LOCATION: SKY VAULT RIDGE — PRE-SINGULARITY ZONE — 05:55 A.M.
A storm churned in the upper atmosphere.
Flares of aurora lightning danced through the sky like veins of colorless fire, and at the edge of the world—where heaven met what was left of Earth's bones—stood a girl wrapped in silence.
Rune.
No containment. No stasis. No cables. Just wind and gravity and the terrifying emptiness between them.
Her eyes were half-lidded, glowing only faintly now. The fire inside her had dimmed, but it hadn't vanished. It had learned how to breathe.
Severin's experiments had ended.
Because Rune had walked out of the Nocturne Core without permission. Without resistance. Without killing a single guard.
They bowed.
Every one of them.
And Severin?
He smiled.
> "Let her go."
He knew what was coming.
---
[FLASHBACK – 02:47 A.M. – NOCTURNE CORE]
"You don't fear me anymore," Rune had whispered to him, rising from the ruptured stasis fluid.
"No," Severin had replied. "I fear what you could choose to become."
Rune had tilted her head. "And what do you choose?"
He didn't answer.
Because the walls began to hum again—not with machinery, but with her voice. Just one note. Carried by the ghosts she had buried inside her.
And the AI node shattered.
---
[PRESENT – SKY VAULT RIDGE]
Below, in the crater valley, the first Black Choir Facility—codename: HOLLOW GOD—rumbled to life. A tower of reactors long believed dormant began awakening. Drone towers activated. An old satellite dish began spinning—searching.
Searching for her.
Searching for Lin.
Because this wasn't just about her anymore. It was about the Song that had been rewritten. The anomaly that had broken the old resonance chain: Lin's bond with her.
> A human heart inside the Choir equation.
The Choir screamed now. Not in words, but in refusal. Rune felt it. Their pain. Their rejection. She was not supposed to choose who to remember. Not supposed to keep that rooftop. That broken music box. That rice ball.
And yet she did.
"I am not all of you," she whispered to the wind. "But I was once one of you."
Her voice cracked like thunder across the sky.
"And that is enough."
---
[LOCATION: BLACK SECTOR HIDEOUT — 06:03 A.M.]
Lin pulled on his coat. The Reactor Ring on his wrist had stopped pulsing. Now it glowed steadily, a soft red shimmer, like a heartbeat resuming.
Nel watched him from the window. "You felt her again?"
"Yeah," Lin said, strapping his boots. "She's not locked in anymore."
"Then it's over?"
Lin looked at the rising sun. Its light was filtered through storm debris and broken clouds.
"No. It's starting."
He turned to Nel. His voice was low.
"The Choir isn't going to let her go. And I'm not going to let them take her again."
---
[LOCATION: HOLLOW GOD FACILITY – INNER SANCTUM – 06:33 A.M.]
Severin stood before the Singularity Core.
Behind him, a dozen Choir Constructs opened their eyes—burning with blue code. Harmony AI nodes. Winged. Each with its own melody of death.
"She will come here," he whispered.
And then: "So will he."
---
[FINAL SCENE – SKY VAULT RIDGE]
Rune reached into her chest and drew something out.
A shard of music. Tangible. Pulsing like a living soul.
She held it up. Whispered a note into it.
A promise.
And released it into the wind.
Far away, across ruined cities and shattered antennas, the broken music box on Lin's shelf suddenly ticked once.
Then again.
Then it began to play.
---