Dreams are supposed to be quiet.

  This one starts with screaming. Not his voice. A child’s. Then glass breaking. Then—

  Nothing.

  Rai Osaku jolts awake, fist clenched so hard it’s left a bloody crescent in his palm.

  He’s not sure where he is at first. The concrete ceiling above him is cracked and pulsing faint blue with emergency runoff power. A dead screen buzzes weakly on the wall, the static shifting like it’s trying to speak. The bed isn’t his. Too clean.

  He forgot again.

  He swings his legs over the cot and winces as pain spikes through his shoulder. Bandaged. Tight. Still bleeding. Right—the scavenger run. The broken Sigil tech. The Pulse rot that fried three of his team before they even touched it.

  Rai stumbles to the sink, splashes water on his face, and stares into the mirror.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Same eyes. Brown. Boring. But something behind them keeps flickering—like a TV tuned to the wrong channel.

  You are not real.

  That voice again. Not his own. It’s been whispering since the alley. Since the crucified Sigil. Since the words that shouldn’t mean anything carved themselves into his head:

  

  Kairon vex e’thal. The world is a second lie.

  He hasn’t told anyone. Not Len, not Auri, not even Captain Moreth. No one would believe it anyway. No one ever believes the junkers when they say the Pulse talks back.

  Outside, Caldrith’s Spine is choking on fog. Towering needle-buildings curve in impossible geometry, remnants of the pre-Pulse age, now twisted by weather and time. Drones hum overhead, scanning for “psychic residue.” Paranoia is policy here.

  People rush past in layered breathing masks, shoulders hunched. The streets feel watched. Always.

  And maybe they are. There are rumors of a new kind of Skyborn—one that doesn’t fall from the tear in the sky but rises up from the ground. One that mimics people. One that remembers your name.

  Rai doesn’t care about the rumors. Not really.

  What he cares about is the body.

  He finds it in the zone’s Old Tech Market—propped against a rusted generator, face torn open, no blood. Like it was drained from the inside. Its eyes are still moving. Watching. And etched into the chest, burned in black static:

  

  REMEMBER: YOU DIED.

  And the worst part?

  It’s Rai’s face.