Kael reached the ridge just before dawn.
Not real dawn — the kind that came from a thousand broken lamps strung across the ruins, burning on scavenged batteries.
The sky stayed black. The horizon was a bruise that refused to heal.
Below him stretched the remains of Valenreach.
Half-drowned in fog, the city looked less like a place and more like a memory trying to recall itself.
Somewhere in the distance, a voice crackled through a broken loudspeaker:
> "Shelter Three remains open. Follow the light. Do not look behind you."
Kael didn't trust anything that called itself light anymore.
Ashveil's whisper slithered behind his thoughts.
> "They built this glow to pretend the moon still watches."
"You sound jealous," Kael muttered.
> "I don't envy the sun. I envy the lie."
---
He followed the trail of flickering lamps, passing streets cracked open like ribs.
Shadows still clung to the corners, hissing faintly as he passed — Dormants that hadn't fully formed.
He avoided them. He'd learned that even half-born monsters could sense fear the way sharks sensed blood.
The air smelled of burnt plastic and saltwater. Somewhere, something was burning — quietly, like it had been burning for days.
When he reached the gates of Shelter Three, the first thing he saw was a man with a flamethrower.
The second thing was the corpses.
Dozens, piled in a neat line beside the barricade — charred black, no shadows beneath them.
A woman in scavenged armor lowered her weapon and looked Kael up and down.
"Unregistered," she said flatly. "Name."
"Kael Vorrin."
"Dormant?"
He hesitated. "Yes."
"Control level?"
He frowned. "Still breathing."
That made her almost smile. "Good enough. Come in before the light shifts."
---
Shelter Three wasn't a shelter.
It was a scrapyard stitched together with faith and fear — metal walls, flickering generators, old buses welded into watchtowers.
Inside, people moved like ghosts pretending to be human.
Every one of them had the same look — that hollow quiet of someone who had lost the sound of their own heartbeat.
A boy offered him a cracked tin cup of water.
Kael took it, nodding thanks.
The boy's eyes were black — not pupil-black, but completely void.
Ashveil stirred. "That one sleeps with his eyes open."
"Don't," Kael whispered.
> "He's not dangerous."
"That's what you said about the last one."
> "The last one remembered hunger."
---
Later, by a barrel fire, Kael learned what had happened since the night the moon fell.
"The Dormant count doubles every cycle," said the woman from the gate, who introduced herself as Mira Solen, acting commander of the Solar Wardens.
"Most people awaken by accident — anger, fear, guilt. Once they lose control, we burn them. If we don't, they eat the rest."
"And the light?" Kael asked, nodding to the lamps around the camp.
She looked up, eyes reflecting the artificial glow.
"Old Order tech. Emits photonic patterns that suppress awakening. Keeps Dormants asleep."
Ashveil laughed softly inside him.
> "Light doesn't suppress monsters. It only blinds them."
Kael ignored it, but Mira noticed his flinch. "Yours talks, doesn't it?"
He froze. "How do you—"
She tapped her temple. "You're not the first Whispered I've seen. The rare ones — the ones whose Dormants don't take over."
"Whispered?"
"That's what we call your kind. Half monster, half liar."
Her tone was matter-of-fact, not cruel. But Kael heard what she didn't say: half useful.
---
By nightfall, the air changed again.
The lamps flickered once, twice — and the fog outside began to move.
Mira shouted orders. "Positions! Watch the perimeter!"
Kael felt it before he saw it. A pulse through the ground.
Dormants — dozens — moving through the fog like predators beneath ice.
Ashveil hissed in delight.
> "They're not hunting food. They're hunting memory."
Kael clenched his fists. "What does that mean?"
> "They want what you have — something that remembers the moon."
---
The first shadow hit the fence.
Sparks exploded. A second one followed, crawling over like liquid night.
Mira fired, flames roaring through the fog. The monsters screamed — not from pain, but fury.
Kael moved before thinking. His mark burned.
Ashveil's voice sharpened.
> "Let me out."
"Not here—"
> "Then watch them die."
He hesitated one heartbeat too long.
A Dormant crashed through the barricade, slamming into a guard. The man didn't even have time to scream before his chest folded inward.
Kael shouted the name.
"Ashveil!"
The shadow behind him unfurled like wings catching light. The world went silent — sound swallowed whole.
Then came the impact: black arcs slicing through fog, tearing Dormants apart as if the darkness itself were devouring them.
When it ended, nothing moved. Only the wind, and the hiss of cooling metal.
Kael stood in the middle of the wreckage, smoke coiling around him like a crown.
People stared.
Mira lowered her weapon. "Well," she said softly. "Looks like the moon's still watching after all."
---