The chamber, once a symbol of the Ghost Code’s hard-won unity and defiance, now felt like a pressure cooker seconds from exploding. The air, usually cool and circulating from hidden vents, was stale and thick with the heat of too many bodies and too much fervent, clashing ideology. The circular table, carved from a single massive slab of reclaimed blackwood, was no longer a place of discourse but a battle line. Councilor Aris sat rigidly in her seat, her hands flat on the table’s polished surface, but the usual calm calculation in her eyes had been replaced by the sharp, desperate focus of a commander whose battlefield has just transformed into something unrecognizable.Across from her, Commander Vex stood, refusing to sit. He leaned forward, his knuckles planted on the wood, his broad shoulders hunched like a bull about to charge. The scar on his face seemed darker, a livid line of fury against his pallid skin. “You saw what I saw!” His voice wasn’t a shout, but a low, vibrating grow

The profound, healing silence that followed the wave of peace was its own kind of sound. It was the echo of a memory the world had forgotten, a pristine quiet that made the previous hum of machinery and the psychic scream of corruption seem like a vulgar noise. In the center of the room, the node pulsed its serene, steady azure light, a tiny star of order in the darkness. The feral mouse, unconcerned by the giants surrounding it, continued its meticulous grooming, a perfect, peaceful testament to the power that had been unleashed.The silence was broken by a soft, crumpling sound.Selene folded.The immense psychic effort, the violent fluctuation of her corruption, the sheer willpower required to not fight but to harmonize with oblivion—it all crashed down upon her the moment the connection was severed. There was no dramatic cry, no final word. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed sideways onto the cold permacrete floor, limbs splayed, utterly unconscious. The terrifyin

The air in the ruined plaza tasted of ozone and old blood. Corporal Kaelen of the Ghost Code, his back pressed against the rusted husk of an ancient public transport vehicle, squeezed off another three-round burst. The sharp crack-crack-crack of his rifle was swallowed by the vast, empty space, answered a half-second later by the sizzling spang of return fire from a scavenger’s energy pistol striking the metal beside his head. He ducked, hot shrapnel peppering his helmet.“They’re pushing from the east flank!” a voice yelled over the squad’s comms, strained with static and adrenaline. “Where’s Vex’s backup?!”“Backup’s busy having a civil war, remember?” Kaelen snapped back, ejecting a spent power cell and slamming in a fresh one. The skirmish was a stupid, pointless thing. A Beauty remnant scavenging party, growing bolder by the day, had tried to muscle in on a ruined hardware depot the Code had been watching. Now they were all wasting ammo and lives over a pile of pre-fall junk. The

The chosen neutral ground was a monument to dead commerce: the vast, open-air top level of a multi-story car park. The once-white lines marking the parking bays were faded to ghosts, the permacrete beneath them cracked and weeded. The skeletal remains of a few burned-out vehicles sat where they had been abandoned a decade ago, their husks picked clean of anything useful. The place was a bowl of cold wind and bleak exposure, chosen for one reason alone: no one could be ambushed here. The sightlines were clear in every direction, all the way to the jagged skyline of the ruined city. It was a place of absolute vulnerability, and that was the only thing that made it safe.Kaelen felt the wind bite through his fatigues as he stood with Aris’s small contingent. They were the first to arrive, taking up a position near the eastern stairwell exit—a tactical choice for a rapid retreat if this was, in fact, an elaborate trap. Selene sat on an overturned crate, wrapped in a thick thermal blanket,

The silence left in the wake of Linda’s words was a fragile, crystalline thing. The wind, which had moments before whipped angrily across the car park, seemed to hold its breath. The hardened faces of soldiers and scavengers, etched with years of ingrained hostility and suspicion, were now slack with a kind of bewildered awe. They had been prepared for a battle of strategies, a clash of force and counter-force. They had not been prepared for a lesson in empathy from a woman who had been, until very recently, lost to the world.Commander Vex was the first to break, but not with anger. A harsh, disbelieving breath escaped him. It wasn't acceptance; it was the sound of a man whose entire worldview had just been invalidated by a logic he couldn't argue with. "Change the sound," he repeated, the words tasting alien on his tongue. He looked at Selene, then at Linda, his expression one of profound, exhausted confusion. "You propose we... sing it to sleep?""It is not a lullaby, Commander," S