins of the industrial district with a heavy gait, each step crunching over shards of glass and charred circuitry. The explosion that had consumed Remnant's core still echoed in his mind, the blinding light, the deafening silence that followed, and Elira's face before everything dissolved into chaos.
He had survived, though he wasn't sure how. The EMP surge should've erased everything, systems, power, even life support. Yet here he was, breathing under a sky that flickered as though it couldn't decide whether to exist.
A broken world. A broken truth.
Kael crouched beside a twisted panel of steel, brushing aside debris to reveal the faint pulse of a still-active interface. He connected his wrist device, fingers trembling. Static hissed through the cracked screen before stabilizing into a stream of fragmented data.
> SIGNAL TRACE: UNKNOWN SOURCE
LOCATION: UNMAPPED—BEYOND CENTRAL GRID
STATUS: ACTIVE
He frowned. The coordinates pointed somewhere deep beneath the city's surface, far beyond the reach of any surviving system. But the frequency.... he knew it.
Elira.
"Still chasing ghosts," he muttered to himself, though his chest tightened with something dangerously close to hope.
He packed his gear and started moving. The lower districts were half-flooded, a labyrinth of rusted platforms and abandoned sky-rails. As he descended into the undercity, the lights grew dimmer, flickering with residual energy from dying generators. The hum of broken drones echoed through the tunnels, their red sensors sweeping the darkness like searching eyes.
Kael kept his hood low, pulse steady. Every sound mattered now, a dropped bolt, a crack of shifting metal, the faint buzz of corrupted systems trying to rebuild themselves. The city wasn't just decaying; it was changing.
At the edge of a flooded corridor, his device beeped again. The signal pulsed stronger now, steady and rhythmic, like a heartbeat. He followed it deeper, past collapsed walls and pools of stagnant water reflecting distorted neon.
The path ended at a vast steel door, half-submerged and covered in cryptic markings. It looked ancient, predating even Remnant's infrastructure. A faint symbol glowed in its center, a circle intersected by three lines, pulsing with the same pattern as Elira's signal.
Kael ran his fingers over it. "You really found something, didn't you?"
He connected his device. Sparks flared, systems protested, and then the door began to shudder open, releasing a gust of cold air that smelled of ozone and burnt circuits.
Inside was a cavernous chamber lit by vertical streams of light rising from the floor like frozen lightning. At its center hovered a massive crystalline structure, fractured, bleeding data from every surface. Holographic fragments flickered within it: faces, voices, flashes of memory.
Kael stepped closer, heart pounding. He recognized some of the fragments, missions they'd run, people they'd lost, pieces of Elira's past. The crystal seemed alive, struggling to hold the weight of what it contained.
"Kael."
He froze.
Her voice, faint, echoing through the chamber.
"Elira?"
The light pulsed brighter. A ripple of energy burst outward, and for a brief second, her image appeared, translucent, fragile, suspended within the crystalline core. Her eyes were closed, her expression calm but distant, as if caught between sleep and awakening.
Kael reached out, his hand trembling. "Elira... you're alive."
She stirred faintly, her voice threading through the static. "Kael... you shouldn't be here. The system, it's rebuilding. Everything's unstable."
He took a step closer. "I'm not leaving you."
"The boundary's gone," she said softly. "This place... it's not the real world anymore. It's the residue of what was lost. I can feel it rewriting itself."
Kael's gaze darted to the flickering walls, where lines of code and images flowed like liquid light. The architecture itself was shifting, bending around her presence.
"Then we'll get you out before it collapses again."
She opened her eyes, and for a brief moment, they glowed, not with human warmth, but with a mirrored light that unsettled him. "You don't understand. I'm part of it now."
He shook his head. "No. I've seen what they do, I can separate the neural threads, pull your consciousness back into physical form. I just need.."
"Kael," she interrupted gently, "if you pull me out, you'll destroy what's left of the real world. This network, this fusion, it's the only thing keeping memory alive. Without it, everything collapses into nothing."
Kael's mind raced. She wasn't just trapped, she was anchoring the surviving data, the remnants of thousands of lost identities. Removing her could erase everything.
"There has to be another way," he said, voice raw.
Her image flickered, glitching. "You always believed there was. That's why I trusted you."
The chamber trembled violently. Streams of data burst from the crystal, tearing into the walls like lightning. Kael shielded his eyes as the entire space shifted, the walls rippling, the floor splitting to reveal endless networks of glowing veins stretching deep into the earth.
"Elira!" he shouted.
"I have to stabilize it," she said, her tone urgent now. "The memories are collapsing. If they merge uncontrollably, they'll overwrite what's left of the real world."
He stepped forward, desperate. "Tell me what to do!"
Her voice softened. "Find the root signal. It connects both realities. If you can anchor it, I can keep this place from consuming everything."
Kael clenched his jaw. "Then tell me where to find it."
Her image began to fade. "It's already searching for you."
The light around him dimmed, replaced by a rising hum that made the air vibrate. The signal on his wrist flared violently, then cut out.
"Elira!"
Her voice echoed one last time before vanishing into the static. "Don't lose yourself trying to save me."
Then the chamber went dark.
Kael stood in silence, breathing heavily, his reflection staring back from the fractured crystal. Around him, the hum deepened, the pulse of something vast and unseen awakening below.
He tightened his grip on the data drive, eyes narrowing.
If this world wanted to rewrite itself, he would make sure the truth survived the process.
Whatever it took.