Three days after the ember village, after the scream, after the quake…
The air had changed.
Not in the way one notices a shift in temperature or the sudden sting of a coming storm. No — this was deeper. Like something primal beneath the world had stirred, and now every living thing above could feel it pressing upward from the earth, whispering in broken thoughts.
The trio had moved far from the crater, far from the cold vault, but the feeling followed them like a scentless fog. Even Chen Yu, who often joked through hunger and death alike, had grown quieter. Rui, normally calm and detached, seemed agitated. She slept in bursts now — not restfully, but like someone who feared what she might dream.
And Li Wei?
He heard the heartbeat.
It pulsed in silence. A slow, dragging throb that wasn't his own. It was quiet enough to ignore — but once heard, impossible to forget. And deep in his bones, he knew:
Something was watching.
Something had woken.
And it remembered him.
Elsewhere in the broken world, the skies cracked open above dead lands. And those who still clung to some shred of civilization — the Traders, the Bunkers, the Tribes — began reporting strange phenomena.
Animals migrating in strange patterns.
Mutated zombies gathering and moving as one.
People speaking in tongues before vanishing.
Electronics shorting when Rui passed nearby.
But worst of all were the sightings: creatures with eyes that didn't blink. Taller than men, with bone and smoke for skin. Things that had never been listed in any database. Things that hadn't evolved — but had returned.
And word spread, as it always did in the ruins. Traders whispered it under their breath. Fanatics screamed it on bloodstained altars. Scientists wept it before sealing their final reports.
"The Ghost Batch has been activated.
They found shelter in a skeletal bus depot, buried under vines and long-dead flyers for pre-apocalypse concerts. They lit a fire, more for comfort than warmth, and sat around it.
Chen Yu was unusually still, his eyes fixed on Rui, who sat cross-legged opposite him. She hadn't spoken since they left the crater. Her fingers curled restlessly in the dirt, drawing circles she then erased.
"I had a dream," she said suddenly.
Chen Yu blinked. "Was I handsome in it?"
She didn't smile.
"I was standing in a white room. There were no walls, no corners. Just light. I saw children. Lined up. Hooked to machines. Tubes in their backs. Screaming, but not with their mouths."
She looked up at them. Her eyes were different.
"They screamed with their minds."
Li Wei met her gaze and saw the flicker of something behind her pupils. Memory. Trauma. Or something worse.
"They were like me," she added, voice low. "Subject 0107 wasn't alone. I wasn't the only one."
"You think the vault released them?" Li Wei asked.
She shook her head. "No. I think… it called them."
Chen Yu shuddered, then forced a grin. "Well, damn. We've gone from bad dreams to psychic siblings. What's next? Flying pigs?
Far away, in a fortified tower overrun with wires and dread, the remnants of The Ascendancy gathered in secrecy.
The breach had triggered more than alarms. It had reactivated programs buried in decommissioned servers. Files long thought deleted blinked back to life.
One of the screens showed a list:
GHOST BATCH:
• Subject 0101 – Deceased
• Subject 0102 – Dormant
• Subject 0103 – Rogue
• Subject 0107 – Active
…
• Subject 0113 – Breached
A woman in a gray coat stood before the screen, hands shaking.
"We can't contain this," she whispered. "They're waking. The vault wasn't a prison. It was a nest."
Another man, scarred and heavily armed, snarled: "Then we burn the nest. All of it."
But the woman only stared, cold and pale.
"You fool. It's already in the wind.
That night, Rui wandered from the campfire. Li Wei followed — not out of protection, but curiosity.
He found her standing at a crumbled fountain, staring into stagnant black water. Her reflection shimmered, but didn't match her movements.
"I feel them," she whispered.
"Who?"
"The others. Ghosts like me. I hear them dreaming."
Li Wei stepped beside her. "What do they want?"
She looked at him. For the first time, her voice cracked with something almost like fear.
"To come home."
Li Wei's mouth tightened. He felt that heartbeat again. Slow. Heavy. It wasn't hers. It wasn't his.
It was below them. Everywhere. Growing louder.
In the days that followed, they moved toward a mountainous region. A place rumored to be rich in abandoned tech, fuel cells, even water.
But the group was different now.
Rui grew distant. Sometimes, she spoke in a language none of them knew — even herself. Once, she fainted and convulsed. When she woke, the veins in her neck glowed faintly purple.
Chen Yu, increasingly unnerved, coped with more humor.
"If she sprouts wings and eats us, I'm not even mad," he joked. "Just make it quick. I hate being chewed slowly."
Li Wei said nothing. But inside, he was watching. Calculating. Trying to hold on to the thread of logic in a world where nightmares breathed and children were turned into weapons.
They passed a sign half-buried in mud:
Welcome to Silent Ash.
A village long since wiped off maps.
A place where the wind whispered words in no human tongue.
They didn't stop.
It wasn't one of the Ghost Batch. It wasn't human.
It had been human, once. But it had stayed too long in the dark. It had drunk too deeply of rage, memory, and experimentation.
When the vault cracked open, it hadn't escaped.
It had risen.
And it was hungry.
Now it moved, slowly, silently, from shadow to shadow — not walking, but folding space around it. The few who glimpsed it died before describing it.
Only one message was ever recorded before the outpost vanished:
"Something… something climbed out of her. Subject 0113 — it wore her face. But it wasn't…"
The recording ended there.
It had begun.
The journey away from the vault should have brought relief.
Instead, it brought whispers.
They crossed no man's land — stretches of quiet terrain where the sky seemed too close and birds refused to fly. The ember mist clung low to the ground, laced with gold flecks that made the dirt shimmer unnaturally. Even Chen Yu stopped making jokes about radioactive glitter.
They walked in silence, each step taking them deeper into a wrongness they couldn't name.
Then they saw the village.
The map didn't name it.
No signs pointed to it.
It simply was.
Crouched between hills like a forgotten memory, its rooftops sagged under the weight of soot and moss. The air smelled of burnt metal and wet cloth, though no fire had touched it recently.
As they approached, Rui slowed. "It's wrong here," she murmured. "This place… it's inverted."
"Inverted how?" Li Wei asked, his voice low.
She pointed. "That window's reflection is upside down. The trees are bent… but not from wind. Like they're reaching back in."
Chen Yu sighed. "Fantastic. A village stuck in a nightmare loop. Shall we knock or keep walking?"
They should have kept walking.
The village had residents.
Children.
At least, that's what they appeared to be — small figures standing still in alleyways, watching silently as the trio passed.
Pale, bald. Eyes too wide. Skin slightly transparent, revealing faint traces of veins — glowing with the same amber hue that now occasionally flickered in Rui's own.
None of the children spoke.
None blinked.
They just… watched.
When Chen Yu stepped toward one, it vanished with a pop of ember mist, leaving behind only a faint footprint and a twisted iron doll.
"This place," Rui whispered, "isn't part of the living world anymore. It's a memory… kept alive by something that doesn't want to forget."
Li Wei's hand drifted to his machete. "Then we don't stay."
But it was too late.
The village square was unnaturally clean. No dust. No ash. Just a perfect circle of cracked stone, and a single figure waiting in the center.
She wore white.
Her face was covered in a linen veil.
Her arms were tattooed with lines — data lines, numbers, formulas, names.
She bowed slightly when they entered. "Welcome back, Subject 0107."
Rui froze. "I don't know you."
"But we know you," the woman said softly. "We are the Rememberers. Custodians of the ember echoes."
Chen Yu squinted. "You the neighborhood welcoming committee or a cult?"
The woman tilted her head. "Does it matter?"
She turned to Li Wei. "You brought her here. The seed. The breach. Do you even know what you've done?"
"We didn't choose this," he replied coldly.
"No," the woman agreed. "But you enabled it."
She lifted her hand. From the rooftops, the ember children appeared again — dozens of them. Silent. Glowing. Unblinking.
"You opened the vault. That makes you marked.
The woman didn't attack. She showed them.
With a whisper, the stone under their feet shifted. Light pulsed beneath it, and a vision bloomed into their minds.
A lab. White walls. Children in pods. Screaming minds. Electrodes and inked numbers on skin.
Subject 0107 in a chair, whispering to someone invisible. The walls bulging outward. The scientists screaming.
A vault sealed. A girl left behind. Rui.
Then blackness.
Li Wei stumbled back, nose bleeding. Chen Yu fell to his knees. Rui stood perfectly still, eyes hollow.
"She survived what no one else did," the woman said. "The Ember didn't kill her. It recognized her."
"What is the Ember?" Li Wei asked.
The woman paused. Then said simply:
"The first virus was made. The Ember… was found."
A silence.
Then Rui whispered, "This place will burn again.
As if her words were command, the children began to hum.
Low. Vibrational. Like a machine warming up.
The buildings began to shake.
The woman turned her back to them and walked into the humming crowd, who parted for her like smoke. "Leave now, or be remembered with the ash."
They didn't hesitate.
The village behind them didn't explode. It folded — like a book snapping shut, swallowed by golden mist and a sound like reversing wind.
And then… nothing.
Where the village had been, there was only scorched earth.
Later that night, far from the vanished place, the fire crackled but brought no comfort.
Chen Yu looked at Rui across the flame. "You really don't remember anything?"
"I remember the pain," she said. "And voices. And that I didn't want to become what they made me into."
"But maybe you already are," he muttered.
Li Wei shot him a look.
"What?" Chen Yu said sharply. "We're supposed to act like we didn't just walk through a memory nightmare created by her trauma?! Like we're not being hunted because of what she is?"
"She's not the enemy," Li Wei said flatly.
"She's not even just Rui anymore," Chen Yu growled. "You saw her veins glow. You saw that woman call her a seed. How long before she snaps?"
"I won't snap," Rui said quietly.
"Hope you're right," Chen Yu replied, standing up and walking into the dark.
Li Wei sat in silence. Rui stared into the fire, haunted.
And in the distance, something watched.