South Ridge fell silent at dawn.
No warning. No flicker. Just absence. One moment the purple pulse nodes hummed at street corners and alley walls. The next—they were cold. Couriers stumbled into each other. Medica runners waited for instructions that never came.
Benedict was already scanning his bracer when the first report arrived.
"Nodes twelve through sixteen inoperative," Arden read aloud. "No pulse. No decay signature. Just blank."
Eline's fingers danced across a manual calibration panel. "No feedback," she murmured. "This wasn't a burnout. This was a kill command. Silent and perfect."
Shael signed one word.
"Sabotage."
Nerys Vale, cloaked in a ripple-field, sat in an abandoned toll station beneath the western aqueduct. Her fingers moved like a pianist's—delicate, precise—as she threaded suppression runes through the stolen node shell. The hijack was already in progress. One more quadrant and she'd erase the pulse echo completely.
Behind her, a relay schematic blinked. Arcten-branded glyphs flared green—replacement towers coming online. Where purple had been, gold now shimmered.
She allowed herself the smallest smile.
In her mind, this was never about war. It was about discipline. Control. Benedict was too fast, too loud, too unpredictable. She had studied people like him—brilliant, undisciplined. Always building cathedrals on fault lines.
So she collapsed the fault lines.
But even as she worked, her gaze flicked occasionally toward the relic hanging from her belt: a cracked node etched with Benedict's early design—a remnant from her scouting phase. She hadn't destroyed it. She told herself it was for study.
But sometimes, she just stared at it.
In Vehrmath's lower wards, the silence spread like rot.
"The purple's gone," someone whispered.
"They failed us."
A merchant rolled down his stall gate, muttering about reliability. A local clinic reinstalled an old Arcten channel stone.
"They're coming back," a vendor said. "Say what you will about nobles, but at least their tech stays on."
The movement faltered—not in action, but in belief.
One courier even returned a node to a community hub with shaking hands. "I don't know what's real anymore," he said. "It was supposed to help us."
Another whispered in frustration, "They promised us a voice. Then left us in silence."
Benedict slammed a mag wrench into the table. Sparks jumped.
"They hit us clean. No signature. That means they know our firmware."
"Which means," Arden said grimly, "someone's been listening in."
Eline took a breath, then pointed to the false node she and Fira had been rigging.
"We don't need to fight back. We let them keep winning—just once more. And we trace their victory."
Shael nodded. The trap was ready.
Outside, the mood was tense. The Whisper Wagon's route had been delayed, its path rerouted to avoid Arcten inspections. Two Purple Pulse Couriers had been detained for "unauthorized technical activity."
"We have to make this next move count," Eline said. "One clean strike. One signal they can't erase."
Benedict paced the room, then stopped in front of the cracked flower a girl once gave him. He touched its stem.
"They can erase signals. But not memory."
Fira and Shael led a team of three couriers down the abandoned root tunnels. Each carried a backup node—pre-keyed, off-grid.
The old Underdark anchors flickered to life. Shael tapped the pipes, sending coded knocks to allies deep beneath the city. The Whisper Wagon rolled again—rebuilt with an embedded amplifier powered by salvaged shield-core energy.
They passed through dust-choked catwalks, forgotten ley vents, and even a half-collapsed bridge once used for smuggler traffic.
At one point, they encountered an old signal technician—a retiree named Marn—with long-forgotten credentials and an intact ley access badge.
"I always thought someone should fix this place," he said, handing over a rusted toolkit. "Guess you're the someone."
Within hours, the couriers reconnected a third of South Ridge. A faint purple pulse returned. Not everywhere. But enough.
Enough to hope.
At the toll station, Nerys's eyes narrowed. A relay flickered unexpectedly.
"Hm. Hidden node."
She activated a suppression tether—only to trigger a reverse signal cascade.
Suddenly, her screens scrambled. False topographies. Looping data. Her tracker pinged seven false node locations, all layered with ghost signals.
She reached for a kill switch—but it was too late. Her system recorded itself.
On her interface, a final message pulsed once: "You're not the only one who listens."
Back at the relay hub, Eline pulled up the ghost trace.
"We have her," she said.
Benedict didn't celebrate. He just tapped into the redirected signal and fed Nerys's team fake expansions: decoy networks, phantom relay clusters.
Arcten tech would now be trying to overwrite illusions.
"Let them plant towers in the wrong places," Arden said.
"And we'll finish the real net beneath their feet," Benedict replied.
In the corner, Shael placed a new node onto a map—one shaped like an eye.
"Underdark route ready," she signed.
Eline added softly, "And now we know the weight of silence. We'll never let it fall again."
A child in South Ridge tapped a wall node. It lit up.
"Mom! It's back!"
The plaza filled with murmurs. A medic's call connected. A vendor's order went through.
Musicians returned to their corners. The purple beat thumped again.
This time, not with novelty.
With defiance.
A teenager carved into a bench: "The dark took our voices. The light gave them back."
Even some who had reinstalled Arcten nodes now used the purple ones to trade recipes, songs, directions.
And one courier—silent for days—stood at a pulse station and simply said, "Thank you."
From the highest tower, Calder Vance watched the pulse-grid ripple back into life—no longer linear, no longer predictable.
Just alive.
He poured himself tea and muttered, "Good. Let them learn from the blackout. That's how true systems are born."
He glanced at a side display—another network forming in the Underdark, lines flickering in forgotten glyphs.
"Especially when systems don't ask permission to exist."