"Nothing follows you. Only what you carry inside." 

📖 Main Story

CHAPTER -15 [ ELIAS POV ]

THE THREE WITNESSES

I never considered myself brave. That day, my fear saved me. I remember exactly where I was standing when it all began. In the corner of the room, as usual. The corner near the spare parts rack, where I usually took notes and observed. I wasn't the genius Arvin, the ambitious Juno, or the charismatic David. I was Elias. A maintenance technician. The one who recorded, checked, and made sure everything was according to procedure. That day, procedure meant nothing. The Prayer Server's indicator lights began flashing in an unfamiliar pattern. Arvin approached the monitor, frowning. "David… there's an incoming intent pattern. It's not from us. It's external feedback. 

This machine is reading two sources of consciousness." Juno stared at the screen, her face pale. "One is yours… and the other… belongs to a child." I took notes. It was my job. My hands scribbled in the logbook, noting the time, noting error codes, recording everything. But my hands were shaking. Then they turned to Shayla. The little girl stared blankly at the core of the machine, as if hearing a call no adult could hear. David tried to calm him down, but a subtle vibration cut him off. The Prayer Server dimmed its lights. Like… calling. And Shayla walked. "DAVID!" Arvin shouted. "HE'S BEEN DRAGEN!" At that moment, my feet were rooted to the floor.

I wanted to run. I wanted to help. I wanted to do something. But my body froze. Fear, not courage, kept me in the corner of the room. I could only clutch my radio, which had been hanging from my waist, now emitting only static. Bzzzt... crack... hhhsssshhh... David tried to force open the panel. Arvin and Juno screamed. The room shook. The Vortex opened. And I saw with my own eyes how David and Shayla weren't destroyed by the explosion. They were erased.

Like a pencil sketch forcibly erased from reality. Their bodies evaporated, leaving black silhouettes on the metal floor. The image of David half-bent over, as if still trying to reach for his daughter. The image of tiny Shayla, her arms outstretched. I wanted to scream, but my voice caught in my throat.

Then Arvin and Juno moved. They looked at each other. "We can't just let them disappear like that," Juno whispered. Arvin nodded. "We're a team. We have to try." They ran to the manual lever. I wanted to scream, "NO!" But my tongue was numb. They clung to the lever as if it could hold their souls, trying to open the portal wider, trying to pull David and Shayla back. But the portal didn't care about good intentions. Bzzzt... CRACK! A flash of white light blinded me. I was thrown back, my head hitting a parts rack. Bolts and wires fell all around me. I curled up in a corner, closing my eyes, feeling the heat sting my skin. Then, silence. A silence so deep, so perfect, that I could hear my own blood pounding in my ears. I opened my eyes slowly. The lab had become the quietest place in the universe. A thin layer of smoke danced in the air, twisting and turning like newborn ghosts. The smell of burning metal and ozone hit my nose—a smell I'll never forget. The emergency lights flickered red, casting swaying shadows on the walls. I tried to stand. My legs were shaking violently. I grabbed a shelf for support, but my hands were also unsteady. With faltering steps, I walked to the centre of the room.

And I saw it. On the metal floor that should have been empty, there were now four permanently charred black shadows. One. David. His posture was still clearly slightly hunched, his arms outstretched. Two. Shayla. Small. Fragile. Her tiny hands etched into the metal. Three. Arvin. Standing straight, facing the lever. Four. Juno. Beside Arvin, slightly bent, as if still holding something. Footprints. Handprints. Traces of a body. Ones that could never be erased. They were there, in the form of ashes imprinted on the metal. But they weren't there. "Arvin?" I whispered. My voice sounded foreign to my own ears. Hoarse. Broken. Like the voice of someone who had just lost everything.

"Juno?" There was no answer. I walked toward Arvin's shadow. Kneeling beside him. I reached out, almost touching the ashes, but pulled back. It was as if if I touched them, I would disappear too. They were truly gone.

Then I heard it. Not footsteps. Not a door opening. Not any sound that should have been present in an empty room. The faint hum of electricity suddenly changed its rhythm.

I glanced at the giant main monitor, which should have been completely dead after the incident. But it flickered. Red. Faint. Like a weak but consistent heartbeat. A single word appeared in the center of the screen, replacing all the lines of code we'd been proud of, all the algorithms we'd painstakingly written over the years: 

P R 3 3 T. 

I stared at it, my brain working feebly to translate. Pr33t. Preet? No. That wasn't an error code. There was no such error code in our system. Never. We'd never programmed that word. "What...?" I whispered. Then I heard breathing. Not a metaphor. Not a poetic allusion. I heard real breathing. The sound of the Prayer Server, the giant machine we'd built, was no longer the usual electrical hum. No longer the whirring of cooling fans or the mechanical ticking of relays.

It was a rhythm. Soft. Regular. Deep. Like the chest of someone in deep sleep. Hhhhuuuuuuh... hhhhhhuuuuuuh... The machine was breathing. I stood up, took a step back. Two steps. My back hit the wall. My eyes were glued to the machine, to the flashing screen, to the word that shouldn't be there. The Prayer Server was alive. But not as a machine. As something else.