The Codex had stopped flipping pages.
But the glyph that remained open on its spread shimmered like a question she hadn't earned the right to ask.
Hina stared at it.
Not drawn. Not inked.
The symbol was embedded in the page like a scar in metal — swirling silver threads spiraling into a shape that looked half-sigil, half-fingerprint.
"This is the next spell," she whispered.
"No," Veyrun said, eyes locked on it. "It's not a spell."
He knelt beside her and touched the page with a single finger.
The glyph shivered.
The cave went silent.
And her mind split open.
It wasn't painful.
Just dislocating.
Like waking up inside two bodies.
Like remembering a dream someone else had through your own eyes.
Suddenly, she was standing in a stone arena — vast, circular, humming with pressure. No crowd. No noise. Just wind slicing between half-destroyed pillars. At the center of the arena, a boy stood alone.
Tall.
Grim.
Holding a spellbook.
Brago.
But his eyes weren't fierce.
They were afraid.
Across from him knelt another Momodo — silver-skinned, hair like white silk, no book in sight.
His voice echoed across the empty field:
"I'm not going to fight you, Brago."
Brago's grip on the book tightened.
"You don't get to choose."
"Neither do you," the silver Momodo said.
"I have spells."
"Yes. But not choice."
Brago bared his teeth. "You think I want this?"
"No. But you think you're meant for it."
He stepped forward, hands raised.
"I was meant too."
"And then I closed my own book."
Hina gasped.
The vision shifted again — and now she saw it:
The silver Momodo standing before a group of elders, his spellbook held open in front of him.
No fear. Just clarity.
"I choose no spell," he said.
"I disarm."
And then — he placed his hand on the book, spoke a glyph that no one else heard, and the book folded in on itself and vanished into smoke.
The elders screamed.
The sky flickered.
A page in the Sigil Tree blackened instantly — not burned, not erased.
Withdrawn.
Hina collapsed to her knees.
The glyph still glowed in the Codex.
Veyrun watched her, calm. Measured.
"You saw it."
"I felt it. His book… unwrote itself."
"His name was Kivar. The first to disarm."
"And Brago… saw that."
"Brago was supposed to erase him. But instead… he remembered him."
"So the system rewrote Brago."
Veyrun nodded.
"You think he still remembers?"
"Not consciously. But the glyph pattern is buried in his book's root string."
"Can we reach him?"
"No."
He looked down at the Codex.
"But it can."
Suddenly — the glyph on the page activated.
No light. No sound.
Just a sudden mirrored pulse — like something inside the Codex had reflected across a great distance.
At that same moment…
—
🜃 Somewhere Else
Brago jolted awake.
He wasn't sleeping.
He wasn't injured.
He was in the middle of a battle — a glyph clash mid-air — his book glowing, energy arcing from his fingertips.
But suddenly, the spell halted.
Mid-cast. Mid-glyph.
"Brago!" Kiyo shouted from the edge of the hill. "What are you doing?!"
Brago stared at his hand.
A symbol had formed on his palm.
Not from the book.
Not from the chant.
From somewhere else.
He clenched his fist.
"I… know this symbol."
Kiyo rushed to his side. "Are you glitching?"
"No."
He turned to look at the boy they were fighting — a red-haired Momodo with electricity crackling around him, now frozen in place.
"He reminds me of someone."
"We've never seen him before."
"Not him. Someone… like him."
He didn't finish the spell.
The spellbook didn't respond.
It was waiting.
Listening.
For something else.
—
🜄 Back in the Cave
Hina stared at her palm.
The same symbol Brago saw was now pulsing just beneath her skin — not etched, not burned — embedded like code in a living process.
"The Codex connected us."
"Spell two," Veyrun whispered.
"Auren'Sil."
"What does it do?"
"It mirrors memory across glyphroots."
"You mean…"
"It lets someone see what they forgot… if they're still capable of remembering."
She felt it in her spine.
Like a tuning fork struck inside her bloodstream.
The Codex was building a network — not just between her and Veyrun.
Not just to breach the Sigil Tree.
But to unhide truth in the hearts of all those who were rewritten.
"You said Kivar disarmed himself," she said softly.
"Yes."
"What happened to him?"
Veyrun's voice darkened.
"They turned him into an Agent."
"What?!"
"They couldn't erase him. His root was too old. So they repurposed his glyphs into a shell — logic armor. No memory. No name."
"Is he the one who—"
"The cube in the sky? No."
He closed his eyes.
"He hasn't been sent yet."
Outside, the light dimmed.
Far above — in the Sigil Tree — the silver leaf split again.
A third offshoot began forming, twitching erratically.
Glitching into the shape of an old glyph signature — buried in archives, flagged as corrupted.
It read:
K-I-V-A-R
The Sigil Tree faltered.
The branches retracted slightly.
It didn't know what to do with this memory.
This wasn't recursion anymore.
This was propagation.
Inside the cave, the Codex closed on its own.
No glow. No sound.
Just… stillness.
Hina looked at Veyrun.
"This is bigger than the king's game."
"Yes."
"Bigger than books and battles."
"It always was."
He turned his back to her, staring at the mouth of the cave.
"The Codex doesn't want to destroy the system."
"What does it want?"
He looked over his shoulder.
Eyes burning with gentle certainty.
"It wants to give them a choice."
Somewhere in the deep memory bedrock of the realm…
A statue cracked.
Not in reality. In record.
The Sigil Tree's most protected statue — the original glyph of the First King, long thought unbreachable.
A thin line split down its center.
And from within…
A glow.
Faint.
And growing.