Chapter Five: Shadows Before the Spark
Part Five – Named Riftborn Appears
Date: Maelis 27, Year 204 PCR
Location: Caervale Ridge – Shattered Pulsewar Basin
Time: 04:35 Veil Standard
The sky didn't split with sound.
It folded.
Once.
Twice.
Then inverted—turning upward into a spiral of silence as if the heavens themselves were being unsung. A single tone pressed against the air, deeper than bass, higher than crystal—both at once, like a hum that hadn't been invented yet.
The squads froze mid-step.
Every glyph dimmed.
Every cast faltered.
Only Thrynn moved.
He stepped into the basin like it was his cathedral—bare feet pressing into the cracked soil, each step bleeding resonance into the ground. Glyphs formed in his wake, not drawn, not cast—grown. Veilmark threads extended across his body like vines stitched into flesh, flickering with dull crimson pulses.
He did not announce an attack.
He spoke.
"Thrynn, of the Bleeding Chord."
No echo followed.
Only the Riftborn behind him bowed in fractured rhythm, lowering heads that weren't shaped like heads—spindled, elongated, partially erased.
"I was once Doctrine," Thrynn said. "I was once Pulseborn. But I hummed where they told me not to."
The spiral glyph on his chest flared—half-formed, backwards, scarred across his ribs.
"They told me to stop."
He looked at Zephryn.
"I didn't."
—
Zephryn stepped forward, the ∞ glyph still floating by his side.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
Thrynn's smile broke his lips—literally.
A line of blood split down the center, leaking song threads.
"To find you."
"Why me?"
"You remembered something you shouldn't have."
Thrynn extended a finger toward Bubbalor, still trembling on the basin's edge.
"And it protected it."
—
Bubbalor tried to rise.
Failed.
The corrupted hum that Thrynn had echoed earlier was still vibrating inside him—not as a wound, but as a command. Not damage. Override. His wings jittered. His pulse shimmered, off-tempo, like a beast that had lost its rhythm and couldn't find its song.
Selka stepped in front of him.
"You're not touching him."
Thrynn's head tilted—unnaturally far. Not a nod. A slide.
"Why do you guard a creature that remembers the First Chord?"
Selka's eyes narrowed.
"Because he remembered when none of us could."
—
Cantare Unit shifted.
Sylie cast a binding arc between squads, locking in the battlefield.
"Elari," she whispered. "Watch the left flank."
Elari's voice was soft. "It's not the flanks I'm afraid of."
Luma, hand pressed to her ribs, added, "He's not just casting. He's composing."
—
Thrynn extended both arms.
The Veilmark threads across his body unraveled.
From his shoulders, glyph strings unraveled like veins, each one echoing notes of a forbidden humline. His voice rose—not loud, but pure:
"I will now play Reversal in Red."
—
Torr moved first.
Punch forward, leap-strike to intercept.
But he never reached Thrynn.
A Riftborn intercepted mid-air—this one taller, missing half a face, its body made of bone and hollow sound.
Kaelen spun to assist—but the moment he did, his pulse sync shattered.
His halberd glowed too hot, then dimmed. The song threads on his weapon disappeared. He stumbled back, choking.
"Can't—hear—it—!"
Yolti caught him with a lightwall that flickered out the moment it formed.
Thrynn's spell was working.
He wasn't fighting.
He was silencing.
—
Rhea tried flanking. Got close.
Too close.
Thrynn's body twisted, and one of the loose threads whipped toward her—it didn't slice. It sank into her memory.
She screamed—not in pain, but confusion.
"I don't… remember how I got here—!"
Zephryn stepped in.
The ∞ glyph pulsed once and flared between them, catching the thread mid-air. The thread recoiled.
Rhea gasped.
Thrynn blinked once.
"You carry His mark."
Zephryn's chest tightened.
"Whose?"
Thrynn's eyes sharpened.
"The one who taught us to listen backward."
—
Behind them, Bubbalor groaned—barely conscious.
Selka dropped beside him, palm pressed to his back, voice low and shaking.
"Come on, you're stronger than this. We need you."
Bubbalor didn't respond with words.
He let out a sound.
A whisper.
A pulse.
But it wasn't his.
It was Thrynn's.
He was being echoed from inside.
—
Thrynn lifted his bleeding arm, palm open.
"Let me take him," he said. "And I will spare your memory."
"No," Zephryn said.
Thrynn's smile flickered.
"Then I will erase it."
—
The glyph ring flared.
Every squad was pushed back by harmonic force.
Zephryn remained standing.
Pulse bleeding from his forearms now—he didn't know how he was staying up.
Only that he had to.
Bubbalor's hum still pulsed wrong.
And Thrynn was only beginning to sing.