Overseer Malrec did not kneel.
Not before gods.
Not before Archons.
Not even before the Rift.
His reverence was ink and pattern, order and reaction — not faith. Control.
The Scriptorium was buried in silence, carved beneath Blackstone's oldest bones. A cathedral of forgotten glyphs and bloodless scrolls. Dust floated like breath suspended in timeless air. Every corner of the chamber pulsed with quiet dread — runes older than empires etched into obsidian that had once been molten under a dying sun.
Here, magic did not sing.
It suffocated.
Malrec stood still before a sphere of floating projection — a writhing silhouette bathed in violet pulses.
Subject Eighty-Eight.
No longer just a slave. No longer just a mistake.
The Riftborn.
Heart rate.
Breath rate.
Shadow drift.
Everything was charted, tagged, and monitored. Every anomaly was a prayer in numbers.
Unraveler Vehris stepped into the light, robes of dusksteel whispering secrets as she moved. Moonstone lenses hid her gaze, but her tone was iron.
"He's accelerating."
Malrec tilted his head. "The mark wakes early."
"It shouldn't. Not without intent. Not without… permission."
"He is not feeding it," Malrec murmured, turning the floating glyph with a flick of his fingers. "It is feeding itself. Through him. A passive tether. Fascinating."
Vehris frowned. "That makes him unstable."
"That makes him... divine," he said, and smiled — thin, brittle, sharp.
A nearby glyphplate projected flickering red text. Void Manifestation Protocol – Revision VII
Symptoms:
— Entropy distortion [✓]
— Shadow inversion [✓]
— Residual aether collapse [✓]
— Mental fracture [–]
— Phase-scream event [–]
"Three markers now," Vehris muttered. "He ticks a fourth, we won't be able to hide it from the Circle."
Malrec didn't look away. "Bring me the beastkin."
Vehris blinked. "Kaia?"
"She feels the Rift. Ancestral sensitivity. Frostfang blood sings through old world threads. She sees more than we do. I want to know what her eyes show when she looks at him."
"And if she refuses?"
"Then we bleed her slowly."
His voice didn't change. Not once.
Vehris hesitated. "And when the Order learn what we've done here—what they've summoned."
Malrec smiled again.
"Then let them come."
He waved the sphere away.
"And let them pray it's still him they're facing."
Scene Shift: Isolation Below
There was no light. No warmth. No time.
He sat still in the cold — chains loose around his wrists, as though even they had grown wary of him. The only illumination came from the crystal above, pulsing once every few heartbeats in rhythm with the mark burned across his chest.
It hadn't spoken since yesterday.
But it didn't need to.
It watched.
And he felt it.
His knees ached.
His breath fogged the still air.
He should be starving. Fading.
But instead…
He felt full.
Heavy.
Like something had curled inside him and decided to wait.
He shut his eyes.
Then —
"Rei."
He flinched. Eyes snapping open.
That voice. Not the Void. Not the whisper of hunger.
A memory. A tone. Familiar. Cold. Feminine.
His mouth went dry. "Who's there…?"
Nothing.
But the cell had shifted.
The shadows bent toward him. Not away.
He reached — not with his hands, but with will.
The mark pulsed.
Once.
Then:
Glass.
A field of shattered stars.
A girl's face — not Kaia, but someone older, colder. A warrior.
A frost-cloaked voice whispering through memory:
"You were never supposed to wake here, Riftborn. But now that you have… everything changes."
He gasped.
The vision broke.
And above him, for just one second, the glyphs carved into the cell wall rearranged themselves.
A new sigil.
Violet.
Fanged.
It crawled across the wall like a scar that had always been there.
It wasn't from this world.
It wasn't for this world.
And somehow…
It was his.