- Frankfurt Civilian Statement, Emergency Broadcast
Frankfurt did not know how to stop moving.
It had learned the wrong lesson.
It held—not because it was stable, but because everything left standing had learned how to compensate for absence. Streets dipped where they shouldn’t. Buildings leaned into one another, redistributing weight like strangers bracing for a shared impact that never finished happening. Sirens wailed in overlapping patterns that no longer mapped to anything real.
Rommulas felt all of it.
The Hole in the Earth no longer strained against him. It didn’t resist. It didn’t ask to be held or still shaped into obedience. It simply was—a massive, honest wound beneath the city, settled into its depth like something that had stopped apologizing for existing.
That frightened him more than the chaos had.
He stood at the edge of what used to be a boulevard, the asphalt sloping downward toward the sink zone where the city had folded into itself. There were a few bodies, one being a Fracture-user and 12 others in Division-9 gear, though that no longer indicated if they were Division-9 or not anymore. Citizens in fear of their lives had begun looting dead soldiers, taking their guns, ammunition, their gear, even their comm. Steam rose in slow, uneven columns against the bodies, the heat underneath persistent but no longer explosive. The ground trembled occasionally—not violently, just enough to remind everyone that this wasn’t finished.
Mira crouched nearby, pressing her palms to the pavement, eyes closed. She wasn’t trying to heal it. She knew better than that. She was listening—feeling where sensation spiked, where numbness threatened to spread.
“It’s not spreading,” she said quietly.
Rommulas turned to her. “But it’s not retreating either.”
“No,” Mira agreed. “It’s… accepted.”
Katie snorted softly from where she leaned against a warped streetlight, arms crossed, eyes on Rommulas. “That’s certainly one word for it.”
Julius stood a few steps back, coat still immaculate despite the ash drifting through the air. He looked out over the damage with an expression that wasn’t calm so much as deliberately restrained. Lullaby hummed faintly around him—not imposed, not protective—just present enough to soften the sharpest edges of panic nearby without erasing them.
“It’s not behaving like a Fracture anymore,” Julius said. “At least not the way we understand them.”
Rommulas nodded slowly. “It isn’t asking for hierarchy.”
The realization settled uncomfortably.
The Hole in the Earth was no longer a force demanding interpretation. It wasn’t violent in the way power often was. It didn’t surge for attention or scream for acknowledgment. It just existed.
Mira opened her eyes. “That’s worse.”
Katie tilted her head. “Explain for the idiots.”
“It doesn’t need us, or anyone for that matter,” Mira said, standing.
Katie snorted. “Oh, it needs someone. Just not approval.
The ground shifted faintly beneath them—not a tremor, not damage. Somewhere deeper, the city redistributed weight without asking whether it should.
Rommulas felt Roan’s absence like a missing direction. Not relief. Not safety. Orientation loss. “He’s gone somewhere,” Rommulas said.
Julius looked at him sharply. “What? Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Rommulas swallowed. “The hole is… centered. It’s focused inward. I don’t think he descended to hide.”
“He descended to decide,” Mira finished.
No one disagreed.
Division-9 units hovered at the perimeter now, weapons lowered, movements careful and observational.
“They’ve lost the map,” Julius said quietly.
“They don’t give a shit about a map. They’re pissy because they lost authority,” Katie corrected.
Rommulas felt it too—Division-9’s internal models collapsing under reality that refused to align. Containment required boundaries. The Hole in the Earth had erased the concept of boundary entirely.
“They can’t intervene without lying,” Mira said. “And if they lie now, the city will feel it.”
Katie smiled thinly, her gaze not leaving Rommulas during this conversation. “Good.”
Another shift rolled through the ground, subtle but unmistakable. Somewhere, infrastructure failed honestly—no cover story, no justification. People died. People moved. People adapted.
Frankfurt learned.
Rommulas exhaled slowly.
Then—
A sound that didn’t belong.
Footsteps.
Not hurried.
Not cautious.
Casual.
Rommulas turned first.
A man stood several meters away where no one had been moments earlier, hands in his pockets, posture loose, expression unreadable in a way that suggested amusement rather than threat. Summer Breeze. He looked untouched by the ash, the heat, the gravity distortion. The wind curled lazily around him, fluttering as if the city’s physics were optional.
Katie stiffened instantly, her gaze finally leaving Rommulas. Mira’s hand flexed reflexively, it was the man that she thought she’d made feel again after the Aerials ordeal. Julius went very still.
Rommulas felt… nothing.
No pressure spike.
No imbalance.
That was worse.
“Well,” Summer Breeze said lightly, glancing around. “You really let it stretch its legs.”
No one responded.
He chuckled. “Relax. If I wanted you dead, only Mira would be standing here.”
Mira met his gaze, voice cold. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Miami,” Summer Breeze replied. “You did me a solid ridding me of Isaac Roan’s grip.”
Mira’s brow furrowed. “Okay… Now that we got that out the way—Why are you here?”
Summer Breeze shrugged. “Curiosity. Also—correction.”
Rommulas frowned. “Correction?”
“You keep talking about the Hole in the Earth like it’s a problem,” Summer Breeze said, pacing along the edge of the sink zone. “It’s not.”
Katie scoffed. “Basic ass name—wait, what do you mean it’s not the problem? It literally ate half the city.”
“Yes,” he agreed to the second part, he didn’t care if the name was unimaginative or not—a name was a name. “And?”
Mira’s jaw tightened.
“People died,” Julius said, taking the words out of Mira’s mouth.
“So did permission,” Summer Breeze replied casually. He stopped and turned to face them fully. “This isn’t about Isaac Roan, not the Hole in the Earth, Isaac is just the first one who stopped asking.”
Rommulas felt the weight beneath the city shift at those words—not violently—acknowledging.
“The Hole in the Earth isn’t a Fracture acting out,” Summer Breeze said. “It’s proof, really.”
Julius narrowed his eyes. “Of what?”
“That Fractures don’t need consensus anymore,” he replied. “Look at that guy over there, around the Division-9 bodies.” He pointed at the group of dead bodies—focusing on the one that was freakishly hairy, like a werewolf. “He didn’t need authority anymore. He killed authority. Him and all the other Fractures in this city—hell, maybe even country—don’t need narrative permission.”
Mira shook her head. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“Never said it did,” Summer Breeze replied. “But pretending it’s a malfunction is how you lose.”
Katie crossed her arms tighter. “Then what’s your advice, oh enlightened observer?”
Summer Breeze smiled faintly. “You don’t fight the Hole in the Earth from the surface,” he said. “You already know that.”
Rommulas felt his stomach drop.
Summer Breeze continued, “You go where Isaac Roan went. Where the Hole in the Earth stops being geography and starts being choice.”
Silence snapped around them.
“That’s suicide,” Julius said flatly.
Summer Breeze shrugged. “So was letting him descend alone.”
Rommulas felt the truth settle, heavy and undeniable.
“You’re saying the Hole in the Earth can’t be challenged unless we’re inside it,” Mira said.
“I’m saying,” Summer Breeze replied, “that harm this honest doesn’t respond to distance, Helmet.”
“I told you not to call me that, you pale fuck,” Mira snapped.
Summer Breeze shifted his gaze to Katie, who looked as if she was about to say something. “Hm?”
Katie studied him closely. “Why tell us?”
He smiled again, the same detached interest flickering behind his eyes. “Watching him win uncontested would be boring.”
Rommulas felt something new then.
(Clarity)
“And if we go down there?” he asked.
Summer Breeze tilted his head. “Then it stops being his world alone.”
The ground shifted again, deeper this time, as if the city were listening. Summer Breeze stepped back, already disengaging. “You’ll figure out the rest. Or you won’t.” He paused, glancing over his shoulder. “Oh,” he added. “And stop calling the Hole in the Earth destiny.”
Then he was gone—no departure, no disruption. One moment present, the next absent, like gravity had never agreed to hold him.
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The four stood in silence.
The city breathed.
Mira broke it first. “He’s not wrong.”
Katie grimaced. “I hate that.”
Julius exhaled slowly. “Entering the deepest region of the hole would change everything.”
Rommulas looked toward the sink zone, feeling the depth beneath it—not calling, not demanding—but waiting.
“He didn’t descend to hide,” he said again. “He descended to choose.”
Katie nodded. “Then if we’re going to stop him, we can’t pussyfoot around at the surface.”
The Hole in the Earth remained. Not expanding. Not retreating. Waiting. And for the first time since Frankfurt was torn open, the path forward was no longer hypothetical. It was downward.
Division-9 did not announce the change.
They never did when they were afraid.
The perimeter tightened first—vehicles repositioning, drones pulling lower, weapons lifted not to aim but to exist. Authority reclaimed posture before it reclaimed language. That was always how it went if you were to ask Mira or Katie.
Rommulas felt it in the city before he saw it. The air thickened—not with pressure, but with intention. The weight beneath the ground did not react. The Hole in the Earth remained patient, incurious.
“They’ve decided,” Julius added quietly.
Katie snorted. “About time.”
Mira watched the movement along the edge of the sink zone—armored silhouettes stepping into new formations, optics flaring, lines drawn where none had existed minutes earlier. A speaker crackled to life somewhere overhead, its voice
(Abraham Francis)
artificially calm. “Subject Left to Right, Subject Infrunami, and the two unregistered Fracture entities,” it said. “You are ordered to remain in place. This area is now under Division-9 control.”
Rommulas felt something cold settle in his chest.
“This isn’t control,” Mira murmured. “This is theater.”
Julius’s jaw tightened. “They need an enemy they can point to.”
“Lucky us,” Katie and Rommulas both said at once.
Synchronicity (jinx, but he doesn’t know this word yet), odd. Why am I feeling this way again? Rommulas thought.
He quickly shoved it aside when the speaker continued, tone sharpening. “Failure to comply will be treated as hostile intent.”
The ground shifted faintly—adjustment, not escalation. Somewhere behind them, a street sagged another inch as load redistributed. Frankfurt did not care about the declaration.”
Rommulas glanced towards Katie, stepping forward half a pace. “If they fire—”
“They will,” Katie interrupted. “Not because it’ll work, love—no, no, no—it’ll be because it makes sense to them.”
A drone descended, its camera iris contracting as it locked onto Mira. The machine hovered too close, too bold.
Mira felt it—eyes without weight, judgment without understanding. The city around them hummed with anxious quiet, people pausing mid-motion, waiting for permission to be afraid.
“Don’t,” she said softly. Not to the drone. To the moment.
The first shot cracked the air.
Not at them—near them. A warning round, chewing a chunk out of warped asphalt at Mira’s feet. The sound echoed wrong in the altered space, flattening as if the city itself refused to amplify it.
“Final warning,” the speaker said.
Katie laughed once sharply.” They’re really doing this.”
“I know,” Mira said. “Oh, what the hell.”
She stepped forward into the open, palms relaxed at her sides. The drone tracked her immediately. More weapons lifted.
Mira looked past them—all of them—at the civilians who have yet to escape gathered at the edges of the district. People standing in doorways. People clutching bags they hadn’t realized they grabbed. An elderly woman desperately grasping onto a photo memory book, with a child by her side. A mid-40s man with a biker mustache nervously pacing back and forth. All of them were people trying very hard not to feel anything at all.
The lie wasn’t that everything was fine. The lie was that numbness was safety. Mira placed her hand on the ground, the pavement was warm. Not burning—alive with residual heat from the Hole in the Earth below. She closed her eyes and listened—not to the city’s damage, but to the places where sensation had been folded away to survive.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Julius murmured.
No reply from Mira.
Infrunami woke like a tide remembering its name. There was no roar. No surge. Water gathered first in the cracks—thin rivulets seeping upward from impossible places, condensing from humid air and broken pipes alike. The street darkened as moisture spread, not flooding, not drowning—claiming presence.
Division-9 reacted instantly.
“Energy spike—”
“Contain—”
“Supress—”
The commands overlapped and died as the water rose ankle-high in a smooth, impossible plane. Then the empathy hit. It wasn’t emotion, it was recognition. The wave moved outward from Mira in a controlled arc, water and sensation braided together. Where it passed, people inhaled sharply. Some gasped. Some staggered. A few dropped to their knees—not all from force, but some from memory.
They felt the moment they decided not to look. The moment they laughed too loudly at the broadcast. The moment where they told their children it was nothing. A man near the perimeter sobbed without understanding why. A woman pressed her hand to her chest, eyes wide, whispering a name she hadn’t said since the museum sank.
Division-9’s front line faltered.
Not because the water pushed them back.
Because their bodies remembered what they were standing on.
“No–no–pull back!” someone shouted.
Weapons dipped. One officer tore his helmet off, retching as the wave reached him, his breath hitching with sudden clarity.
Katie watched, satisfied and furious all at once. “This is your Fracture? Impressive,” she said. “Let it hurt where it’s fake.”
Julius felt Lullaby strain—not fighting Infrunami, but recoiling from its honesty. He did not suppress it. He let fear move, let people step back instead of freezing.
Rommulas felt the city respond—not violently, not defensively—but with relief. The Hole in the Earth did not swell. It did not feed. The pressure beneath the ground steadied, redistributed without hunger.
This was not escalation.
This was correction.
The wave reached the drone. Its stabilizers whined, systems struggling to reconcile moisture and data with an input they had no category for. The machines wobbled, then dipped, optics flickering before it crashed into the shallow water with a hiss of dying circuits.
Silence fell—not calm, but honest.
The speaker crackled again, voice no longer smooth. “Cease—cease Fracture activity immediately—”
Mira opened her eyes.
The water held.
She did not push it further.
“You don’t get to lie to them,” she said, voice carrying without amplification. “Not anymore.”
Division-9’s line broke—not in retreat, but in disarray. Officers backed away from the water’s edge, some staring at their hands like they’d just noticed they were shaking.
A commander stepped forward, helmet on, posture rigid. “You are interfering with emergency operations.”
Katie stepped beside Mira. “You’re interfering with reality, you fucking bum!”
What is this in my gut? Rommulas thought. What is this nauseating, fluttery sensation?
The commander raised his weapon. Rommulas stepped forward, grounding deliberately, not to threaten, not to dominate—just enough to refuse collapse if the shot came.
It didn’t.
The commander’s hand trembled. His breath hitched. The water lapped at his boots, cold and undeniable. He lowered the weapon. “Wuh—wuh–we cuh—cuh–cuh–ant–” he started, then stopped, swallowing hard. “We cuh-cuh-CAN’T contain this.”
“No,” Julius said quietly. “You can’t.”
Mira’s gaze softened—forgiving, but firm. “So stop pretending you can.”
The speaker went dead.
Division-9 withdrew in uneven steps, formations dissolving into individuals who needed air, distance time. No one fired again. The water receded slowly, soaking into the ground, leaving the street slick and dark and remembering.
People began to move—not in panic, not in denial. Some helped others. Some finally got the hell out of Frankfurt. Some stayed and watched the sink zone with open eyes.
The people of Frankfurt exhaled.
Katie turned to Mira, voice low. “You good, love?”
Mira nodded, though her hands trembled faintly. “They’ll call us enemies now.”
Katie looked toward the retreating units. “They already did. Ah, it’s fine. Fuck them.”
Rommulas felt the Hole in the Earth settle—quiet, observant. It did not surge. It did not resist. “They didn’t fire because you pushed them back,” he said to Mira. “They didn’t fire because they felt it.”
Mira wiped rain from her face. “That’s the point.”
The city groaned again—not in pain, but adjustment. Somewhere, infrastructure failed openly. Somewhere else, people adapted faster than expected. Division-9 had lost more than ground. They had lost the lie.
Rommulas looked toward the sink zone, feeling the depth beneath it—no longer just absence, but a place where choice mattered.
“He’s still down there,” he said.
“Yes,” Mira replied. “And now the city knows why that matters.”
Katie cracked her knuckles. “Those shitheads won’t pretend anymore next time they come.”
Julius nodded. “And neither will we.”
The four stood together as the rain fell harder, washing the street clean of dust and denial alike.
The Hole in the Earth remained.
Not retreating.
Waiting.
They did not leave when the water was gone, mainly because more water simply came. Rain fell harder now, washing soot and dust into the shallow gutters that still knew how to drain. The streetlights flickered, uncertain but functional. Frankfurt did what it could with what remained.
“This isn’t a pursuit,” Julius said quietly, breaking the silence. “If we move now, we don’t chase him.”
Mira nodded. “We prepare to meet him where he stopped asking.”
Katie glanced back toward the perimeter, where Division-9 had retreated into distance and indecision. “And if they come back with more guns? More people?”
“They won’t come back the same way,” Julius replied. “Not after that, not after everything that’s happening.”
Rommulas felt the city’s posture again—how weight redistributed where denial had been peeled away. The Hole in the Earth responded to none of it. It did not feed on fear anymore. It did not swell at resistance. It had learned something from Roan’s descent.
It had learned focus.
“He’s not hiding,” Rommulas said. “He’s building a position.”
Mira’s jaw tightened. “Inside.”
“Yes.”
Katie exhaled through her nose. “Figures. Every bastard with power eventually decides their amazing underground hideout isn’t low enough for them.”
Rommulas smiled. Then the truth settled into him with a calm that felt earned, not granted. The city didn’t need him to anchor it right now. It needed him to choose when not to.
“I won’t go first,” he said. “Not alone, at least.”
Mira met his gaze. “You won’t go alone at all.”
Julius adjusted his stance, the hum of Lullaby barely perceptible now—present, but leashed. “If we enter the deepest region, silence becomes dangerous. I can’t smooth what needs to stay sharp.”
“Good,” Katie said. “I don’t want it smooth.”
The Hole in the Earth shifted faintly beneath them, acknowledging. A place where the city’s underside folded into itself, where geometry surrendered to intent. It felt closer now, not in distance, but in relevance.
Mira stepped forward and placed her hand on the wet pavement again—not activating Infrunami, not pushing anything outward. Just grounding herself in the fact of it. “When we go down there,” she said, “we need to decide what we do. I don’t know if I’m ready to stop him. I fucking hate Isaac, but—”
“He’s not alone in that body,” Rommulas said.
Katie glared at Rommulas. “I’m sorry, but there is only one way out of this. We have to kill him, your friend’s soul or whatever inside him or not.”
Rommulas didn’t flinch. “He isn’t ‘whatever.’ He’s Noah Vale.”
Mira’s gaze dropped to the wet pavement. “Noah didn’t get a choice. In any of this. He shouldn’t die because of Isaac Roan’s insanity.”
Julius looked toward the darkness where the ground dipped into the Hole in the Earth. “Mercy against the aggressor is violence against the victims,” he said. “That asshole and his Fracture has taken more than just Noah. He’s taken lives, he’s taken innocence, he’s taken cities.”
Katie nodded once. “Exactly.”
Rommulas felt the weight beneath the city shift—not in response to anger, but to certainty. The Hole in the Earth did not argue. It did not object. It accepted the logic easily. “That’s the problem,” Rommulas said. “It accepts that answer too fast.”
Julius turned to him. “And you don’t?”
“I don’t trust solutions that don’t feel heavy,” Rommulas replied. “If killing him is the only answer, it shouldn’t come clean.”
Katie scoffed, lighting a cigarette everyone was dumbfounded she had yet no one questioned where she got it from. “You want it to hurt so it feels morals?”
“No,” Mira said sharply, lifting her head. “He wants us to admit what we’re doing.”
Silence fell.
The rain filled it.
Mira stood slowly, hands trembling—not from fear, the effect of Infrunami was still going on. It had been quite a while since she used it. “If we go down there with a single outcome in mind, we become what he thinks we are. Enforcers. Executors. Another system deciding who gets erased.”
Julius’s jaw tightened. “And if you hesitate, more people die.”
“Yes,” Mira said. “And if we don’t hesitate, Noah definitely does.”
Katie stepped closer, voice low and dangerous. “You’re asking us to gamble a city—fuck, this could be Germany as a whole or even Europe—on a boy who might already be gone?”
Mira met her stare. “I’m not asking us not to pretend he is.”
Rommulas felt it then—the truth none of them wanted to say aloud. “We don’t know if Noah can be separated,” he said. “We don’t know if he’s conscious. We don’t even know if what’s left of him can survive what Roan’s become.”
Katie crossed her arms tighter. “Then you’re proving my point.”
“No,” Rommulas said. “I’m explaining why this isn’t an execution.”
Julius exhaled slowly. “Then what is it?”
Rommulas looked toward the sink zone, feeling the depth beneath it—not calling, not demanding, just waiting.
“It’s a confrontation,” he said. “Not with power. With choice.”
Mira nodded. “We don’t go down there to save Isaac Roan.”
Katie’s eyes narrowed. “No shit.”
“But we don’t go down there planning to kill Noah,” Mira finished.
Another shift rolled through the ground, deeper this time. The Hole in the Earth was eager with expectation.
Julius closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, his voice was quieter. “If this ends with his death…”
“It might,” Rommulas said. “And if it does, it won’t be because we decided he was expendable.”
The rain fell harder, cold and grounding. Somewhere far below, pressure and heat coiled in uneasy alignment—two forces bound together by a choice made without consent.
The path forward was no longer abstract.
It was downward.
And when they finally moved, it would not to be deliver justice or mercy—
—but to confront the Fracture between the man who chose destruction and the Fracture who was trapped inside it.