Axel woke before the orb pulsed.
He was lying on his side, the blanket half-fallen, Kaelin's breath steady against his chest. The light was dim, not quite dawn, but the room had lost the sterile feel it usually held. Something in the silence had shifted. Not warm. But no longer cold either.
Her arm was still over him so he still didn't move.
> Rest status: 4.3 hours.
> Neural stress: reduced.
> Registry coherence: stabilizing.
> Deviation margin: within range.
After hearing the analysis from NEX, he stared at the glyph on the wall. The one he'd drawn, of the two simbols it was composed by, the first one remained unchanged, but the second, however, now bore faint striations around its curve, like stress fractures in stone under pressure.
< Surveillance level: recalibrated.
< Partner presence: noted. Logged as 'Kaelin – Unranked'.
< Interaction flagged: non-hostile. Observation deferred.
He slipped from bed carefully, not waking her. The chill hit fast once her warmth was gone. He pulled his cloak from the wall hanger and crossed to the basin.
He splashed cold water across his face. His reflection looked back through drops, it was more alert than it had been days ago.
Behind him, Kaelin stirred. "You always this quiet in the morning?"
"Only when I'm not dead."
She sat up behind him, dragging the sheet loosely around her waist. Her hair was tousled, falling over one shoulder in uneven strands. Eyes sharp, but unguarded. "So. That wasn't a mistake, right?"
He hesitated. Not out of doubt, but because the word felt too small for what it had been.
Then: "No."
"Good," she said, standing with a stretch, her back straight despite the chill. "Because if you ever pretend it didn't happen, I'll rearrange your face."
A faint grin pulled at the corner of his mouth.
She returned it, barely. "I'm serious."
"I know."
She crossed to where her tunic had been tossed the night before. "Just so we're clear—this doesn't mean I trust you. Not yet."
Axel nodded once. "Didn't expect you to, me neither", he added with a smirk.
"But it does mean," she added, pulling the fabric over her head, "that I'll keep watching your back."
A pause.
"Even if you don't ask me to."
He turned slightly, enough to see her eyes again. They weren't teasing now.
"Likewise," he said.
Then silence again, but not the kind that needed filling.
Then, the orb flared:
< Reminder: Assignment continuation – Archive 3C.
< Supervision: Lira.
< Time: Immediate. Delay not advised.
Kaelin stood, already lacing her boots. "Guess you're still on their list."
"They want a reaction," he said. "I gave them one yesterday."
"You think they'll back off?"
"No. I think they'll press harder."
She looked at him for a long moment. "Then I'm still coming with you."
They made their way through the early corridors, the Citadel still waking. Street sweepers etched cleaning runes across tiles, traders unsealed carts, mana-torches flickered to full brightness. But eyes followed them—longer than usual.
> Pattern recognition: partial match.
> Social profile: anomalous pairing.
> Observer drift: 2.8% above baseline.
Even NEX seemed wary of it.
By the time they reached Tier 3, no Warden waited for them. Just the gate, open and humming. As if expecting him. As if routine now included him.
Inside Archive 3C, the atmosphere was colder. More technicians moved between tables, most avoiding eye contact. A few glanced at Kaelin, frowning.
Lira stood at the central desk. No medallion today—just her slate and a set of thin gloves she hadn't worn yesterday.
"You brought a guest," she said without looking up.
"She's not a guest," Axel replied.
Lira lifted her eyes.
Kaelin stepped forward and presented herself. "Kaelin. Unranked. Transcribed under Archives 7B and 2A. I know clearance protocol."
A pause. Lira considered.
Then: "She doesn't touch anything. You do."
"I wasn't going to ask," Kaelin muttered.
Lira gestured toward a table near the back. "We're running trace overlays from a Tier 1 excavation site—what's left of a ruined memory vault. Most of the glyphs are collapsed. But two layers held pattern resonance. One matches what you drew yesterday."
Axel's fingers tensed.
"We're going to try reconstruction. Safely. No system bridge activation, just passive alignment."
"And if something triggers?"
"Then we learn more," Lira said calmly. "Or someone dies. Either result's a data point."
Kaelin shot her a glare. Axel stepped closer to the slab.
> Neural Parse: ready.
> Internal glyph memory: semi-active.
> Recall probability: 74%.
He began tracing.
The pattern wasn't symmetrical. It curled inward, fighting the outer shape. Like something locked in a loop that kept fraying at the edge. As he copied, his pulse sped up.
> Glyph fragment aligned.
> Memory feedback: controlled.
> Drift threshold: 91.3% – stable.
Suddenly, the slab pulsed.
Lira stepped back, the technicians froze and Kaelin moved closer.
But the pulse didn't expand. It focused. A line of the glyph deepened, as if reacting to his presence, adjusting to his trace.
Then...
> External sync triggered.
> System response: latent.
> Echo signature: undetermined.
A projection flickered above the slab. Not text. Not a map.
It was a sigil.
But not one from this city.
It was older.
Wider than the language used here. The mark was circular, but not divine. It bore no tier, no rank. No system tag.
> Unrecognized iconography.
> Cross-referencing…
> Closest match: Rift Breach Protocol Class IV – Forbidden.
"Cut the feed," Lira barked.
But the image didn't fade.
The slab hummed, low and steady.
Then: silence.
The glyphs went dark.
Axel backed away slowly. Kaelin reached for him—but didn't touch.
Lira stepped forward, inspecting the stone with narrowed eyes.
"You didn't trigger that alone," she said quietly.
"I didn't do anything," Axel replied. "Not consciously."
She studied him. "Which makes it worse."
After they were dismissed, Kaelin stayed close as they walked back.
"You okay?" she asked.
He shook his head. "That glyph—it wasn't from here. I don't even think it's from this system."
"I noticed," she said. "It didn't have the compression markings. That means pre-Classification era, the Pre-System era."
"How do you know that?"
She didn't answer right away.
Then: "I wasn't always unranked. My family… we worked in breach suppression. Before things went bad."
"Breach suppression?"
Kaelin slowed her pace. "When a Rift opens where it shouldn't—when it pulls something through—the system doesn't always react fast enough. Some people are trained to act before full protocol is deployed. We used to trace untagged glyphs. Seal rogue fragments."
Axel frowned. "And you ended up sorting archives."
"They call it demotion," she said flatly. "I call it survival."
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
But Axel's mind was moving too fast to rest. The sigil had stirred something deep—beneath the surface of memory, beneath the system layers, beneath even NEX's masking.
That wasn't just a signal.
That night, Axel sat alone in his quarters. Kaelin had returned to her own room, sensing he needed space.
He stared at the glyphs again. Traced their arcs with his finger. Thought about the projection. The sigil that hadn't triggered alarms. Only… presence.
> Internal scan complete.
> Memory anchor detection: partial.
> Glyph classification: undefined.
> Drift pressure: increasing.
> Countermeasure suggestion: passive containment.
He opened the chalk drawer again. This time, he hesitated.
When he began to draw, he didn't copy this time, he composed.
Not from vision, but from impulse.
The result was not exactly a glyph. It was something else. A mark that didn't fit the city's language. Not even the forbidden libraries Kaelin had mentioned.
When he stepped back, even the orb dimmed slightly as if it was recognizing a contradiction.
> Unauthorized construct: present.
> Core structure: not system-derived.
> Possible origin: Other Plane.
> Recommend elimination.
But Axel didn't erase it.
Because the longer he looked at it, the more certain he became of one thing:
This wasn't something he had learned.
It wasn't anything NEX had ever hinted at.
But his body moved with a certainty that felt older than thought, it was like instinct, honed in silence.