They didn't put Cael in a cell.
That might have been a kindness.
Instead, they gave him a room just familiar enough to feel wrong—spartan bed, one sink, a mirror too clean to belong in the Citadel. No glyphs, no prompts, no light except what leaked from a single ceiling line that hummed when he blinked too hard.
A false room. An imitation of recovery. It smelled like bleach and old ash.
Cael sat on the edge of the bed and tried to trace the rhythm of his thoughts.
They wouldn't stay in order.
He remembered walking into the Spiral Choir's chamber. He remembered Vellin's eyes blinking out of sync. He remembered a name. He remembered—
No. Not yet. That comes later.
[Thread Identity: [NULL NULL NULL]]
[SEVERANCE: INCOMPLETE]
[Do you wish to undo?]
YES
NO
The prompt had faded three hours ago. But the echo still pulsed beneath his ribs. A question asked too deeply to answer.
He didn't know what undoing meant.
He wasn't sure he hadn't already chosen it.
A knock came. Not hard. Just real—three short taps that reverberated against the frame.
He stood. Stared at the door.
Then it opened on its own.
She stepped in.
Still barefoot. Still draped in white. Her eyes carried no judgment, no fear. Just a strange, aching clarity—like she'd seen the shape of him before he was made and hadn't decided yet whether it was beautiful or broken.
The girl—the voiceless one—closed the door behind her.
They stood in silence.
Not tension. Not comfort.
Just silence.
Cael opened his mouth, tried to say something. The words reversed before they reached his tongue.
She stepped closer.
Her presence didn't press. It folded. Like standing near a reflection you almost remember.
She raised her hand.
At first he thought she was reaching for him.
But instead, her fingers traced a slow motion in the air.
A glyph appeared—glimmering, unspoken. It hovered, pulsing faintly with inner resonance. The same glyph he'd seen before. The same one etched in his memory.
But this time… it didn't vanish.
It answered.
The light flared. Letters unspooled around it—no alphabet he recognized. But the sound it made...
He inhaled sharply.
A word pressed itself to the inside of his skull.
Nara.
The glyph pulsed again.
His mouth tried to form the sound.
"N—…nah—"
He stopped. The shape fractured on his tongue. Not from difficulty. From resistance.
Because it wasn't a name he was allowed to speak.
It was one he had once forgotten.
She watched him—not in hope, not in sadness.
Just waiting.
[NEW SUBJECT REGISTERED: NARA][Origin: UNRESOLVED]
[Fragment Classification: Type Null / Choirbreaker]
[Connection Thread Detected: Initiate CAEL ↔ Subject NARA]
[Resonance Risk: Elevated]
He looked down.
His palm still bore the remnants of Spiral glyph scarring—but they were fading, replaced by something subtler. More fluid. A new shape taking root beneath his skin. He recognized part of the glyph she projected.
It matched.
She wasn't just named. She was echoed.
And somehow, so was he.
She stepped closer again.
Their shadows touched, and something in the light around them flickered.
A low hum—not from the ceiling, not from any wall.
From the System.
"Resonance point initialized."
"Cognitive loop soft-anchored."
"Stability threshold… recalculating."
Nara tilted her head slightly. Then, finally, she made a sound.
Not a word. Not a sentence.
Just a hum.
A single, low note.
The same one from the Choir.
Cael's knees nearly buckled.
Not from pain.
From recognition.
She had sung before. Not to the world.
To him.
And now he remembered.
Just a piece.
But it was enough.
He didn't sleep.
Not really.
When Cael closed his eyes, the dark didn't stay still. It fractured. Looping fragments of light danced along the inside of his skull—moments he had never lived, feelings he hadn't earned. But they clung to him like skin.
He saw a hallway of rusted glass.A girl—not Nara—running through it, laughing.He heard a lullaby in a language no one in the Corps was allowed to speak.He felt rain. And shame. And something close to being loved.
They weren't his memories.
But they nested in his thoughts like they belonged there.
By morning, he couldn't be sure which pieces of him were still original.
The System stayed quiet until he looked in the mirror.
Then it cracked.
Not the glass. The reflection.
His face flickered.
Once, for a blink, it wasn't his at all. Pale skin. A sharp jaw. Eyes too wide, as if they'd forgotten how to close. A scar that cut across his lip—something he'd never had.
But the person staring back looked afraid.
And the System spoke.
[THREAD INTEGRITY: DEGRADED]
[IDENTITY FEED INTERFERENCE: SOURCE UNKNOWN]
[SPIRAL DISLOCATION: ADVANCED STAGE]
[DO YOU WISH TO UNDO?]▸ YES▸ NO
He touched the mirror.
The reflection didn't follow.
"Undo what?" he whispered.
The System pulsed again.
[FRAGMENT INSTABILITY DETECTED]
[CONCEPTUAL BLEED IMMINENT]
[MEMORY ANCHORS RECOMMENDED]
Then came the flash.
Not light. Sound.
A sharp, crystalline tone that shouldn't have echoed—but did. It burst behind his eardrums, sending Cael stumbling back against the wall.
When the ringing faded, he wasn't in his room anymore.
Not really.
The room was still there. But overlaid across it—layered like translucent skin—was a different space entirely. A school hall, yellowed with age. Faint chalk scent in the air. Cael looked down and saw shoes that weren't his.
Children laughed in the background.
He turned.
Nara stood beside him—but younger. Or maybe not her at all. Just the shape of her, cast backward through a broken memory.
Then he looked in the mirror again.
It was a chalkboard now.
And across it, a name had been scratched:
CAEL REVER.
Then someone screamed behind his eyes.
Not out loud. Not in this room.
But in another. A real scream, echoing through corridors and time both.
He collapsed to the floor, gasping.
The illusion fractured.
The school hallway flickered away.
The mirror returned.
And the System shuddered.
[THREAD IDENTITY COLLAPSE: 87%]
[RECURSIVE ANCHORS ACTIVATING]
[REVERSE PATH TEMPTATION SPIKE DETECTED]
[OBSERVATION WARNING FLAGGED TO: Overseer VAETH]
Cael didn't move.
He sat there, breath rattling through cracked lips, watching the prompts glitch and reform.
Then a final line appeared:
[NOTE: You are beginning to confuse remembering with becoming.]