Chapter 1 — The Sound Beneath Silence
Chapter 1: The Sound Beneath Silence
The city never truly slept.
It only waited.
Rain slid down the fractured spires of Vireth, tracing veins through rusted metal and blackened stone. Neon lights flickered like dying stars, swallowed by fog that clung too tightly to the streets below.
High above the alleyways, Kael stood on the edge of a skeletal rail tower.
Wind pulled at his dark coat. His boots balanced at the brink of a hundred-meter fall.
He closed his eyes.
And listened.
There it was again.
That sound.
Not a voice. Not quite.
A vibration beneath reality — like glass humming before it shatters.
Kael pressed his palm against his chest.
It wasn't coming from the city.
It was coming from him.
---
He had started noticing it three nights ago.
The tremor in the air.
The way shadows stretched half a second too long.
The way strangers sometimes looked at him as if they almost recognized something.
As if he had once mattered.
A drop of rain slid past his eye, but he didn't blink.
"I remember," he whispered.
The words felt wrong in his mouth.
Because he didn't.
Not fully.
Only fragments.
A battlefield that did not exist.
A throne carved from bone and light.
A crown suspended above a sea of kneeling silhouettes.
And blood.
So much blood.
---
A pulse rippled through the tower beneath his boots.
Kael's eyes snapped open.
The city lights dimmed — not physically, but perceptually. As if something behind the world had inhaled.
Then—
A crack.
Not in the air.
In *understanding*.
Kael staggered as symbols flared across his vision.
White glyphs.
Sharp.
Ancient.
They spiraled around him in silence, carving patterns into the dark.
No one on the street below reacted.
Cars moved.
People walked.
The world continued.
Only he could see it.
Only he could feel it.
---
"You hear it now."
The voice did not come from behind him.
It came from everywhere.
And nowhere.
Kael turned slowly.
The rain stopped mid-fall.
Suspended.
Frozen.
The city hung like a painting.
At the end of the rail tower