"Some ghosts don't haunt the living—they recruit them."
The wasteland had forgotten color.
Weeks after the fall of Sanctum 4, the world was nothing but gray and gold—the gray of ash, the gold of dying light. The rain never stopped now; it fell like residue from a broken sky, leaving thin metallic streaks on every surface.
Less Vogue walked through it without looking up.
Her crimson scarf was torn, stiff with blood and soot. The once-gleaming circuits beneath her skin had dimmed to a soft, erratic pulse—faint glimmers running up her throat and along her wrists like the veins of something neither human nor machine.
People had started calling her the Pulsewalker.
The title drifted through the settlements like smoke—half warning, half prayer.
The sniper who burned her own army to stop a god.The woman who carries the pulse of the world in her veins.The last song of the ashes.
Less ignored the stories. They made her sound holy. She wasn't.
She was just what was left.
The settlement was called Greyline, a shantytown built from the bones of transport wrecks and Helix scrap. Its people lived by trading relics from the old world—circuit cores, coolant tubes, rations that hadn't yet turned to dust.
When she arrived, no one stopped her. They just stepped aside, silent, eyes wide with recognition.
At the edge of the main street, an old trader leaned against a rusted exo-frame. "You shouldn't be here," he said quietly.
Less kept walking. "No one should."
He followed her with his eyes. "They say you killed the angel queen."
Less stopped, just long enough to reply. "Not yet."
She kept moving.
She found Shelly two streets over, inside a makeshift lab built from broken drone hulls. The younger woman looked thinner, her eyes bruised from sleepless nights. A dozen holographic screens floated around her, projecting endless streams of data.
"You look terrible," Less said.
Shelly smirked faintly. "You look worse."
They didn't hug. They never had been that kind of friends. But the silence between them was heavy with everything they'd lost.
"How long have you been here?" Less asked.
"Two weeks. Since the crater cooled."
Less nodded. "Khale?"
Shelly's expression faltered. "Gone east. Said he needed to find the others. He'll come back."
Less didn't ask when.
She looked at the screens. "What are you tracking?"
"Vira's echoes," Shelly said. "After the explosion, the network didn't vanish—it fragmented. Bits of her code scattered across the neural grid. She's rebuilding herself through data trails."
Less leaned closer. "You can trace it?"
"I can try. But it's not digital anymore. It's biological—spreading through the air, the soil, maybe even through people."
Less's pulse quickened. "She's infecting the world."
Shelly nodded grimly. "That's what gods do."
They left Greyline by nightfall, traveling west where the network's fragments were strongest. The wasteland stretched before them—endless plains of glass and bone. In the distance, faint towers of light rose and fell like dying stars.
Along the way, they passed refugees—mutants, scavengers, children with gold flickering faintly in their eyes. Each one recognized Less, though none dared speak to her.
Shelly noticed. "They look at you like you're one of her angels."
Less's voice was flat. "I killed angels."
"That's not how legends work," Shelly said softly. "People don't need truth. They need something to believe in."
Less looked out across the horizon. "Then I'll give them something real."
They camped beneath a half-collapsed overpass. The night air was cold, electric, humming faintly with the same rhythm that haunted Less's dreams.
She couldn't sleep. The pulse beneath her skin had grown restless again—like a trapped animal trying to claw its way out.
When she closed her eyes, she saw flashes: Vira's face, broken and burning; the Seraphs rising like golden ghosts; the Choir Engine screaming her name.
And beneath it all, a voice.
"You can't erase me, sister."
She woke with a start, breath ragged.
Shelly stirred beside the dying fire. "Nightmare?"
"Not a dream," Less said. "A signal."
Shelly frowned. "From her?"
"She's calling me back."
Two days later, they reached the ruins of a Helix relay station. The structure jutted from the ground like a ribcage—half buried, half alive.
Shelly scanned the air. "High radiation. But there's power."
Less stepped inside. The walls pulsed faintly with light, each beat syncing with her heart.
The deeper they went, the louder the hum became. It wasn't just sound anymore—it was language.
"Come home, Less."
"You carry my heart."
"Let's finish what we started."
Less gritted her teeth. "She's in the system."
Shelly typed furiously, trying to cut the signal. "If I can isolate the node, maybe—"
The lights flared gold.
Shelly's body jerked, eyes widening.
"Shelly!" Less lunged forward, grabbing her shoulders. The younger woman convulsed once, then went still. When she looked up, her eyes glowed faintly.
"Don't fight me," Vira's voice said through her mouth.
Less froze. "Get out of her."
"You gave me life, sister. I just borrowed a voice."
Less's hands trembled. "You killed everything I built."
"No," Vira whispered through Shelly's lips. "You built everything I needed."
Shelly's body shuddered. Blood trickled from her nose.
Less raised her gun, eyes wet. "If you hurt her—"
"You'll kill me again?" Vira said softly. "You already tried that."
Less fired.
The bullet hit the relay core behind Shelly, shattering the conduit. Sparks exploded. Shelly screamed as the light poured out of her eyes, then collapsed into Less's arms.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then Shelly gasped, blinking. Her eyes were her own again.
Less held her tightly, whispering, "It's okay. I've got you."
Shelly trembled. "She's not gone."
Less nodded. "I know."
They destroyed the relay station at dawn.
The explosion lit the horizon, scattering flocks of metallic birds into the sky. The shockwave rippled through the wasteland, and for a brief moment, the hum faded.
But when the dust settled, Shelly looked at her scanner and went pale. "She's already moved. Ten more signals just activated."
Less stared at the map—a web of gold spreading across the world like veins.
"She's turning the planet into a body," she said quietly. "Every city a nerve. Every person a cell."
Shelly swallowed hard. "Then what do we do?"
Less slung her rifle over her shoulder. "We amputate."
That night, they found a group of survivors camped near the edge of the old metro tunnels. Their leader, a scarred woman with a mechanical arm, recognized Less immediately.
"You're the one they call Pulsewalker," she said. "You burned Sanctum 4."
Less didn't flinch. "We're hunting what's left of Helix. You in or out?"
The woman smiled grimly. "In. I'd rather die loud than live quiet."
Word spread fast. By morning, others had joined them—mutants, ex-soldiers, refugees. They called themselves the Choir Reborn.
They followed Less not because she promised survival, but because she promised meaning.
When Shelly asked why she accepted the title they gave her, Less said simply, "If people believe in a ghost, I'll make sure she fights for them."
At the edge of camp, Khale returned.
His armor was battered, his eyes hollow, but he still carried that quiet smirk that somehow made the world feel less doomed.
"Took you long enough," Less said.
"Had to bury the past," he replied. "How's the apocalypse treating you?"
She glanced at the growing campfire behind them. "Busy."
He chuckled. "You building another army?"
"No," she said softly. "I'm building a song."
Khale frowned. "A song?"
She looked at the stars. "Something loud enough to wake the gods."
Far away, in the ruins of New Genesis, Vira's voice whispered through the network.
"Let them gather."
"Let them hope."
Her body, now pure light, drifted through the circuits of the world. The air itself shimmered where she passed.
"Every note she sings is mine."
"And when her song ends…"
"…the world will remember which sister wrote the final verse."
Back in the camp, Less sat by the fire, polishing her rifle. The golden pulse beneath her skin flickered faintly with the rhythm of the flames.
She could still feel Vira—faint but constant, a heartbeat away. The war was no longer for territory or survival. It was for identity.
Shelly sat beside her, watching the fire. "If you could kill her once and for all, would you?"
Less didn't look up. "I wouldn't kill her," she said quietly. "I'd rewrite her."
Khale raised a brow. "And if she rewrites you first?"
Less chambered a round, the click echoing like a promise.
"Then I'll be the last line she ever edits."
The wind shifted, carrying the faint hum of Vira's growing network. It wasn't fear that stirred in Less's chest this time. It was rhythm.
The Pulsewalker had learned the beat of the world.
And now, she was ready to make it sing.