The interrogation room used to be a children's classroom.
Kael could tell by the cartoon planets still painted on the walls — faded colors, little faces drawn on the sun.
Now there were just bullet holes between the smiles.
A generator hummed nearby, filling the room with nervous light.
It wasn't sunlight — nothing was anymore — just a dim yellow glow from the old city grid.
Still, it made Ashveil uncomfortable.
> "Too bright," it whispered, low, coiling around his thoughts.
"They built their safety out of blindness."
"Quiet," Kael muttered under his breath.
Mira heard. "Still talking to it?" she asked from across the table.
Her voice was calm, but she hadn't taken her hand off her weapon.
Kael met her eyes. "Still trying to ignore it."
"Good. Keep trying."
She tossed a thin file onto the table — what passed for a record these days.
The front page read: 'SUBJECT: WHISPERED, CLASS-UNKNOWN.'
"You know what that means?" she asked.
Kael shook his head.
"It means you're lucky," she said. "Most people with a Dormant don't last five minutes after awakening. You lasted two nights. That makes you useful."
"Useful for what?"
Mira smiled. "Understanding what's next."
---
They'd started calling people like him Whispered because the voice never stopped.
Most died before they could tell anyone what it said.
The survivors — the rare few like Kael — learned to live in duet.
Ashveil's laughter brushed against his mind.
> "Duet. Pretty word for possession."
"Shut up," Kael said aloud.
Mira leaned forward. "You're not the only one who hears it, you know. The difference is… yours listens back."
Kael frowned. "What do you mean?"
She tapped the file. "Two days ago, our sensors picked up a resonance pulse during the Dormant attack. Frequency unknown, origin… you."
He stayed silent.
"You shouted its name," she continued. "Ashveil. Then you erased half a swarm without using fire, steel, or tech. Do you understand what that means?"
"It means I got lucky."
"It means," she said, "your shadow obeys."
---
Kael looked at the wall. The shadows there were still — calm.
He could feel Ashveil shifting inside him, restless, curious.
> "They're afraid," Ashveil whispered. "They want to name what they don't understand."
> "Once they name me, they'll try to own you."
Kael gritted his teeth. "You're not helping."
> "I'm not supposed to help. I'm supposed to stay."
---
Mira stood. "You're being transferred to Core Shelter."
He blinked. "What for?"
"Observation. The higher-ups want to study you. See if you can be replicated."
Kael's stomach twisted. "You mean used."
She didn't deny it. "If the world's ending, we'll use whatever's left to fight it."
Outside, something roared — not the howl of a Dormant, but the deep mechanical hum of the city's power grid shifting.
Mira glanced toward the sound. "That's the east sector," she said. "Power fluctuation. Probably another blackout."
Ashveil hissed sharply inside him.
> "Not blackout. Birth."
Kael's pulse quickened. "Birth of what?"
> "Another Whispered."
---
They ran outside. The camp lights flickered, one by one, like fireflies dying mid-flight.
People were shouting — guards, scavengers, civilians.
Then the air split.
From the direction of the eastern wall came a surge of black smoke — not fire, not mist, something alive.
It twisted upward, solidifying into the vague shape of a human form, screaming without sound.
Mira's hand went to her weapon. "Another awakening."
But Kael didn't move. He could feel it — the same resonance as his, but louder, angrier, rawer.
The smoke parted, revealing a figure crawling out of it — a man, or what used to be one.
His skin glistened with liquid shadow.
When he opened his mouth, his voice came in two tones — human and something behind it.
> "We... remember the light."
Ashveil's voice turned cold.
> "That's no Whispered. That's something older."
"Older than what?" Kael whispered.
> "Older than fear."
---
The man's shadow stretched across the camp — far too long, far too wide.
It brushed Kael's foot, and for a second, the world tilted. He saw flashes: a moon breaking apart, oceans rising, voices whispering from the cracks in the sky.
Then it was gone.
Mira's soldiers opened fire. Bullets shredded the man's body, but his shadow didn't die — it detached, slithered through the dirt like ink spilled underwater.
Kael could feel Ashveil tensing, hungry, ready.
> "Let me," it whispered. "Let me see what he was."
"Not now," Kael muttered.
> "You can't fight him with light, Kael. Only memory kills what remembers the dark."
He clenched his fists, trying to breathe. "Then teach me."
Ashveil smiled — not in sound, but in the way the air bent.
> "Lesson one: monsters don't hunt the weak. They hunt the familiar."
---
The thing in the smoke stopped moving.
Its head tilted toward Kael, and for the first time, he realized — it was smiling.
> "We... are kin."
Then it sank back into the dark, leaving the ground scorched with shapes that looked like letters.
Kael knelt, brushing his hand over them. The symbols burned faintly.
Mira leaned over his shoulder. "What does it say?"
He swallowed hard.
> "The Moon never fell."
---