The night refused to breathe. The smoke from the ruptured Seam still hung low in the air, glowing faintly like embers trapped in fog. The ground was fractured where Lin's last surge had detonated—burnt lines crawling outward like veins of black glass. Hana sat amid the wreckage, Keller's weight heavy in her lap, her eyes flicking between him and Lin's motionless form a few meters away.

For the first time in hours, there was no hum, no pulse from the Seam. Only silence.

But silence had its own kind of terror.

Hana brushed Keller's hair back, her hand trembling. His skin was too pale, too still. "Come on," she whispered, her voice cracking. "You don't get to vanish now."

Keller's eyes fluttered open for half a heartbeat—silver glinting faintly in the dark. Then he coughed, a rough, human sound that almost made her cry. "Still… too dramatic," he rasped weakly. "You never change."

She laughed once, a sound halfway between relief and sob. "Neither do you."

Lin stirred beside the shattered pavement, groaning softly. Hana turned toward him, half dragging Keller against the broken wall for support. The scientist's coat was torn, his face streaked with soot, his left arm a patchwork of burned circuits. He blinked up at her, dazed.

"Did we—?" His voice faltered.

Hana nodded. "It's gone. The Warden's gone. The Seam's sealed."

Lin didn't look relieved. If anything, he looked haunted. "Nothing that large ever really seals," he muttered, staring at his arm. The edges of the wound still flickered with faint light—data residue crawling like phosphorescent veins. "It'll find a way back."

Hana followed his gaze and swallowed hard. "We'll deal with that later. Right now, we need to move. Someone will have noticed the pulse."

Keller managed a smirk. "You think? That was like setting off a nuke in the middle of Seoul's data lattice."

"Exactly," Hana said. "Which means we've got minutes, maybe seconds, before they start scanning for anomaly spikes."

She turned toward Lin. "Can you walk?"

He tested his legs, grimacing. "Barely. But I'll manage."

Together, they pulled themselves up from the ruins and slipped into the narrow service alley that ran behind the broken lot. The streetlamps flickered as they passed, the Seam's residue disrupting everything electrical. It was like walking through a dying heartbeat—one last spasm of power before the city swallowed it whole.

They reached an underground parking bay beneath an old tower—their pre-arranged fallback site, one of the last few places the Agency's sensors couldn't reach. The air was cold, metallic, and filled with the faint echo of dripping water. Hana forced open a maintenance hatch and led them down the narrow stairwell, Keller leaning on her shoulder, Lin trailing behind.

Once inside, the silence hit harder. The bunker's faint emergency light flickered to life, painting the walls in pale green.

Keller sank against the wall, his head falling back. His breathing was steady, but every now and then, his body twitched. Hana saw it immediately—the faint shimmer beneath his skin, as though the Seam's light hadn't quite let go.

She knelt beside him, whispering. "You said it used you… what did that mean?"

He hesitated, then opened his palm. Faint silver lines crawled up his veins, branching toward his wrist. "I don't think I came back completely human."

Lin knelt too, analyzing the glow with wide eyes. "Those aren't energy burns. That's integration. Keller, the Seam embedded part of its structure inside you."

"Great," Keller muttered. "I'm half ghost code now."

"It's not a joke," Lin said sharply. "That means you might still be connected to it. If the Seam stabilizes again, it could use you as an anchor."

Hana's voice lowered. "Then we don't let that happen."

She reached for his hand, holding it firmly, ignoring the faint pulse of light under his skin. For a moment, everything else fell away—the noise, the science, the fear. It was just the two of them, their fingers locked together, the faint warmth of life reminding her he was still here.

Lin moved away, pacing slowly. "We need to understand what came through before it's too late. The Warden wasn't just a guardian—it was a construct designed to measure imbalance. That means it was summoned, not random."

Hana looked up. "Summoned by who?"

Lin's gaze hardened. "By the Agency."

Keller looked at him in disbelief. "They wouldn't—"

"They already did," Lin cut in. "You think the Seam ruptures were accidents? No. They've been testing controlled breaches for months. We were the first to survive one—and that made us a threat."

Hana clenched her jaw. "So they sent a Warden to erase the evidence."

"Exactly."

A chill ran through the bunker. The fluorescent light above them buzzed faintly, as if reacting to the tension in the air. Hana stood, her mind already racing. "If they wanted you erased, Lin, you can't stay here. Neither can Keller. They'll trace the energy signature."

"Too late," Lin muttered. "They probably already have."

Keller chuckled weakly. "Then maybe it's time we stopped running."

Hana turned to him sharply. "You're in no shape—"

He met her eyes, the faint glint of silver deep within his pupils. "You don't understand. I can feel it. The Seam… it's still connected. I can sense where it was anchored before it collapsed. If I follow that connection, I might be able to shut it down completely."

Lin frowned. "You mean go back in."

Keller nodded. "One last time."

Hana's throat went dry. "No. You barely made it out alive. I'm not losing you again."

He smiled faintly. "If I don't go back, no one will survive what's left. The Seam isn't gone, Hana. It's leaking into reality—slowly, quietly. I can feel it under my skin, in the city's signal flow. It's already rewriting things."

As if on cue, the lights flickered again. The faint hum of electricity shifted pitch—turning into something alive. The concrete walls seemed to shiver, vibrating with invisible threads.

Lin stepped back, eyes widening. "He's right."

Hana's pulse pounded in her ears. "Then we go together."

Keller's eyes softened. "You'd die in there."

"Then we die together," she snapped, voice cracking with emotion. "But you're not walking into that place alone."

Lin moved between them. "Enough. Neither of you are dying. We'll find another way—there always is."

Keller shook his head slowly. "Not this time."

He closed his eyes, focusing. The faint glow beneath his skin intensified, spreading up his arms, neck, and into his temples. Hana gasped as the air around them warped—the faint outline of the Seam's light beginning to bloom once again, like a ghost returning to the world.

"Keller!" she screamed.

He opened his eyes. They were completely silver now. "If I can end it from inside… maybe the world finally stops bleeding."

Then everything went white.

When the light faded, Hana was alone.

The bunker was empty—no trace of Keller, no shimmer of light, no echo of his voice. Just Lin, slumped against the far wall, bleeding and barely conscious, his face illuminated by the faint glow from the cracked ceiling lamp.

She staggered forward, whispering his name again and again, as if saying it might pull him back.

But the only thing that answered was silence—and the faint, rhythmic pulse in the walls, like the Seam's ghost still breathing beneath the surface.

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