What if some bonds had existed... long before you ever became aware of them?
The serpent had disappeared, yet its presence still seemed to glide beneath their skin.
The stream had returned to its peaceful course, as if nothing impossible had risen from its depths. And yet... nothing was quite the same anymore.
Aria walked more slowly. Her eyes constantly left the trail, drifting toward the roots, the branches, and the fleeting movements hidden among the ferns.
The forest no longer seemed simply beautiful. It felt inhabited by countless presences she had never imagined before. Without realizing it, she was learning to step outside herself, to observe before acting.
Neris led the way, though without the cold confidence she had carried since they first met. Her drones remained packed away inside her case. Just like at Pulse-9, she was now moving forward without an interface between herself and the world.
Jazz trotted along in the middle of the group.
"Journal entry: since encountering the very large serpent, the three humans have developed an unusually cautious behavior."
"Thanks, Jazz," Aria murmured.
"I'm doing what I can to support your personal growth."
Sophie gave a faint smile but remained silent. Ever since meeting the serpent, the world seemed to have gained a new depth. The wind was no longer just wind. Water was no longer just water. And some silences now seemed to contain... something.
They followed the stream for nearly an hour.
At times, the forest opened slightly, allowing damp shafts of light to filter through the enormous branches. Elsewhere, the trees closed in so tightly that the path almost disappeared.
Then Aria noticed something. Neris was counting rhythms, sometimes under her breath. Three steps... pause... two steps... glance to the left... thirty-two seconds... no longer. She always did the same thing.
And suddenly, a memory surfaced.
An inner courtyard with metal climbing structures. A little girl her own age, teaching her how to cross a small fountain without stepping on certain stones.
"Three steps, then you pause, two more steps, and thirty-two seconds... no longer."
Aria slowed down. Her heart began to beat a little faster.
"Wait..."
Neris turned her head.
"What?"
Aria stared at her for a few seconds.
"Do we know each other? I've had this feeling ever since we met."
Neris frowned. She studied Aria's face for a long moment. Something inside her resisted. Then, without warning, an image surfaced.
A courtyard and the sound of a fountain.
Two little girls sitting on the stone edge, their feet almost touching the water. One let dead leaves drift across the surface, insisting they would eventually reach the sea. The other laughed, convinced they would disappear long before that.
The image faded almost immediately.
"Wait..."
Her voice had become quieter.
"That fountain..."
Aria stood perfectly still.
Something crossed her eyes as well.
"The leaves..."
Silence.
Then, almost at the same time—
"That was you?"
Silence fell instantly. Even Jazz stopped talking.
Neris didn't answer right away. Instead, she resumed walking. She let out a quiet breath before finally stopping. The stream flowed behind her.
"When I was little... my mother sometimes took me to some of Biel's educational centers."
Aria frowned slightly.
"Private programs for employees' children?"
"Yes. You were there often."
Aria felt something shift inside her memory. Faces. White rooms. A girl who always watched the others before speaking.
"It was you..."
Neris barely nodded.
"Something inside me recognized you the moment we met."
Sophie quietly looked up at them.
"Why didn't you say anything?"
Neris let out a small, joyless laugh.
"Because I wasn't sure it was good news."
Aria remained silent for a few seconds. Then something slowly came back to her. The educational centers in Biel. The courtyard. The white rooms. The adults who always talked for far too long. Her mother sometimes took her there when she was working on certain projects and meeting with Kaïssa.
What Aria remembered most was a strange feeling… The feeling of being watched everywhere, even in places meant for children. And in the middle of those memories... one name finally came back.
Neris.
Her stomach tightened slightly.
"Wait..."
Neris raised her eyes toward Aria.
"I think my mother used to mention you sometimes."
The silence that followed was very brief, but long enough.
"Maybe," Neris replied.
And immediately another memory returned.
A white room in Biel. She was maybe thirteen. Two girls looking at her, convinced she couldn't hear them.
"Do you think she can see our files?"
"With her mother? Of course."
Then that little laugh, not cruel...worse. The kind of laugh that turns you into someone apart.
That was the day Neris began shortening her name whenever she met someone : simpler, less recognizable. Because after the name almost always came everything else: the looks, the assumptions, the whispers.
"Oh... it's her."
She had understood very early that some children didn't even need to know her to already have an opinion about her. All they needed to know was where she came from...
...and who her mother was.
As a child, Kaïssa sometimes appeared behind her on Biel's giant screens. So Neris learned to slightly change the way she spoke, to avoid certain places, to shorten her name, to wear clothes that were too loose so people would notice her body less, and to observe before entering anywhere.
The children from Skyward seemed made to be seen. They wore their names like shining crowns: son of… daughter of...
Perfect heirs to a world that taught them very early how to shine in front of cameras, how to smile the right way, how to exist without hesitation.
Neris had never known how to do that. She didn't like eyes that lingered too long. Even less those that had already decided who she was before she had spoken. Some thought she had every privilege. Others wanted to get close to her only because of what she represented. And there were those who hated her in advance.
So she learned to hide her name… before she had even learned how to defend herself.
Aria kept looking at her now, as if trying to piece together fragments of an old memory.
The strangest thing, Neris thought, was that she wasn't feeling that familiar tension anymore. Only a quiet weariness as if she had suddenly grown tired of always having to go around her own existence.
"Were you already like that?" Aria finally asked.
"Like what?"
"Like someone who always checks the exits before sitting down."
This time, Neris truly smiled.
"Yes. Always."
They resumed walking, but something had changed. The distance between them had grown smaller, not physically… in another way.
Sophie was looking at the stream.
"There's... something."
Neris immediately reached toward her case, then hesitated. The memory of the serpent crossed her mind briefly. She let her hand fall.
"What do you feel?"
Sophie closed her eyes for a few seconds.
"Not danger."
"More like... a familiar presence."
Jazz tilted his dome.
"Statistically speaking, that kind of sentence is becoming increasingly alarming."
Sophie crouched beside the water. Between two damp stones, almost completely hidden by moss, something was blinking faintly.
Aria immediately stepped closer. So did Neris.
"What's that doing here?"
Half hidden beneath moss and damp roots, the object looked like an old relay terminal forgotten by the network. A compact model, worn with age, probably installed long before Biel's latest surveillance measures.
Neris carefully picked it up.
"An old model... a very old one."
She wiped the mud from the screen with the sleeve of her jacket.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, after a small adjustment, an unstable light flickered across the device.
Connection interrupted. Attempting relay...
Sophie immediately felt her stomach tighten.
Almost at the same moment, her phone vibrated in her pocket : a real signal, weak… but real.
She quickly pulled it out. 17 secure connection attempts, all signed with the same name.
NUMA.
Her heart started beating faster. A final message appeared.
Sophie...
Something tightened gently inside her chest. The terminal suddenly crackled. Then a broken voice pushed through the static.
"...Sophie... if you get this... please answer! I'm really worried!"
The signal cut off. A few seconds later… It came back.
"...not safe... they're searching..."
Neris had frozen, her own phone had vibrated too. A single notification, no name appeared, but she already knew.
Her fingers hesitated before opening the message.
Neris, Soren's name has reached me. Call me back before someone else takes care of her.
Her stomach tightened immediately.
Aria noticed the change in her expression at once.
"What is it?"
Neris locked the screen almost too quickly.
"Nothing."
But no one really believed her.
The relay crackled once more.
"...don't trust anyone coming from Biel..."
Then nothing. The screens went dark almost at the same time, and silence settled around them again.
Sophie was still holding her phone.
Sophie... answer me!
Those two words kept beating softly inside her chest, not like a warning, but like someone who was truly afraid of losing her.
Beside her, Neris was already looking at the forest differently. Kaïssa's message still seemed to burn behind her eyes.
Soren's name has reached me.
Her stomach tightened again. It wasn't the threat that frightened her most. Kaïssa rarely threatened people directly. She never needed to. The worst part was that she had already started connecting the dots : Pulse-9, Soren, herself and perhaps... the Alliance.
If Kaïssa traced the path back to Soren, the whole system would follow behind : the analyses, the surveillance, the invisible cross-checks that always ended up turning a person into a target.
A cold wave of guilt passed through Neris. Soren had spent years becoming invisible. And now, because of her… That invisibility was beginning to crack.
Aria looked at Neris.
"Do they know where we are?" she asked quietly.
Neris hesitated for a second.
"Not yet."
But even she didn't sound completely convinced.
Jazz slowly rotated his little dome.
"Optimistic analysis: we will soon be slightly hunted."
No one answered. Somewhere, far beyond the trees, a drone briefly crossed the sky before disappearing behind the clouds.
Earlier, high above the clean streets of Biel, Kaël was getting ready to lie live on air or at least... to try.
The Detective Trials studio had been rearranged overnight with new camera angles. And new lights for a new story. Lila watched the screens from the control room. Everything seemed under control. That was precisely what worried her.
"Projected audience is up forty-two percent," Maya, the assistant, announced.
"Obviously."
"Social media is still exploding over the three silhouettes."
Lila didn't answer. She was looking at something else. The video was frozen on the third figure. No matter how many times she replayed it, something resisted.
The two fake spirits now looked flat, almost artificial. The third presence… gave the impression that the camera had captured something it should never have seen.
"Lila?"
She flinched slightly.
"What?"
"Kaël is ready."
"Good."
But she immediately felt it wasn't true. No one was ready.
Kaël stepped onto the set with that cold beauty that had driven the ratings up ever since his participation had been announced. But today, something had hardened slightly. He seemed less polished and more human.
And the audience noticed it immediately. The comments had already begun to scroll.
HE DIDN'T SLEEP.
HE REALLY SAW THOSE SPIRITS.
Kaël took a deep breath. For the first time in a long while… he no longer knew what he was going to say.
The live broadcast began. Lila immediately took control.
"Since last night, millions of people have been asking the same question:
What did we really see near the fracture?"
She turned toward Kaël.
"What did you feel?"
Kaël looked at her. Then at the cameras. The script was still scrolling discreetly on the teleprompter.
A vague feeling. Incredible mystery. No certainty.
He took a breath. Then simply said,
"I don't know."
The control room froze. Lila didn't move, but she immediately lifted her head. Kaël continued.
"Yesterday... I thought I was taking part in a staged performance."
Silence.
In the control room, someone instinctively cut his microphone. But it was too late. The audience had heard. The comments exploded.
WHAT???
WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT???
THEY LIED TO US?
Lila stepped in.
"Kaël is obviously referring to the visual effects used during the program."
"Yes," he replied.
Then he added,
"But not the third presence."
This time, even the technicians froze. An old fear tightened in Lila's stomach as if the live broadcast had just opened a door she had always avoided.
Kaël kept looking straight into the camera.
"I don't know what we saw."
A vast silence spread across the set. Then suddenly, the lights flickered. A dull tremor ran through the building.
Light… but strong enough to make several screens vibrate. Discrete alarms immediately lit up in the control room.
"What was that?" someone shouted.
A second rumble echoed farther across the city. Several feeds went down at the same time: cameras, secondary networks, urban drones. For one second… Biel seemed to blink.
The live broadcast abruptly cut to a black screen. In the control room, several voices erupted at once.
"Sector 7 is down!"
"We've got outages in Groundward!"
"Several drones have just disappeared from the radar!"
Lila grabbed Kaël by the arm.
"Are you out of your mind?! You just destroyed our entire editorial line!"
But she wasn't listening anymore. Because at that exact moment the live feed had gone dark… the third silhouette had changed ever so slightly on the frozen screen. It had moved closer.
Deep inside Biel's central system, Kaïssa was already watching the consequences unfold. The graphs were surging. Searches related to the Wall were increasing everywhere. And above all… network anomalies were multiplying: layers of data scrolled across her screens, false signals, inconsistent logs, shifted trajectories.
Someone was deliberately scrambling certain routes.
"Locate the source."
"It's fragmented," an analyst replied.
"Then reconstruct it."
Kaïssa watched the lines of code stream past. A real intelligence was behind this.
Not an improvised group. Someone who knew the internal structures extremely well. She couldn't help making the connection.
Soren. Pulse-9. The fake logs. The diverted routes.
Something connected all of it or someone. She could feel it.
At that very moment, a new alert crossed the screens.
Micro-explosions had been reported in several outer sectors of Groundward, and one in Skyward. Small homemade charges, not powerful enough to destroy anything. Just enough to disrupt the flows and saturate the local networks.
Kaïssa immediately felt that something was changing.
These weren't coordinated attacks. They were worse.
Disorder was beginning to spread on its own…
In his apartment, plunged into darkness, Numa kept working, barely breathing. The different screens illuminated his tired face. He had managed to slow down several searches but not enough.
He tried another connection: no response.
"Come on..."
He tried again, still nothing. His gaze drifted, despite himself, to the last picture of Sophie he still had : a university photo where she was laughing without a care.
Numa briefly closed his eyes.
"Answer me… just once."
A new signal suddenly appeared on one of the screens.
RED PRIORITY. SECURE INTRUSION.
He immediately straightened up. Several windows opened across his monitors. The same crackling as the day before came through the speakers. Then the sentence appeared.
You're looking too late.
This time, Numa didn't turn pale. He recognized perfectly the hidden structure behind the injection. He had built part of those pathways himself.
And now someone was using them… with an accuracy that was almost insulting to his own expertise.
Numa ran a tired hand over his face. Every window on the terminal abruptly closed. Then the screen went black.
In the dark reflection of the monitor… Numa saw someone standing behind him.
And froze.
The Guardian Angel: The deepest bonds are not always born from blood.Sometimes they are woven through a glance, a meeting, or a shared path. When two beings walk toward the same truth, something already binds them together… long before they become aware of it.
To those who come back every Sunday...
In Worlds Reconciled, we often talk about invisible bonds. I believe they also exist between a story and the people who choose to follow it. There may still be only a few of you, but knowing that you come back every week truly means a lot to me.
Thank you for sharing this part of the journey with me, don't hesitate to contact me through the comments". Elea 🤍