SWNOVELXO Chapter 394: War X
Later That Evening — Infirmary Wing
Aris sat alone near a pulse screen showing a simplified map of the Tower's upper sectors. A line traced her last mission path in red.
Kael entered quietly and handed her something.
Her baton.
Clean. Repaired.
But unchanged.
She ran her fingers across it.
"Still mine," she said softly.
Kael nodded. "Always was."
She looked up at him.
"What happens now?"
"Now?" he said. "Now we prepare for worse."
She stood slowly, testing her balance. Her limbs still ached. But her resolve was sharper than ever.
"They buried one Sovereign to keep the world quiet," she said. "I'm going to be louder than all of them."
Kael's lips twitched.
"You'll have to be."
Back in the Archive Vault
Renic stared into a flickering memory shard.
It showed Aris.
Fighting.
Winning.
He studied her frame-by-frame.
Then reached into his coat.
Pulled out a small Choir seal.
Pressed it into the table.
And activated a glyph that had not been used in centuries.
CHOIR PROTOCOL 02 — Initiate Collapse Thread
Target Floor: 307
Detonation Delay: 3 Days
He stood up, adjusted his glasses, and smiled to himself.
"They'll never hear it coming."
Floor 307 — Harmonium Substructure, Day -2
The low thrum of the Tower's pulse system had always comforted Leon.
Steady. Predictable. Alive.
But tonight, the beat was… wrong.
Too clean in some places. Too absent in others.
Kael crouched over the central anchor node, holding his hand just above the crystalline housing. The pulse wasn't fluctuating randomly—it was being manipulated.
He frowned. "This isn't flux from a fractured rhythm. It's being diverted."
Leon leaned against the wall beside him, arms folded, jaw tight.
"Could it be a system degradation?"
"No," Kael said. "There's no signature decay. This was placed intentionally."
Leon narrowed his eyes. "Then we've got a breach."
Kael tapped a control rune, zooming the floor map.
A soft red glow pulsed in three spots near key structural glyphs—barely noticeable unless you were looking for them.
"See that?" he said. "These sectors have no reason to have heat flux. No heavy devices. No resonance machinery. But they're radiating silence."
Leon looked up sharply. "Choir?"
Kael didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he slowly turned to face him.
"I think they're already here."
Archive Hall — Same Time
Renic stood in front of a reflective pulse screen, adjusting a tempo scroll in his hands.
On the outside, he looked like any other mid-tier analyst—focused, quiet, harmless.
Inside, his mind ticked.
The null threads were nearly finished.
With all twelve in place, the Choir collapse thread could detonate silently, cutting Floor 307 off from all upper-level support. No alarms. No signal bursts. Just instant rhythm erasure.
He looked at the new assignment list.
Aris Vale.
Scheduled for a rhythm sync test at the outer practice ring in two days.
Perfect.
He pocketed the last null thread chip.
Meanwhile — Central Tower Security Post
Roman stepped into the room, alert, holding a scan tab.
"Leon. You need to see this."
He tossed the tablet onto the console.
Leon and Kael leaned over it.
What they saw wasn't complex.
It was too simple.
A maintenance worker who didn't exist before last week.
Cleared for all archive levels.
Appeared just after the first null spike.
Renic.
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Who let him in?"
Leon scanned the data.
"Doesn't matter. We just found our Choir agent."
Roman's voice dropped. "What do we do?"
Leon stepped back, grabbed a pulse-suppressing baton from the weapons rack, and checked his sidearm.
"We catch him."
Kael raised a hand. "No," he said. "Not yet."
Leon turned. "Why not?"
Kael's tone was calm—but his expression was sharp.
"Because he thinks he's still hidden. That means we have a window to learn what he's really doing."
Leon slowly lowered the baton.
"And if he finds out we're on to him?"
Kael smiled, cold and focused.
"Then we let Aris ask him what the hell the Choir really wants."
End of Day -2
Renic walked through the Sovereign gardens, passing between silent training halls and echoing bridges.
He paused at a statue of an unnamed Sovereign—destroyed in the Choir Wars long ago.
He whispered a phrase under his breath.
The glyph inside his chest pulsed once.
Collapse Thread – 85% Calibrated
Rhythm Lock – Engaged
He walked on.
And no one noticed.
Floor 307 – Control Wing – Day -1
The air in the command center was tense.
Leon stood at the central console, scanning three different tempo monitors. Kael was nearby, linking the internal surveillance feeds into a loop. Roman kept watch by the door, arms crossed, listening for anything unusual.
They didn't have proof yet.
But they had enough to start baiting the trap.
Leon pointed to a section of the map that pulsed faintly red. "We traced five of the null threads here, here, and here. Each placed near a major resonance node, but without disrupting flow immediately."
Kael nodded. "Which means they're designed to stay dormant until triggered. And when they do—"
"They'll cut this floor off," Leon finished. "No warning. No backup."
Roman's voice was low. "He's smart. He's doing it slow. Subtle. We move too early, he disappears. Too late, we lose the entire floor."
Leon turned to Kael. "Are you sure about the echo switch idea?"
Kael nodded. "It's the cleanest way. Plant a false anchor signature. If he's been mapping pulse locations, he won't resist checking it."
"And when he does?"
Kael smiled.
"I'll be there waiting."
Floor 307 – Archive Annex – Evening
Renic moved through the aisles of pulse recorders, hands behind his back, eyes reading everything—without touching anything. He wasn't a ghost. He was worse.
A listener.
Every glyph he passed, he absorbed its purpose. Every tempo scroll he read, he remembered it in perfect detail. The Choir hadn't made him strong. They'd made him precise.
He paused as he entered a side corridor.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
A new node signature.
Hidden behind a false bookshelf.
It wasn't here yesterday.
He stepped closer.
Felt the ripple in the pulse stream.
Echo anchor. Level-3 decoy glyph.
Clever.