Niko liked the quiet.
The others often mistook her silence for distance. Weirdness. Fragility.
But Niko didn't need noise to feel a connection. She saw it in the things left behind: a torn scarf, a half melted fork, a drawing taped to a wall with fading hope. She felt people in absence, the way some could feel static before a storm.
She was curled up near the campfire with Whiskers nestled beside her his incorporeal form flickering faintly, like a static given shape. His tail twitched toward the fire every so often, chasing shadows only he saw.
Niko whispered, "He's not gone."
Aya, seated beside her, turned her head. "You mean Jaden?"
Niko nodded. "I can feel him. Like… he left footprints behind in places we didn't think to look."
Rowan raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying you're tracking him emotionally?"
"Emotion leaves echoes," she said simply. "So does intent."
---
The others might not have understood.
But Jaden had.
---
Flashback – The Night They Listened
It was early in the camp's formation. Trust was rare. Food was rationed. Niko was the strange one the girl who talked to a cat no one else could see, who wandered empty buildings and returned with stories of things no one could verify.
They didn't ignore her. But they didn't understand her either.
One night, Niko sat alone, watching moonlight fracture through a broken glass ceiling. Whiskers perched on her shoulder, tail swaying, eyes glowing softly.
She whispered to the air, "They think I'm broken."
She didn't expect an answer.
But Jaden stepped into the light like he'd been listening all along.
"Whiskers thinks they're just scared," he said.
Niko blinked, startled. "You… believe me?"
He didn't sit close. Just near enough. Enough to be there without pressuring her.
"I don't have to understand something to believe it's real," he said quietly.
Niko stared at him.
"Then… What do you think Whiskers think of you?"
Jaden smiled faintly.
"Storm in human skin. Right?"
She grinned, eyes soft. "Whiskers say you're good to nap on."
He actually laughed.
Not loudly. Just enough for the moonlight to catch on his breath.
---
Back in the present, Niko opened her eyes.
The fire had dimmed—but the space around her shimmered.
The world felt thinner. The air is warmer. Her fingers tingled.
She touched the ground, gently.
A low hum rippled through the zone like an emotional sonar.
> Fear.
Grief.
Hope.
A thousand fragments of memory buried in ash.
All of them gently vibrating in one direction.
---
> SYSTEM NOTICE:
User Niko Reyes – Talent Registered: Echo Trace
Skill Type: Emotional Residue | Soulbound Navigation
Status: Active
---
She stood slowly.
Whiskers hopped off her shoulder and circled her feet, purring into nothingness.
Aya stared in awe. "What… what do you feel?"
Niko pointed into the distance, past the glitch fields and out toward the fractured zone line.
"Someone left a piece of Jaden behind over there."
Rowan frowned. "You mean, like… something he dropped?"
"No," she said. "Something he felt."
Kael stepped closer, eyes intense. "Can you follow it?"
Niko nodded. "All the way to him."
---
Silas stepped forward, gaze locked on her now-activated aura. "And what if what you're sensing is a trap?"
Niko smiled, eerie and soft.
"Then I'll walk into it," she said. "But I won't walk in alone."
Silas blinked.
And then, slowly, he smiled too.
---
They gathered their gear quietly. No speeches. No declarations.
Just a sense of motion.
Of pull.
Niko led the way, eyes half-lidded, soul wide open.
And behind her, the team followed.
Toward the ghost they refused to bury.
---
End of Chapter 16
Author's notes;
Yey they are all now awakening
Finding Jaden
(⌐■-■)