Silence came first.
Not the absence of sound, but a kind of deafening stillness, like the universe had taken a breath and hadn't let it go yet.
Then came the heat. A ripple of pressure and force, surging outward in all directions from the fractured core of the chamber where the stabilizer had detonated.
When Ava opened her eyes, she was floating.
Or maybe falling. It was hard to tell. The sky above her—or what was left of it—was cracked like glass. Ribbons of dark light twisted through the atmosphere, as if the veil itself had split and didn't know how to close.
She gasped, but no air came.
And then, just as quickly as it began, gravity returned.
She fell.
Hard.
Pain lanced through her shoulder and ribs as her body slammed onto solid ice. She rolled instinctively, coming to a stop with a groan. Her ears rang. Her mind swam. But she was alive.
Barely.
Smoke curled from the ruined crater where the monolith had stood. The black stone was gone, obliterated. In its place was only a scar—scorched ice and fractured ground, steaming beneath the unnatural cold.
Ava pushed herself up, coughing blood into the snow.
The taste was sharp, metallic. Real.
She looked around.
Ezra was the first she found—unconscious, his face scraped, breathing shallow. His body had landed several meters away, half-buried beneath debris. She staggered to him, shaking him gently.
"Ezra. Hey—come on, wake up."
He groaned, blinking against the brightness of the fractured sky.
"Ava…?" he croaked.
"Yeah. I'm here."
He looked past her, horror dawning in his eyes. "Did it work?"
She didn't answer. Not yet. Because she didn't know.
They searched for the others.
Caroline was still breathing, but one of her legs was twisted unnaturally. Ava splinted it with cloth from her jacket while Ezra held her hand and kept her from screaming.
Marin was gone.
Jules had vanished in the blast. Nothing left but a scorched mark and the fractured remains of the detonator.
Ava stood at the edge of the crater, arms crossed against the wind, face expressionless.
"We stopped it," Ezra said quietly, standing beside her.
Ava's jaw clenched. "Did we?"
He looked at the sky.
Thin fractures still marred the horizon. Like hairline cracks in a mirror waiting to shatter.
"I think we wounded it," he admitted. "Not killed it."
Ava nodded slowly. "Then we make sure it dies."
Three days passed before extraction came.
A second VTOL, this one patched together from whatever the northern outpost could spare. The pilot didn't speak much—just stared at the sky with the same haunted expression everyone wore now.
They flew in silence, not just from exhaustion, but because the veil had changed.
The world was thinner now. Lighter in some places, darker in others. The fractures Ava had seen in the chamber had spread—spatial tears in reality, blinking like dying stars in the corners of their vision.
Every city, every border, every coastline they passed looked… older. As if time itself had cracked along with the veil.
They landed at the ruins of Outpost Nine.
No one was there to greet them.
No technicians. No command. Just the empty hum of backup generators and flickering emergency lights.
Ezra moved ahead carefully, sweeping the corridors with his rifle. Ava followed, holding onto Caroline's arm for balance.
They found a console still operational. Ezra typed quickly, bringing up the last outgoing message.
Broadcast timestamp: 48 hours ago. Emergency Code Black.
Subject: Veil anomaly detected in all hemispheres. Civilian communication blackout advised. High-level personnel: initiate ghost protocol. All other stations: hold until collapse or extraction.
There was no signature.
Just a timestamp, and a single attached data packet labeled "CASANDRA_01.vr".
Ava downloaded it to her neural port, despite Ezra's warning glance.
"We don't know what it is," he said.
"She left it for me," Ava replied.
Then, turning to Caroline: "Get some rest. I'll be back."
She walked alone through the wreckage of Outpost Nine, back to the sealed room where they had first discovered Cassandra's early veil experiments. The glass was shattered. The lights flickered overhead. In the center of the room was the same chair Ava had once sat in, strapped down, wires digging into her scalp.
She sat again.
Not out of obedience.
Out of defiance.
She inserted the data key.
The chair came to life, humming softly.
A whisper filled her ear. "Ava… if you're seeing this, it means you survived. It means I failed."
Cassandra's voice.
Ava closed her eyes.
The room around her dissolved.
She was standing in a memory.
Cassandra's lab.
But not how she remembered it. This one was warmer. Softer. The walls were lined with books, not machines. A kettle steamed in the corner. Cassandra sat at a desk, scribbling in a leather-bound journal.
Then she looked up—and saw Ava.
Smiled.
"You were always the strongest," she said. "That's why they picked you."
Ava tried to speak, but no sound came.
"This isn't a recording," Cassandra continued. "It's a projection of everything I couldn't say while I was alive."
She gestured around her.
"This was my first lab. Before the veil. Before the experiments. Before I broke everything trying to fix the wrong thing."
She stood slowly, walking toward Ava.
"You don't have to carry it all anymore. You can end it."
Then she placed a key in Ava's hand.
A real key. Brass, old, marked with the same sigil Ava had seen on the mirror in the depths of the veil chamber.
"What is this?" Ava managed to ask.
Cassandra's eyes were full of grief.
"It's the door they never told you about. The real origin. The first flame. Burn it, and the hunger dies with it."
The world around her cracked.
Cassandra's voice echoed as it dissolved.
"Find the lighthouse."
Ava awoke on the floor, blood dripping from her nose.
The neural interface had shorted. Sparks flew from the panel behind her. Ezra burst in a second later, rifle raised.
"I'm fine," she said, barely conscious. "But we have to go."
"Go where?"
She handed him the key.
"The lighthouse "
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