"Keep it down, Shouta! If your Zoryn leaks again, that drone overhead will turn us into a crater!" Kaito hissed. He was leaning against an old oak tree, clutching his side where the General’s shockwave had cracked his ribs. Even hurt, his eyes burned with a frustrated fire.

  "I'm trying!" Shouta snapped, his hands shaking. "It’s like holding a lid on a boiling pot. The silver energy just wants to explode out."

  "Trying gets us erased," Kaito coughed, a small flame flickering in his palm for a second before he crushed it. "I spent a month showing you how to tuck your soul under your skin. If you can't mask your flow, you’re a beacon. We aren't students anymore. We're ghosts."

  Suddenly, a high-pitched, metallic trill echoed from the trees. A Soul-Siren. It was a long-range sensor designed to pick up irregular spiritual vibrations. It had caught a stray ripple of Shouta’s silver energy.

  "It found me," Shouta whispered, his face going pale.

  "Don't panic," I said, stepping toward him. "Zero, show me how to ground him."

  “Do not ground him, Raizen. Submerge him,” Zero’s voice rumbled in my head. “Reach into his chest. Find the leak in his soul and stitch it shut.”

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  I placed my hand on Shouta’s chest. I felt the golden heat of my Zoryn wrap around his jagged silver energy like a heavy blanket. I didn't just push it down; I pulled it into a tiny, dense point at the base of his spine. The silver glow vanished instantly. The Soul-Siren above the trees wavered, let out one final, confused chirp, and went silent.

  "He's under," I panted, sweat dripping off my chin. "But he has to learn to do that himself. We can't stay 'loud' out here."

  The next few days were a blur of silence. We didn't fight. We sat in the dirt and learned to "die" to the world's sensors. Kaito pushed Shouta until he could hold his Zoryn in his lungs for an hour at a time. Yuna learned to turn her blue Aegis into a thin, invisible film that coated her skin to mask her body heat.

  By the morning of the "Essential Count," we were ready.

  From our ridge, we watched as a massive, automated transport truck rolled out of the Sector 4 gates. It wasn't headed for another city. It turned toward a deep, jagged canyon—a place marked as "Uninhabitable" on every map.

  "That's the delivery," I whispered, pulling my Iron Guard helmet back on. "If we want to know where the 'Essentials' come from—and why they make everyone hollow—we follow that truck."

  "Keep your Zoryn tight," Kaito warned, his eyes tracking the dust cloud. "If even a flicker of silver or blue escapes while we're trailing them, the 'Peace' will find us again. And this time, they won't bring a General. They'll bring a High Lord."

  We slipped into the shadows, moving like four grey ghosts behind the machine that fed the world its lies.

  To be continued...