In the "Unseen" layers of the city
the alleys that weren't on maps
and the shadows between heartbeats
something had been waiting
For eons, the Hollows and Sentinels had fed on the scrap-code of the Architect.
But now that the city was pulsing with raw, visible emotion, a more dangerous predator had emerged.
They were called the Glints.
They didn't look like monsters.
They looked like silhouettes made of shattered glass, beautiful and jagged. They didn't want to delete the world; they wanted to Drain it.
"They're feeding on the Resonance," Caius said, his watercolor form dimming as a Glint drifted past them, its glass-like body turning a bright, stolen pink. "Every time they touch a streak of light in the sky, the people below lose that feeling. Look."
Adriana looked down at the street.
A young couple had been laughing
a Glint brushed past the golden aura surrounding them, and instantly, their faces went blank.
They didn't fight
they simply stopped caring.
They became "Grey Souls"
not dead, but hollowed out of all passion.
"They're turning the city into a desert," Adriana whispered.
She tried to reach out with her mind to filter the Glints, but she was too weak. Her empathy was a depleted battery.
"You can't filter them, Adriana," her mother
the Void-Anchor said, her dark hand resting on Adriana's shoulder.
"A filter only catches what flows through it.
These things are parasites.
They have to be Expelled."
Suddenly, the roof was surrounded.
A dozen Glints crystallized out of the air, their jagged bodies humming with a high-pitched, discordant sound.
They weren't interested in the people below anymore.
They had found the Source.
They wanted the woman who was holding the heart of the city.
"If they touch you," Caius hissed, stepping in front of Adriana, his logic-circuits flaring, "they won't just take a memory.
They'll take the entire 'Law of Resonance.'
The city will go cold forever."