"When we breached that door, it released the unfiltered aetherich that had been building up in the chamber for a decade, it was the kind of exposure that killed." The moment replayed in his mind with perfect clarity—the door coming down, the rush of air that tasted like bronze and ozone, the civilians' faces—fear giving way to confusion as his squad members started falling.‎"Three soldiers died on the spot. They Just collapsed, as their brains couldn't adjust to the frequency." Joren touched his neck, the gesture unconscious. "Two others developed sensitivity, started hearing things, feeling things they couldn't explain. Command pulled them out within hours, sent them to research facilities for evaluation."‎"And you got corrupted," Petran said quietly.‎"Wrong genetics. I had some compatibility markers—enough that the exposure didn't kill me outright, but not enough to develop actual abilities. So my body tried to adapt and failed. The dust got into my cells, my brain, and started

The godstorm left scars that weren’t visible. days after weathering it, Kael could still feel the phantom press of foreign memories against his thoughts—ghosts of lives he’d never lived, bleeding through the edges of his own consciousness like colors running together. A woman’s hands kneading bread dough. The metallic taste of fear before a battle. The slow, grinding ache of disease eating someone from the inside out.He’d learned to push them away, mostly. His father had taught him that, back when the dust-memories first started. “Build walls in your mind”, Marcus Ardren had said. “Make rooms for what’s yours and what’s not. Don’t let the dead crowd out the living”.Good advice, when the dead stayed quiet, but these memories weren’t quiet. They insisted, pressed against those mental walls with a persistence that spoke of intelligence, of purpose, as though something on the other side was testing the barriers, looking for weaknesses.Kael sat on the edge of the lead wagon’s run