06 - I'm Screaming but YOU Don't HEAR

By Dread Nocturna · Metalcore

**Week 2. The same moment as Track 5. Her side of the impossible.**

Nova senses him before she sees him.

In the Sorrow Depths, emotions create ripples across the landscape like stones thrown into still water. When Calen enters Fogreach on the Material side, she feels it—a warmth, a pull, a sudden thinning of the barrier between their worlds. Their connection acts like a compass needle, always pointing her toward where he is.

She manifests at the corresponding location in the spectral realm, watching him move through the silver fog. He's holding something—a crude device cobbled from scavenged parts. Her research notes, she realizes with a jolt of pride. He built something from her theories. He's actually trying to bridge the dimensional gap.

**"CALEN!"**

Her voice doesn't work the way it did when she was human. Sound doesn't propagate in the Sorrow Depths—not normally. Instead, her scream becomes a distortion in the fabric of the realm itself. The silver mist swirls violently. The landscape ripples. But the sound doesn't cross.

She watches his face, desperate for any sign he heard her. Nothing. He's adjusting his device, pointing it at the thickest concentration of Veil-fog, completely unaware she's standing three feet away.

Nova gathers everything she has—every memory, every moment of love, every ounce of emotional energy—and focuses it into a single point. She thinks of their first date, their wedding, the morning of the Shattering. She pours it all into her voice and projects it toward the thin point in the Veil.

**"CALEN! I'M HERE!"**

The effort is excruciating. It feels like her translucent body is being torn apart from the inside. Energy radiates from her in waves of silver light. The Sorrow Depths responds to her intensity—the ground cracks, buildings made of crystallized memory shudder, the sky fractures into more impossible angles.

And then—**he reacts.**

Calen's head snaps up. His eyes widen. His device crackles with static and something breaks through. She watches him adjust the settings frantically, and she hears her own voice emanating from the speakers, fragmentary and broken: **"Calen... here..."**

It worked. Two words. Just two words made it across the dimensional barrier. But it's enough. She can see it in his face—the shift from desperate hope to absolute certainty. He heard her. He knows she's there.

Nova tries again, forcing more energy into the projection: **"I'm still alive! Please—"**

But the words fragment. The Veil distorts them, tears them apart, scatters the syllables across frequencies human ears can't fully perceive. His device captures pieces: **"...alive... please... Calen..."**

Each word she sends costs her. She can feel herself becoming more translucent, her form flickering like a dying light. The effort of projecting across dimensions is burning through what little stability she has left. But she doesn't stop. She screams his name over and over, watches him record every fragment, sees the tears streaming down his face as he realizes what he's capturing.

**"Don't give up!"** she projects with everything she has. **"Find me!"**

The words shatter into syllables: **"Don't... up... find..."**

She watches him listen to the recording, playing it back, analyzing the waveforms. He's nodding, talking to himself, confirming what he's hearing. He knows. After two weeks of everyone telling him she's dead, he has proof—scientific, measurable, undeniable proof—that she's alive and trying to reach him.

Nova collapses to her knees—or what passes for knees in this realm. Her body flickers, barely maintaining coherence. That much projection has drained her catastrophically. She can feel the Sorrow Depths trying to reclaim her energy, to dissolve her into the ambient emotional landscape.

But it was worth it.

Through the Veil, she watches Calen clutch his device to his chest like it's the most precious thing in the world. Because it is. It's proof. It's hope. It's validation that his grief hasn't driven him insane.

Then she sees the Core Keeper patrol approaching through the fog—three figures in gray uniforms, demanding to see his authorization for Veil technology. They're reaching for his device. He's backing away, refusing.

**"RUN!"** Nova screams, but she has nothing left to project with. Her voice doesn't cross.

Calen seems to sense the danger anyway. He shoves the device inside his jacket and breaks into a run. The Core Keepers chase him through the ruins. Nova follows in the Sorrow Depths, her translucent form barely holding together, watching helplessly as he vaults over collapsed walls and ducks through narrow passages.

He escapes. Disappears into the warren of buildings with his evidence intact.

Nova lets herself collapse fully, lying on the ground that isn't quite ground, staring up at the fractured sky. Her body is flickering badly now, fading in and out of visibility. Above her, the Luminarch's massive eye opens, studying her with cold fascination.

*INTERESTING. SUCH EXPENDITURE FOR MINIMAL COMMUNICATION. IRRATIONAL.*

"Shut up," Nova whispers to the cosmic entity. "You wouldn't understand."

*EXPLAIN WHY YOU PERSIST WHEN DISSOLUTION WOULD END SUFFERING.*

"Because he heard me," she says. "Two words made it through. He knows I'm alive. That's worth everything."

The Luminarch's attention intensifies, probing her consciousness, trying to understand the mathematics of love—why a rational being would choose pain over peace, struggle over surrender, all for the sake of connection to another individual.

It finds no logical answer. Love isn't logical.

Nova lies in the silver mist for hours—or what passes for hours in a realm without consistent time—gathering what's left of her energy. Slowly, painfully, her form stabilizes. The Luminarch continues its observation, recording data, measuring the incomprehensible.

Finally, Nova forces herself to stand. Her body is more transparent than before. She can see straight through her torso now. More memories are fragmented—she can't remember her mother's face anymore, can't recall what her childhood home looked like. The projection effort burned through non-essential memories, consuming them as fuel.

But she remembers Calen. She remembers his voice, his face, the way he looked at her. The core remains intact.

She makes her way back to the apartment that manifests in the Sorrow Depths whenever she thinks of home. It's becoming a permanent structure here—her emotional attachment is so strong that it's carved into the realm itself. She can retreat there, rest, gather strength.

In the apartment made of crystallized memories, Nova sits on the bed that isn't quite a bed and listens to the silence that isn't quite silence. Through the thin point in the Veil, she can sense Calen back in his workshop, playing the recording over and over, analyzing it with the underground Veil technicians who've confirmed what he already knew.

She smiles—or tries to, her translucent face struggling with the expression.

They communicated. Barely, fragmentarily, at tremendous cost. But they did it.

If her voice can cross, then maybe—just maybe—he can too.

**"I'm here, Calen,"** she whispers to the empty apartment, knowing he can't hear her now, the distance too great and her energy too depleted. **"I'm still here. And I heard you say you're coming. So I'll hold on. I'll fight to stay myself long enough for you to reach me. However long it takes."**

The Sorrow Depths breathes around her, neither comforting nor hostile, simply present—a realm of emotion where she exists as barely-coherent consciousness held together by love alone.

Outside, the Luminarch continues its eternal watch.

And somewhere across the dimensional divide, Calen is making plans to descend into the Undergrave.

The echoes have become proof. Hope has become certainty. Now the real journey begins.

---

**GENRE:** Atmospheric Melodic Metal

**PERSPECTIVE:** Nova (Veilside)

**MOOD:** Desperate effort, exhausting struggle, bittersweet success

**THEMES:** Communication across impossible distance, cost of connection, love as fuel

*"I'M SCREAMING BUT YOU DON'T HEAR ME. BUT NOW YOU KNOW I'M FIGHTING TO THE END."*

About Metalcore

A modern fusion of metallic riffing with hardcore punk intensity, featuring breakdowns, screamed/clean vocal dynamics, and technical rhythms popular in contemporary metal. Bands include: Killswitch Engage, Architects, Trivium

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