In a city where every shadow whispers secrets and every flame remembers, the past isn't buried—it's waiting to ignite.
The rain fell soft tonight over Nocturne City—more like a curtain than a storm. It didn't scream or crash against rooftops like usual; instead, it sighed, like the city itself was tired. Streets shimmered, not from neon lights this time, but from something stranger. Not quite reflection. Not quite illusion. Memories bleeding through cracks in the pavement.
Some said Nocturne could remember. That if you bled on the same corner too many times, the stone would keep a piece of you. The city wasn't built for the living. It was built to preserve the dying.
And tonight, it remembered too much.
Inside the skeleton of an old train station long abandoned—where rust had long since outpaced paint, and the benches were eaten by time—Rosa stood in silence. Her fingers brushed across the faded graffiti carved into the brick wall like she was reading Braille etched by ghosts. Names. Dates. Promises. Some of them hers. Some of them belonging to people now long gone. People who believed this place could still be saved.
She didn't cry. Rosa had run out of tears a long time ago.
Behind her, the door creaked.
Lucien entered, boots clicking against cracked tiles that had once led thousands home. He brought with him the scent of cold rain, iron, and the quiet weight of too many things unsaid. His usual trench coat sagged slightly, soaked and dusted in ash, like he'd fought his way through some pocket of the undercity just to get here.
He didn't speak at first. He just stood there.
Then:"Didn't think you'd come back here," Rosa murmured, her voice low, eyes never leaving the names.
Lucien let out a long breath that wasn't quite a sigh. "Didn't think I had a reason until now."
Silence stretched between them—not uncomfortable, but heavy. Familiar.
This station hadn't been operational in fifteen years. Not since the Corporate Syndicate shut down Line Echo after a string of disappearances. Unexplained. Buried in bureaucracy and sealed in forgotten tunnels.
But they remembered.
This was where Rosa used to organize protests—back before protests in Nocturne turned into funerals. And this was where Lucien, younger and rawer, once slept in the boiler room, dreaming of vengeance he didn't have words for yet.
Nocturne hadn't broken them in one blow. It wore them down piece by piece.
Lucien stepped forward, one hand brushing his side where his badge usually sat—he hadn't worn it in weeks. "You still believe in saving this place?"
Rosa didn't answer right away. Her thumb pressed against a scorched etching—someone had tried to burn it off years ago, but even fire couldn't erase what had been carved deep.
She turned slowly, smirked. Not cruel. Not warm. Just tired."No," she said. "I believe in saving what's left of us."
And that was it, wasn't it?
The truth they had both danced around. Nocturne didn't want heroes anymore. It didn't believe in redemption. But maybe—just maybe—there were still pieces worth preserving. People who had once dreamed of a different future, before the grinning Heart beneath the city began whispering in their sleep.
The station trembled.
Not from trains. There were no more trains. It was the city itself, stirring beneath their feet. A low vibration in the bone. Like something old was waking up. Something that had been listening all along.
Rosa's eyes flicked to the rusted ceiling. "It's happening, isn't it?"
Lucien nodded. He didn't have to ask what she meant.
Outside, across the empty boulevard shrouded in drizzle, Asher stood under the skeletal awning of a half-collapsed noodle shop, watching them through broken glass. He hadn't planned to be here. He hadn't meant to eavesdrop. But the message had pulled him, like so many invisible threads that kept tightening around their necks.
He saw them—Lucien and Rosa—not as they were now, but as the city had once made them. Not soldiers. Not survivors. But shards. Fragments of Nocturne's hidden heart.
The realization hit like a punch to the gut.
They weren't side characters in this war. They were its foundations.They were Nocturne. The pieces the city never let go of, even when it pretended to forget.
He took a shaky breath.
Behind him, a nearby streetlamp flickered, casting stuttering light over a mural. The paint had changed. It was now the Heart—the grinning maw—but its smile had cracked. Roots spread beneath it, wrapping around buildings. Growing. Breathing.
Above, the sky rippled faintly. Not thunder. Not rain. But memory.Like the city was peeling itself open, layer by cursed layer.
Nocturne City wasn't done yet.And neither were its ghosts.
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Asher's phone buzzed.He fumbled it from his pocket, rain dripping down his jaw.An encrypted message flickered to life on the cracked screen:
"The Eye awakens. Velvora's gates are weakening."
His hands clenched.
The Eye—one of the Watcher factions that dealt in omens and catastrophes. If they were speaking in absolutes… then the end was close.
This wasn't just about Nocturne anymore.Velvora was opening.
It was starting. Again.
[End Of Chapter 97]
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Preview of Next Chapter:Chapter 98 – "Velvora's Secret War"Beneath Velvora's surface, a deeper layer stirs.Asher, Rosa, and Lucien descend into the city's oldest chamber—where the past bleeds through the walls and nothing stays buried.But the Heart has one final memory to show them… and it knows their true names.