You can create an illusion, control an image, shape a narrative. But what happens when something real enters the frame uninvited?
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 Fissure 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 Fissure. 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 Fissure. 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 Groundward, 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: Humans often believe that what they cannot explain must be a mistake, and that what they cannot control must be hidden. Yet the invisible worlds did not wait to be seen in order to exist. They have always been there, close by, beyond a boundary that humans have simply forgotten how to cross. But when that boundary begins to thin and the invisible starts to reveal itself in plain sight… the real question is no longer whether it exists, but why it is choosing to reveal itself now.