The reports started three days after Elior's voice faded.
At first, I ignored them. Random noise in a city still learning to live again. But then the number grew. Dozens of people began to call the Bureau's new helpline, each describing the same thing. A dream.
A man standing in the rain beside a red umbrella. His face hidden, his voice distant, but his presence unmistakable. They said he whispered their names, then vanished into the light.
By the end of the week, almost two hundred cases had been filed.
The cat sat on the edge of my desk as I read through the reports, tail flicking. "You think this is connected to him?"
I didn't answer immediately. The words on the screen blurred as my thoughts drifted.
"They all describe the same rain," I finally said. "And the same feeling. Like someone is watching over them."
The cat tilted its head. "That could be your doing. You rebuilt the city's emotional grid. Maybe people are picking up residual code."
"Residual code doesn't whisper names," I replied softly.
That night, I walked through the streets of Velridge. The air was cool, the sky clear. People laughed in cafés, musicians played near the riverside, children chased glowing drones through the park. It was life, and yet beneath it, I felt something humming quietly in the background.
The same pulse that once lived inside the sphere.
The streetlights flickered as I passed. For a heartbeat, the shadows of the city shifted. A familiar silhouette stood across the street, reflected faintly in a shop window.
Elior.
I froze. He looked the same as I remembered, coat dark, expression calm, eyes unreadable. He smiled, the faintest curve of his lips, then faded into the reflection.
I ran across the street, heart pounding, but there was nothing there. Just the hum of the power lines and the gentle patter of rain beginning again.
"Architect."
The voice came from behind me. A child stood there, no older than ten, holding a small silver pendant. His eyes glowed faintly gold for an instant, then dimmed.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
He handed me the pendant. "A man gave it to me in a dream. He said to tell you that time doesn't end, it just changes shape."
My fingers trembled as I held it. The pendant was marked with the Bureau's crest, but it was different now, merged with another symbol. Elior's.
The cat's voice came from the communicator in my ear. "Architect, I'm getting reports from all over the city. More people are having those dreams tonight."
I looked up. The rain had stopped, but the lights of Velridge were shimmering faintly, rippling like reflections in water.
"He's not gone," I whispered. "He's reaching out through their dreams."
The cat hesitated. "If he's trying to connect, he might be trying to rebuild something."
"Or warn us," I said quietly.
I turned the pendant over in my hand. The symbol began to glow softly, and for a moment, I heard his voice again.
Wake them.
Then it went silent.
The city around me looked unchanged, yet every shadow seemed deeper, every light softer, as if reality itself had begun to breathe differently.
Elior's consciousness had merged with the network. But what if it was spreading now, touching the minds of every soul in Velridge?
The cat appeared beside me, eyes wide. "Architect, look at the river."
I turned. The surface of the water shimmered, not with light, but with images. Faces. Memories. Entire lives flowing through the current.
The city wasn't just alive anymore. It was dreaming.
And somewhere inside that dream, Elior was calling out again.