They didn't speak for the first few minutes after leaving the Echo Field.
No one knew how to name what they had seen—or what had listened.
Farworth walked ahead, his lamp casting thin lines of gold across the stone. Lyra followed close behind, tablet pressed to her chest as if numbers could pin silence in place.
Tomas carried the instruments on his back, their weight barely registering. His steps were even, measured.
Nebula walked beside the wall, one hand brushing close without touching, her gaze tracking fractures and shadows alike. She said nothing. She didn't need to.
Arata brought up the rear, his hand resting on the hilt of Resonance, listening as the world's pulse thinned with every step upward.
The hum that had filled the lower tunnels was gone.
In its place lingered a stillness that wasn't absence, more like the air itself was holding its breath.
By the time they reached the surface corridor, the artificial sunlamps had dimmed to dusk.
Farworth halted near a junction, marking a point on his map.
"We'll camp here," he said. "The field will stabilise by morning."
Later, when the others had settled, Arata found Nebula near the tunnel entrance her legs drawn close, eyes fixed on the faint shimmer still lingering where she'd arrived.
"Why are you really here?" he asked quietly.
Nebula didn't look at him. "I volunteered. You heard Farworth."
"You're here for the Choir."
"I'm here for the rifts," she corrected. "The Choir just sings loud enough to hide them."
Arata sat beside her. The stone was cold through his coat.
"What did you see on the way here?"
She hesitated. Just long enough.
"Nothing at first," she said. "Then… people. Shapes moving through the walls. They were not shadows though, they didn't notice me."
The air around them felt different—thinner.
"Echoes?" he asked.
"Or memories trying to take shape," she said.
They fell silent, listening to the vibration beneath the stone.
It wasn't the rhythmic hum of life anymore.
It was softer. Like something breathing through glass.
Dinner was quiet. The rations were tasteless; Tomas's tea made up for it.
Lyra logged field data until her hands cramped. Farworth sat outside the dome, staring into the tunnels, eyes half-closed, as though listening to something only he could hear.
When Arata finished eating, he stood and stepped out to join him.
"Professor," he said softly, "do you believe what Tomas said? That the Veins are listening to themselves?"
Farworth didn't answer at once. The glow from the rune-lamp outlined the weary folds of his face.
"I believe," he said at last, "that the world dreams of what it once was. And sometimes, those dreams learn to breathe."
Arata frowned. "So the dead—"
"—might not be gone," Farworth finished. "But they're not alive either. They exist in a kind of echo equilibrium. Memory collapsing and rebuilding itself endlessly. What you and your blade felt today wasn't power, Arata. It was recognition."
He looked down the tunnel, his voice soft. "The Vein's don't speak to us. They speak to themselves. We just happen to be standing close enough to overhear."
Inside the tent, Tomas adjusted the monitors, his movements precise despite the weight of exhaustion. Screens glowed softly, tracing fluctuations that refused to settle.
Lyra leaned over his shoulder.
"How's the field holding?"
"Stable," Tomas said. "But the baseline resonance keeps dipping. Like it's… thinking."
Lyra frowned. "Machines don't think."
He glanced at her, almost gently.
"Neither do memories. But they still remember."
She studied him for a moment. "You talk like Farworth."
Tomas smiled without looking up. "He may be right."
When Arata returned, the tent was quiet.
Lyra slept curled near the far wall. Farworth's breathing was slow and even. Only Tomas remained awake, seated by the monitors, scribbling into his worn field log.
He looked up as Arata entered.
"Can't sleep?"
"Not yet," Tomas replied. He gestured at the open page. "Trying to draw the hum before it changes again."
"Draw it?"
Tomas turned the log around.
It wasn't a sketch—not exactly. Just lines of uneven thickness, winding in slow, imperfect circles. But they carried motion. Direction. Almost intent.
"Looks like a map," Arata said.
"Maybe it is," Tomas murmured. "Maybe that's what the world's been drawing all along."
The lights dimmed as the generator shifted to low cycle. Beneath the floor, the hum deepened—no longer rhythmic, no longer steady.
Far beyond the tent, past the edge of mapped corridors, the black metal of the Echo Field stirred.
Ripples crossed its surface, faint as breath.
If anyone had been there to listen closely enough, they might have heard it whispering... not in language, but in tone.
To itself.
And in that tone, if silence could be translated, there was the sound of cities of millions of them...Dreaming.
The black chamber slept through the night.
By morning, the air had changed very slightly, a faint metallic taste, a static whisper beneath every breath. The surface of the Hollow Vein no longer looked still. It shimmered, as if something beneath were trying to breathe through glass.
Farworth stood at its edge, his reflection warping with each pulse. "It's not stable," he murmured.
Tomas crouched over the instruments, brow furrowed. "The rhythm's returning. It's rebuilding a pattern."
Lyra joined him, tablet dim in the half-light.
"A fourth resonance?"
Nebula, standing apart, eyes half-closed, spoke quietly. "A fourth voice."
They turned to her.
"What do you mean?" Arata asked.
She pointed to the black mirror. A faint vibration rippled across its surface—four concentric rings spreading outward like sound waves.
"Before, there were three pulses," she said. "The Choir. The Echo Field. The living Veins."
Her gaze darkened.
"This is the fourth. Something tying all of them together."
They spent the next hour mapping the phenomenon.
Lyra's readings climbed erratically. Tomas moved between consoles, murmuring figures under his breath. Nebula stabilised the air around them with faint spatial folds, keeping the instruments from shaking themselves apart.
Arata watched the light crawl beneath the black surface slowly and deliberatly.
It reminded him of breathing. No, not exactly, but of learning.
"Professor," he said quietly, "what if this isn't a field? What if it's a response?"
Farworth glanced up."To what?"
"To us."
Lyra gave a nervous laugh. "Don't start sounding like Tomas."
Tomas didn't look up. "He's not wrong."
Then the hum changed.
It began as a single low tone, deep enough to rattle the walls. The air thickened. Lights flickered out one by one.
Tomas's monitor spiked.
"Energy rising exponentially—this isn't feedback, it's—"
The pulse slammed through the floor, lifting dust in a circular wave. The black surface blazed red, veins of light tearing through it like cracking glass. The air rippled; their reflections fractured.
Lyra staggered back.
"It's reactivating, the Vein's awake!"
"Stabilisers," Farworth barked. "Now!"
Nebula dropped to one knee, dragging spatial anchors from her belt and driving them into the stone.
"I can hold the fold for thirty seconds," she said. "No more."
The hum climbed into a scream.
The black mirror split down the middle.
From within surged heat and a shape of blinding white—like light turned liquid.
"Everyone, back!" Farworth shouted.
Arata grabbed Tomas by the shoulder and yanked him away from the consoles.
Lyra sprinted toward the exit corridor, datapad clutched tight. The walls convulsed, veins of light crawling up them like fire.
The ceiling buckled.
Stone crashed down in a shower of debris.
The fold Nebula held began to buckle, screaming like tearing silk.
"Move!" Arata yelled.
The chamber started collapsing inward—gravity bending toward the mirror's heart. Dust turned to mist. The air itself warped.
Lyra tripped over a broken cable. Her datapad flew from her hands, skidding across the floor toward the glowing fissure.
"Lyra!" Arata lunged.
She tried to rise, but the ground tilted, dragging her closer. Her fingers scraped stone, searching for purchase.
"I've got it—!"
"Forget it!" he shouted.
She reached again. The edge gave way.
Arata caught her wrist.
The pull nearly tore his arm from its socket. Light flared around them, heat crawling up his sleeve. He braced his boot against the floor and hauled, every tendon screaming.
For a heartbeat, their eyes met—hers wide, reflecting the chaos—and he realised he'd never seen fear in them before.
Then Nebula's voice cut through, sharp and absolute. "Now!"
Space snapped.
The anchors detonated in a burst of blue-white light. The fold imploded inward with a soundless roar.
Arata and Lyra were thrown backward together. He hit the wall first, taking the impact for both of them.
The light vanished.
Silence rushed in, thick and ringing.
Minutes later, the dust settled.
The chamber was gone—replaced by a perfect circular void, smooth as obsidian, faintly warm beneath the fingers.
Nebula stood at its edge, chest heaving, the last glow fading from the glyphs along her arms.
"Fold stabilised," she said panting. "For now."
Farworth knelt beside Tomas, checking him over. The cadet coughed once, then lifted a shaky thumbs-up.
Lyra sat against the wall, knees drawn to her chest, breathing hard. Arata still knelt beside her, one hand resting on her shoulder, as if unsure whether to let go.
"You're an idiot," she whispered.
"You dropped your datapad," he said.
She let out a laugh that broke into a sob.
"I can replace the datapad."
"Not you," he replied. "I know you better than that."
That stopped her.
A faint flush crept across her dust-streaked cheeks before she looked away.
"Next time," she muttered, "you save the data."
...
At the centre of the circular hollow, the obsidian surface began to ripple, not outward, but upward, as if depth had forgotten it was flat. The black metal softened, its sheen dulling, surface tension pulling against something that wasn't there.
A bulge formed.
Then collapsed.
The metal flowed back into itself, shuddering, leaving behind faint concentric scars—like fingerprints pressed by a hand that didn't exist.
Nebula's breath caught.
"Arata," she said quietly. "Look."
The surface swelled again.
This time, strands peeled upward—thin, filament-like ribbons of darkness stretching from the floor, snapping, recoiling, reforming. They twitched with hesitant intent, groping blindly, as if searching for a remembered shape.
Something tried to stand.
It failed.
The strands tangled, folding in on themselves, collapsing into a boneless heap that slithered back into the metal with a wet, soundless recoil.
Then it tried again.
The floor wrinkled.
A knee pushed up through the surface—wrongly jointed, bending backward before dissolving into smoke-like distortion. An arm followed, elbow splitting into too many angles, fingers forming and unforming in rapid, panicked succession.
The shape convulsed.
It was not growing. It was revising itself.
The air thickened. Pressure built behind the eyes. Arata felt Resonance vibrate not in warning, but in confusion, as if the blade couldn't decide what it was sensing.
The figure rose halfway this time.
A torso pulled free, rib-like shadows flickering beneath a skin that wasn't skin at all, more like layered reflections stacked too close together. Its surface shimmered between solid and hollow, light bending unnaturally around it.
Where its head should have been, there was only a smooth, featureless curve.
It paused.
The chamber went still.
Then the head creased.
A mouth opened it was too wide, folding inward instead of out—and immediately collapsed, the entire upper half of the figure sloughing back into the floor like melting wax.
Lyra staggered back, hand over her mouth.
"Oh gods…"
The metal tensed.
On the third attempt, it slowed.
Deliberate now.
The floor no longer fought the shape—it yielded.
A spine extruded cleanly. Shoulders followed, settling into place with careful precision. Arms formed symmetrically, hands clenched and unclenched as if testing weight. Legs unfolded, joints aligning correctly this time.
The figure stood.
Its surface drank in light, matte-black and depthless, edges subtly blurred as though reality refused to sharpen it fully. No face. No eyes.
But it leaned.
Toward them.
Nebula felt it then—a faint tug, like something brushing the inside of her skull.
Recognition.
Not of her.
Of the idea of her.
The thing's head tilted, mirroring her posture with a delay that was just a fraction too slow to be coincidence.
Arata tightened his grip on Resonance.
The figure took a step.
The floor rippled beneath its foot, as if memory itself were bearing its weight.
And then it moved—