The tower wasn't supposed to move.
It pulsed.
Not like a heart — more like a throat swallowing light.
Each beat sent tremors through the crater, rattling bridges and kicking up dust shaped like half-spoken words. The names carved into the ground after the fight glowed again — this time blue, like they'd changed allegiance.
Mira squinted at them. "Are they… pointing somewhere?"
Kael wiped soot from his sleeve. "If they start spelling 'Kael this way', I'm leaving."
Ashveil's voice slithered through his mind.
> "The tower is responding to your resonance. It remembers your noise."
"Great. Even buildings stalk me now."
Rae stood near the edge of the debris, eyes reflecting the glow. "No. It's syncing to you. You broke the eater's sequence — you changed the grammar of names. The tower wants to rewrite itself using you as syntax."
Mira groaned. "He can't even file paperwork, Rae."
Kael muttered, "Hey, I once returned a library book on time. That counts as structure."
---
The tower thrummed again, the vibration climbing from stone to air to bone. The pulse wasn't just heard — it was felt, deep and wrong, like a heartbeat under someone else's skin.
Rae's expression tightened. "That's a call. A resonance ping."
"Meaning?" Mira asked.
"Meaning it's looking for the rest of itself."
Kael's mark flared, searing white-blue.
Ashveil hissed.
> "Something inside it is waking. If it finishes the call, the whole crater becomes memory again."
"Memory again?" Kael echoed.
> "Meaning it forgets being real."
Mira swore. "We shut it down."
Rae nodded. "Then we climb."
---
They approached the base of the tower. The outer wall was smooth stone etched with moving lines — words flowing like rivers across the surface. The lines rearranged themselves every few seconds, spelling and unspelling entire sentences.
Rae pressed a palm against it. The wall rippled. "Alive," they murmured. "The tower's made of name-stone — every brick an identity written and sealed."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "So it's a library made of corpses?"
"Of records," Rae corrected. "But yes, corpses too."
Mira sighed. "Lovely vacation spot."
---
Inside, the air tasted like copper and lightning. The first floor was vast and circular, lit by floating glass orbs that hummed at the edge of human hearing.
Each orb projected faint images — memories flickering: a child's laugh, a city skyline, the shadow of a moon.
Kael's pulse matched the hum. The orbs turned toward him, aligning one by one.
"Rae," he said, stepping back. "They're doing the thing again."
"They like you," Rae said absently, tracing symbols on the wall. "You're a tuning fork with legs."
Ashveil laughed quietly.
> "He's also a disaster with legs, but yes."
"Love the moral support," Kael muttered.
---
The stairs spiraled upward, dizzying. Each landing carried less light, more whisper.
Sometimes the whispers sounded like words; other times they sounded like someone almost remembering your name.
Halfway up, Mira's radio hissed alive — voices that weren't hers bleeding through.
> "Return… the… silence…"
"Echoes will drown…"
She turned the knob — static screamed back. She killed the signal. "We're on borrowed time."
Rae pointed upward. "Then we finish borrowing."
---
They reached the top — a chamber open to the sky. The center held a structure like an organ made of glass ribs. Cables of light pulsed through it, pumping a slow rhythm that bent the air.
Kael felt it before he saw it — the shard in his pocket burning so hot he thought it'd melt through his jacket. He pulled it free, and it lit the chamber with pale silver fire.
The tower answered.
A column of light erupted from the organ, swirling up into the sky, breaking through clouds and vanishing into the black. The crater below vibrated like a struck bell.
"Kael!" Mira shouted. "Shut it down!"
"How?!"
"Use your weird powers! Pretend you read the manual!"
Ashveil's laughter was wild and bright in his skull.
> "Resonance is communication. Speak, Kael. Remind it what it is."
"What if it doesn't like what I say?"
> "Then we improvise poetry with consequences."
---
Kael stepped into the light. The shard hummed, matching the tower's pulse.
Images hit him like punches — people, places, moments:
Lioren's ink-stained hands, Dr. Inari's golden veins, Mira's laughter muffled under gunfire, Rae's reflection whispering something he couldn't hear.
He reached out — fingers shaking — and spoke the first word that came to mind.
"Stop."
The tower flared brighter.
Ashveil growled.
> "Not command. Memory. Speak its truth."
Kael swallowed hard. "You're a record," he whispered. "You keep what's lost. You don't decide who forgets."
The pulse stuttered. The cables flickered.
He kept going. "You remember so the world can move on — not freeze!"
For a moment, the chamber held its breath. Then, slowly, the light bent inward, shrinking until it became a single, trembling thread.
The tower's heartbeat slowed.
The names carved into the walls dimmed, then steadied — no longer bleeding, just breathing.
Rae exhaled. "You rewrote the command."
Kael stumbled, clutching the shard. "I winged it."
Ashveil purred, proud.
> "Winged it well."
---
The tower fell silent, but the sky didn't.
Above, faintly visible through the haze, a shape shimmered — a curve of light like a broken halo.
Mira squinted. "Is that the moon?"
Rae's voice was barely a whisper. "No. That's its reflection."
Kael looked up, chest heaving, half-exhilarated, half-terrified.
"That's… new."
Ashveil hummed. "We made it remember how to look back."
---
They descended at dawn. The crater was quiet now — eerily still.
Mira's hand brushed Kael's shoulder. "That was insane."
He grinned weakly. "Thanks. I try to keep my breakdowns productive."
She laughed, shaking her head. "You're officially the worst team player I've ever liked."
Rae joined them, face unreadable. "The tower won't call again. But others will. You've tuned the world to your frequency."
Kael frowned. "Meaning what?"
Rae met his gaze. "Meaning everything that remembers is listening."
Ashveil purred softly. "And when the world listens, it learns your name."
Kael sighed. "Can I at least charge rent this time?"
Mira elbowed him. "Not unless you start writing receipts."
They walked toward the rising light — not sun, but the pale imitation that passed for it these days. Behind them, the Resonant Tower glowed faintly — its pulse synced to Kael's heartbeat.
The world had remembered something new.
And that was never safe.
---