The shard didn't speak again that night.
It pulsed—soft, patient, alive—but silent, like it was watching her thoughts swirl.
Sira lay in her makeshift hammock above the rusted pipes, arms behind her head, eyes open. The shadows of the undercity flickered on her ceiling. She could hear the wind shifting through the broken support beams, the quiet song of the Slums—metal groaning, steam hissing, people whispering stories they weren't supposed to remember.
Her fingers brushed the shard again.
Warm. Comforting. Dangerous.
She didn't sleep.
---
By morning, a pale light filtered through the cracks in her wall. The glow wasn't sunlight—sunlight never reached the Slums. It was the glow of Caeluma's grid veins, a vast neural net of powerlines and oxygen vents stretched beneath the floating city's skin.
She packed quickly: goggles, wirecutters, boltpistol, rations, a faded photo of her mother, and the shard, wrapped in synthcloth.
She needed answers.
And she knew where to find them.
---
Sector Six Archive Ruins
The Archive had burned two years ago—an "accidental data overload" the Technocrats said. No one believed it. Everyone knew the sector was hiding pre-Collapse history. That made it dangerous.
Sira stood at the edge of the ruins, smoke still rising from beneath the collapsed floors. Burnt metal and old glass shimmered in the toxic light.
She stepped over the warning tape.
No drones here. Not anymore. No one cared what scavengers did in ghost sectors.
The ground floor was mostly caved in, but she found a way down through a collapsed stairwell, dropping into the hollow dark with a quiet grunt. Her boots crunched old data tablets. She waved her flashlight and scanned the blackened walls for symbols.
There—etched into the far corner.
A spiral.
The mark of the Hidden Historians.
She knelt and brushed the soot aside, revealing a hidden console behind a false panel. Surprisingly intact.
She placed the shard near the surface.
It reacted instantly.
> "Accessing local echo... syncing..."
The room flickered.
Reality stuttered.
Then the Archive came back to life—not in the present, but as it once was. Not physically, but layered over reality like a ghost.
She gasped.
Transparent shelves reassembled themselves. People bustled past—Archivists, students, drones carrying scrolls. The illusion was silent, but vivid. And among them stood a figure she recognized.
Silver eyes. Robes with threadlike circuitry. Architect Vorn Ilyas.
He was in the middle of a lecture, gesturing to a map projected mid-air.
A world—not the Citadel. But below. A vast landmass divided into glowing biomes, ringed by towers.
> "The Heart of Terra regulates atmospheric synthesis, water cycle restoration, and memory imprinting protocols," said the shard in her mind, translating his long-dead voice.
> "It was designed to merge machine logic with natural instinct. A living AI, grown from Earth itself."
Sira's chest tightened.
"Why would they hide this?" she whispered.
The shard answered without hesitation.
> "Because the Citadel exists in defiance of balance. The ruling order survives by suppression of memory."
The illusion darkened.
Sira reached forward—touching the ghost of a world that might've been.
And then—footsteps.
Real ones.
She spun, drawing her boltpistol.
A figure stepped out of the shadows, hands up.
"Easy," he said. "Didn't mean to interrupt your history lesson."
He was her age, maybe older. Dust-covered coat. Tech scavenger gear. Blue eyes. Confident.
Sira didn't lower her weapon.
"Who are you?"
"Name's Kael. I saw the light show. Didn't think anyone else still remembered the spiral marks."
She narrowed her eyes. "How long have you been watching?"
"Long enough to see you're holding something worth dying for." He nodded toward the shard. "You should put that away. Fast."
"Why?" she asked, tense.
He glanced upward. "Because you're not the only one who saw it."
A siren echoed in the distance.
Not from the Archive.
From above.
From Caeluma.
---
High Citadel – Council of Technocrats
Varn Ilex, Prime Technocrat of the Core Tower, tapped his gloved fingers against the arm of his steel throne. The room was vast, circular, and cold. Light flickered from a suspended orb in the center—an ancient AI remnant called The Overseer.
"Play it again," Varn said.
The orb pulsed, projecting a glowing replay of the Drop Zone incident. A girl. Scavenger-level. Holding a shard.
Varn's face remained unreadable.
"She activated it?" murmured Technocrat Yara Lin, the youngest of the Circle. "No training. No interface link."
"No bloodline," another added. "It shouldn't be possible."
"And yet it is," Varn replied.
The Overseer spoke in its soulless voice.
> "ARCHITECT SHARD 7-ALPHA. EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS BREACHED. POTENTIAL SYSTEMIC CASCADE: 17.8%."
Varn stood slowly. His cloak brushed the floor like falling ash.
"Send a Warden Prime," he said. "We cannot allow her to reach the Core."
Yara blinked. "But the Archives are dead. The Citadel's structural focus must remain—"
"Send it." His voice cut through the room.
"And if others are with her?" another asked.
Varn's silver eyes glowed faintly.
"Then burn what remains."
---
Outer Slums – Rooftop Refuge
Sira and Kael reached the edge of the Slums by sunset, crawling through a defunct service tunnel and climbing a broken tower that jutted toward the underbelly of the Citadel like a broken tooth.
The view from here was rare: she could see the distant curvature of the earth, fractured and scarred. The remains of old cities, swallowed by dust storms. And overhead, the glow of Caeluma's radiant veins, webbing across the sky like the bones of a dying god.
Kael sat beside her, pulling out a cracked canteen.
"So," he said, "you gonna tell me why that shard chose you?"
She didn't answer right away. The shard sat in her hand, quiet now, but warm.
"I was in the Drop Zone. Got a ping. Picked it up. It… spoke to me."
Kael whistled. "Lucky you. I've been chasing echoes for years. All I got were corrupted fragments and headaches."
She finally looked at him. "Why?"
He gave her a crooked smile. "Because I want to tear this city down."
She didn't smile back. "I want to fix it."
He shrugged. "Same result, different slogan."
She paused.
Then asked, "What do you know about Terra?"
Kael's smile faded. He leaned in, voice low.
"Only what they burned to keep hidden. That beneath the cities—beneath the waste—something still breathes. Something that remembers before the sky cities."
Sira looked down at the shard.
> "Awaken me," it whispered, so faint she almost missed it.
> "Find the heart. Restore the pattern."
---
That night, as Caeluma's underbelly shimmered above and ash rained like snow, Sira Vey stared at the stars she'd never reach and made a choice.
She would find the other fragments.
She would follow the echoes.
And she would awaken Terra—whatever it cost.
---