Overseer Malrec did not kneel. Not before gods. Not before Archons. Not even before the Rift. Reverence for him was ink and pattern, reaction and control — never faith.
The Scriptorium below Blackstone breathed dust and death. Carved from the Keep's deepest foundations, it pulsed like the heart of a god long dead, veins of obsidian and glyphlight coiling through the walls. Pale violet lines shimmered faintly, not illuminating, merely existing — the memory of power trapped in stone. Every rune here was patient, every seal a warning. Even breath had weight; even a word spoken too loudly could fracture the space like glass under hammer.
Malrec stood motionless before a floating sphere of projection, its surface alive with radiant threads of violet and white. Within it, a silhouette twisted — and there he was. Subject Eighty-Eight. No longer slave, no longer error, no longer even man.
The Riftborn.
Heart rate. Breath. Shadow tremors. Aether static. All observed. Catalogued. Recorded.
Each pulse of data became scripture. Each anomaly a hymn in numbers.
Unraveler Vehris stepped through the silence, robes of dusksteel whispering along the stone like fog brushing cliffs. Her moonstone lenses reflected nothing, yet her voice cut sharper than flint.
"He's accelerating," she said.
Malrec inclined his head by infinitesimal degrees. "The mark wakes early."
"It shouldn't. Not without consent. Not without…" She hesitated, the air taut around her like drawn silk. "…permission."
"He is not feeding it," Malrec murmured, fingers dancing over the sphere. It rotated like a planet in slow orbit, tendrils of light pulling along ghostly arcs of flesh and shadow. "…It feeds through him. Passively. As if he were…" He smiled, a blade-thin curve, cold. "…a gate left ajar."
"That makes him unstable," Vehris said, frown taut with apprehension.
"That makes him divine," Malrec replied.
Her eyes narrowed. "Three indicators already. Entropy shift. Residual collapse. Inverted shadow. One more… and the Order will notice. We cannot hide him."
Malrec did not move his gaze. "Then let them see. Let them gather and whisper. I'll give them a name worth fearing again."
A glyphplate glowed to life at his gesture. VOID MANIFESTATION PROTOCOL — REVISION VII.
Symptoms:
— Entropy distortion [✓]
— Shadow inversion [✓]
— Residual aether collapse [✓]
— Mental fracture [–]
— Phase-scream event [–]
Vehris whispered, almost to herself, "He's close."
Malrec turned from the sphere, voice smooth as molten glass. "Bring me the beastkin."
Vehris's brow lifted. "Kaia?"
"She feels the Rift. The blood in her veins sings in harmony with what lies beneath. She sees what others miss. I want to know what her eyes reveal… when she looks at him."
"She won't come willingly," Vehris said.
"Then bring her anyway."
Vehris's hesitation was a knife-edge.
"And if she resists?"
Malrec's gaze finally found her, and his words cut porcelain clean. "Then bleed her. Slowly."
Kaia sat still. Chains had long since stopped burning. Hunger ebbed and flowed like a tide she had learned to wait out. Stone pressed against her back, iron against her wrists. She meditated not from choice, but necessity.
Bootsteps. Heavy. Deliberate. Two guards.
The door slammed open. No summons. No warning.
She did not flinch.
"Where are you taking me?" Her voice was low, a snow-wrapped growl, the edge of predator calm.
One guard reached for her shoulder. She twisted, a fluid strike like falling ice, planting her heel behind his leg. He collapsed with a grunt, sound muffled by the stone.
The second guard was quicker, dirtier, unrefined. His punch landed low, cruel, precise, in her stomach. Breath ripped from her lungs. She hit the ground like a boulder tumbling from cliffs. Another strike landed before she could recover, and darkness claimed her.
She awoke to cold. Not the cold of winter, but the cold of something older. Something that remembered time before snow.
Her cell was different. Wider. Wrong. Not a prison, but a stage for observation. No torches. No windows. Only a thread of pale violet trickling from a crack above, like starlight fleeing its prison.
She rose slowly. Frost bloomed on iron seams. Breath curled white.
The air hummed. Not sound, but expectation. She placed a palm against the wall.
And felt it.
Beneath stone. Beneath time.
The Rift.
A pulse. A heartbeat not hers. A resonance, hungry and deliberate.
One walks in shadow, but sees the thread.
Kaia stepped back. The cell was not a prison. It was a testing ground.
Far above, deeper in the Keep, Eighty-Eight remained in chains. Isolation had no light. No warmth. No time. The violet shard above pulsed faintly, synchronized with the mark across his chest. It had not spoken since yesterday. It did not need to.
It watched. And he felt it.
He sat, knees aching, breath fogging the still air. Hunger, expected and ignored, had no purchase. Instead, fullness lingered within him — something curled inside, waiting.
Eyes closed, he let the silence settle.
"Rei."
He flinched. Eyes snapped open. That voice. Not the Void. Not the whisper. Cold. Feminine. Familiar.
"Who's there?"
No answer. The cell itself shifted. Shadows bent toward him. Not away.
He reached with his will. The mark pulsed once.
And the vision came.
Glass. Shattered stars falling across black seas. A girl's face — not Kaia, but pale-eyed, hoarfrost gaze. Beastkin. Warrior. Her voice wrapped around memory:
"You were never supposed to wake here, Riftborn. But now that you have… everything changes."
The vision snapped.
Above him, the glyphs twisted. New sigil — violet, fanged, wrong. Crawling across stone like a scar that had always been there.
Not of this world. Not for this world. Somehow… his.
Eighty-Eight exhaled slowly. A heartbeat of violet light throbbed beneath his ribs. He did not understand. Did not question. Only waited.
Somewhere far above, the Keep exhaled with him. Chains rattled softly. A tremor of inevitability passed through the stones.
The Rift had awakened.
And so had he.