Epilogue: Frequency Unknown (End)

The hum of the radio filled the empty studio late at night. Outside, the city lay quiet beneath a blanket of clouds, its streets slipping into a sleep that felt almost eternal. Inside, the host sat alone, her voice calm and steady as she navigated the night’s broadcast.

"Midnight's rolling in," the host announced, her voice low and even with practiced calm. "You’re tuned into Frequency Unknown, the place where the unexplained finds a home, where urban myths take shape, and where whispers of the impossible echo in the dark."

A stack of old papers rustled beside her. Creased printouts of forum posts, urban legends, and sightings that never made the news.

"Tonight," she continued, tapping one finger lightly against a worn photo pinned to the wall. It was a feather, stark against a dark starry sky. "The Children of the Sky. You've heard the stories. People with wings. Strange dreams that don't belong to you."

Her eyes flicked to the studio window, where the moonlight tried to pierce the thick clouds. She smiled faintly. "I don’t know if I believe the stories, but there’s something about them that feels like an echo of a forgotten truth," she confessed.

Callers trickled in. One shared a vivid dream of flying. The wind sharp against their face, the sky endless, the ground far below. Another spoke, voice hushed with awe, of seeing two figures silhouetted against the clouds, flying with strange wings.

The same scattered puzzle pieces she had heard a hundred times before. And yet they resonated like nostalgic memories clawing at the back of her mind.

The show pressed on. Then came the static.

It slipped in quietly at first. A soft hiss beneath the words. A faint hum that set her pulse stumbling. Her screen flickered. The audio wavered. A sound broke through.

Through the static emerged a voice. Cold, mechanical, and warped beyond recognition. Not a human voice but a whisper of something digital and alive within the frequency.

"... memory layers restored," the faint, crackling voice declared, warped and broken like corrupted code bleeding through the frequency. "... two anomalies unaccounted," it whispered again, fragmented and layered beneath the noise, like a message that did not belong in this world.

Then silence.

The static cut out. The studio's dim light hummed steady again.

She exhaled, fingers frozen on the dial.

"Technical issues," she muttered with a shaky chuckle, running a hand through her gray hair. "Guess even the airwaves believe in ghosts tonight."

The clouds outside thinned, just for a heartbeat, the moonlight pushing through in faint silver streaks. Her eyes lifted, narrowing with quiet curiosity.

High above, a single feather drifted upward. It caught the moonlight as it floated higher, delicate and weightless, barely visible as it slipped through the dark sky. It rose past the rooftops, past the antennae and wires, carried on a current that should not exist, until it vanished into the clouds.

"Stay curious out there," she told her listeners, voice quiet but steady. "You never know what's real."