"Sometimes silence isn't emptiness—it's something waiting to wake."
The next day, I wasn't summoned.
No punishments. No questions. No one spoke to me about what happened at the Hall of Ancestry.
It was as if the Soul-Stone had never reacted.
But I noticed the way servants paused longer when passing me.
The way my sisters whispered a bit too softly when I entered a room.
The way guards started shifting their eyes toward me more often—carefully, but unmistakably.
> "Nothing happened," I told myself.
But something had.
That night, I snuck into the hidden stairwell above the eastern balcony. I had done it many times before—my sisters had shown me where to step without creaking the wood.
I crouched in the shadows, listening.
Below me sat five figures—our father's wives.
All of them.
Mother, of course. Rynella, calm and patient.
Then Lady Marthesia, face rigid.
Lady Velasha, who often negotiated trade routes.
Lady Rhoen, sharp and analytic.
Lady Synna, with her strong arms crossed, always ready to fight anything—except a child.
They spoke in hushed tones, but the echoes carried upward like wind through a flute.
> "It's not just the stone," Rhoen said. "The glyphs recorded something… alien."
> "Not system-compatible," murmured Velasha.
> "Void-colored light. A type only recorded during celestial convergence anomalies."
I didn't know what that meant.
But they were talking about me.
> "It doesn't matter," Marthesia cut in. "He's a non-classed child. Weak. That kind of anomaly should not be nurtured."
> "But it wasn't a System fluctuation," Rynella said quietly. "It called to him. Something ancient... maybe older than the system itself."
Silence.
Then Synna whispered, "What if he wasn't rejected by the system? What if the system feared what's inside him?"
Even the wind outside seemed to freeze.
I didn't move. I didn't breathe.
But something inside me… stirred.
That night, I dreamt of stars.
But they weren't still. They moved, like eyes.
Watching me.
And for the first time, the system orb above my bed blinked. Once. Then vanished.