The Subvoid trembled.
Kaien stood at the chamber threshold, the golden ember of the Memory Seed still flickering behind his eyes. He could feel the walls of time thickening—slowing down like syrup. Moments that should pass in seconds stretched like molten glass.
Mirra cursed again as the klaxons shifted pitch. "They're here."
Gorran didn't speak. He was already setting charges along the bridge entrance behind them.
Kaien turned to Mirra. "The Spiral Choir?"
She nodded grimly. "Not just hunters. Ideo-psions. They don't chase—they rewrite. We need to move before they unmake this place."
Kaien glanced back once more at the dormant clock pedestal. The shard was now embedded in its core, pulsing dimly. A reminder.
A beacon.
He turned to face the team.
"Let's go."
They emerged into the lower catwalks of the Subvoid city. The once-bustling resistance center was already in evacuation mode. Citizens ran between transport pods, carrying what tech and memory-cores they could salvage. Lights blinked erratically overhead, flickering from power surges.
Above them, a rift was opening.
Not torn, but peeled—like a page being uncurled by invisible fingers.
From within the tear came music.
No. Not music.
Chorus.
Layered, resonant tones not made of sound but of meaning—like poetry sung through thoughts, like commands embedded in reality itself. The kind of sound that rewrote you as you heard it.
Kaien shivered as the voices reached him.
One word repeated over and over in the harmonies:
"Reduce… Reduce… Reduce…"
Gorran slammed a button, and a bulkhead lowered behind them, sealing the chamber exit.
"They've already started collapsing the outer moments," he grunted. "Places are vanishing without even exploding."
"Why reduce instead of destroy?" Kaien asked, breath short as he ran.
Mirra answered, tossing him a belt with a folded displacement shield.
"Because to destroy leaves memory. But reduction…" She looked back as part of the ceiling crumbled into concept-dust. "...means it never mattered at all."
They reached the Resistance Tram—a magnetic sled that rode along folded rails beneath the city. Dozens were already aboard: children, former scholars, old soldiers, flickering beings caught mid-evolution.
Kaien climbed into the forward pod alongside Mirra and Gorran. The control panel was cracked, but the system still purred.
"Destination?" the interface asked, voice glitching.
Mirra keyed in the route. "Sector Delta-Five. Echo Trench."
"Echo Trench?" Kaien asked. "That's where the next Seed is?"
"It's where the memory-point collapsed, yes," she said. "Only place the Choir wouldn't dare enter—not fully."
Kaien was about to ask why, when the ground beneath them shook so violently that the tram nearly derailed before departure.
A booming voice filled the air:
"YOU WHO CARRY THE BROKEN THREAD.YOU WHO STAND IN DEFIANCE OF INFINITY.CEASE. RETURN TO THE FLOW.OR BE SUBSUMED."
Mirra slapped the override.
"GO!"
The tram blasted forward—magnetic coils flaring, rails whining as they bent time to gain speed. Outside, the world rippled. Buildings collapsed into static. Walkways unraveled into blue threads. A resistance soldier beside them blinked out of reality mid-scream—unmade by an errant tone from the Choir.
Kaien gritted his teeth.
This wasn't war. This was erasure.
He gripped the railing as visions flooded his mind again—unwanted this time.
He saw Elion standing in this very tram once, centuries ago. Saw him pressing his hand to the wall and whispering something too quiet to remember.
Kaien pressed his own hand there.
For a moment, the metal under his palm grew warm.
Then… a new voice rang out in his mind:
"Hold. Remember. Focus."
It was Elion's. Faint. Barely audible. But there.
Suddenly, Kaien could see the world differently.
The collapsing world outside wasn't chaos—it was being carved. Sliced. The Choir was removing moments with precision.
And then he saw them.
Hovering just outside the field of speed—six cloaked figures, drifting like marionettes of thought.
Each wore a mask of polished bone, etched with shifting symbols. Their mouths didn't move, but their intent was deafening.
One pointed toward the tram.
A spiral symbol etched into the air.
"REDUCE."
The tram began to slow—not physically, but temporally. Their time was being stretched, unraveled.
Kaien could see everyone moving slower. Gorran's shout became a deep, echoing bellow. Mirra was mid-gesture, stuck between heartbeats.
Only Kaien remained aware.
The Seed inside him flared, burning gold in his chest.
He stepped forward.
And for the first time—
He spoke back.
"NO."
His voice carried more than sound. It carried resistance. Memory. Weight.
The air shuddered.
The Choir twitched.
Kaien reached inside himself—not physically, but mentally, reaching for the spark. He grasped it and pushed.
A burst of golden light exploded from the tram's front, forming a wave of stabilized time.
The slowing stopped. The world snapped back into motion.
The Choir recoiled, retreating slightly.
Gorran collapsed to one knee, coughing. "What did you just do?!"
Kaien stared at his hands.
"I… held time still."
Mirra's eyes lit up. "You countered a Choir harmony. That shouldn't be possible unless…"
She looked at him with something close to reverence.
"…Unless you're waking up."
The tram shot out of the Subvoid into the open fault lines between sectors.
They raced through zones of broken continuity, past mountains that whispered songs in reverse and lakes that reflected what you feared most. Kaien kept his eyes forward.
In the far distance, a chasm of twisting black-light appeared—the Echo Trench.
Their destination.
A place so drenched in raw memory that even the Spiral Choir avoided full entry. It was where old timelines fell when they were too shattered to salvage.
And somewhere within, the second spark waited.
As the tram descended, Kaien felt something tighten inside him.
The Seed wasn't pulsing now.
It was pointing.
Like a compass.
The golden threads only he could see were weaving outward—stretching across the horizon and forming a path only his soul could read.
He felt the words return to his mind, Elion's voice like a soft drumbeat:
"When memory leads, follow.When time bends, listen.And when the world unravels—hold."
Kaien didn't know what waited in the Echo Trench.
But for the first time, he felt something stir in his chest that wasn't fear.
It was conviction.
The war hadn't ended with Elion's fall.
It had just… been waiting.