The survivors

**Kelly Thompson's POV**

The Marked don’t kneel anymore. They *judge*.

Their violet eyes track me as I move through the camp, their whispers sharpening into a single accusatory hum. *Worldbreaker. Liar. Failure.* The Voidspire’s silence lingers in their pupils, a void that no longer commands—*observes*. Ravel says they’re plotting. Veyd says they’re evolving. But I feel the truth in the static’s absence, in the raw ache of my human hands: they’re becoming something even the Primal Verse couldn’t foresee.

Jarek approaches at dusk, his obsidian arm now a nest of writhing tendrils. The lesions on his neck pulse in time with the Marked’s chanting. **“You abandoned us,”** he rasps. **“But we found a new song. No Verse. No Harbingers. Just… *us*.”**

Ravel steps between us, her rifle angled at his chest. “Back off, prophet.”

He laughs, tendrils snapping like whips. **“You don’t see it, do you? The static’s gone, but the hunger remains. *We’re* the storm now.”**