The storm sirens screamed again.
Not the mechanical wails of dead defense grids—those had gone silent cycles ago.
This was older. Deeper. A primal howl that clawed through steel and soul alike.
The sky itself—wounded, ruptured, remembering—was screaming.
A bloom of violet fire tore across the horizon, searing the edge of Vireth's outer ring.
Glassbone towers sagged, then crumbled in molten silence—falling like ribs from a dying titan.
Anti-echo flak stitched crooked lines across the clouds, blotting out the red sun and replacing it with unraveling death.
And through it all, Casamir ran.
His boots slammed over broken sigil-plates, across stairwells slick with blood and oil.
His breath came ragged, burning his throat like acid, each inhale raw and wrong.
His coat, ash-stained and threadbare, snapped in the wind like the forgotten banner of a war already lost.
The air tasted of static and rusted memory.
The ground trembled, humming with the death rattle of a city that had never learned how to live.
But his eyes never stopped searching.
Past fractured domes and collapsing halls, through fields of broken vigil-helms and melted cables, he fixed on one place still standing:
The Hall of Unrested Voices.
A cathedral of resonance and ruin.
Once, this place had been sacred—an archive where names were sung, not stored. Where memory shimmered in crystal lattice and was offered not as data, but devotion.
Now, it barely held itself together.
He burst through a shattered archway, shoulder catching on a jag of broken stone.
Blood welled, but he barely felt it.
The air inside was thick—charged with old memory, ozone, static, and the faint scent of burning circuitry.
Stone groaned beneath his steps. Walls pulsed faintly, as if breathing in pain.
Cracks split the ghost-veins in the floor, flickering with a dying light that whispered too many names.
And there—at the heart of it all—was Narel.
Bent over a fractured transmitter array, fingers darting through sparks with desperate grace.
Crystals floated midair—each one a trapped song, a life, a name waiting to be remembered.
The light from them refracted over his face, a constellation of ghosts painting the skin of the living.
Casamir's voice tore from his throat like a wound. "You're still here?"
Narel didn't look up. "I'm trying to preserve the last recordings. The final truths."
"The spires are collapsing," Casamir shouted. "Rupture storms are swallowing the district!"
"I know," Narel said, quieter now. "But if anything survives this place… let it be the voices."
His hands didn't stop. One crystal flared, another dimmed.
The console sputtered. Sparks kissed his fingertips. He didn't flinch.
Casamir crossed the floor in three strides, boots crunching shattered memory-disks beneath him.
He grabbed Narel's shoulder. Not roughly—desperately.
Anchored, not to drag him back, but to keep something from being lost.
"It's over," he said, eyes burning. "You don't have to go down with it."
Narel looked up at last.
Dust caked his lashes. His face was lined with ash and resolve.
But his eyes—those dark, patient eyes—were steady.
"That's why I'm doing this."
For a breath, the war outside fell quiet.
Just ruin-glow between them.
Two silhouettes framed in failing light.
The past held in crystal fragments. The future humming faintly in Casamir's hand.
The cathedral pulsed around them—walls etched with runes bleeding memory like open veins.
The architecture mourned in silence. Each arch bowed like a grieving spine. Each stone exhaled warmth that had no source.
Casamir's voice cracked. "I thought we'd leave together. Start over. Somewhere."
"You always dreamed of other worlds," Narel said softly. "Even when they told us this was all there'd ever be."
"Because I had to," Casamir said. "Because this place… this city… it never wanted us. It only taught us how to crawl."
"But we learned to walk anyway," Narel murmured.
He reached into his coat.
Drew out a sphere—metallic, warm, faintly humming.
"I found this under the Observatory," he said. "Buried beneath the core spire. Forgotten like everything else."
He turned it in his palm, eyes distant. "I didn't understand it. But it called to you."
Casamir didn't hesitate. Curiosity flared through fear.
He took the orb—and the moment his fingers touched it, the air changed.
Not outside.
Inside.
The world skipped—like a phrase half-forgotten, suddenly remembered.
The orb pulsed—once, then again.
Runes spiraled inside it, rearranging. Fragments of a name that didn't fully belong to him—
—and yet always had.
Memories not his own flickered behind his eyes:
A blade made of ashglass, inscribed with guilt.
A city suspended in air, sung into being by dreamers who no longer existed.
A voice, clear and unfamiliar, whispering, "You will be the fracture or the thread."
It felt like falling backward through time, through myth, through self.
Then the tremor hit.
A groaning rift split the ceiling.
Stone screamed. Dust rained down in curtains. Light carved through the breach—ashen, silver, sharp as judgment.
And then—he saw it.
The sky had torn.
Not metaphor. Not storm.
A wound.
A spiral, jagged and deep, ripped through the heavens like a scream remembered too late.
Its light was not light. Its darkness was not shadow.
It shouldn't have existed. And yet—it did.
Inside it—movement.
Shapes too large for form. Too old for thought.
Things without beginning. Things that had watched the world since before it had names.
Casamir stepped back.
His body recoiled, but his mind… stared.
Wondered. Measured the impossible.
Tried—and failed—to breathe.
Narel didn't move.
He gave a low, broken laugh. "You always joked about escaping," he said. "Maybe you were meant to."
Casamir's hand clenched the orb. It burned now.
Not with heat. With weight. With invitation.
"Then come with me," he said, breath trembling.
But Narel shook his head.
Soft. Final. Certain.
"You're meant for something I'm not."
The floor cracked again.
Memory veins split open. Crystals shattered, releasing faint echoes—laughter, music, crying, screams.
The air screamed. The hall groaned.
Sirens below tried one last time to speak—
—and failed.
"Don't," Casamir said, seizing Narel's arm. "Don't you dare do this alone."
Even now—he hoped.
Even now—he believed in something better.
"I would have followed you anywhere," he whispered.
"I know," Narel said. "That's why I can't let you."
Another pulse hit.
A shockwave of gravity and noise. The cathedral buckled.
Air folded in on itself. Runes across the walls turned to static.
Casamir was hurled back—through smoke and collapsing air.
He crashed into a pillar, cracked it, slid to the floor, gasping.
But the orb stayed in his hand.
When the dust cleared, he saw—
Narel.
Still standing.
Eyes closed.
Singing.
"When the Bell tolls Seven, the sky shall fall,
And stars shall weep for memory's call…"
His voice was not loud, but it was heard.
The crystals responded—flickering, humming.
For a moment, it felt like time bowed to him.
Then—he was gone.
No flash.
No scream.
Just absence.
A soft folding of space, like a chapter ending without a final line.
Casamir rose slowly.
His lungs scraped. His ears rang. His ribs protested with every breath.
But the worst pain was hollow.
As if something had been taken from his chest—and left nothing behind.
The orb pulsed faster now.
Wild. Urgent.
Above, the fracture bloomed wider—becoming a spiral. A gate. A storm.
Light bent. Sound curled inward, folding into silence that still hurt.
The world began to unravel.
Casamir looked back.
Once.
At the skyline that raised him with pressure and pain.
At Vireth—the city that never loved him, but still shaped every part of who he was.
He saw flashes—
Him and Narel laughing under the rusted sky.
Him stealing food. Running from drones.
Him breaking into the old signal towers just to hear the stars whisper nonsense.
Karnox wasn't home.
But it had been the crucible.
"Karnox," he whispered.
And then he turned.
Not to run.
Not to flee.
But because he had to know what lay beyond.
The vortex stretched toward him.
A silhouette waited—formless. Faceless. Familiar.
It held no shape, but it felt like recognition. Like a truth not yet spoken.
Casamir's body trembled.
He thought of Narel. Of the voices lost. Of the silence to come.
"I'm not ready," he whispered.
The orb flared.
Too late.
The sky surged.
The world split.
And Casamir stepped forward—into fracture, into memory, into whatever came next.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
To no one.
To everyone.
And then—he was gone.
Karnox—the Eternal Machine World—shuddered once more.
And died.