The One They Feared Would Remember
The summons didn't come with a knock.
Just a glyph-slip left beneath his pillow—its paper laced in violet threading, pulsing softly against the stillness of the dorm room.
No wax. No title.
Just a single note:
"Audience requested. High chamber. Come alone."
Zephryn folded the slip and didn't wake the others.
Not Kaelen. Not Yolti.
Not even Selka—though he knew she heard him leave.
She always did.
The walk to the inner citadel felt longer than usual.
Not because of the distance.
Because of what waited at the end of it.
He moved past Veil-touched doors, through corridors polished in silence. Pulse-threaded veins glowed faint along the walls, tracing power lines fed directly from the kingdom's memory grid.
He stepped through two archways—no guards, no escorts.
Only the air changed.
He was inside.
The king's vault wasn't a throne room.
It was built low, dark, and circular—walls carved from deepcore obsidian, etched with glyphline inscriptions in a language Doctrine had long since banned from public reading.
And in the center sat King Vaelen Tiramis.
No crown.
No armor.
Just a layered robe woven with unlit harmonic thread—and a pair of eyes that had forgotten how to look kindly.
"Zephryn," he said.
His voice wasn't soft.
It was careful.
"You shouldn't be alive."
Zephryn said nothing.
"You know why I summoned you?"
Still nothing.
Vaelen leaned forward.
"Because the Choir knows. Your scan hum wasn't hidden. The glyph it revealed was… familiar. But not from any registry."
"So you've seen it before," Zephryn said.
"I've seen it once. Years ago. Before your mother vanished. Before the Fracture walls began humming in their sleep."
The room went quiet.
Not out of fear.
But reverence.
Because the moment her name neared the air, the fire remembered.
Vaelen stepped to a sealed console at the far end of the chamber and pressed his hand to the node.
A glyphlight circle spiraled open—revealing a crystal envelope laced in dormant resonance.
He returned and held it out.
"Inside is a Lyceum reaccess key. Your schedule. Celestols. A sealed frequency stamp."
He didn't hand it over immediately.
"And a phrase."
Zephryn narrowed his eyes. "From you?"
"From her."
A beat passed.
"I never opened it. I wasn't supposed to. Just keep it sealed until your glyph sings."
Zephryn took it.
Vaelen stepped back.
And as he returned to the center of the circle, he muttered just loud enough for the flame to hear:
"I hope the Choir doesn't get sound of this."