The Citadel's upper deliberation chamber was carved from reinforced obsidian logic-stone—black, heatless, and thought-proof. Glyphlines ran underfoot, forming a lattice that only illuminated when the Overseers took their seats.
Today, they all glowed.
Seven Overseers, seated in silence.
One chair remained empty.
Overseer Vaeth Ocran had not arrived. But his presence lingered anyway—etched into the center stone in an echo-loop that shimmered like frost. The rest did not comment on his absence. Only Corra Venn, standing at the far end, held the floor.
Her voice, calm and sharp as ever, cut through the hum:
"They should be separated. Monitored. If need be—extracted from the thread entirely."
One Overseer—tall, lean, with skin cracked like dry script and eyes clouded with memory—raised a hand. Nel, keeper of the Mnemos Vaults. Voice of the God of Memory.
"Containment is no longer viable," she said, eyes half-shut. "The girl's resonance is recursive. The boy's Spiral drift is compounding. If either of them crosses another echo point…"
She let it trail off. Everyone understood.
Reverse resonance breaches weren't theoretical anymore.
Corra's jaw flexed.
"Termination is inefficient. We've culled instability before and lost insights we couldn't afford. These two are navigable."
A snort from Overseer Elreth, from the Obedience Court.
"'Navigable,' Corra? One of them tore open a Choir and destabilized a sealed Sanctum. The other keeps misremembering walls into places they never were. What exactly are we navigating toward?"
The chamber dimmed for a moment. Not visually—psychically. The System had blinked in, listening.
Then:
[DIRECTIVE RECEIVED – VAETH OCRAN / HIGH OVERSEER]
[REVIEW FINDINGS:]
Subject Cael: Instability: rising. Thread drift approaching collapse.
Subject Nara: Classification: Choirbreaker. Origin: Redacted. Combined resonance: Unstable, but aligned.
[VAETH'S ADDENDUM – RECORDED IN ABSENTIA:]
"They were not chosen by error. They were not severed by chance. The Gate opens in reverse. And only the broken may return intact."
A long pause.
The chamber held its breath.
Overseer Nel finally said, "If he means to send them through again…"
"He does," said Corra.
"But where?" Nel asked. "Which gate?"
That was when the final glyph activated.
Not from the System.
From the lattice itself.
A location. Ancient. Unvisited. Buried.
Its name translated loosely as:
"The Weeping Segment."
None of the Overseers spoke.
The System responded instead:
[MISSION PARAMETERS BEING ASSEMBLED]
[THREAD TEST DEPLOYMENT: APPROVED]
[ASSETS: SUBJECTS CAEL + NARA]
[RETURN NOT GUARANTEED]
--------------------------------------------------
They went down far enough that the Citadel stopped pretending to be stone.
The steps turned slick and pale, like ribs. The handrails were old chain, cold with a taste like old blood. Every fifty paces a weak glyph flickered on the wall, trying to light, failing, trying again. It wasn't a corridor; it was a throat that had forgotten how to swallow.
Cael's Spiral Dislocation kept time for him—badly. Three steady pulses, then a skip like a missed heartbeat. He counted anyway. If he didn't count, the numbers counted him.
[THREAD DRIFT: 49%]
[ENVIRONMENT TAG: INFRAVAULT BASIN]
[ANCHOR TRACE: PROXIMAL]
Nara walked a half-step behind. Barefoot again; she moved like the floor owed her silence. When the chain sang under Cael's palm, she pressed two fingers to the links and the sound cut out, as if the metal remembered it shouldn't speak near her. The containment mark on her wrist flared once, then dimmed. She didn't glance at it.
"Almost there," Cael said. The words came out in the wrong order in his head and rearranged halfway to his mouth. "Almost… there."
They reached the basin.
A bowl carved into the world, under the Citadel and under that. Wide enough to hold a cathedral. The ceiling was a low curve studded with dead lamps. At the center: the Anchor.
It didn't glow. It didn't move. It just existed with the kind of certainty that made the rest of the room seem like a rumor. A hollow heart the size of a man. Fossil-dark. Its surface was cut with spirals and half-written names that never finished the last letter. Looking at it made Cael feel like he'd forgotten how to blink.
The Spiral under his ribs answered like a dog that had heard its name.
[ANCHOR RESONANCE: 7%]
[IDENTITY OVERLAP: MINOR]
[CAUTION: APPROACH SLOWLY]
He did not approach slowly.
The first step took itself. The second was a stumble. By the third his breath had gone thin and sharp. The Anchor didn't pull as much as he fell toward it. Gravity had been replaced with intent.
He passed a ring of old machines—broken frames with glyph-burn scars where screens used to be, racks for tools that weren't here anymore. A low basin at knee height held ash like black snow. He could smell it. Not like a fire. Like a burned-out thought.
Nara didn't cross the ring. She stopped at its edge and lifted a hand, palm open. Not a warning. An offer: If you turn back, I will make the room help you.
He didn't turn.
His hand rose. He didn't remember telling it to. The Anchor stayed still. The room didn't breathe. Cael's palm neared the fossil heart until the hair on his arm buzzed with static that wasn't static.
The System choked and came back weak.
[REVERSE CONTACT PENDING]
[SEQUENCE CHECK… FAILED]
[CAUSAL GUARDRAIL: N/A][ANCHOR SYNC: 11%]
"Don't," he meant to say out loud to himself. It came out as a dry laugh.
He touched it.
The world peeled.
Not the way a scab comes up. The way a page tears backward off a book.
The basin was there and not. The lights above were dark and bleeding. The ribs of the corridor folded inward. He was small. He was taller. His knees hurt from a fall he hadn't had yet. He stood in a room with a window made of old glass. Rain hit it in long ropes. A hand he knew and didn't know traced circles in fog on the pane.
A voice hummed a tune. No words. A shape of sound like a knot. He knew it. He did not. His teeth hurt like he'd bitten ice.
He tried to pull his hand back and found there wasn't a hand. There was only the idea of having reached. The Anchor held the idea and refused to return it.
[MEMORY ECHO OVERLAP: SUBJECT/VARIANT]
[LOCK STATUS: SOFT]
[IF YOU CONTINUE: RETURN PATH UNCERTAIN]
He saw himself in the window. Younger. Before the Citadel cut him to fit. Eyes wider. No Spiral scar. A mouth shaped around a name he could taste but couldn't own.
"Iri," the younger him said.
It was Cael's voice. Just… before.
He didn't want this.
He wanted it so badly he could feel his bones move toward it.
Nara's fingers brushed his wrist. Not pulling. Anchoring. Her Fragment breathed around her hand, a pale ring of un-sound that made his ears pop and the anchors of the room snap back into place. The fossil heart's surface cooled under his palm by a single degree. He could tell. His skin had become a measuring tool.
She pointed to herself. To him. To the ash basin. Then she tapped the ring of machines twice—her sign for danger you cannot meet with speed.
"I know," he whispered.
He didn't. But he knew she needed him to know.
The Anchor changed the room without moving. The lamps above them were now sparking with dull glow, then they weren't. The ash climbed the sides of the basin like slow water, then settled. The ribs of the corridor realigned, then tilted again. In one of the broken screens he saw a reflection of himself wearing a robe he had never owned. The collar bore a glyph for Authority. His mouth in the reflection was saying something he couldn't hear. He was smiling the way you smile when your teeth are not your own.
The System tried again. It was tired.
[REVERSE PATH INTERFACE: ACTIVE]
[HOST: CAEL][CONSENT: IMPLIED]
[YOU WERE NOT BUILT. YOU WERE CALLED.]
He flinched. That last line wasn't the System. It was written in the prompt like a note the room had forced into the code.
He pushed away from the Anchor and failed. Nara's grip tightened. Her Fragment expanded enough to make the air ripple—no heat, no sound, just a held moment. For a heartbeat the basin stopped fraying. The fossil heart's cuts looked like cuts again instead of doors.
"You can't keep me out," he told the Anchor. Saying it out loud helped. The room heard the noise and had to assign it a place in time. "Not like this."
The Anchor didn't answer. Anchors didn't talk. The memory around it did.
Something brushed his cheek. Not a hand. A childhood. He saw a cradle, wood stained dark. A mobile hung above it made from old bone rings. Someone was singing the wrong way around, starting on the last note and climbing back to the first.
A line of pain ran down his spine. Not injury. A mark being drawn into skin that had been waiting for it.
Nara stepped closer, boots crossing the ring. This time her bare feet touched the ash and left no print. Her containment mark flared again, brighter, and cracked. She didn't look at it. She put her palm over Cael's and pressed his hand harder into the Anchor.
He looked at her, startled.
Her eyes said: If you're going to touch it, then touch it like you mean to survive it.
The Spiral under his ribs kicked once. His breath broke and reformed. He pushed.
[ANCHOR SYNC: 15%]
[IDENTITY OVERLAP: MODERATE]
[RECOMMENDATION: RITUAL BURIAL REQUIRED FOR SAFE EXIT]
"Burial," he said. "Of what?"
The Anchor gave him an answer that wasn't words. A shape of leaving.
The ash basin. The ring of machines. The heart. A small boy at a window. The rain. The name. All of it laid out like pieces that could be put away if you knew where they belonged. He didn't. He knew enough to know he didn't.
He wrenched his hand free. This time it came loose. Nara's ring of held time collapsed with a soft thump he felt in his teeth. The fossil heart stayed still. The basin's ash settled.
He staggered back two steps and almost fell. Nara caught his elbow. Her hand shook once and then was steady.
[CONTACT ENDED]
[ANCHOR TRACE: ACTIVE]
[SYNC RESIDUE IN HOST: PRESENT]
[NOTE: YOU CANNOT FORGET WHAT YOU NEVER CHOSE.]
He laughed again. It sounded like someone else trying on his laugh to see if it fit.
"Nara," he said, and stopped. She tilted her head.
"We're not leaving," he said, the decision arriving before the reasons. "Not yet."
Her mouth didn't move. Her shoulders did, a small nod like a door closing softly.
He turned to the ash basin. It was black as old night, but it wasn't empty. Bits of bone-thread. Thin flakes that looked like burned paper but felt like dried skin. He reached in. It was cold. His fingertips came up dusted gray. The dust blew off without wind and drifted to the fossil heart, clinging in a thin ring at its base like it had been waiting.
He felt the moment settle into him like a seed.
Whatever happened next, this part would not come loose.
He had touched the Anchor. The Anchor had touched back.
Irreversible.
[ANCHOR RESONANCE: PERSISTENT]
[SYNC WINDOW: OPEN]
[RETURN COST: UNDISCLOSED]
Nara stepped away from him and walked the circle once, slow, stopping where the old machines were scuffed deepest. She crouched and pressed her ear to the floor. After a breath, she tapped twice—her sign for hollow underneath.
Cael nodded. "There's a way to put it down," he said, less to her than to the room. "I just don't know what I'm burying."
The Anchor did not disagree.
He wiped ash from his fingers onto his robe. It left a mark that didn't smear. A thin spiral. Not the one the Corps taught. Older. Meaner.
He felt strangely calm. Not safe. Not sane. Just… lined up with something that had always been following him.
He looked at Nara. "Stay with me."
She was already staying.
The basin's air trembled, a faint hum rising from below the floor, like a voice behind a wall asking to be let out only so it could remind you that it never left.
Cael breathed in. Out.
Then he stepped into the ash.