Chapter Two: The Ones Who Watch the Silence
Part Four – The Pulse in the Blood
Date: Maelis 25, Year 204 PCR
Location: Veilscar Ridge Ruins – Riftborn Collapse Site
Time: Evening
The Riftborn was gone. But its voice hadn't left.
"He who was not sung."
The phrase didn't echo—it anchored. Hung in the cracks of the stone. Curled into the pulse of the silence. It didn't feel like a phrase spoken aloud.
It felt like a name the world had been trying to forget.
Zephryn hadn't stood yet.
His glyph was dimming again, but his chest wouldn't stop humming—like something old was knocking from inside his bones, asking to be remembered.
Kaelen paced nearby, one hand sparking erratically as the last of his fire refused to settle.
"We're not ready for this kind of mission," he muttered. "That thing said his name.
Riftborn don't know names."
Selka wiped her blade clean in slow strokes, but her eyes stayed locked on Zephryn.
"He didn't speak that name, Kaelen."
"Then what was it?"
"He carried it."
Yolti knelt beside the remains. The Riftborn's body wasn't flesh—not anymore. It was half-sung resonance threads and ash. It looked like it had been pulled from a memory, not grown in the wild.
She dragged her hand across its chest and paused.
There, hidden under the collapsed ribline, was a mark.
A glyph fragment, burned into its core.
"This Riftborn was built on echo-stolen memory," she whispered.
"Whose?" Zephryn asked.
She looked up at him, fingers trembling.
"Yours."
Selka's glyph flared without warning.
A sharp, sudden flash of frost erupted from her back and curved into a defensive arc—not aimed outward… but inward.
Toward the body.
Because it was moving.
No longer whole. No longer living.
But one glyph within the ash was still pulsing.
It blinked—once—then burst in a shockwave of resonance light.
Kaelen was flung backwards.
Yolti hit the stone hard, arm shielding her face.
Selka covered Zephryn with a wide sweep of her blade and dropped low, absorbing the ice pulse.
And in the smoke—
For a split second—
They saw a Choir mask form in the ash cloud.
It blinked. Tilted. Then broke into dust.
Zephryn stood slowly.
"That wasn't from the Rift."
"No," Selka said. "That was embedded. Hidden inside it."
Kaelen growled. "Like bait?"
"Like a message." Selka said.
Then they heard it.
A soft clink of stone. A footstep—measured. Heavy.
Not Riftborn. Not beast.
They turned fast, weapons flaring, glyphs lit.
A figure stood in the mist, near the far ridge wall.
Black coat. Torn boots. Veil-touched armor.
A blade sheathed in cracked leather across his back.
Face scarred by old burns. Eyes distant—like someone who had seen glyphs break and kept walking anyway.
He didn't draw his weapon.
Didn't speak.
Just looked at Zephryn and whispered:
"She said you'd remember."
And walked into the fog.
Kaelen shouted, "HEY—Who the hell are you?!"
No answer.
Selka stared into the fog, heart suddenly pounding.
Yolti didn't even rise. She just murmured:
"He's not Riftborn.
He's not Doctrine.
He's something older."
Buta's voice crackled through the glyph communicator rune in Zephryn's sleeve.
"Return. Now. No extraction—move silent.
We have eyes at the stronghold."
Zephryn looked at the others.
They nodded. No questions.
Even Kaelen stayed quiet.
They didn't speak again until they reached the stone threshold of Cradle of Aegir.
The stronghold door was already open.
The hall torches had been lit.
And Lumyra was gone.
A single plate sat at the dining table.
Still warm. Untouched.
Next to it, a folded cloth.
On it—
a mark drawn in blood ink.
∞
And beneath it, a note:
"He's waiting upstairs.
He doesn't knock."