1. Silence Before the EchoFor weeks the world stayed still.Screens glowed with Phoenix insignias, city feeds ran clean, and Mara’s network hummed like a flawless machine.Then, one dawn in São Paulo, an operator whispered, “Director… someone breached the west relay.”Mara looked up from the holo-table. “Which cell?”“None of ours. It’s analog. No digital code, no encryption, just a signal burst on shortwave. Old military frequency.”Mara frowned. “Analog? That’s impossible. We decommissioned all analog relays months ago.”Jonah ran diagnostics, eyes wide. “It’s not a hack. It’s a transmission.”They played it back.A voice—crackling, distorted, male—spoke through static:“You cleaned the cities, but ghosts don’t live in cities. You can’t control what doesn’t exist.”Then silence.2. Ash in the AirMara leaned against the console. The message felt colder than any bullet.Jonah murmured, “Someone’s broadcasting from the outskirts—old industrial zones. Maybe an abandoned steel district

When Jonah opened his eyes, he thought he’d gone blind.Everything around him was drenched in shadows—thick, living shadows that pulsed with slow breaths, like the lungs of a beast too ancient to name. The air wasn’t cold, but it clung to his skin like damp silk, whispering in languages he could almost understand.He stood, though his body felt wrong—lighter, stretched, not entirely human. His reflection in a shattered pane of obsidian showed a pale figure whose eyes burned faintly gold, the last echo of a man who had once carried faith in his veins and blood on his hands.The city beyond the Veil stretched before him. It was both familiar and broken — Los Angeles reimagined in decay.The skyline twisted into impossible shapes.Buildings leaned like drunken giants, their windows leaking crimson mist.Billboards blinked with faces that mouthed words without sound.And above it all, a cracked moon hung low, its reflection shattered into thousands of hovering shards across the sky.Jonah

The river had stopped flowing weeks ago.It used to carry trade ships, garbage, secrets — the usual veins of a living city. But after the blast that swallowed the central grid, it had turned still, dark, heavy as glass. People said it was poisoned. Some said it was cursed.They were both right.Deep beneath the black surface, far below the bones of the city, something moved. Slow. Silent. Ancient.It didn’t have a shape, not really. Just a memory of one — a shifting mass of thought and hunger that had once been trapped between worlds. For centuries, it had waited in the cold mud, whispering through water and stone, pressing against the edges of its invisible cage.Now, the cage was cracking.When Jonah broke the circle in the undercity, he hadn’t just sealed the Veil — he had weakened it. The explosion of energy that followed didn’t close the gate. It fractured it. The light that swallowed him also bled downward, into the river, into the deep, waking what slept there.The first to fee

The city groaned under the weight of its own ruin.Jonah and Nia stood on the edge of the flooded district, the river now a roiling, black serpent of water and shadow. The mist curled around them, thick enough to cling to skin and clothing, carrying the faint scent of ozone and rot. Every ripple in the water hinted at movement beneath — unseen, but palpably alive.Jonah adjusted the metal disc in his hand, the faint glow casting wavering shadows across the cracked pavement. He could feel it — the Echo — growing stronger. It wasn’t just in the river anymore. It had begun to seep into the city itself. Every broken streetlamp, every shattered window, every stagnant puddle pulsed with its presence.Nia checked the map again, tracing spirals with her finger. “It’s… spreading faster than we thought. Every street along the river’s edge has markings now.”Jonah’s jaw tightened. “It knows we’re coming. It’s preparing.”Their plan was desperate, but it was all they had: force the Echo to concen

The city had changed. Not just from the flood and the mist, but from the presence that now pulsed beneath its streets, in its puddles, in the reflections of broken windows. Jonah and Nia moved through it cautiously, their boots splashing on wet asphalt, eyes scanning every corner, every shadow. The Echo was no longer confined to the river — it had learned how to spread, and every person was a potential host.Their safehouse smelled of damp concrete and stale coffee. Maps were spread across the table, covered in marks, spirals, and annotations. Candles flickered, casting elongated shadows that danced like predators on the walls. Nia tapped her finger along the map.“West district,” she said. “Another disappearance last night. And reports of strange shadows near the old industrial complex.”Jonah leaned over the map, tracing the streets with a gloved finger. “It’s moving fast. We have to anticipate it, predict where it’ll strike next. But the city itself is against us. Every alley, ever