The alert arrived just past dawn.
Encrypted. Blind-routed. Hidden within a fake maintenance ticket.
Rowan Vell, school physician and part-time lecturer in medicinal alchemy, opened it with a practiced flick of his fingers. He was already at his desk, coffee untouched, one hand adjusting the calibration of a soul-temper scanner.
The message unfolded in his glasses:
ENERGY DISTORTION DETECTED
TYPE: Sub-reality fracture (unclassified)
LOCATION: Northwest wing, archival stairwell
INTENSITY: 2.9 – Above threshold
RISK LEVEL: Fracture Host Signature Suspected
Rowan blinked once. Then again.
He leaned back in his chair. No immediate reaction. Just silence.
Then he unlocked the drawer with a thin iron key, pulled out a silver card etched with seven runes, and slotted it into a panel behind the shelf.
The air shimmered. The room dimmed.
A false wall dissolved beside the cabinets, revealing a vertical chamber: the Observation Vault.
He stepped in. The door sealed behind him.
Six monitors lit up. One replayed footage from the school's sensory grid—not cameras.
Timestamp: 03:14 AM.
Nothing at first.
Then—a pulse.
The hallway rippled like water. A tear flickered open midair—brief, almost invisible. Then sealed again.
But it left a scar.
Burn residue. Gravity skew in the left wall. Light distortion.
Rowan frowned.
Codex-class anomaly.
Not theoretical. Not simulated.
Real.
He turned off the feed and reached for his coat.
—
The old stairwell still smelled like ash.
He didn't need a scanner to tell. Reality had warped here. Slightly. Subtly. The bricks curved inward where they shouldn't. A crack in the tile formed a symbol—not random.
He knelt beside it.
Took out a brass vial. Scraped ash into it.
The moment the powder touched the vial's seal, it hissed.
He froze.
The metal turned black. Burned cold.
"Containment breach level: 4," he murmured.
Then—he spotted something else.
Near the base of the stairwell. Folded. Torn.
A piece of paper. Scorched around the edges, but intact at the center.
He picked it up with gloved fingers.
A circle drawn in ink—sharp, geometric. Too perfect.
A single word beneath: UNBOUND
Rowan stared.
Then pocketed it.
—
Back at his office, he unlocked a steel cabinet behind a hidden sigil. Inside were rows of lead-etched files and relics sealed in runes.
He pulled out an old case. Opened it.
A silver coin lay inside—identical to the one Elias had been given.
Its sigil pulsed faintly. Dormant.
He took a deep breath. Opened a record log.
Archive Reference: Codex Fragment Class D
Suppression Attempt: Failed. Subject dissolution confirmed.
Coin Tag: REVERSE FLOW BLOCKER
Estimated Survival Window: 72 hours (active contact)
He closed the log.
Compared the coin in the box to the one he saw earlier in the trace report.
"Same frequency. Stronger surge."
He sat for a long while.
Then picked up a pen. Wrote:
Fracture Host Signature: Confirmed
Binding Depth: Early-Stage Recursive Looping
Suggested Action: Classify as Level 3 Entity
Status: Observing. Delay report.
He tapped the end of the pen against the paper.
Then looked out the window.
Down in the courtyard, students moved in clusters. Laughing. Talking.
He spotted one.
A hood pulled low. Hands in his pockets. Walking alone.
No ripple in the air. No glow.
Just a presence.
Rowan narrowed his eyes.
"So," he murmured, "you're the one."