4:30 a.m.
The rental's floor might as well have been a slab in a morgue.
Lu Jin lay on his side, cheek pressed to the boards. The glow from his phone washed his face in a sickly blue, carving his cheekbones into something sharp and unnatural.
Every breath scraped. His lungs dragged air in with a noise like a bellows with holes.
In the bottom right of his vision, the crimson countdown jumped and flickered.
[ Holy Resonance Debt Settlement: 69:59:11 Remaining ]
When it hit zero, Deep Space Echo would "respect his free will" in the purest way possible.
By switching him off.
Lu ignored it.
His gaze stayed glued to the wasteland holomap in the center of the screen. A gray-white expanse. A few pulsing markers. His index finger hovered over the [Deploy] icon. The joints twitched from pain, but the fingertip stayed steady, as if he were threading a needle.
This wasn't rescue.
This was a currency trade.
The currency was fear.The exchange rate was faith.And the underlying asset was Li Xing's life.
"Lock position," Lu rasped, tasting iron, "X-77, Y-92. Four hundred meters in front of her."
A little blip lit up on the map—a ruined block with a natural echo chamber.
Perfect spot.
He tapped.
[ Item: Civilian Sound Lure Deployed. ][ Delivery Mode: Remote Air-Drop (Cost Deducted). ]
The red numbers in the corner didn't move. Those 10 points of Holy Resonance had already been eaten when he bought the thing.
"Showtime," Lu muttered.
The chuckle that crawled out of his chest pulled something loose in his lungs. His ribs seized and he coughed up blood, spattering the floor beside his face.
Worth it.
—
The data feed warped, then snapped back into focus over gray-white.
Wasteland. A-11 Zone, Black Rock Shelter outskirts.
Wind drove snow in messy sheets across the ruins, smearing sky and ground into the same dead color.
Li Xing pushed the last carefully wrapped can of expired beef into a gap on the sled. S-09—Big Yellow—lay a short distance away, massive frame low to the ground. Its single eye half-closed to a dull ember, playing at "sleep."
Too quiet.
Quiet enough that a person could trick themselves. Keep creeping north like this, silent, cautious, and maybe someday they'd hit the finish line.
Then the sound came.
"Woo… ee—eeeee—"
Not wind.
A high, thin wail ripped through the ruins, rising and stretching until it made the teeth ache. It sounded like something small and hurt with hands around its throat, squashing the last of its air into one long note.
The geometry of the broken buildings caught it, tossed it around, layered it. It bounced off walls and broken overpasses until it hung over the ruins like a siren.
Little Rock's compressed biscuit slipped from his fingers and hit the ground with a dull crack.
"Wh-what… was that?" he stammered, throat dry.
Li Xing snapped upright. The joints of her exoskeleton ticked once as they locked into place. Her pupils tightened, hunting the direction of the sound.
The ground gave a faint shiver.
It wasn't just noise.
In the dead corners of the landscape, red pinpricks blinked open. One pair, then a cluster, then too many to count. Hungry eyes, all turning toward the source of the "cry."
"Corpse-ghoul tide…" the old man whispered. His teeth chattered so hard his words broke, "It's… it's a tide…"
They spread first. Dark shapes smeared along the edges of collapsed buildings, then peeled away. Muscle and bone twisted wrong under broken skin as they dropped to all fours and sprinted.
They ran like the world had flipped downhill and this was the only direction gravity knew now.
"Run!" Li Xing shouted.
She grabbed Little Rock by the collar and hurled him onto the sled. "Big Yellow! Pull!"
S-09's threat-response routines woke in an instant. A clipped electronic roar tore from its speaker. Its hydraulic legs punched into the ice, hauling the scavenged tank-plate sled into motion.
Metal scraped frozen ground. The noise cut into the air—shrill, grating.
Too late.
The lure's wail had been a drop of water into boiling oil. Everything hiding nearby came rolling.
Stretched, red-tinged bodies came pouring out of side alleys and toppled stairwells, a succession of waves cloaked in sinew and frost. In seconds, the "far away" turned into "right here."
"Left! Ram through!" Li Xing brought the Thunderstorm nail gun to her shoulder and fired at the first ghoul that closed.
Thunk.
The alloy spike punched through its skull and stapled it to a cracked concrete wall. Dark pulp splattered out, already freezing as it hit the air.
More took its place.
"Ah—ah—ah—!" Little Rock curled around a crate, knuckles white on the handle, the front of his trousers spreading wet and dark.
S-09, for all its S-class heritage, was running on fumes. With weapons systems locked and shields offline, it had exactly one option left: be heavy.
It threw its mass into the tide, bodies crunching under its legs, flinging ghouls aside like broken dolls. But every gap it punched closed again, filled by more muscle, more teeth.
—
Back on the floor.
Same room. Same cold boards.
Lu Jin stared at the screen so hard his eyes burned. His thumbnail dug into the edge of the phone until a crescent of blood welled under it.
On the right, Deep Space Echo's data stream flew faster.
[ Observed Subject: Li Xing ][ Heart Rate: 168 bpm (Extreme Fear) ][ Adrenaline: Surging ][ Environmental Threat: A– (Corpse-Ghoul Tide Event) ][ Holy Resonance Yield Estimate: +5… +8… +12… (Climbing) ]
"Still not enough," Lu murmured.
That spike wouldn't even cover interest.
He watched Li Xing as she fired and fell back; watched S-09 disappear under a layer of ripping bodies; watched the escape route he'd drawn on a napkin get swallowed by black and red.
He waited.
Waited for the moment a human mind stopped thinking in terms of fight and started thinking in terms of someone, anyone, please.
Only then did a miracle pay out.
"Come on," he whispered. "A little further…"
Pain flared behind his ribs. Blood taste soaked his tongue. The edges of his vision pulsed dark, but he forced his eyes to stay open.
On-screen, a bulkier ghoul dragged itself down from a leaning wall. Extra limbs, extra muscle, head swollen and ugly. A variant.
It timed its move perfectly, lunging while Li Xing swapped magazines.
Its claws raked her arm. The worn fabric of her suit split. Skin flashed white with cold, then red with blood.
"—!"
The impact knocked her sideways. She went down hard beside the sled.
The nail gun spun from her fingers, half the weapon vanishing into the snow.
The reaction from the tide was immediate. The smell of fresh blood cracked across the mob like a whip. Bodies surged, clawing and trampling to reach her. Jaws snapped, blotting out even the flat, sick light overhead.
That was it.
End.
Li Xing slumped, spine pressed against the side of the sled. For the first time, the fire in her pupils went out completely.
She watched the jaws coming for her—the tongue slick with scraps of some earlier kill, bits of something's hair still tangled between teeth. Every scrap of "bravery" she'd managed to pretend collapsed like a bad battery. All that was left was a living thing about to be chewed up.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Tears forced their way out, hot enough to melt the frost clinging to her lashes so it dropped in tiny beads.
"Listener…"
Her voice didn't sound like her own. Thin. Cracked. More like a wounded animal's last noise than words.
"Please… save me…"
"I don't want to die… please…"
That was when—
On Lu's UI, a gold line shot straight up, punching through its previous ceiling.
[ Absolute-Despair Prayer Detected! ][ Emotional Threshold Exceeded! ][ Holy Resonance Multiplier: 300% (Locked)! ]
"Now," Lu said.
His pupils pinholed.
Two fingers tapped two spots on the virtual map in the space of a heartbeat.
"Step one. Vanish."
[ Item: Scent-Block Spray (Trial) Activated. ][ Target Coordinates: Directly Above Li Xing. ]
"Step two. Exit sign."
[ Item: Single-Use Low-Power Flare Activated. ][ Target Coordinates: Northwest Street Exit (Approx. 200m from Subject). ]
—
Wasteland.
As the ghoul's teeth grazed the skin of her throat—
Pssst.
A soft hiss popped above Li Xing's head.
Pale blue mist billowed outward, thin and almost without smell. It poured over her, Little Rock, the sled. Even S-09's frame vanished inside the haze.
The miracle came in the space of a breath.
The ghoul's jaw froze.
Its nostrils flared hard. Its tongue rolled in its own drool. The scent it had been following—hot blood, warm flesh, fear—vanished. One blink, and its "prey" turned into a lump of meaningless stone.
Not just it.
Everything.
The tide around them staggered. Bodies collided. A few ghouls snapped at each other, confused, before peeling away. The horde scattered, scent trail gone, reduced to raw agitation with nowhere to go.
Nearby, one monster's drool dripped onto Li Xing's boot, warm and disgusting as it slid down the leather.
The jaws that owned that drool swung past her face like she wasn't there.
Invisible.
No. For her, that word was too technical.
This was protection.
Then the sky to the northwest tore open.
Boom.
A white orb climbed slowly into the air, hanging just above the ground like a miniature sun. The low-power flare burned hotter than it had any right to, glare slicing through the storm.
To the light-drunk ghouls, it might as well have been a fresh, bleeding world.
"Grrr—aaah!"
The sound from the horde turned feral. They turned as one.
They forgot about the little patch of ground where their dinner had disappeared. The tide rolled toward the flare, black water rushing downhill, swallowing the side streets and intersections between Li Xing and the north.
In their wake, they left a gap. A corridor scoured clean of teeth.
That corridor pointed straight at North Star.
Li Xing sat there, stunned, snow burning the cut on her arm, watching that makeshift "sun" rise and fade in her pupils.
She hadn't seen a spray nozzle. She hadn't seen a flare launcher. No equipment, no tricks.
She had screamed for the Listener.
And the world had bent.
That was all.
She pushed herself upright on numb legs.
She didn't run.
First, she turned around. Then she dropped to her knees.
Her forehead hit the ice-hard ground with a dull, heavy thunk. Pain flared across her skull, but she stayed where she was, hands pressed flat, shoulders shaking.
No words came out. Just sound. A broken melody wobbled up from her chest, little more than a tune hummed through clenched teeth.
It wasn't a song.
It was the sound of something dragged to the edge of the pit and yanked back, trying to pour everything it felt into the only direction it knew its "god" could be.
—
In the rental—
Something blew open in Lu Jin's chest.
The phone's light flared, too bright, washing the room in harsh white. Gold fragments—notes, symbols, whatever Deep Space Echo thought emotion looked like—poured off the screen. They crashed through his vision, then drove down his nerves in a rush that left his muscles buzzing.
[ Holy Resonance Settling… ]
[ +15 (Intense Gratitude) ][ +20 (Faith Consolidation) ][ +50 (Miracle Witnessed – Critical) ][ +10… +10… +10… (Ongoing) ]
Another, smaller panel lit up, tagged to her instead of him.
[ Observed Subject: Li Xing ][ Holy Resonance Realm: Faint Echo – Glimmer Tier ][ Level: LV2 (Max) → LV3 ][ Growth: 484 / 500 → 500 / 500 → 0 / 1000 ][ Level-Up Note: First "absolute-despair prayer" answered and miracle personally witnessed. Faith link closed. Minor mental resistance gained. ]
The prompt folded itself away a second later.
Lu barely glanced at it.
His focus snapped to his own status.
The death timer in the corner hit 00:00:00. Then it blinked… and vanished.
In its place, green digits rolled into view.
[ Current Holy Resonance: 47 (Debt Cleared). ][ Life Status: D (Critical) – Temporarily Stable. ]
The pain cut out so fast it made him dizzy.
The feeling of a rusted saw grinding against his vertebrae, the grind in every breath that made him want to bite through his tongue—something hot and heavy smothered it. As if someone had forced a fresh, warm quilt between his spine and whatever was chewing on it.
His muscles let go all at once. He sagged backward, slamming his shoulder into the leg of the crooked chair and then into the seat itself.
His T-shirt clung to him with cold sweat. Hair plastered his forehead. He dragged air into his chest in huge, uneven gulps, like someone who'd just been hauled out of a river.
And he smiled.
There was a crack in it. Too many teeth. Too much relief.
"Paid off…" he breathed. "Broke and still managed to pay off a loan shark… huh."
He held his hand up and watched it.
The fingers shook, but not like before. Not from pain.
Fifty points of raw emotion as principal. A handful of bargain-bin items bought on credit. One stage-managed little apocalypse that almost got his "asset" eaten.
In return, he'd ripped his life away from the reaper holding the paperwork.
On paper, the trade was clean. No loss. Maybe even profit.
Except Li Xing had thrown in a lot more chips than he had.
—
On-screen, she was moving again.
Blood leaked down her arm. Her leg dragged a little. But the look in her eyes had shifted.
No more simple stubbornness. No more naive brightness.
Something harsher sat there now. A glow that had nothing to do with the flare.
Faith, sharpened to a point.
She stuck out her hand to Little Rock and the old man.
"It's not safe here." Her voice had steadied. Soft, but it cut through the wind regardless. "He lit the way."
She lifted her head, following the last smear of light in the northwest sky.
"The Listener is guiding us."
"He wants us to go north."
"We go now."
She hauled on the sled's line with her good arm, not waiting for S-09 to brace properly. The tank-plate lurched forward with a scrape. A few seconds later, the mech caught up, emitting a low, begrudging growl as it took the weight back onto its frame.
Her silhouette stretched and shrank with each gust of snow. Thin.
Unshakable.
Lu watched her until the feed blurred.
The smile died on his face, piece by piece.
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, letting the lenses hide whatever flashed through his eyes.
The room felt colder than it had ten minutes ago.
He had, undeniably, orchestrated a miracle.
He had also, just as undeniably, used that miracle to drag himself off the chopping block.
And somewhere out there, on a ruined continent under dead clouds, he had probably just created something dangerous.
Something that believed in him more than he had ever believed in anything.