Chapter 6 : Seeds of Fear
Morning light painted Skyline City in dull gray.
Kael sat disguised on a transport headed for Sector 9, eyes glued to the flickering news screen inside.
Headlines rolled like thunder:
"WRAITH SIGHTING CAUGHT ON VIDEO"
"IS THIS SKYLINE'S NEW NIGHTMARE?"
"VIGILANTE OR MONSTER?"
"FAITH IN HEROES AT AN ALL-TIME LOW."
Anchor voices buzzed with urgency. The short, shaky footage of Wraith had already gone viral.
Only a few seconds long, the clip showed his half-white, half-black mask, glowing purple eyes, and lightning cracking through the substation. It was enough to terrify the public. The myth had a face now—and that face looked unstoppable.
Kael leaned his head back, jaw tight. The panic was spreading faster than the truth.
Even some heroes were starting to question everything.
The screen showed an interview with a mid-tier hero, dressed in red armor, eyes weary. "We're being told to step down, move to calmer zones. But the problem's not going away. It's growing. And we're being kept in the dark."
That line echoed in Kael's head.
The system is in denial.
The transport stopped. Kael stepped off into Sector 9—once home to monuments, libraries, and heroic murals. Now, it was dust, shadows, and quiet despair. Buildings were boarded up, and Trust Network drones hovered low and sluggish.
Nima met him near the entrance of the old Hero Archives.
"You're late," she said, arms crossed.
"Fake Wraith downtown," Kael replied, rubbing his shoulder. "He had a taser, purple spray paint, and zero restraint."
"Another impersonator?"
"Third one today."
*******
Earlier that morning…
Kael sprinted across a crumbling rooftop in Sector 8, cloak flaring behind him. Below, a
a panicked crowd scattered as a masked figure hurled electric shocks from modified gloves.
"Stay back!" the fake Wraith shouted. "This city belongs to fear now!"
Kael descended in a flash, landing hard. "You're not him."
The imposter aimed a shock device—but Kael flung it away with a flick of telekinesis, then slammed the thug into a wall.
"Who are you working for?"
"I—I don't know, man! I just wanted clicks!"
Kael stepped back, disgusted. Another poser. Another drop in Trust. He left the man for patrol units and flew off.
Anchor voices buzzed with urgency. Reports of masked figures claiming to be Wraith were popping up all over the city—some robbing banks, others attacking civilians, and a few just spreading chaos for the thrill of it. They wore cheap masks, faked the voice distortions, and leaned on the fear his name now commanded.
And the public was falling for it.
******
Back at the archives.....
"It's getting worse huh" Nima said grimly. "People are scared. The idea of Wraith is spreading faster than the real one ever could."
Nima sighed and gestured to the building. "Let's focus on what we are here for."
They entered the archive building—dusty, cold, forgotten. Walls once lined with portraits of past heroes now bore torn banners and cracked holo screens.
"We used to bring school kids here," Nima said softly. "Let them see what belief could do."
Now it felt like a graveyard. Ever since that incident two years ago, which shook the whole Skyline City.
Everyone knew it but never talked about it.
They walked in silence until Kael stopped in front of an old mural. It showed dozens of heroes standing united against a dark storm. Eric's was at the center.
The air was thick with dust and silence. Kael followed her past rows of cracked screens and stopped in front of a broken statue, its once proud-figure now reduced to fragments.
Underneath the statue, a faded inscription read "Er...." but the name tile was shattered, leaving the rest of the name a mystery.
Nima called Kael from behind with a serious expression interrupting his thoughts about the broken statue.
"We're not just here for research," she said. "We need to talk. HQ's orders came down this morning. No more heroes investigating into the Wraith case. You will be watched, Kael."
Kael's brow furrowed. "Why? What are they hiding?"
Nima tapped her tablet. "They're not just pulling us from low-Trust zones. They're blocking Officer access to old case files—especially the incident from two years ago."
Kael stopped walking. "They know something."
"They know enough to be scared of what we'll find," Nima said. "This isn't just about Wraith anymore. This is about the cracks in the system he's exposing. If the public sees a top hero gone rogue, the whole Faith model breaks."
Kael clenched his fists. "So instead of facing it, they're sweeping it under the rug."
"Exactly. Which is why we keep going—off the books."
Kael nodded. "Agreed. But the pressure's building. My Faith Value's still dropping. People think I'm part of the cover-up."
Nima looked up. "Then you just have to show them something real. A reason to believe again."
******
They reached the central vault. Nima tapped into the old system, eyes scanning the
still-functioning archives. She pulled up data logs from a month ago.
"Someone accessed restricted records here. Not long before the first disappearance."
Kael stepped closer. "Can we trace what they looked at?"
"Trying—wait." She paused. "Security footage was deleted, even the history of access. Let me try connecting with my datapad."
"Look, the energy signature from the access point... it's similar to what we picked up at the substation."
Kael exhaled slowly. "It was him."
"He came here for something," she said. "Information, maybe. Something about the system."
Kael clenched his fists. "He's not just fighting heroes. He's to dismantle the past—piece by piece."
They left the archives hours later, minds heavy. As they stepped into the cool evening air, Kael glanced at Nima.
"We need to meet like this more often," he said. "Off the grid. Every night if we have to. To share anything we find—before the panic drowns us and HQ must not know."
Nima nodded. "Agreed. Same time tomorrow?"
Kael smiled faintly. "Yeah."
As the sun set, the city's tension only rose.
That night, Kael was called to two more fake Wraith incidents—one was a robbery, the other a vandalized hero memorial. In both cases, the public's fear was the same, raw and unfiltered.
And the more they feared, the weaker he felt.
That's when it hit him.
Back at HQ, he opened his Faith meter dashboard. His score was still dropping. Slowly, steadily.
And not just his—every hero's. Public confidence was eroding, and the Trust Network couldn't keep up.
But something else was rising.
The city's digital billboards began broadcasting a new headline:
"FEAR SURPASSES TRUST IN THREE DISTRICTS "
"TRUST METERS TUMBLE AS FEAR VALUE RISES"
A new line had appeared on the monitor: Fear Index.
Unlike Trust, Fear didn't need admiration. It fed on doubt, suspicion, and anxiety. The lower the faith in heroes, the higher the Fear reading climbed.
And at the top of that chart… was Wraith.
He wasn't just attacking them. He was replacing them in people's minds. A dark mirror of what a hero could be—unbound by rules, driven by purpose, feared more than any villain.
Kael shut the screen and buried his face in his hands.
He was being pulled in every direction—fighting criminals, managing panic, chasing ghosts. And every time he saved someone, three more started doubting.
How long before the crowd stopped believing altogether?
That night, just before midnight, Kael met Nima again.
They stood on a rooftop overlooking Sector 3. Below, people rushed through the streets, tense and watchful. The skyline glowed red from flashing news screens.
"Fear Value," he told her. "It's real. The system's tracking it."
Nima blinked. "I've never seen that metric before."
"Neither have I," Kael said. "But it's there. And maybe….definitely, Wraith is drawing from it. Like we draw from faith—he's powered by fear."
Nima was quiet for a long time. "Then the more afraid people become… the stronger he gets."
Kael nodded. "And the weaker we become."
They stood side by side in the cold wind, the weight of the city pressing down on them both.
Kael broke the silence. "We're not just chasing a killer. We're chasing an idea."
"And ideas," Nima said, "are harder to kill."
And far away, somewhere in the static-laced dark, Wraith watched in silence.
He wasn't afraid of being seen.
He wanted it.