Part III — Ghost Frequencies
Hours later, Lira found him outside the chamber, sitting on a rusted pipe overlooking the Veil's flooded lower levels.
He stared into the rippling water, seeing faint static glimmer across its surface.
"Guess they didn't like the encore," he muttered.
"They don't like anything they can't cage," Lira said, lighting a cigarette with her charm flame. "You scare them."
"Good."
"Careful, rockstar. The Alpha Order isn't your label — they don't drop you, they bury you."
He almost laughed. Almost.
Up above, muffled thunder rolled — but it wasn't weather. Drones.
The surface world watching.
Lira's eyes hardened. "They're moving. The Shadow Syndicate. Government ghosts. They hunt anything that glitches their system."
Kai looked up, pulse steady.
"Guess I'm a glitch now."
She handed him a patched jacket.
"Welcome to the pack, anomaly."
A low, synchronized howl rose from somewhere deep below — not one voice, but hundreds, echoing through steel and stone.
The sound vibrated through Kai's bones until it became something more than noise — a signal, vast and alive, pulsing beneath the entire city.
He closed his eyes.
Somewhere in that howl, he heard his own voice calling back.
---
> "Hierarchy is just fear given ritual.
The moon knows no order—only pull."
— The Veil Manifesto, Verse III