The silence that followed was violent. The neon lights of Sector 7 snapped back into focus, harsh and unforgiving. Kael sat shivering, his neuro-deck smoking. The bar was empty now, the "Slowed Reverb" crowd having drifted off into their own private voids.
Then, he heard it. Beneath the layer of distorted bass and artificial hiss, there was a second melody. It wasn't part of the track. It was a response. The Connection Hazy Cosmos Slowed Reverb
As the music slowed to a crawl, the walls of the bar seemed to melt. This was the "Hazy" effect. The patrons around him weren't just people; they were silhouettes of light, moving in stuttering frames. Kael closed his eyes, and suddenly he wasn't in a bar. He was drifting through the Pillars of Creation, the reverb acting like a physical current, pushing him deeper into the celestial soup. The silence that followed was violent