Chapter 7: The Fourth Voice

They didn't run in silence.

They ran through silence.

Down corridors where sound was swallowed before it could echo. Past walls embedded with acoustic foam so dense, even footsteps dissolved mid-stride. The Republic's agents moved like ghosts, boots never touching the soul of the floor.

Nima was bleeding.

A single shard from the ceiling blast had sliced across her forearm. She ignored it, gripping Arian's wrist as they darted through collapsing scaffolding.

Behind them, Seraph's last note still vibrated faintly in the air—a living hum that refused to die.

"Left!" Koro shouted, kicking open a hidden door beneath the orchestra pit.

They fell into darkness.

Then stillness.

Then breath.

They had survived the ambush… for now.

In the hidden catacombs beneath the opera house, they regrouped.

Kes was pacing.

Nima stitched her wound with a tremble in her jaw.

Arian stood apart, clutching the third activated symbol disk—Seraph's voiceprint still hot against his palm.

"They were the fourth," he whispered.

Kes stopped pacing.

"Yes."

"But you said we were finding the third."

Kes turned to him. "And we did. You were the second. Seraph is both third and fourth. A dual Host."

Arian frowned. "That's not possible."

Kes's face darkened. "It wasn't supposed to be. But Seraph… broke the code."

Nima exhaled sharply. "You knew. You knew they were a mirror tone. You didn't tell us it could cause a recursive imprint."

"I didn't know it would," Kes snapped. "But now it makes sense. The Republic didn't silence Seraph because they were afraid of the song—they feared the reflection."

Later, as the others slept in shifts, Arian walked alone down the corridor of shattered mirrors.

This opera house had once been the pride of Arenthil—built entirely from acoustically reflective surfaces. But now, its mirrors were all broken. Cracked voices hung in their fragments like trapped memories.

He stood before one.

His reflection fractured into seven pieces.

One looked like the boy from his memories—the one who cried for his mother.

Another… was older. Colder. Wiser.

He touched the glass.

And heard his own voice whisper back:

"You are not Arian."

He stepped back.

"You are the Silence they failed to erase."

A sudden cold filled the room. Then—a shape.

A man, tall and faceless, stepped out from behind the mirror. His presence felt wrong, like static given form. His voice—if it could be called that—was a pulse inside Arian's skull.

"Codename: HALLOW. Fourth Voice. Acquired."

Arian's body locked. He couldn't move. His veins lit up with blue circuitry.

He screamed—inside—but no sound came out.

Kes arrived in a blur, smashing the mirror with a broken chair.

The shape vanished.

Arian collapsed.

When he woke, they were miles away—riding in a stolen tram through Republic-forsaken lands. His body ached like it had been reprogrammed.

"What was that?" he asked.

Kes answered gravely. "A failsafe. The Republic's last line of control. Hallow is not a person. It's a subroutine. A kill switch."

"You mean… they embedded it in me?"

Kes nodded. "In all Echo Hosts. But only activates if too many memories are aligned."

Arian stared at the disk.

Three symbols glowed.

Four remained.

And now, the enemy knew.

At the next outpost, they met a contact from the old Resistance.

A woman named Ilya Van.

Scarred. Weathered. With one robotic arm and a voice that sounded like shattered windchimes. She had once led the Voice Rebellion—before it was erased from history.

She studied Arian like a weapon she wasn't sure she wanted to reload.

"You've got three echoes," she said. "That makes you dangerous."

Arian nodded. "I'm not trying to be a hero."

"Good. Heroes get people killed. But ghosts?" She smirked. "Ghosts make empires crumble."

She handed them an encrypted data shard.

"This has the location of the fifth Host."

"Who?" Nima asked.

Ilya's smirk faded.

"Codename: Velar. The one who betrayed the first rebellion."

Kes inhaled sharply. "He's still alive?"

Ilya nodded. "And he's waiting."

Arian looked to Nima.

Her jaw was tight.

"We're going," she said.

That night, Arian couldn't sleep.

He stared at the stars—real ones this time. Not digital reflections.

Nima sat beside him.

He asked softly, "Do you think I'm just a container? A vault they filled with other people's pain?"

"No," she said. "You're not a vault."

She looked him in the eyes.

"You're a door. And once you open, they can't close you again."

Arian didn't reply.

But in his chest, he felt it—

A hum.

Not Seraph's.

Not Kes's.

His own.