25. Jules #2
Finally, she turns off the tablet screen. “Glass Anthem’s final concert ended seventeen minutes into their set. The official report attributed the incident to a pyrotechnic malfunction, an electrical outage, and crowd panic.”
“Didn’t people online claim there were shadows moving through the audience?”
“There were.”
No one speaks.
Camille’s eyes remain fixed on the dark screen. “I was sent to Valencia to manage the aftermath. I suppressed the footage, coordinated witness statements, and drafted the group’s hiatus announcement before the venue had been cleared.”
My headache abruptly becomes irrelevant.
“What did you see?” Remy says.
Camille’s jaw tightens. “The stage wards had collapsed. Several audience members were unconscious. Others were repeating the same phrase in unison, although none of them remembered doing so afterward.”
A chill slides over my skin. “What phrase?”
“‘We are listening.’”
Nope.
Absolutely not.
“Only one member of Glass Anthem remained when I reached backstage,” Camille continues. “She was injured and severely disoriented. She kept saying that something had looked through the audience and found them.”
“Found them,” Kaia repeats.
Camille nods once. “A Council handler removed her before I could question her further. I never saw the other four members. I was told all five members were secured and being transferred to a secure treatment facility.”
“And?” I ask, already knowing I am not going to like the answer.
“I never saw any of them again.”
The room is completely silent.
“I wrote the statement claiming they had chosen to step away from public life,” she says. “I maintained the narrative for six months. By then, their accounts were operating without direct input from any member.”
I stare at her. “You knew?”
“I knew the official explanation was false. I did not know the scale of what it concealed.”
There is no defensiveness in her voice. Somehow, that makes it worse.
The cold feeling at the back of my skull spreads.
“Each group reaches peak engagement,” Camille continues. “Maximum emotional output. Then they experience an event that Eon classifies as an accident, retirement, or voluntary hiatus.”
We stare at Camille with varying expressions of disbelief, which she takes as an invitation to continue.
“Velour Sky disappeared after the highest-rated broadcast of Eon’s first decade. Neon Saints’ final verified appearance followed their anniversary stadium event. Glass Anthem vanished during the most heavily promoted concert of their career.”
Heavy silence settles over us. I look between Kaia, Mina, Remy, and Camille. My chest feels too tight.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “So what? You think Eon is killing their own groups?”
“Not killing,” Camille says.
Something in her tone makes my stomach drop.
“Sacrificing.”
That word lands.
I laugh because what else am I supposed to do?
“Sacrificing to what? That’s insane. That’s actually insane. We’re not… This isn’t…”
“We’re next,” Remy says.
Flat. Certain.
I look at her, then Camille.
Camille doesn’t deny it.
My mouth goes dry. “No. We’re not. We’re different. We…”
“You are being targeted,” Camille says.
“The possession attempts,” she continues. “The escalation pattern. The altered warding. None of it is random.”
“It could be a hotspot,” I say automatically. “Bad luck. Whatever.”
“It is not.”
Her voice is sharper now. More certain.
“The Mouthpieces are not independent mid-level entities,” she says. “Their behavior is too consistent and their objectives too focused. They are entering through different systems, but each one is attempting to do the same thing.”
“Get to me,” I say.
“Yes.”
Cold slides down my spine. “Then what are they?”
Camille hesitates.
That is worse than anything else she has said.
“Extensions,” she says finally. “Projections of a larger entity.”
“Of what?”
She meets my eyes.
For the first time since this started, I see something other than control or certainty.
She looks unsettled.
“After the others left last night, I cross-referenced the truncated beneficiary code with the Valencia archive and earlier Council records,” she says. “I believe they describe the same shadow Mina has been Seeing.”
Mina goes very still.
“They call it the Patron,” Camille says.
The name feels wrong in the room, like it does not belong in human mouths.
I glance at Mina. She has gone pale. Paler than I am, which feels medically impressive considering my current condition.
I reach across the space between us and take her hand. Her fingers close around mine immediately.
“What the hell is that?” I ask.
“There is limited reliable information. Most references are fragmented and closer to folklore than documented fact.”
“Try me.”
Camille’s gaze flicks towards Mina before returning to me. “It is described as an entity that feeds on attention, devotion, and emotional output at scale.”
A chill crawls higher along my spine.
“People do not describe seeing it,” she continues. “They describe being seen. Being noticed.”
“I saw it.” Mina’s voice is so quiet that I almost miss it.
Everyone turns towards her.
Her grip tightens around mine. “And when I did, I knew it could see me too. It wasn’t just there. It was looking right at me.”
I do not like any part of that sentence.
“It knew you could see it,” Kaia says.
Mina nods.
“Hate that,” I mutter. “Absolutely hate that.”
“It does not take energy directly,” Camille says. “It uses intermediaries. Demons, broadcast systems, contracts, warding structures. It builds channels and draws through them.”
“The Chorus,” Remy says quietly.
The name pulls me straight back to Harbor’s Edge. To the demon we thought we had ended there—the one that never felt entirely singular, even when we were fighting it.
A chorus is not one voice. It is several voices serving the same song.
Camille nods. “I do not believe that it was entirely separate from the Patron.”
I stare at her, then at the room that suddenly feels too small, too tight, and far too real. “You think it was working for it?”
“More likely through it,” Camille says. “Another intermediary. Another way for the Patron to reach into our system without appearing directly.”
“So what you’re saying,” I say slowly, my voice coming out thinner than I want, “is that this whole thing…” I gesture around us, meaning the tour, the contracts, the crowds, all of it. “It isn’t about us at all.”
No one answers.
They do not need to.
Everything clicks into place in the worst possible way.
“So the shows aren’t just drawing demons in so we can kill them and keep everyone safe,” I say slowly. “That’s what we thought, right? The music pulls the bad energy toward us, we take it out, people go home alive. Very heroic. Great branding.”
“That part is still happening,” Remy says. “It just isn’t the whole mechanism.”
I look at her. “Then give me the non-terrifying technical version.”
“There isn’t one.” She moves closer to the tablet and points to the rising tour data. “The audience gives Eon ordinary engagement: views, attention, participation. That attention generates emotional resonance. During a performance window, our contracts open a channel to it.”
She shifts to the altered musical pattern.
“The music escalates the emotion. The wards and broadcast systems collect and route the resonance. The Mouthpieces use those same pathways to enter the system and reach us.”
Mina’s fingers tighten around mine. “And the Patron?”
Remy looks at her. “It’s waiting at the other end of the channel.”
The room seems to shrink.
“So every larger crowd, every stronger reaction, every engagement record…” I say.
“Produces more emotional yield,” Remy finishes. “Eon sees successful performances. The system sees something to extract.”
I stare at the graph climbing towards the final tour date. “And when a group reaches the most it can produce?”
Remy’s expression goes flat. “The pattern ends.”
Velour Sky. Neon Saints. Glass Anthem.
Gone.
“We’re not just killing demons,” I say. “We’re collecting energy for something else.”