What if the greatest danger was believing that everything could be understood?
The stream no longer flowed the way it had before. It was still moving, yes… But something had changed in its rhythm. The water slipped between the stones with an unusual slowness.
Sophie stood perfectly still, so did Aria.
As for Jazz… He had stopped making comments altogether. For him, that was almost more unsettling than the anomaly itself.
"Presence confirmed," he repeated, his voice lower this time.
Neris returned to them in just a few strides, her eyes already sweeping the canopy, then the ground, then the water. Her miniature drones hovered silently around her, tiny black specks suspended in the air.
"Where?" she asked.
Jazz tilted his dome toward the stream.
"There."
A brief silence.
"In the water."
Sophie's stomach tightened with the strange dizziness that comes when something you had always believed was imaginary suddenly decides to take shape.
The stream began to ripple, not across its entire surface, only along a long, winding line. At first it was barely visible, like a shadow beneath the reflections. Then it became clearer and wider.
"Sophie..."
Aria took a step backward.
"I know."
"No, you don't," Aria replied, her voice tight.
"There's something under there."
The line moved slowly beneath the water.
Something long drifted silently between the stones, following the current. Green and golden reflections bent across a dark, smooth mass whose true size was impossible to judge.
Jazz quietly took another step back.
"Journal update: twelve-percent probability of encountering a mythical creature has been canceled."
A pause.
"Revised assessment: mythical creature confirmed.Estimated size: much too large."
"Jazz..."
Aria whispered.
"Please be quiet."
"That was exactly my intention."
The water rose. First like a low swell, then like a back. An enormous back, something slowly emerged from the stream. Dark scales shimmered with blue and copper reflections. Thin streams of water slid across them like liquid light. Its body looked far too large for such a narrow stream, far too ancient for this place.
Sophie stopped breathing.
Then its head appeared, broad, long and elegant : a serpent.
Not quite like an anaconda. It belonged to the natural world… Yet also to something beyond it. There was a presence about it, too calm, too aware.
Its eyes opened in two dark glimmers, not hostile. Within them there was neither curiosity nor anger, only a cold recognition. As though it already knew something they did not.
Neris froze.
"None of my sensors can detect it properly," she murmured.
"My drones can see it..."
"...and not see it at the same time."
"Same here," Jazz confirmed.
"My systems refuse to decide whether it is an animal, a thermal anomaly..."
"...or a very bad idea."
Aria couldn't take her eyes off the serpent's head. Every instinct she had screamed at her to run. Her body refused. Sophie heard something else, not words, a breath, a faint vibration just behind her heart.
The forest allowed you to enter.
She repeated it aloud without realizing.
"The forest...allowed us to enter."
Aria slowly turned toward her.
"Is it saying that?"
Sophie didn't answer.
The serpent rose a little higher. Its head now towered above the stream, above the ferns, above the stones. In a way… above them. Water streamed from its scales in slow, silent ribbons, as though even the droplets knew better than to disturb it.
The breath returned. Sophie's fingers turned icy.
"But welcoming… is not the same as protecting."
The silence grew heavier. Neris slowly lowered one hand toward her equipment case.
The serpent turned its head toward her. Neris froze instantly.
"Message received," she murmured.
"No technology."
Jazz backed away another step.
"I have a proposal. We should listen to the giant serpent."
Aria swallowed.
"For once..."
"I completely agree."
The serpent remained perfectly still for several long seconds… It simply watched them. And Sophie felt something else flowing through it, not a threat, a truth.
The forest wasted nothing. It was only the beginning of another cycle. Life continued relentlessly and indifferently.
Every step, every heartbeat, every escape belonged to the same fragile balance to survive… Or to nourish something else : predator, prey, death, growth.
Everything belonged to an ancient dance where each depended upon the other to preserve the rhythm of the endless forest.
Sophie slowly closed her eyes.
"We're walking like children..."
"...through a kingdom that doesn't belong to us."
A wave of humiliation swept through Aria.
Ever since crossing the Wall, she had believed she was being careful. She had calculated, observed, followed tracks, and watched the drones.
Yet she had failed to notice the most obvious truth.
Here… Danger did not only come from above. It came from everywhere, from the water, from the roots, from everything they had never learned how to read.
The serpent slowly curved its immense body. The water shifted with terrifying gentleness.
Neris whispered,
"It could kill us without the slightest effort."
"Thank you," Jazz replied.
"I was trying very hard not to say that out loud."
Sophie rested a hand against her chest.
"It doesn't want to kill us."
The serpent turned its dark eyes toward her. The words entered Sophie like a blade of ice. She did not repeat them.
But Aria saw her turn pale.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"What did it say?"
"It says..."
"...we have to learn."
"Learn what?"
The serpent opened its mouth just slightly… Then it became perfectly still.
A cold breath swept across them. Suddenly, Sophie saw farther beneath the calm water.
Another shape gliding silently below the surface.
She stumbled backward.
"There's another one."
Aria went pale.
"Another serpent?"
"No… I don't know."
"Something."
Jazz turned sharply toward the stream.
"Negative detection."
Neris clenched her jaw.
"My drones can't see anything either."
Sophie blinked.
Only the current remained. The great serpent slowly lowered its head. Then it breathed once more.
This time… Aria felt it too. Not words, but a certainty : the forest was not a refuge. It was a world that did not exist merely to be beautiful. Before anything else… It was wild.
The serpent slipped back toward the stream. Its immense body gradually disappeared beneath the water. It should have been impossible for something so large to vanish into such shallow depths.
And yet… Segment by segment… It sank until only one last dark reflection remained.
Then… Nothing.
The current resumed its quiet flow.
For a long moment… No one spoke.
Then Jazz quietly said,
"Forest protocol update: do not die because of ignorance."
A nervous laugh escaped Sophie. Aria ran a hand across her face.
"We really were walking around as if we understood any of this."
"Maybe we understand one thing now," Neris said.
Aria looked at her.
"What?"
Neris kept her eyes on the stream.
"The forest doesn't hate us."
A brief pause.
"But it's not going to take care of us either."
Sophie nodded slowly. She could still feel the serpent's breath deep inside her chest. Not as a threat, as a warning, as wisdom settling somewhere beneath her skin.
"It said we have to learn."
"Learn from the forest."
"Then that's what we'll do," Aria replied.
Neris retrieved her drones but didn't launch them again.
"We slow down.We keep following the water..."
"...but we also watch everything around us : the ground, the trees, everything."
Jazz blinked.
"At last a reasonable decision."
Sophie smiled faintly, but her eyes remained fixed on the stream. She was still afraid, not in the same way as before. This fear didn't crush her. It opened her eyes.
Far behind them… The city continued believing that danger came with badges… Drones… And official reports.
It was wrong, danger could also have scales. And it had just welcomed them.
Back in Biel, night had already fallen when Kaël woke with a start. His bedroom was bathed in the bluish glow of screens left on standby. For a second, he had no idea where he was. He could still see the crack before him. The floodlights on his face. The audience holding its breath behind the barriers.
Then he sat upright. His T-shirt clung to his back. He was drenched in sweat. His phone was overflowing with notifications, clips from the live broadcast, slow-motion edits, comments, fan compilations.
THE MOMENT KAËL SEES THE SPIRITS.
HE WAS REALLY SCARED.
LOOK AT HIS EYES.
HE KNOWS SOMETHING MORE.
Kaël remained motionless. He opened one of the videos. The image trembled slightly.
There he was, standing beside the crack. His face tense, trapped beneath the floodlights, trapped inside the role he had agreed to play. He remembered exactly how he had felt: empty, fake, locked inside a performance he had accepted simply to keep existing on-screen.
Then the visual effects appeared: the two planned silhouettes, the artificial glow, their outlines too clean. Their light calculated to send just enough chills through the audience.
Kaël almost looked away.
He remembered the cold shame that had clung to him after the live show. The feeling that he had allowed something inside himself to break… for a few more audience ratings.
The video continued. Then… something changed. A third figure appeared, barely visible, not in the same place, not moving with the same rhythm.
It didn't possess the sharpness of the first two, nor their perfectly controlled glow. It seemed...less projected, more present.
Kaël felt his stomach tighten. He restarted the video. The first two silhouettes appeared at exactly the expected moment. Then...the third one, as though it wasn't obeying the edit.
He stopped it, and started it again, slowed it down even further. This time he noticed something else. The first two luminous figures seemed to pass slightly through the scenery. The third didn't. It seemed to receive the light...rather than produce it.
A chill ran up both his arms. He hadn't truly seen it during the broadcast. At the time… He had been too busy hating himself. Too busy feeling that he had lost something essential in front of millions of people.
But now… He saw it. Something had appeared. Something that had never been planned.
His phone vibrated.
Lila.
He hesitated for several seconds before answering.
"Did you see it?" he asked immediately.
Silence answered him.
Then Lila's perfectly controlled voice.
"Good evening, Kaël."
"I'm delighted to hear from you too."
"Lila."
"Yes."
"I saw it."
"And?"
"We're going to control the narrative."
Kaël closed his eyes.
"You know perfectly well it wasn't part of the effects."
"Two fake ones..."
"...and one real one."
"I know one thing," Lila replied evenly.
"The audience doesn't care."
"They want to believe they saw something."
"And now..."
"They have."
"We don't need to go into the details."
"That's not the same thing."
"Yes, it is."
"For them..."
"It's exactly the same."
Kaël walked to the window. Outside, Biel shimmered in scattered patches of light : storefronts, towering buildings, advertising screens. An entire city digesting a lie...And a fragment of truth.
He no longer knew what to believe.
"There were three figures," he said quietly.
"Then we'll simply say that some secondary visual projections may have created the illusion of depth."
"You're lying to yourself."
Lila let out a faint sigh.
"No."
"I'm already doing my job."
Kaël clenched his jaw.
"And what if it wasn't the production team?"
"What if it really was a spirit?"
A longer silence followed.
When Lila finally spoke again, her voice had changed.
"Kaël."
"Listen to me carefully."
"You don't tell anyone that."
"Why?"
She hesitated.
"Because the moment you do..."
"...you become a problem."
A chill ran down the back of his neck.
"For whom?"
"For everyone."
A few seconds later, Lila spoke again, more gently.
"Tomorrow you're giving an interview."
"You'll say you sensed three identical presences."
"It's clean."
"It leaves room for mystery."
"I'll send you the script and the production notes within the hour."
Kaël let out a joyless laugh.
"You still want to manufacture reality."
"I want to survive."
"And I want to keep doing my job professionally."
"If we don't tell this story..."
"...someone else will tell it for us."
This time, Kaël said nothing, because he heard something else in her voice, not only calculation, but fear carefully controlled and undeniably real.
"You saw it too."
He spoke almost in a whisper.
"So tell me..."
"What does Miss Pragmatic think?"
Lila didn't answer. The call ended.
Kaël remained standing in front of the window for a long time. Something inside him had shifted.
He returned to the screen. The video was still playing : three figures. He froze the image on the third one, then slowed it down even further. The first two shapes floated slightly above the scenery. The third didn't. It seemed denser.Almost absorbed by the darkness surrounding it.
And above all… It wasn't looking at the crack. It wasn't looking at Lila. It wasn't even looking at the audience.
It was looking at him.
A cold shiver climbed the back of his neck.
He abruptly stopped the video. The silence filling his bedroom suddenly felt too heavy. For several seconds he remained perfectly still, both hands resting against the edge of his desk.
Then, almost despite himself, he whispered,
"What... was that?"
Far away, in a discreet apartment deep within Below the Sky, Numa was watching the same footage on an aging computer terminal with battered monitors.
The third figure appeared. He paused the video immediately.
His expression hardened.
"Damn..."
He had hoped it was nothing more than a compression error, a streaming artifact, a broadcast glitch, not this, especially not now.
He rubbed a hand across his face before opening an encrypted folder.
SOPHIE_ARIA_PASSAGE
Several files were already waiting inside : fake university records, simulated attendance logs, scheduled messages, medical excuses, transportation plans, emergency digital traces.
Numa stared silently at the data. Until now...everything had still been precautionary, a contingency plan.
But after tonight… Nothing would remain hidden for much longer.
He inhaled slowly.
"All right. We're moving to the next level."
His fingers flew across the keyboard: camouflage protocols, algorithm diversions, false digital signals.
Sophie and Aria's disappearance had to remain invisible… Or at least stay unnoticed for as long as possible. He needed time and a little luck.
Suddenly… His monitor flickered.
Numa froze.
Every light in the apartment went out at once.
The Guardian Angel: Sophie, Aria, and Neris discover that the serpent is not their enemy. It simply reminds them that the same force can protect… Or destroy. Everything depends on how we learn to recognize it.