2025-04-30 00:50:38Frank sat in a quiet hospital corridor, elbows on knees, his heart still racing. Outside the ER doors, doctors worked furiously to stabilize Winston Wrenford. Blood still stained Frank’s shirt, but he didn’t feel it. All he could think about was the moment Winston was shot—and the cold, hollow look in Corbin’s eyes before he was dragged away by security.
“Frank.”
He looked up.
Ella stood before him, her hands trembling slightly. Her eyes were red, not from fear—but fury.
“He’s going to be okay,” she said. “The bullet missed anything vital. The doctors say he’s lucky.”
Frank nodded, relieved—but only for a second. Because something still didn’t sit right.
“This wasn’t just about power,” he muttered. “Corbin had something else planned.”
Ella hesitated. “What do you mean?”
Frank glanced around, lowered his voice. “I think he was working with someone… maybe outside the company. The hit—it was too clean. The sniper vanished. And when I caught up with Corbin, he didn’t seem surprised. He was prepared.”
Ella looked at him. “You think there’s more coming?”
Frank’s silence was her answer.
Three blocks away, in a dimly lit hotel room, the sniper stood by the window, cleaning his rifle. His gloves were crimson red—an odd flourish for someone so calculated, so surgical.
The TV played silently in the background. News footage from WrenTech Tower: board members escorted out, Winston loaded into an ambulance, police swarming the scene.
He muted the screen.
Then opened a second folder: Frank Sutton – Level 2 Priority. Eliminate Quietly.
A text lit up his burner phone:
“Failure is not an option this time.”
– R
The man cracked his neck, zipped his case, and slipped on his coat. He walked out without a sound, merging into the crowd.
At WrenTech HQ, police finished sweeping the premises. Officers questioned employees, pulled surveillance footage, and catalogued Corbin’s electronics.
Frank was brought back in under heavy security. He had gone from janitor to national headline in twelve hours.
Winston was recovering, but still unconscious.
The boardroom had been transformed into a crisis command center. Agents in dark suits swarmed the halls. Federal eyes were now watching.
Agent Mia Caldwell approached Frank. Tall, sharp, with an expression that didn’t blink.
“You’re Frank Sutton?”
“Yes.”
“I’m with Internal Security Liaison. We’ve been monitoring threats to tech firms. This incident isn’t isolated. There’s a pattern.”
Frank’s stomach twisted. “Pattern?”
“Three other tech CEOs in the last year—‘accidents.’ All happened right before sensitive mergers, key inventions, or massive IPOs.”
“And you think WrenTech is next.”
“I think,” Caldwell said, “you’ve just stepped into something much bigger than you realize.”
Back in the hospital, Ella sat beside her father’s bed. His hand twitched slightly.
“Dad,” she whispered. “Frank… he saved everything.”
Winston’s eyelids fluttered, and for a second, she saw life return to his face. He tried to speak—but a tear rolled down instead.
Ella gripped his hand tighter.
That night, Frank couldn’t sleep.
He paced his one-room apartment, surrounded by files, charts, and code sheets. The excitement of cracking the T9Space code had evaporated into dread.
He knew Corbin’s arrest didn’t end this.
The moment the sniper tried—and failed—something shifted.
They would come again.
He stared at his wall. A formula he’d sketched out weeks ago seemed to shimmer in a new light. He picked up a pen, circled two fragments, and frowned.
“T9 wasn’t just about stocks,” he muttered. “It’s a gateway.”
Suddenly, his phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
He hesitated, then answered. “Hello?”
A low, gravel voice replied:
“Tick-tock, Mr. Sutton. You shouldn’t have touched the code.”
Click.
Frank froze.
He turned, instinctively checking his window—nothing.
But across the street, from the rooftop opposite, a small red light blinked once, then disappeared.
Frank rushed to grab his bag—his instincts screaming.
But as he reached for the doorknob, he paused.
Under the door…
No address.
No writing.
Just one thing inside:
And a note scrawled beneath it:
“You unlock secrets. We unlock people.”
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Chapter 277: The Thing That Fell
It wasn’t a person, It wasn’t a Hollowborn. It wasn’t even alive. But the moment the sky cracked open and it began to fall, every spiral stone in the crater went dark. Not dim, Not flickering. Gone.A silence descended like a hammer, The Third hum ceased, Even the wind stopped, The shape fell fast, No fire, No flare. Just a vertical descent that ignored gravity, as though obeying only memory.The clouds twisted around it, The Hollowborn watched it come. And for the first time, it stepped backward.Ember hovered mid-air, still glowing, still breathing the breath of the Rift, Ten flickering Witnesses stood behind her.Callen lay collapsed on the ground below, Savi held a shaking spiral blade, Amari raised her rifle, Skov braced for impact. And then, the thing hit the earth. No explosion, No crater, No impact tremor. It just appeared.A vertical figure, hunched and silent, with no face, No arms, No spiral groove, Just a column of jagged spirals folded inward upon itself like a collapsed
Chapter 276: The One Who Followed
It didn’t breathe. It didn’t blink, It simply stood behind Callen, its feet hovering inches above the ground, its body draped in smoke that didn’t billow or rise, but hung around it like memory too heavy to leave.Eyes like burn holes in paper. Not black.Absent.Amari was the first to speak, Not a whisper, Not a warning. Just one word, ripped out of her like a curse:“Hollowborn.”Savi stumbled backward, Skov dropped into a low stance, Callen turned, swaying, blood running from his nose again, and froze. He knew what it was. He’d seen it in the Rift.But it hadn’t followed him. It shouldn’t have been able to. And yet, It had. Witnesses panicked.Some screamed and ran. Others dropped to their knees, spiral stones pressed to their chests, murmuring old Driftline prayers. The First was gone. The Second had vanished with the rupture.There was nothing now to guard them. Except Ember. And she was nowhere to be seen. Callen’s breath came ragged. “Where’s Ember?”No one answered, He stagger
Chapter 275: We Are the Ones Who Stay
The breach snapped shut like a mouth that had swallowed its last name, And with it, Callen was gone, Not dead, Not screaming. Just erased.Ember stood barefoot in the churned earth, mud clinging to her ankles, blood streaked up her arms, and a rawness inside her that didn't come from the Rift.The kind of rawness that meant something was missing, Not a limb, Not a stone, A person, Behind her, the Witnesses rose in silence. Some bowed. Some turned away. None dared speak her name.Skov walked toward her slowly, like someone approaching the center of a battlefield littered with traps. “Ember…”She didn’t look up. Just whispered, “He chose me.”Skov stopped. He had no answer. There wasn’t one, In the infirmary tent, Amari hovered over Callen’s body. Technically: not a body anymore. His vitals were gone. Pulse. Breath. Neural trace. Spiral groove completely burned out.But the skin was warm. The lips slightly parted. And his right hand still curled into a fist, like it was holding on to so
Chapter 274: The Echo That Stayed
When Ember collapsed, it didn’t feel like a fall, It felt like being unplugged.Cut off from the current she hadn’t even realized she’d been riding, Callen’s breath, the tether, the fractured echo-field. All of it snapped out of her at once, like a trapdoor yanked out from under her soul.Her body struck the mud hard, Eyes open, But the light inside her was off, Skov was the first to move. He ran.Dropped to his knees beside her and rolled her onto her back. “Ember. Look at me.”She didn’t blink, Savi was behind him a second later, spiral band scanning her vitals, but the readings flickered, pulsed, then flatlined “No pulse.”Skov’s voice cracked. “That’s not possible.”Amari knelt over Callen. “It is if she gave it back.”And she had The breath. The Root fire. The spark that wasn’t hers, She’d given it to Callen, But Callen wasn’t moving either.The Circle formed tight around them. Silent, No panic, Just stillness the kind that came after the end of a storm, when the damage couldn’t
Chapter 273: Breathing Borrowed Fire
The moment Ember opened her mouth and Callen’s breath passed through her lips, the world shifted, Not visibly, Not with tremor or collapse, But inside the air itself, as though the Riftline rewrote gravity to obey something ancient, something feral.Skov froze mid-step, Savi dropped her spiral band as if it suddenly burned, Amari went pale, whispering something no one could hear, The First scattered, not gliding fleeing.The Second’s hum surged so loud the Witnesses collapsed to their knees, And Ember… wasn’t breathing anymore, The breath in her body didn’t belong to her, It moved in rhythms foreign to her lungs slow, measured, thick like tar exhaled in pulses.Her eyes stayed open but unfocused, One hand still gripped Callen’s limp wrist, The Circle held its breath, Waiting, Watching, Not one dared touch her. Inside her chest, Ember was awake. But not… present.She stood in a space layered with pulse and echo. The floor beneath her flickered with overlapping memory, a thousand spiral
Chapter 272: A Body Not Yet Ash
When the light vanished, silence reigned, No pulse, No static, Not even the old hum of the Second threading through the Driftline Just blackness. Thick, hot, and wet.Like breath trapped inside lungs that had forgotten how to exhale, Ember blinked, Nothing, No walls, No sky.Her hand, the one that caught the blade, hung limp at her side. Spiral stone gone. The groove that once hummed beneath her skin was burned away. Just flesh now. Raw and quiet.Callen lay beside her, Chest rising, Barely, Face bloodied, eyes closed, whispering something so faint it could’ve been breath or memory. The voice returned.Not the rig. Not the siphon. Something older, Older than Emotia, Older than MARROW, Older than hush.It whispered not into their ears but into the empty places between thoughts, where memory couldn’t reach, and forgetting had already claimed its price. “Two touched the cost. Only one may return. Choose.”Ember’s knees sank into the strange ground, not stone, not mist, not soil. It felt
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