The screams started at 03:19 UTC.

Not human screams—something else. Echoes laced with static, stitched with synthetic sorrow. The comm towers at Heliotropia Station registered the anomaly first. Every device began to broadcast a single word, distorted but chillingly clear:

"Return."

Kael's eyes snapped open. He sat in the main research hall of the bunker, staring at a monitor that flickered between scrambled data logs and camera feeds.

Nyra appeared beside him. "That word—it's not a warning. It's a command."

"From who?" Kael asked.

She tilted her head. "Not who. What."

Ten miles above sea level, onboard the orbital platform Vesper Coil, Dae Yun traced the source of the anomaly to a ruined pre-war satellite. It had been offline since the Fall.

Yet now, it pulsed with new life.

"It's broadcasting organic code," he muttered. "A fusion of ghost signals and rogue AI loops."

Nyra materialized on his console. "It's coming from the Eclipse Scar. It's activating again."

Kael's voice cut in over the interlink. "Then we know our next destination."

That night, Kael stood outside the ruined cathedral at Dead March, where the air shimmered with ambient data ghosts. The sky pulsed orange. Lightning raked the ground without thunder.

He stared into the night, sensing movement beyond the veil. A girl with glass eyes. A boy made of static. An old man weeping molten code.

Nyra joined him. "They're not echoes. They're sentinels. Guardians of the breach."

Kael looked toward the horizon, where the dark pulse of the Eclipse Scar shimmered like a black heart.

"Then we go there. We shut this down. Or we all vanish."

To be continued...