Elijah waited until the others were asleep.

  The campfire had burned down to embers, casting a dim red glow across their makeshift camp. Alexander y on his side, breathing deeply, one arm flung over his face as he'd done since childhood. Riva was curled into a tight ball near the fire's warmth, while Valeria had taken first watch but dozed at her post, head nodding against her chest.

  Perfect.

  Elijah eased himself away from the group, moving with deliberate slowness to avoid making noise. He retreated to a small clearing about thirty paces from camp—close enough to hear if trouble arose, but far enough for privacy.

  The Whispering Woods lived up to their name tonight. A slight breeze stirred the emerald leaves, creating a constant susurration that almost—but not quite—masked the other whispers. The ones only he could hear.

  He settled cross-legged on a patch of moss and closed his eyes, focusing on his neural interface's sensory settings. The Architect-css interface was supposedly the pinnacle of neural technology, with capabilities far beyond what Servicers or Workers received. Yet the standard documentation mentioned nothing about what he'd been experiencing.

  "System diagnostic," he subvocalized, activating the interface's self-assessment protocol. The diagnostic overy appeared across his vision, dispying dozens of parameters monitoring everything from visual processing to proprioception.

  Everything registered as optimal, just as it had during yesterday's check. Nothing to expin the whispers.

  Elijah navigated to the advanced settings menu, an area most users never accessed. He'd been methodically exploring its capabilities since entering the Game, looking for anything that might expin what he was experiencing.

  He adjusted the auditory sensitivity slider, pushing it 15% beyond recommended parameters. Immediately, the forest sounds intensified—the rustling leaves, distant animal calls, the soft breathing of his teammates.

  And something else.

  ...pattern recognition subsystem active...

  ...preservation integrity at 99.4%...

  ...subject 34582 integration complete...

  The whispers became clearer, though still fragmented and contextless. They weren't coming from any direction he could pinpoint—they seemed to exist directly within his mind, yet separate from his own thoughts.

  Elijah's heart raced. He quickly noted the settings configuration in the small physical journal he'd fashioned from bark paper. It wasn't the first adjustment that had affected the whispers, but it was certainly the most dramatic.

  He returned the auditory settings to normal, and the whispers receded but didn't disappear completely. Next, he accessed the electromagnetic sensitivity controls—a feature supposedly designed to help users detect power sources and electronic devices.

  When he increased its range by 30%, the whispers changed character.

  ...neural pattern archived...

  ...transfer complete...

  ...waiting for processing assignment...

  Elijah's hand trembled as he recorded these new fragments. There was a pattern here, something significant. The whispers seemed to have distinctive types depending on which settings he modified.

  He sketched a quick map of their campsite, marking locations where the whispers intensified. There was a subtle corretion with certain environmental features—they grew stronger near crystal formations embedded in trees and almost disappeared near running water.

  "What are you?" he whispered, not expecting an answer.

  None came directly, but as if in response, he felt a strange pressure behind his eyes, and for just a moment, his vision overid with a ghostly image—a complex network of glowing lines running through the forest floor, connecting the crystal formations like a circuit diagram.

  He blinked, and it was gone.

  Elijah shivered despite the warm night. This wasn't just his imagination or some strange side effect of Game immersion. The interface was picking up something real—something significant that he hadn't been told about.

  He flipped to a new page in his journal and began a more systematic documentation. If he mapped these whispers across different locations and settings, patterns would emerge. He was certain of it. And if Alexander or the others noticed his private investigations, he could easily cim he was documenting local flora for potential medicinal applications—an expected behavior for his healer css.

  A twig snapped behind him. Elijah closed the journal with a snap and turned.

  Alexander stood at the edge of the clearing, hair tousled from sleep. "Everything okay?" he asked, voice rough. "You disappeared."

  "Couldn't sleep," Elijah replied, slipping the journal into his inner pocket. "Thought I'd check some of these pnts. The luminescent ones might have properties useful for our healing supplies."

  Alexander nodded, seemingly satisfied with the expnation. "Don't wander too far. We need to be fresh for tomorrow's push toward the vilge."

  "I won't," Elijah promised. "Just needed some quiet to think."

  As Alexander turned back toward camp, Elijah released a slow breath. He'd need to be more careful. Whatever he was discovering might be important—too important to share until he understood it better himself.

  He gnced up at the canopy above, where moonlight filtered through in dappled patterns. The whispers continued at the edge of his perception, like background radiation he'd somehow become attuned to.

  ...subject ready for integration...

  ...network status optimal...

  ...waiting for assignment...

  Elijah made one final note in his journal before following Alexander back to camp. A simple question, underlined twice:

  Who are these "subjects"? And what are they being integrated into?

  The answers, he suspected, might reveal more about the Game than anyone was supposed to know.