The message blinked into Kael's HUD like a glitch.
No timestamp.
No sender tag.
No encryption signature.
Just a black glyph mark — inverted, flickering faint white — and three words:
Rooftop 14. Alone.
No punctuation. No threat.
But very clearly not optional.
He didn't respond.
Didn't trace it.
Didn't have to.
Only one person in Silverstring routed messages through an extinct raid instance like Wraithvault. Only one person used dead channels to talk like a ghost.
Aria.
He took the long way up — not because he was afraid, but because Aria was careful, and he needed to match her pace.
The rooftop was quiet.
Cold.
Unlit, except for the faded blue flicker of an old streetlamp bleeding through the skyline. Industrial vents hissed softly nearby, pulsing steam.
She was already waiting.
Of course she was.
Aria Voss didn't wear armor in places like this.
She wore a long ash-gray coat, sleeveless, open at the throat. Her arms were marked with clean glyph scars — not cracks, not corrupted like Kael's. Hers were inked intentionally. Measured. Legal.
She didn't speak when he approached.
Just nodded once.
And waited.
Kael kept five feet of space between them. No closer.
Her eyes flicked toward his wrist — not the skin, but the sleeve.
The question was already there.
"You always this punctual?" she asked finally, voice low.
"Only when summoned by ghosts," Kael replied.
A faint smile.
But not warmth.
"You know why I asked you here?"
Kael didn't answer.
She didn't wait.
"Two weeks ago, your team staggered a Wyrm-Kiln boss without a skill trace. Yesterday, you stopped a cooldown burn mid-instance without a skill tag. This morning, someone clipped your reflex frame from a training spar. It syncs too clean."
"Sounds like I've been busy."
"Sounds like you've been watched."
The wind picked up.
Aria's coat fluttered at the edges like a signal flag.
She stepped closer.
Still no accusation in her tone. Just observation. And something sharper underneath.
"I don't know what you're doing, Kael. And I don't think I want to. But I know one thing."
She paused.
Waited until her eyes met his.
"If I can see it… they can too."
Kael didn't respond at first.
Just listened.
Watched.
Aria didn't speak like a guild leader now. She spoke like a tactician tracking footprints across a battlefield only she could see.
"You've never been ranked high enough to get audited," she said.
"But you've survived more wipe events than the top twenty combined."
Kael stayed still.
"They call it instinct," she added. "Timing. Luck."
A pause.
"I call it something else."
She walked past him — slow, calm, boots clicking gently on the rooftop cement — until she stood near the edge.
City lights glowed below, cold and blurred in the distance.
"I saw it the first time six months ago. A reflection. During a failed shadow gate run. The healer was gone. The tank dead. You stood up — barely alive — and the boss missed you by two frames."
She glanced back at him.
"I was spectating. You didn't know."
"But in the reflection… you moved before the hit."
Kael's jaw tensed.
Not enough to show. But enough for her to notice.
She pointed at the nearby window, fogged slightly by the night air.
"The mirrors always flicker before you move. Not during. Not after. Before."
The word hung between them.
Flicker.
Kael stared at the window, silent.
He knew that flicker now.
He'd seen it in the hallway mirror. In the training room. In the gearsmith's glass.
And Aria had seen it too.
"What are you?" she asked finally.
Not accusing.
Not hostile.
Almost… curious.
"You patching instance threads? Hijacking rollback echoes? Something worse?"
Kael didn't answer.
Couldn't.
But he held her gaze.
Unblinking.
And that was enough.
She took a step back.
"I don't care how you're doing it," she said quietly. "I only care what it brings with it."
A gust of wind passed between them.
Cold.
Sharp.
"Because if mirrors are starting to move on their own… something's watching."
She turned to leave.
And then added, over her shoulder—
"Careful which reflections you trust, Stryx."
Aria paused at the stairwell door.
One hand resting on the handle.
The wind still moved through the rooftop — not loud, but sharp enough to carry her voice as she said:
"They haven't said your name yet."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "Who's they?"
She didn't turn around.
"Council. Overseers. Audit clerics. Call them whatever name helps you sleep."
A faint grin. Dark. Not amused.
"But I know the look they get when they're circling something they don't understand."
Kael stepped forward once, keeping his voice low.
"So why warn me?"
Aria exhaled slowly. Not tired — measured.
"Because I've seen this before. Once."
She glanced back, just for a second.
"A healer named Seln. Quiet. Clean logs. Started surviving hits he shouldn't have."
"Reflections flickered near him too."
Kael's pulse ticked once.
"And?"
"He vanished."
"Raid accident?"
Aria's voice was flat now.
"There was no raid scheduled that day."
She opened the door.
Steam hissed from the stairwell below — industrial heat pipes bleeding warmth into the cold.
"I don't know what you are, Kael."
"But if the system thinks you're rewriting it…"
She looked over her shoulder.
Not angry.
Not afraid.
"It will come to write you out."
And then she left.
The door clanged shut behind her.
Kael stood still.
Breathing quiet.
Not thinking. Not yet.
The silence on the rooftop wasn't peaceful. It was listening.
He felt it in the soles of his boots — like the instance itself had narrowed around him.
Not a place anymore. A container.
A waiting room.
The pane of glass beside the stairwell vent was old.
Industrial.
Not polished — just clean enough to show a blurred outline. The kind of reflection you could ignore in daylight.
But not now.
Not in the dark.
Kael stepped toward it.
The city behind him cast a jagged silhouette across his coat.
He stopped just short of the glass and tilted his head —
—and his reflection moved first.
Not much. Half a second.
But enough.
Enough to see.
His pulse caught.
Then slowed deliberately.
He tilted his head the other way.
The reflection was already there.
Already watching.
Kael didn't flinch.
He looked deeper.
Through the warped blur of glass and industrial grime.
And he saw it:
A pulse of light in the reflection — near the chest. A faint glyph sigil. Not his usual pattern.
A different sequence.
As if the mirror had its own Kael.
Wearing the same skin.
With a different glyph.
The pane didn't crack.
It didn't glitch.
It just waited.
Held the moment like a camera trap.
And Kael knew — he wasn't alone when he looked into that glass.
They're syncing through me now.
Not just watching me. Watching what I touch. Who I speak to.
Watching her.
His hand trembled once before he pulled it back into his coat.
He turned away from the reflection.
And left the rooftop without looking back.
He didn't turn the lights on when he entered.
Didn't wash.
Didn't speak.
Kael walked straight to the panel, sat down, and opened the diary.
The screen blinked awake.
The last entry still hovered there — "Fear moves faster than code."
He started typing.
"She knows."
"She won't say it. Not yet. But she knows."
"She saw the flicker. The sync. The delay that moved before the action."
"And she saw what I've been pretending not to."
His fingers hovered over the keyboard for a long time before continuing.
"The reflections aren't watching anymore."
"They're predicting."
"There was a glyph in the mirror tonight. Not mine. Not cracked. Stable."
"I think it's learning from me."
"I think it's trying to become me."
He paused.
One knuckle pressed to his mouth.
Then he added a final line:
"Next time, I won't look away."
[ENTRY SAVED: PATCH_DIARY.SN | V0.09]
In the corner of the screen — just for a blink — a trace flag pinged.
[UNUSUAL SYNC: ACTIVE – SOURCE UNKNOWN]
[TRACE PENDING…]
[...]
[...]
[TRACE FAILED.]
The log went dark.