Chapter Two – The Silence in His Glyph
Part One – Interrogation Spiral
Date: Maelis 27, Year 204 PCR
Location: Doctrine Tower Annex – Sub-Resonant Chamber 3B
Time: 10:26 Veil Standard
There were no walls.
Not in the way Zephryn could trust.
The room surrounded him in gray curve and reversed light, like a folded note trying to forget it had ever been written. The chamber hummed faintly—not with resonance, but with suppression, like every sound was being strangled the moment it was born.
Three Doctrine Recorders hovered near the ceiling. No faces. No breath. Just Choir-shaped glyphs burning in blue-white stillness.
He didn't sit.
Didn't speak.
He watched.
So did they.
The silence lasted four minutes.
—
"Begin."
A voice. Genderless. Sterile. Doctrine-filtered.
Zephryn's glyph flickered. Not in defense.
In disagreement.
"Name," the voice requested.
He didn't move.
"Date of glyph ignition."
He turned his head slightly.
"Your Veilmark's source."
Still silent.
—
The chamber dimmed.
Not darkness.
Pressure.
Like the room was trying to compact his pulse signature into compliance.
His glyph flared again, briefly—but the ∞ did not form.
It pulsed once, faded into his forearm, and left a spiral burn behind.
One of the Recorders sparked.
Just a flicker.
A humline snapped loose and curled in the air like a dying violin string.
No one acknowledged it.
But Zephryn watched it float. Unrepaired. Untethered.
And that was when he spoke.
—
"I don't have answers you can translate."
The Recorders didn't respond.
But something else did.
In the corner of the chamber—
a crack.
Barely visible.
Like a thread had pulled away from the wall and refused to come back.
A rift inside the suppression weave.
And through it—
Zephryn felt eyes.
—
One of the Recorders fizzed again.
The voice spoke once more.
"Glyph signatures recorded at Caervale Ridge correspond to Doctrine-sealed humlines from 48 PCR."
Zephryn tilted his head.
"…I wasn't alive in 48 PCR."
"Which implies you accessed an external memory stream."
He smiled. Just slightly.
"No."
"I am the stream."
—
That did it.
One of the Recorders sparked violently—its Choir-glyph folding in on itself before stabilizing.
A high tone rang once through the room.
It wasn't part of the suppression field.
It was a notice.
To someone else.
—
Zephryn stepped forward.
Only once.
The suppression ring beneath his feet dimmed.
"I'm not your experiment."
Silence.
Then:
"You're not ours," the voice replied.
—
And through the crack in the glyph wall—
A smile opened in the dark.
Not a mouth.
Not a mask.
Just the curve of a Watcher's face etched into the air like smoke.
He was not Doctrine.
He was not visible.
He was listening.