Kaelen woke to the crystals screaming.
Not aloud. Inside his skull. A frequency he'd never heard before. Higher than the Harvesters. Colder than the first post-human.
The echo stirred.
“Something is coming.”
He sat up. His left arm hummed—the neural interface was reacting to something outside the network.
Zara was already awake. Blades in her hands.
“What is it?”
“I don't know.”
He ran to the crater.
The crystals were pulsing. Not blue. White. Blinding. The Harvesters were in chaos—their voices overlapping, panicked.
“The signal. The original signal. The one that corrupted the Ascendants. It's back.”
Kaelen's blood went cold.
“That's impossible. The Source is destroyed. The first post-human is gone.”
“The signal doesn't need the Source. It travels through space. Through time.
