CHAPTER 307: ANGER MAKES NOISE.... BUT THAT WILL NOT CHANGE ANYTHING

Not to the public.

To the ones still alive who remembered what real terror felt like—not just chaos, but the kind that rewrote silence into something heavy.

The cult?

That had been a smokescreen—a footnote.

And the girl—Pale Mirror—was never some prophet or divine voice. She wasn’t meant to speak the truth.

She was a mirror.

And now, it had cracked.

Director Valcrest didn’t move. Just watched the screen, calm, eyes unreadable as the pulse of the map flickered again.

That faint signature of something watching. Something brushing the edge of presence, like fingers trailing under the surface of still water.

He didn’t speak right away.

Just waited.

Then, in a tone that didn’t carry weight but still cut through the quiet, he muttered:

"Anger makes noise.... but that will not change anything."

And in the silence that followed, the world kept shifting underneath the surface, quiet, but steady. Like it wasn’t done yet.

—

Far from the capital and farther still from safety, Pale Mirror hadn’t stopped moving.

She wasn’t running.

But she wasn’t settled either.

The ruin she’d holed up in was old. Cracked. Forgotten. One of those places where the wind didn’t bother anymore, and the stones had long stopped echoing footsteps.

That’s why she’d chosen it. That, and the fact that it had no power lines. No active signatures. No watchers.

But even now, even with all her layers of defense, she still didn’t feel hidden.

She pressed her back to a worn pillar and stayed there, letting the cold stone anchor her breath. Her heart wasn’t pounding.

Her limbs weren’t shaking. But something in her gut—some thin, tight thread—kept stretching. Not snapping and just pulling tighter.

It wasn’t fear. Not exactly.

It was being seen.

Not by someone watching through a scope or a lens.

But by something that didn’t need eyes.

She tried to shake it off, to focus again, but the unease clung to her like the air was too thick and too still.

When she’d first arrived, this world felt easy.

Soft.

Unaware.

Like glass waiting to be tapped.

But now... something was wrong.

"The Association’s protocols are a joke," she muttered, mostly to herself. "But the core..."

She didn’t finish.

Because she didn’t have to.

She’d been watching the cult from the start. Tracking its growth, its whispers, the rituals, and hidden assemblies. She knew its structure better than some of the lieutenants did.

And then, in less than a night, it was gone.

Not torn apart. Not exposed.

Just... erased.

No bodies. No fallout.

Even the memories were foggy, like the idea of the cult had been plucked from the collective mind.

She shifted her coat tightly and stepped further into the ruins. The dust didn’t move much. There wasn’t enough wind left here to bother.

But that made the silence worse.

She reached inside herself, toward the thread—the one that always hummed softly beneath her mind, the line that connected her to the god.

And felt the interference again.

It wasn’t broken and just muddied.

Like someone had stirred noise into the signal until she couldn’t tell what was hers and what wasn’t.

She tried again. Focused harder.

The pressure came back.

Sharp. Cold.

She pulled back with a grimace.

"They blocked it."

The words came out flat. Not surprised. Just bitter.

She didn’t know how. Couldn’t explain how a world that looked so fractured on the surface could move with such unity when it mattered.

It was like someone had mapped this entire event months ago, and now they were just flipping pages in real time.

That was what unsettled her most.

She hadn’t come to test humans.

She came to test the seams.

The edges of this reality. The soft parts. The ones that could be pushed, widened, and turned into gateways.

But there weren’t any.

The whole world felt... reinforced. Older than it looked. Worn, yes, but not hollow. Not breakable.

It felt like steel disguised as paper.

And that meant someone had been waiting for something like her.

She crouched under a fallen beam and made her way toward a sunken hallway that used to lead underground. The space was cold, not from temperature but from something deeper.

The gate she had used to enter this layer—this world—wasn’t responding anymore.

Not sealed.

Closed.

On purpose.

She wasn’t sure if it was a trap or a decision.

And that made it worse.

"I thought she was just strong," she whispered to herself. "Not surrounded."

But now she saw it clearly.

The rituals. The layers of magic.

All of it had been centered around a boy.

Ethan.

Not a king. Not a leader.

But protected like one.

She remembered the way the energy around him curled—tight, aware, responsive. It didn’t flare or lash out like unstable power. It didn’t try to frighten.

It just noticed her.

It looked at her.

And it didn’t see an enemy.

It saw something to erase.

Not with hate.

With dismissal.

She moved slowly down the steps. Rubble cracked under her heel, but she didn’t stop.

Her eyes kept scanning the dark, not for guards, or sensors, or cameras.

But for flickers in the air. For static that didn’t belong.

Because something about this place felt staged. Like a theater that had gone quiet just before the curtain opened.

She reached for her shard communicator.

The glow was faint. Warped. Every time she tried to send a message, it bent sideways.

She could feel her words stretch into something else—twisted, distorted, returned not as answers but as screams of static.

She pulled back quickly and shut it down.

She didn’t trust it anymore.

Didn’t know if the god could even hear her.

And for the first time, she wondered if that silence was by design.

She crouched down beside an old wall, drawing her coat closer, breathing as steadily as she could manage. She was trained for tension. Built for it.

But this... this was different.

She had walked into countless worlds.

She had faced things that carved mountains in seconds.

But none of them ignored her.

None of them looked at her like this world did.

Not like prey.

Not like a threat.

But like noise.

She swallowed hard.