The glyph on his wall was breathing.
Not literally. But its lines pulsed in tandem with something deep inside Cael's chest—his Spiral Dislocation twitching like a second heartbeat. The shape Vellin had scrawled into the panel above Cael's sleeping berth should've faded by now. But instead, it shimmered faintly, like oil catching fire under skin.
It hadn't been painted. It grew.
Cael sat up slowly, body sore from unreconciled motion. He hadn't dreamed. Not exactly. But his thoughts were scattered—threads arriving in the wrong order.
He'd seen a hallway. Heard the word "Return" before someone could say it.
He blinked once. Twice.
The glyph pulsed again.
[UNKNOWN GLYPH PATTERN DETECTED]
[THREAD SIGNATURE: NON-LOCAL]
[ORIGIN: OUTSIDE CIT–- //ERROR//]
[SYSTEM STABILITY: DEGRADED]
[RECOMMENDATION: OBSERVE… DO NOT TRACE.]
"Right," Cael whispered hoarsely, voice like rusted wires. "Because that always works."
He grabbed the corner of his field journal and began sketching the glyph with a dull graphite stub. His fingers moved faster than he could think—muscle memory from somewhere else, as if this was a glyph he'd practiced before. In another life. In a memory not his.
Nara stirred nearby.
She didn't speak. She never did. But when she rose and saw the glyph, her posture shifted—spine straighter, fingers tight at her sides like coiled script.
Cael caught her watching. She tilted her head slightly.
"It's not just a marker," he said. "It's… pulling."
He pressed his fingers to the wall just below the glyph.
It felt warm.
Beneath his palm, the Spiral Dislocation fluttered again, and the System glitched—
[THREAD: DRIFTING TOWARD ORIGIN POINT]
[CONVERGENCE VECTOR: ACTIVE]
[WARNING: THE GLYPH REMEMBERS.]
Nara moved closer. Without needing a prompt, she pressed her palm gently to Cael's arm.
A second later, her Fragment flickered—just once—and a mirrored version of the glyph briefly hovered in the air between them.
She nodded once.
"You feel it too," Cael said. "You don't even need to know what it means."
She didn't respond. But he understood her silence.
It was calling them.
And it wouldn't stop.
Ten minutes later, they were descending into the sub-levels of the Citadel. The lower spirals—the ones they weren't supposed to know existed. No Overseers stopped them. No System warnings intervened.
Only once did the walls react. As they passed through a long-abandoned junction stair, a containment glyph scrawled in old tongue briefly lit up with the word:
VEINLOCKED
Then it flickered and died.
he deeper they walked, the fewer glyphs obeyed.
Cael's internal map—already erratic—flickered to blank every few turns. The Spiral Veins weren't abandoned in the usual sense. They were half-erased, like someone had tried to unbuild them from memory rather than stone. Floors existed but had no weight. Stairs ended and began again a step later.
The glyph Vellin left still burned in his vision, guiding. Not forward—but inward.
Memory clung to the walls like mildew.
In one archway, Cael caught a flicker of himself as a child. Not a hallucination. Not a flashback. Just a residue, like a wet footprint on dry stone. A small version of him, wide-eyed, staring down a hallway where nothing waited.
"Don't stop," he whispered to himself.
The Spiral Dislocation pulsed again—like it was sniffing something.
Nara pressed her fingers to the wall. A glyph appeared briefly between them—slashed vertical, crooked left. Not one Cael knew.
The System twitched.
[UNRECOGNIZED SIGN CAST]
[SIGNAL: NULL PATHWAY | ECHO DEVIANT]
[INTERPRETATION: WARNING.]
And then the stairwell ahead screamed.
Not sound—force. A blast of memory erupted from the walls, seizing Cael's chest like cold breath. Shadows spilled across the stairwell. Something flailed through them.
A humanoid shape.
Bent wrong.
Moving too quickly in slow motion.
Glyphs spat from its mouth, mid-air—flashes of logic that unraveled before they could be read.
A Threadbroken Initiate.
The uniform was half-torn, stitched into flesh. A Corps badge dangled from a length of hair. The Initiate's skin flickered between states—old, young, blank.
The eyes had no irises. Just recursion spirals spinning deeper.
It leapt.
Cael moved—but wrong. His sense of moment staggered behind his body. He meant to dodge right, but his body dropped too early, then flinched left just in time to catch a glancing blow to the ribs.
Pain stuttered across his side.
The Threadbroken Initiate landed, turned without moving, and spat another glyph—a ripple of heat cut across Cael's cheek like script set aflame.
He staggered.
Time inside him cracked.
[PERCEPTION OFFSET: +0.4 SECONDS]
[THREAD DRIFT ACTIVE | COMBAT CALIBRATION: DEGRADED]
The figure screamed—but backward. A perfect reversal of a warning cry.
Nara reacted.
Her fingers moved—not a full casting, but a flicker of fragmented logic. Her Fragment triggered in a short wave. Space bent—not folded, not warped, just… skipped. The Initiate blinked across the stairwell and collapsed.
Its glyph stream severed.
It clawed at the wall for half a second, trying to resume a loop that no longer existed.
Then its body folded inward—not crushed, but reabsorbed by memory.
The dust that remained shimmered. Whispered.
Cael leaned close.
It said his name.
Backwards.
He shuddered. Nara's hand gripped his shoulder.
[UNSTABLE MEMORY FORM PURGED]
[RECURSIVE SIGNATURE: MATCHED TO SUBJECT'S THREAD]
[WARNING: RESONANCE INFECTION POSSIBLE]
He turned to Nara.
She wasn't looking at the ashes.
She was looking at him.
And the glyph still hovered over her hand—flickering once, then folding inward like a closed wound.
He said nothing.
Because he knew now:
This wasn't just a warning.
Cael dropped to one knee.
The stone was cold, yes—but it felt woven. Braided with threads he could not see, only hear. The hum resonated just beneath conscious hearing, a braid of syllables without meaning, thrumming behind the bones of his teeth.
Nara tapped his shoulder.
He looked up.
She pointed to a seam in the wall.
It hadn't been there moments ago. Or maybe it had—and their minds hadn't been shaped correctly to see it.
Together, they stepped forward.
The seam cracked wide.
No unlocking glyph. No passcode. No Overseer clearance.
Just the invitation of something buried too deep to be guarded.
What opened beyond was not a chamber.
It was a misfiled thought.
The Reverse Vault.
It resembled an archive—but its shelves were too narrow and too tall. Scrolls and data-cores floated midair. The glyphlight was ambient, emitted from no single source, and bent around their feet.
Time didn't pass inside this room. It slid.
Cael stepped in—and immediately felt his Spiral Dislocation seize. Not violently. Joyfully. Like the Fragment recognized this place as home.
The System screamed
[REVERSE SANCTION DETECTED]
[THREAD DRIFT AT 48%] [ENVIRONMENTAL LOGIC NON-COMPLIANT]
[REVERSE PATH: ACTIVE FIELD TRACE]
But Cael didn't stop.
Neither did Nara.
She walked without hesitation, fingers trailing across the floating documents.
She stopped in front of one.
A black slab. Unmarked.
She reached toward it—then recoiled.
The slab hummed once.
And showed a name.
Not hers.
His.
Cael staggered back. "That's not—"
But the glyph behind his ribs ignited.
The black slab rotated once and projected an image.
Not a memory. Not exactly.
A location.
A corridor.
One he'd never seen.
But already recognized.
Nara inhaled sharply.
Then she gestured.
Two fingers across the air. Then a twist.
A phrase in Fragment-sign, newly improvised:
"That's not a location. That's a sequence."
Cael stared at the image.
A corridor.
With six doorways.
Each one humming in different frequencies.
Each one waiting.
Cael stepped forward.
The moment his boot crossed the threshold of the projection, the air changed. Not colder—not hotter. Just aligned. Like the space had finally noticed him.
All six doorways were real now.
Stone and script. Carved into the curved wall of the vault's far edge. No handles. No hinges. Just openings—sealed not by locks, but by consent.
One of them hummed.
Low and slow. Like breath through broken reeds.
Cael felt his chest tighten.
Spiral Dislocation pulsed once beneath his ribs—and the second door on the left lit from within.
He turned to Nara.
She didn't move. Didn't follow.
Her eyes were wide, her hand resting on the containment glyph still burned into her wrist. She signed:
"Only yours."
Cael nodded.
And walked in.
The room behind the second door didn't exist.
Not in the way rooms should.
There was floor—but no weight. Light—but no source. A pressure surrounded him like deep water, but dry.
A memory pressed into him.
Not one he'd lived.
Not fully.
But familiar.
He stood on a shoreline.
The sea was gray. The sky darker. Waves rose and fell without sound.
A small figure stood beside him.
A girl.
Not Nara.
Not anyone he knew.
But her presence was unmistakable.
Iri.
She didn't look at him. Just stared out toward the silent water.
"You should've stayed gone," she said.
The voice didn't come from her mouth. It spilled from the waves. Spoken in Cael's own cadence. Like an echo sent backward in time.
"I didn't leave," Cael said, or thought he said.
"No," Iri said. "You were taken. But not by them."
She turned.
Eyes like fractured glass. Mouth stitched closed—but her words still arrived.
"You're the door," she said.
Cael shook his head. "I don't understand."
"You will," she replied. "Just before you close it."
Then she walked away—into the sea.
The sky flickered.
The shore bent sideways.
The Spiral inside Cael flared—
—and he was back.
Staggering out of the doorway, chest heaving.
The vault was silent again. The door behind him had closed.
Nara rushed to catch him as he stumbled.
He didn't speak.
Couldn't.
Not yet.
The slab that had projected the corridor had gone blank.
But the System had not.
[MEMORY EVENT: RECORDED]
[RECURSIVE INSTANCE CONFIRMED]
[SUBJECT: IRI]
[THREAD-LINK FORK ESTABLISHED]
[DOORWAY LOCKED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]
Cael's palms were wet.
Not with sweat.
With saltwater.
And far, far below the vault, something had shifted.