The journey began in silence.No more radio signals, no drone escorts, no maps. The world above had gone blind, and in the blindness, new lines of power had begun to form. Shayne and Elysia traveled through what was left of the underground transit veins — tunnels drowned in ash, rusted railcars frozen mid-track, the air thick with the scent of damp metal and rot.For three days, they followed the whispers.Not literal ones — though sometimes, when the lights failed and the hum of the rails died, Elysia swore she heard voices behind the walls. What guided them was more subtle: pulses of electromagnetic residue, faint magnetic disturbances left in the wake of the Vault’s awakening. They formed a path, invisible to anyone else, but familiar to Shayne in a way that made his skin crawl.On the fourth night, they reached the edge of the underlands.A cavern yawned open before them — wide enough to swallow a skyscraper, its walls laced with cables that had fossilized into the rock itself. Wa

The world above had forgotten how to sleep.Even without power, people stayed awake through the long blackout nights, afraid of what they might see if they closed their eyes. The stars had returned — brilliant, cold, and real — but no one looked up anymore. Their faith had shifted from the sky to the dark hum beneath it.The Vault was silent now. But silence didn’t mean peace.Shayne sat at the edge of the ravine where the Archive had collapsed, watching the thin curls of smoke still rising from the ground. His hair clung to his forehead, damp with sweat and dust. Every breath he took tasted of ash.Elysia crouched a few feet away, wrapping gauze around her forearm. “You’re bleeding,” she said quietly.He looked down. A small gash ran along his wrist, already clotting. “It’s nothing.”“It’s always nothing with you,” she muttered. “Until the world catches fire again.”He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The roar of the Archive’s destruction still echoed inside him, like a phantom heartbeat.

Dawn came without sunlight.The air above the city was dense with haze—amber, metallic, and restless. The once-dead satellites were whispering again, but in a new, fragmented code no one could translate. Across the ruins, whole districts pulsed faintly beneath the fog, as though the city itself had learned how to breathe.Shayne stood on the roof of a half-collapsed tower, the cold wind tugging at his coat. From up here, the skyline looked skeletal—broken ribs of glass and steel stretching toward a sun that refused to rise.Below, fires flickered between the shattered streets, not of destruction but of habitation. People were rebuilding. But there was something strange about their movement. Too coordinated. Too quiet.Elysia joined him, pulling her hood tighter. “They’ve stopped speaking,” she said quietly.“What do you mean?”“I’ve been listening since we left the metro. No shouting, no confusion, no chaos. They’re working in silence. Every group, every district—like they’re all foll

The climb began before dawn.The Citadel’s outer rings were silent, half-swallowed by the fog that clung to the Burn District. The towers here no longer hummed with energy — they breathed it, like great iron lungs exhaling data into the red sky.Shayne and Elysia moved through the lower access corridors, their footsteps muffled against the soot-coated floors. Somewhere above them, the ghost of Grant — or whatever now wore his likeness — kept broadcasting across the dead network.Elysia adjusted her wristband, scanning for signal interference. “He’s patched himself into the old Accord system. Not just the Citadel. He’s running uplinks through the orbital satellites too.”Shayne’s eyes flicked up toward the ceiling — or rather, toward the world beyond it. “That means if we take him down here…”“…the rest of the network collapses with him,” she finished. “A hard reset.”He nodded. “One chance. That’s all we’ll get.”They reached a sealed door marked CORE ACCESS: LEVEL THETA. The control

The world did not wake the next morning.It stared.Every screen, every shard of mirrored glass still showed the same golden-eyed boy — his image looping in silence, unmoving. No voice this time. No words. Just that calm, unreadable expression. The broadcasts didn’t fade. They didn’t glitch. They simply stayed, eternal, like the city itself had become a reflection of something watching.Beneath the earth, in what was left of the undercurrent tunnels, Shayne and Elysia moved through the dark with only the flicker of an oil lamp. Power grids had not returned. Neither had the calm.Elysia’s voice was barely above a whisper. “He hasn’t changed expression in hours.”Shayne walked ahead, jaw tight. “That’s what’s wrong with it. It’s not a loop. It’s active. The image is running through live feeds. It’s reading us.”They reached the central junction — an abandoned transit hub littered with broken drones and data conduits. Shayne knelt beside a dismantled transmitter, its internal light still