“You never were.”

Kael froze. “Who—?”

In the city of Veridia, where neon bled into rain-slicked streets and the rich lived in spires above the smog, there was a name whispered only in the darkest corners of the data-stream: .

“Because no one else listened.”

“I am Extera. I hear what the world casts away. You, Kael, have 47 recorded acts of kindness. You returned a lost child to her mother in the Lower Warrens. You once gave your last ration chip to a dying man. You carry your mother’s locket, though she sold you for debt.”

And in a city that forgot how to care, that was enough.

Not a person. Not a ghost. Something else.