The cathedral's echoes were gone, but Velvora had already begun its next verse.
Rising back into the surface was like waking from a nightmare — except this time, the nightmare had followed them.
Asher's boots hit the cracked pavement of Cathedral Square with a thud that echoed strangely, like the air itself was hollow. The city hadn't changed in the usual way — no sirens, no chaos. No screaming. It was worse.
It was quiet.
Not the absence of noise. The presence of silence.
The kind that crawled under the skin.
Asher narrowed his eyes. "...Does the city feel smaller to anyone else?"
Rosa emerged behind him, pulling her jacket tighter. Her breath fogged unnaturally in the air — even though it wasn't cold.
"It feels like we came back into a memory," she said, voice lowered. "But not ours."
Lucien followed in silence, though his gaze was sharp. He pulled out his communicator again and tapped a few encrypted codes.
Static.
"No signal. Spiritual grid's gone dead. That includes the Guardian Net," he muttered. "Velvora's blind."
Asher looked up. That's when he noticed the sky.
Clouds had always hung over the city — smog, storms, light pollution — it was never truly clear. But now, the sky shimmered. Not like heat or haze. Like fabric — stretched thin. Like something was watching through it.
Veins of red pulsed just beneath.
He didn't speak it aloud. But he didn't need to.
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Scene: The Square Has Changed
They returned to Cathedral Square — or what was left of it.
Stalls that once buzzed with street vendors were overturned. Metal awnings twisted like they'd been melted. Police drones hovered mid-air, twitching slightly, their red eyes blinking erratically like corrupted toys. A neon ramen sign flickered with broken syllables — "EAT D_R_MS HERE."
Everything felt... paused.
No crows. No cats. No children running.
And in the center of the square — the fountain.
It no longer ran with water. It flowed with black ink.
Thick, glistening, impossibly fluid — the way shadow might look if it learned to crawl.
A single white mask floated atop the surface. Blank. Hollow.
Asher approached it slowly, crouching by the edge of the black pool. The reflection didn't show his face — it showed the cathedral, upside down, with flickering figures bowing at the altar.
"Cult?" he asked aloud.
Lucien stepped beside him and shook his head. "It's… not them. Not anymore."
The mask pulsed. Then, without warning, it shattered — not into shards but into ash, which didn't fall, but rose in reverse, sucked up toward the sky like time itself ran backward.
Rosa's breath caught. "Did… did it just ascend?"
"No," Lucien replied. "It returned."
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Scene: Citizens Acting Strange
They didn't find many people — not at first.
But eventually, the city breathed again… wrong.
A family huddled in an alley behind an old church. They weren't crying, just muttering. Repeating a prayer, but it wasn't in any known tongue. Their hands bled from symbols they'd carved into their palms — masks, bells, wings.
Down another street, a man wandered barefoot, eyes glazed, humming a tune. It wasn't melodic. It wasn't from anywhere.
Children sat in a circle by the clocktower, staring up.
Lucien knelt by one of them — a boy no older than seven. He gently touched the child's shoulder.
"What are you looking at?"
The boy blinked slowly, as if waking.
Then he smiled.
"Waiting for the next bell. The mask said it would ring soon."
Lucien recoiled.
Rosa whispered, "They're not possessed. They're conditioned."
Asher grit his teeth. "The cult's gone quiet… but its poison's still in the bloodstream."
Lucien added darkly, "It's deeper than belief. It's systemic. A neural scar left on the soul of the city."
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Scene: The Agency's Safehouse
Sector 3's nightclub had been condemned for years. But beneath it, behind a hidden stairwell guarded by memory wards, lay a Phantom Regulation Unit safehouse — low-tech, reinforced, and insulated from psychic interference.
When the trio entered, they were greeted by the battered remnants of their surviving allies.
Mia sat cross-legged in the corner, applying bandages to an injured recruit. Her eyes, usually sharp, were glassy — exhausted. A faint red shimmer traced her irises, then faded.
Crimson Jack lounged on a steel bench, running a whetstone along his wickedly curved knife. He took a swig from a beaker filled with smoky red alcohol.
"Nice of you to drop by," he muttered. "It's a madhouse out there."
Detective Wynne sat at the central table, books and torn reports scattered before her. Her charcoal pencil scratched across the table's surface — drawing sigils over and over, layering them like she was trying to remember something.
"Update me," Asher said.
Wynne didn't glance up.
"It's spreading. Not just the cult. Not just their sleepers. Everyone. Random dreams syncing across different minds. Strangers reporting the same visions. The same symbols. The same bells."
Mia added, "We ran psi-scans. Their brainwaves are syncing like a chorus. It's like… the city is rehearsing something."
Lucien tilted his head. "Or remembering."
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Lucien pulled a crumpled scroll from his coat. An old map — pre-modern, inked with hand-drawn ley lines and sigils.
"This is Velvora before it was Velvora," he said. "A trading post. A circle of five districts, each built around one of the original sacrificial rings."
He pointed at five intersecting nodes.
"They match up with the five zones that reported the highest disappearances over the last fifty years."
Asher leaned closer. "And the center?"
Lucien's finger tapped the middle of the map.
"A structure that predates the city. The Hollow Bastion."
Asher exhaled. "That's our next dive."
Rosa blinked slowly, her voice dry.
"So… let me get this straight. We're crawling back underground. Again. To stop a city-wide dream plague. Caused by a forgotten demon orgy cult. Who also might be a civic planning committee."
Asher shrugged. "When you say it like that, it sounds kinda fun."
Lucien rolled his eyes. "...No. It doesn't."
Mia snorted. "I mean... he's not wrong."
Crimson Jack raised his glass. "To demon orgies and urban decay."
Everyone ignored him.
Before they left, Asher stepped outside one last time, needing air that didn't taste like recycled fear.
The fountain's water had stilled.
No ripples. No mask.
But something new had appeared.
Etched into the stone beneath the basin, glowing faintly in red runes:
"The First Bell Has Rung. Four Remain."
Rosa saw it too. Her voice wavered.
"Four… other bells?"
Lucien stared up at the sky, translating instinctively.
"Four other cities. Four other altars."
Asher didn't flinch. He stared upward at the trembling clouds.
His jaw clenched.
"Good," he said softly.
"I wanna meet the other monsters."
[End of Chapter 101]
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Chapter 102 – The Hollow BastionAsher and the squad prepare to infiltrate the oldest structure in Velvora's map — a long-abandoned estate buried beneath Sector 3's slums. But inside the Bastion, time folds in on itself, and something ancient waits… still wearing the faces of the ones they lost.