Chapter 19 · The Hollow Cure - Chapter 19: Whispers from the Dead

"Get out of my head!" Kael screamed, but his voice didn't make a sound.

He wasn't in the ruins anymore. He was drowning in a sea of static and jagged glass. Every direction he looked, a thousand versions of the same dead man stared back at him, their eyes replaced by pulsing red crystals. This wasn't a memory; it was a psychic trap. A mental minefield designed to shred anyone who tried to steal the blueprint for the cure.

"You're not a doctor, Kael. You're a scavenger," a voice hissed. It sounded like his own, but twisted, like a recording played backward.

Kael lunged forward, trying to grab the glowing schematic floating in the center of the void. As soon as his fingers brushed the light, the floor vanished. He plummeted through a kaleidoscope of his own failures—the faces of patients he couldn't save, the sneers of the Council members who had stripped him of his license, the cold iron of the exile shackles.

"I'm not a scavenger," Kael spat, fighting the vertigo. "I'm the only one who can fix this mess!"

"Fix it?" The dead man appeared right in front of him, his face cracking like dry porcelain.