Silence settled in layers.
Not peace.
Latency.
Yuvraj lay on the cold concrete, counting breaths.
Every inhale scraped bone against bone.
Broken ribs.
At least two. Maybe three.
Spirit Energy pulsed faintly in his chest, like a dying battery.
SPIRIT ENERGY: 5/100
"Figures," he muttered.
Pain wasn't the problem.
Pain was information.
He closed his eyes and activated Vibrational Parse deliberately this time.
The world didn't light up.
It resolved.
His own body became a data set.
Heartbeat, erratic but stable.
Lungs, compressed on the right side.
Ribs, fracture points glowing faintly, each vibrating at a slightly different frequency.
Bone wasn't solid.
It was organized noise.
Calcium lattices oscillating within narrow tolerances.
Yuvraj swallowed.
"So that's the bug."
Healing, he realized, wasn't repair.
It was re-synchronization.
No gods.
No faith.
Just resonance.
He remembered something from an old physics lecture, how bridges collapsed when soldiers marched in step.
Not force.
Frequency.
Yuvraj braced himself against the wall and sat up slowly.
Stars exploded behind his eyes.
Nausea followed.
"Okay," he whispered.
"One experiment."
He inhaled shallowly.
Then he hummed.
Not loudly.
Not reverently.
A low, controlled HUM, adjusted in real time using Vibrational Parse.
The sound wasn't constant.
It wavered, micro-adjusting as feedback poured in.
The room reacted.
Dust trembled.
Hair on his arms lifted.
Inside his chest, something shifted.
Pain spiked, then changed quality.
From sharp to itchy.
Wrong, but promising.
He focused harder.
The hum deepened, syncing with the fracture frequency.
Calcium atoms vibrated faster, aligning, snapping into coherence like magnetic filings obeying a field.
His ribs burned.
Sweat drenched him.
SPIRIT ENERGY: 3/100
His vision blurred at the edges.
He almost stopped.
Almost.
"Don't collapse," he hissed.
"Finish the equation."
He pushed the frequency slightly higher.
The pain peaked.
Then dropped.
Not gone.
Connected.
The fractures knit imperfectly, jagged edges pulling together under enforced resonance.
It wasn't healing.
It was forced compliance.
Yuvraj gagged, bile rising.
SPIRIT ENERGY: 1/100
The hum died in his throat.
He collapsed forward, retching dryly onto the floor.
The room spun.
Cold sweat.
Ringing ears.
But when he pressed a trembling hand to his ribs,
They held.
Cracked.
Weak.
But no longer stabbing him with every breath.
Yuvraj laughed softly, half-delirious.
"Science," he whispered.
"Terrifyingly reliable."
The blue screen flickered into view, slower than before.
ANALYZING USER ACTION…
NON-STANDARD APPLICATION DETECTED
Text scrolled.
NEW METRIC UNLOCKED:
ENTROPY STABILIZATION: 0.1%
Another line followed.
WARNING:
MENTAL CORRUPTION RISK INCREASED
Yuvraj frowned weakly.
"Define corruption."
The System didn't.
Instead,
SPIRIT ENERGY: 0/100
STATUS: SYSTEM SHOCK IMMINENT
His body went heavy.
Muscles refused to respond.
He slid back against the wall, breathing shallowly, consciousness flickering.
The room felt wrong.
Not unsafe.
Stale.
A countdown appeared unprompted.
LOW-ENTROPY ZONE STABILITY: 00:01:20
Yuvraj blinked.
"What?"
NOTICE:
STATIC OCCUPATION INCREASES LOCAL ENTROPY
RECOMMENDATION: RELOCATE
The walls creaked.
Hairline cracks spread like time-lapse rot.
Paint peeled, not downward, but inward, curling into black flakes that evaporated before hitting the floor.
Concrete darkened, dampening, aging decades in seconds.
Yuvraj tried to stand.
Failed.
His limbs tingled uselessly.
The countdown ticked.
00:00:45
Something shifted in the far corner of the room.
Not a glitch.
A sound.
Soft.
Wet.
A whimper.
Human.
Yuvraj froze.
The sound came again, ragged breathing, suppressed sobbing.
His heart slammed against his newly knit ribs.
"There's someone here," he whispered.
The System pulsed once.
NEW VARIABLE DETECTED
The wall beside the sound blistered outward, rotting faster, space destabilizing around it.
The countdown hit zero.
LOW-ENTROPY ZONE COLLAPSED
The room exhaled decay.
And from the darkness,
The whimper turned into a scream.