Part II — The Lure
The Syndicate moved fast. They always did when belief began to spread.
Two nights after the Reverb riots, they took Ash, the band's drummer — human, loyal, the only one who'd still call Kai "brother" without fear.
They sent a message: a frequency ping, encoded with his scent and a taunt. "Come tune the silence, god-boy."
Lira tried to stop him.
"Don't go alone," she said. "They're setting a stage."
"I know," Kai replied, pulling the hood over his head. "That's why I have to show up."
The rescue was an act of art and war.
The Syndicate held Ash in the heart of their resonance lab — a cathedral of steel and soundproof glass built beneath the city's old metro. The walls thrummed with anti-divine frequencies, engineered to cage gods.
Kai walked in anyway.
Each step set the lights flickering — security feeds cutting out, comms collapsing under interference. His heartbeat carried through the walls, disrupting their instruments.
Then came the chorus.
He closed his eyes and let the frequencies align — sound, fire, wolf. The lunar flame coiled around his hands like spectral strings; each motion struck invisible chords that tore through steel.
Guards fell, weapons melting into slag. The air burned with silver and ozone.
When he reached Ash's containment sphere, he pressed his palm to the glass — and sang.
The note wasn't loud. It was pure.
The glass dissolved into light.
Ash stumbled out, coughing. "You shouldn't have come."
Kai smiled faintly. "Neither should they."
Above them, the entire complex began to hum — frequencies folding over one another in a perfect harmonic collapse. Kai guided the resonance upward, shaping destruction into beauty, ruin into song.
From above ground, witnesses later said it looked like a moonrise beneath the city — a pulse of silver fire blooming from the cracks in the asphalt.
By dawn, nothing of the Syndicate's base remained. Only a single glyph burned into the ruins:
> 𝘌𝘊𝘏𝘖