The stars were humming again.
Kael heard them in the quiet moments—when the world stilled just enough for truth to surface. The Mask of the Ninth rested on a pedestal beside him aboard the Echohound, pulsing like a second heartbeat. He hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, and the lines between dream and memory had grown disturbingly thin.
Lira watched him from across the control chamber, arms crossed. "That thing's changing you."
Kael didn't look up. "Or revealing me."
Rax scoffed softly from the navigation bay. "Same thing, isn't it?"
Nira stepped in from the corridor, holding a data-slab. "We've received a signal. Not from any of the remaining Shards—but from something beneath the old crater at Blacksite Enclave 7."
Kael's head snapped up. "That place was erased."
"Exactly," she said. "Which makes this even more interesting."
The coordinates glowed on the holo-map—deep within the now-quarantined wastelands of the former Sovereign Territories. Once a military testbed for resonance weapons, the region had been declared uninhabitable after the Pulsefall Cataclysm.
But the signal... was unmistakably tied to the Shards.
Not one of them.
All of them.
They arrived at Enclave 7 two days later, guided by echo-beacons through a haze of atmospheric instability and radiation fields. The landscape looked like a painting smeared with ash—twisted trees, black-glass plains, clouds that never moved.
The Echohound docked on a rusted platform that had once served as an airship tower. It groaned under their weight like it remembered the war.
Kael stepped out first, the mask now integrated with his pulse suit. Its resonance stabilized the local distortion field—like it was meant to be here.
"This is where they tested the first synthetic Shard," Nira said quietly. "The Echo Core. It didn't just explode—it sang itself into oblivion."
Lira checked her scanner. "There's something still alive down there."
"Not alive," Rax muttered, staring at the crater's edge. "Remembered."
They descended into the abyss.
Metal walkways collapsed underfoot, vines growing through concrete like claws. The further they went, the less the laws of reality obeyed themselves. Time blurred. Color faded. At one point, Kael looked into a reflection and saw a version of himself aging backward.
Finally, they reached a chamber half-buried in stone and silence. The door was sealed with layered locks—physical, digital, and resonant.
Kael stepped forward.
The mask hummed.
And the door simply… opened.
Inside, they found a throne of wires.
Atop it sat a man—withered, half-machine, half-echo. Tubes connected to what looked like a synthetic shard suspended above his chest, flickering with unstable light.
His eyes snapped open the moment Kael entered.
"I know that pulse," the man rasped. "You're the Ninth."
Kael approached slowly. "Who are you?"
"I was the First Conductor. The one who made the mistake of turning echoes into weapons. They called it innovation. I called it betrayal."
"What happened here?" Lira asked, eyes scanning the ruined tech.
"The world tried to shape resonance," the man said. "But you don't mold a god's voice. You listen. Or you burn."
He looked at Kael, the glow of madness behind his pupils. "You've heard it, haven't you? The Forgotten Cadence."
Kael tensed. "The what?"
"The song buried beneath the pulse. The one that predates even the Nine Thrones. It's not a memory. It's a warning."
The chamber shook.
Above them, the synthetic shard cracked.
"I sealed it away," the old man whispered. "But it sings still. Because it remembers what we tried to become."
And then he laughed.
Not out of joy—but from knowing there was no escaping what came next.
Suddenly, the shard above him pulsed.
Wildly.
Erratically.
As if angry.
Nira's scanner blared. "It's initiating a full-core resonance loop! It's going to collapse the chamber!"
"Then we break the loop," Kael said, stepping forward.
"No!" the old man screamed. "You don't understand! If you harmonize with it, you wake it up! The Cadence wants to be heard!"
Kael didn't stop.
He placed his hand on the shard.
The world flashed white.
He stood on nothing.
Not air.
Not ground.
Just… pulse.
Across from him floated a figure made entirely of fractured light and shifting sound. It had no face. Only a mouth that never moved, yet always echoed.
You seek to unify the Shards.
Kael felt the words inside his bones.
"I seek to heal the fractures," he replied.
But fractures are where the truth leaks in.
The being stepped forward.
We are the Cadence. We were before the Throne. Before time found its rhythm.
Kael narrowed his eyes. "What do you want?"
To be remembered. To be played. You are a key, Kael. A chord waiting to be struck.
The Cadence raised a hand.
Suddenly, Kael saw worlds collapsing.
Echoes weaponized.
Planets tuned to frequencies that made stars scream.
The Ninth was not created to lead.
It was created to contain.
You are not a savior.
You are a lock.
He was thrown back into his body.
The chamber exploded in harmonic dissonance, the old man screaming as the shard shattered—its energy flowing into Kael's chest, burning him from the inside.
Lira dragged him out just as the chamber collapsed behind them.
Outside, under the dead sky, Kael gasped for air.
His team surrounded him, but he barely heard them.
All he could hear…
Was the Cadence.
Whispering.
Laughing.
Waiting.
---
That night, as they left the wasteland, Kael sat alone in the Echohound's meditation chamber.
He stared at the stars.
And they no longer looked like beacons.
They looked like eyes.
Watching.
Waiting.
And remembering.