Chapter Three: The Hollow Between the Notes (Part Five)
Date: Maelis 26, Year 204 PCR
Location: Legato Stronghold – East Veil Forest, Celestis Borderlands
Time: Dusk, Storm Incoming
Twilight crawled over the sky like ink bleeding through silk, and the winds above the stronghold stilled as if holding their breath. Within the Atrium of the Veilmark—a circular chamber hollowed into the cliffside stone—resonant glyphs flickered along the walls, pulsing faintly with the day's memory.
Zephryn stood at the center of it all, shoulders heaving, his palm trembling as the final glyph of his forbidden mark sizzled in the air before him.
The shape—an infinity loop carved in harmonic script—hung between realms, neither solid nor sung, a resonance remembered through recursion alone. And it was fading.
Selka was at his side before the last echo dimmed, her hand gripping his shoulder tight. "That wasn't a glyph from the Lyceum," she whispered. "That was… something else."
"It remembered me," Zephryn muttered, eyes wide. "I didn't draw it. It came on its own."
Kaelen stepped into the flickering glyphlight, gaze sharp and voice low. "You heard what Buta said. Only the highest-level Resonants can ever channel a mark like that. The ones with true harmony."
"Then why do I have it?" Zephryn asked, looking down at his bare hand. "Why does it feel like I've seen it before… in dreams I don't remember?"
Behind them, the door creaked open. Buta's footsteps echoed like slow thunder, followed by Yolti's lighter ones. Mino and Sylie remained just outside, whispering to someone unseen.
"You did well," Buta said at last, lighting a cigarette without emotion. "Too well."
Zephryn turned, breath caught in his throat. "You know what that glyph was, don't you."
"I know it should be impossible," Buta replied. "And I know it's not the first time I've seen it. Once… long ago. On someone who died before their memory could be rewritten."
"Solara?" Selka asked. Buta said nothing.
Instead, he looked to the others. "No one outside this room is to speak of what they saw. This is not Lyceum-level resonance. This is a pre-Caelus mark. That means it comes from before the Doctrine ever sang their first law. And if the Hollow Choir senses it—"
"They'll come," Mino said, stepping in with Sylie at his side. "And this time, they won't be gentle."
"Let them come," Zephryn growled, stepping forward. "I'm done being afraid."
But Buta's eyes didn't leave the fading glyph. "That mark… doesn't make you strong. It makes you hunted."
Suddenly, the stronghold's perimeter glyphs flared to life—an amber warning pulse echoing down the hall. A silent alarm. The air snapped cold.
Kaelen moved first. "That's the front barrier."
"Riftborn?" Yolti asked.
"No," Buta said, pulling a pulse rifle from the wall. "Worse."
From the ridge above the stronghold, three beams of red light split the air, illuminating the cliffside like scars.
A voice thundered across the valley—amplified by Veil resonance. Slow. Serrated. Smiling.
"Come out, child of Solara. Come out, son of the silence. We remember what you are."
Selka grabbed Zephryn's hand.
"Who is that?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
Because he already knew.
That voice—
It was the same one he'd heard during the memory collapse.
The same one he'd heard whispering behind the Choir's chamber wall.
A Riftborn… wearing his mother's voice.
Outside, clouds began to spiral unnaturally. Glyphstorms rumbled on the horizon. From within the mists, shadowed figures stepped forward—three of them, cloaked in what looked like harmonic bone.
But it was the fourth figure—the one dragging a chain made of Veilglass—that made Zephryn stumble back.
It was him.
Or someone wearing his face.