Chapter Four: Parallel Pulse
Part Eleven
Date: Maelis 26, Year 204 PCR
Location: Caervale Ridge – Pulsewar Zone Theta
Time: Night deepens – Humline unstable
It began with a name no one remembered saying.
Not shouted.
Not sung.
Just… hummed into the fabric of the terrain.
And the glyphs responded.
Not to power. Not to threat.
To the uncertainty behind the word.
One of the empty sky platforms trembled.
It hadn't held any squad.
Now… it began to hum on its own.
A resonance tone that didn't match the Veil registry.
Didn't belong to Doctrine.
Didn't align with any of the squads.
Rhea looked up from where she crouched behind Vessa, her hand trembling.
"We didn't cast that."
"None of us did," Mino said, voice low.
Kellian stared into the light, pale glyphfire reflecting in his irises.
"Then who did?"
Tether began to slow.
Its hum faltered—not broken, but competing with another.
It tilted its head.
And for the first time since it appeared…
It looked concerned.
Bubbalor bristled—crystals flaring.
"Something's coming up through the glyph field," Yolti called.
"Beneath the fracture?" Luma asked.
"No," Yolti said. "Inside it."
Tether twisted sharply and cast a ripplewave straight into the rogue platform—trying to collapse the unknown humline.
The moment the glyph hit…
The hum got louder.
Not from the field.
From the sky.
Zephryn staggered, clutching his chest—not from pain. From familiarity.
"I've… heard this before," he whispered.
"Where?" Selka asked.
"When I was… younger. I think. Or maybe it was a dream."
His glyph flared—reactive, not controlled.
A projection bloomed around him—three overlapping memory signatures, flickering through people he's never seen but somehow knows.
A girl with silver hair.
A man with no face but a voice that speaks in riddles.
And a Crestborn with a hum that matches nothing in the known world.
Rhea gasped, falling to her knees.
"I know this place," she whispered.
"You've never been here," Mino said.
"Not physically."
The rogue platform cracked—splintering into light.
And something stepped out.
Not humanoid.
Not Riftborn.
Not Crestborn.
It wore no face.
But every Veilmark in the zone pulsed once—then dimmed.
Tether turned sharply—backing away.
"Is it a Riftborn?" Kaelen asked, readying his stance.
"No," Yolti whispered. "It's something Riftborn are afraid of."
The faceless figure didn't move.
But the hum that followed its entrance cut through the air like grief given shape.
Zephryn's glyph curled into a spiral.
Selka reached for him—
"Don't touch him!" Yolti snapped. "He's slipping!"
"Into what?" Kaelen shouted.
Yolti's voice shook.
"Memory recursion. The glyph's folding in on itself—he's being pulled into a forgotten echo."
Zephryn's eyes turned silver.
And he whispered the fragment again.
"Ra…"
Then he vanished.
Not teleported.
Not erased.
Just… pulled downward.
The faceless one stepped forward, turned toward Tether—
And spoke.
Not to the squads.
To the basin.
"Begin the return."
The glyph field rippled like a drum.
And the Veil broke open.