Chapter Four: Parallel Pulse
Part Nine
Date: Maelis 26, Year 204 PCR
Location: Caervale Ridge — Basin Echo, Western Fracture Ring
Time: Full Nightfall, Pulsewind active
It didn't speak.
Tether just stood in the basin's edgeglow, arms slack, pulse coiling around its frame like fog caught in grief.
The Choir ring around its throat hummed like it was tuning a memory.
One that didn't belong to it.
Kaelen took a step forward, halberd low.
"It's not a Riftborn."
"It's not alive," Yolti said beside him. "But it's not dead either."
"It cast our name," Selka said softly.
Sylie was already flanking, her hand raised in glyph sync.
Mino's squad spread wide, surrounding it with formation silence—not to trap it. To observe.
"It's testing resonance," Rhea said. "Each breath. It's syncing to us, not itself."
"It's remembering us before we were here," Elari whispered.
The figure raised its hand.
And every glyph in the basin flared for one beat—not in light, but in sound.
A pulsewave shook the hill beneath their feet. Symbols carved into terrain they hadn't seen glowed upward, responding to the figure's presence.
Tether wasn't invading the basin.
It belonged to it.
Bubbalor screeched and leapt forward, but stopped mid-flight—frozen in a crystalline shield of harmonic memory.
"Bubbalor's Veilmark is jammed!" Zephryn called.
Selka was already casting, sword wrapped in friction glyphs—
Clang.
Tether caught the edge of her blade with two fingers, no glow, no echo.
"It's nullifying glyph output," Kellian said. "It's not absorbing—it's disconnecting."
"It's Choir tech," Sylie hissed. "Layered field inversion. We need to break the terrain."
"Then we shatter the basin," Kaelen said.
"No," Zephryn murmured. "We shift the song."
He stepped forward—slow, deliberate, bare hands raised.
The glyph on his forearm lit again—not in full, not with control.
Just a shimmer.
Like a memory trying to surface—but not sure it should.
Tether tilted its head.
Its hum sharpened—matching Zephryn's glyph hum beat-for-beat.
Then—
Snap.
The terrain broke.
Not exploded—inverted. The ground flipped into layered platforms as pulse lines rotated and formed new battle zones.
The squads staggered as footing realigned.
Tether vanished into the center.
Its voice echoed once more—not from the throat, but from the glyph it left behind.
A single word, sung through memory:
"Respond."
The glyph detonated outward.
A pulse storm began.
And Zephryn saw, for a split second, a name etched in the light of the explosion—
Not his.
Not yet.
Just the start of it:
"Ra—"
Gone.