What if the world isn't waiting to appear... but simply to be heard at last?
The forest was listening. The light slowly drifted toward night, brushing against the tree trunks before disappearing among the roots. The air had grown cooler. A fine layer of moisture rose from the ground, clinging to their clothes, their hair, and their skin.
Jazz walked a few yards ahead of them, blinking from every direction with an enthusiasm that felt completely out of place.
"Exploration mode activated. Probability of encountering a mythical creature: twelve percent. Probability of victory: one hundred percent."
"Jazz..." Sophie murmured.
He turned around.
"Yes?"
"You're not a warrior."
"I know. I am a concept that became reality."
Despite herself, Sophie smiled. Aria rolled her eyes, though the corner of her mouth twitched ever so slightly.
Ahead of them, Neris walked alone, her case in one hand. Ever since they had left the waterfall, she had spoken very little. Her eyes constantly scanned the forest : the branches, the shadows. The almost invisible movements beneath the ferns.
Not like someone who was afraid… But like someone trying to understand a language without knowing a single word of it.
The stream continued flowing beside them on their right. Sometimes it disappeared behind the trees. Then it returned, glimmering between the stones like a ribbon of light.
Neris slowed down. Something on the water's surface had caught her attention, nothing truly unusual. A few leaves, carried away by the current, a brief ripple around a root. Then once again, the clear water moving steadily onward without hesitation.
And yet… She stopped. Sophie noticed immediately.
"Are you okay?"
Neris didn't answer at once.
Her eyes remained fixed on the stream.
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"It reminded me of someone."
She started walking again, though more slowly than before. The sound of the water stayed with her.
Its steady flow between the stones, a rhythm without measure. Impossible to calculate precisely because every obstacle altered it… And yet it never stopped moving forward.
Soren would have loved this place. The thought came without warning.
The first time Neris had walked into Pulse-9, she had immediately searched for the exits.
It was instinct.
One main entrance, two secondary exits, a maintenance door behind the counter. Probably another one somewhere beyond the back rooms.
The visible cameras recorded almost nothing. The hidden ones were harder to spot. She had identified three of them before she had even placed her order.
Everything looked improvised. But nothing truly was. The place simply refused to reveal how it worked.
From the entrance, Pulse-9 still looked like an ordinary café with low tables with soft music and colored lights. Farther inside, the corridors opened into rooms where the noise grew denser. Where people stood closer together. Where identities were neither requested… Nor verified.
No one seemed interested in fitting into a category. That made Neris uneasy.
She remained near one wall, quietly observing the movements, the habits, the conversations. She was searching for the place's logic.
"You're looking at everything as if you're trying to crack the code."
The voice had appeared beside her. Neris turned her head.
Soren stood only a few steps away, a glass resting lightly between their fingers. Her delicate features and androgynous appearance blurred everything Neris had been taught to define at first glance. Her dark clothes followed the lines of their body without trying to explain them.
She wasn't really smiling, but their eyes were open and warm.
"Maybe I already see it," Neris replied.
Soren tilted their head slightly.
"No."
"No?"
"You're still looking with the tools they gave you."
Neris stiffened.
"You don't know anything about the tools they gave me."
"I know what they do, to the way you see."
There was no challenge in Soren's voice. It sounded almost like an observation.
Soren gestured toward the room.
"Since you walked in, you've counted the doors, located the cameras, and identified everyone capable of blocking your way."
Neris said nothing.
"You also noticed that the screens in the back display everything with an eleven-second delay," Soren continued.
"And you're wondering why."
"Nine seconds."
A genuine smile crossed Soren's face.
"Fair enough."
"Nine."
Soren took a few steps away.
"Come."
"Where?"
"Somewhere you might finally stop watching the exits."
Neris should have left. Instead...She followed.
Soren led her into a quieter room behind the main hall. There was almost nothing there, two worn armchairs, a few plants and a large window overlooking a narrow canal that wound through Groundward before disappearing beneath the buildings.
Outside, the water reflected violet and blue neon lights.Soren sat on the edge of the windowsill.
"So..." Neris asked.
"What do you see with?"
"I'm sorry?"
"You said I'm still using the tools they gave me. So what do you use?"
Soren took a moment before answering.
"My joyful curiosity... when I stop trying to control everything."
Neris let out a quiet breath.
"That's not an answer."
"Of course it is."
A faint smile crossed Soren's face.
"You just don't like it."
"Because it doesn't mean anything."
"It means reality doesn't have to wait for you to understand it before it exists."
Soren turned toward the canal.
"Look."
Neris looked.
"What?"
"The water."
"I am."
"No."
Soren's voice remained calm.
"You're analyzing it."
"You're placing it into categories, exactly as you were taught."
"It's H₂O. A molecule. A liquid. A resource."
Neris frowned.
"I see an artificial canal with a controlled slope, a regulated flow rate, and a filtration system that probably isn't working very well."
"Exactly."
"So I'm right."
"You've described everything that's being imposed on it."
Soren's eyes stayed on the water.
"But not what it is."
Neris stared at the canal.
"It's water."
Soren smiled gently.
"And you're a body. A registered identity. A collection of biometric data and the result of a very expensive education."
Neris shot them a sharp look.
"I'm not just that."
"The water isn't either."
For the first time since arriving at Pulse-9… Neris stopped searching for a reply.
Soren set her glass beside them.
"The ancient peoples believed water possessed a consciousness. A spirit."
"They believed a lot of things that weren't true."
"And people today believe they've replaced beliefs with certainty."
Soren gestured toward the glowing lights of Pulse-9 behind them.
"And yet they still feed invisible systems without realizing it."
"They still follow voices they cannot hear. And they devote their entire lives to spirits they created themselves."
Neris frowned.
"Are you comparing technology to religion?"
"I'm only saying that human beings have never stopped believing."
"They've simply changed the names of their Gods."
The sentence lingered quietly between them. Then Soren looked back at the canal.
"The ancients gave names to the spirits of the water."
Silence.
"What names?"
"Undines."
Neris almost laughed.
"Mythical water creatures?"
"Maybe."
"Or maybe they were simply a way of remembering that water is alive."
"Water doesn't think."
"Maybe not the way you do."
"So it thinks differently?"
Soren gave a small shrug.
"That's absurd."
Without answering directly, Soren let her fingertips glide across the window, following the reflection drifting over the glass.
"It doesn't matter whether they existed exactly as the ancients described them."
"What matters is what that idea invites us to see differently."
Soren never rushed to fill a silence. They gave it room to breathe. That was probably what unsettled Neris the most.
In her mother's world… Every silence had to be interpreted, corrected or used.
With Soren… a silence could simply exist.
Neris returned to Pulse-9 a few days later, then again and again, without warning, without any apparent reason.
She told herself she was interested in the café's security systems. Soren let her believe it. As though they already knew that wasn't the real reason.
Sometimes they talked for hours. Sometimes hardly at all.
Soren worked, organized, and listened. She moved effortlessly from one group to another without ever seeming to belong entirely to any of them.
And yet, wherever she stopped… Something shifted. Shoulders relaxed. Voices became more genuine. People seemed to remember they were allowed to exist...without asking permission.
One evening, Neris watched Soren cross the room.
"You're a center."
Soren stopped.
"No."
"Everyone comes to you."
"That doesn't make me a center."
"Then what are you?"
A soft smile lit their face.
"A doorway."
"A doorway to where?"
"To themselves."
Neris shook her head.
Soren stepped closer.
"I simply make space."
"Space for what?"
"For whatever is trying to breathe inside each of us."
Soren gently placed two fingers against Neris's wrist. The touch was feather-light. Neris almost pulled away.
Not because she wanted to, because it was too much. Something opened inside her too quickly. As though her body understood before her mind that it was safe.
"You can stay..."
Soren whispered.
"If you want."
It wasn't an order. It wasn't even an invitation. It was simply a possibility. And that possibility was more unsettling than any command...
Because it required a choice. Her choice.
For a long time, Neris believed she kept returning to Pulse-9 to understand Soren.
It was only now, listening to the stream, that she realized she had really been going back to rediscover the person she became whenever she was with her.
"N?"
Sophie's voice pulled Neris back to the forest. She stopped walking. Pulse-9 faded away.
Aria was watching her.
"You went somewhere far away."
Neris lowered her eyes to her wrist.
"Not that far."
Sophie looked toward the stream.
"Was it someone important?"
Neris hesitated.
"Yes."
The word came out more quietly than she had intended. She resumed walking before either of them could ask another question.
Behind her, Sophie exchanged a glance with Aria. Neither of them insisted. The path narrowed.
Roots covered almost the entire ground, forcing them to walk in single file. The stream now flowed only a few feet away, sometimes less than a yard from the trail.
Then Sophie began to notice a vibration. It seemed to be coming from the stream. She turned her head. The water continued slipping quietly between the stones.
Nothing unusual.
She took a few more steps. The sensation returned. Something between a tremor and a breath. A presence forming just beyond the edge of her senses. Every time she tried to listen to it… It vanished. Then it returned the moment she stopped trying.
Sophie slowed her pace and moved closer to the water.
"Do you hear something?" Neris asked.
"I think so."
The vibration had changed. She wasn't hearing it with her ears. It reached her somewhere else, beneath her chest. In the same place where she sometimes sensed her mother's emotions before Grace had spoken a single word.
A feeling began to take shape. Sophie expected Neris to laugh at her. Instead… Neris remained silent, then she whispered,
"Undines..."
Sophie turned sharply toward her.
"What?"
Neris immediately seemed to regret speaking.
"Nothing."
"No."
"You said something."
Aria frowned.
"Undines..."
She paused.
"My mother wrote something about them."
She set her backpack on the ground and pulled out Aurelia's journal. Her fingers quickly turned the pages. Neris watched without saying a word.
Aria kept searching… then stopped.
"Here."
She looked up.
"She says that, in some traditions, the ancients called the spirits of the water... Undines."
Neris looked back at the current. Soren's words returned instantly.
Jazz tilted his dome toward the notebook.
"Logical conclusion: you are currently discussing something that cannot be observed, measured, or verified."
"Exactly," Aria replied.
"Excellent."
A brief pause.
"I hate this forest."
Sophie knelt beside the stream. The water hadn't changed. She was beginning to hear what had always been there. The realization left her dizzy.
Another impression flowed through her. Again, that same feeling of opening. As though something had recognized within her a doorway that had remained closed for far too long.
The words formed slowly. You're beginning to be ready.
Sophie's throat tightened. She kept the experience to herself.
Beside her, Neris closed her eyes for a single second.
The stream shivered. A circle appeared on its surface. Then another.
No raindrop fell. No animal crossed the water.
Aria clutched the journal against her chest.
"Okay..."
"That definitely wasn't in my mother's notes."
Jazz suddenly pivoted toward the current. His lights shifted from blue to red.
"Abnormal detection."
Without hesitation, Neris set her case on the ground and removed three miniature drones.
"What kind of anomaly?"
"Unidentified movement."
The drones lifted into the branches before drifting toward the stream. Their beams swept across the rocks… The submerged roots… The dark patches beneath the banks.
Nothing.
And yet Sophie felt the presence changing. Whatever was approaching was neither light… nor fluid. It felt denser and heavier.
Aria took a step backward. This time… She felt it too. Not around them, not in the trees, but incredibly close.
The stream kept flowing… And something...
Was slowly rising toward the surface.
The Guardian Angel : The Undines are the spirits of the water. They are the living consciousness of its currents, the silent guardians of the soul of the plant kingdom. They dwell in the depths of rivers, lakes, and springs, nurturing the hidden life that allows plants and trees to bloom.