Chapter Two – The Silence in His Glyph
Part Five – Memory Breach
Date: Unknown – Sealed Time Within the Fracture
Location: The First Collapse – Bubbalor's Core Memory
Time: Undetermined (Caelus Era Residual)
He was not roaring.
He was remembering.
Bubbalor's body curled around the sleeping Zephryn as the fracture ripple passed through the Doctrine walls like a second heartbeat. Every wall in the tower should have dampened it. But memory doesn't obey containment.
It obeys loyalty.
And Bubbalor had never forgotten.
He closed his eyes.
And opened the past.
—
A world of white gold and glass. Towers of harmonic crystal reaching past the cloudline. The sky sang—not with weather, but with resonance. This was not Celestis Veil. It was older. A capital that no longer existed.
The capital of the last Veilbearer.
Caelus.
And at its center—
She stood.
—
Solera Veyl'run.
She wasn't yet Solara. Not to them.
She was radiant in layered resonance robes, glyph rings hovering at her sides. Her left arm burned with the Veilmark of Preservation. Her right hand trembled over a glyph that hadn't been sung in years.
Behind her stood three Choir Agents.
Unmasked.
Not enemies yet.
Not then.
One of them stepped forward.
"You can't hide him from Caelus."
She didn't move.
"I'm not hiding him from Caelus."
"I'm hiding him because of him."
—
In her arms was a child.
Small. Silent. Wrapped in pulse-threads.
Not crying.
But glowing.
The glyph on his chest—spiral-formed and trembling—wasn't hers.
It was Caelus' last fragment.
She didn't understand how it passed to the boy.
Only that it did.
And that Caelus was dying.
And that this child was the last thing he would erase.
—
"You're breaking the Song Pact," the Choir agent warned.
Solera turned, hair flaring in Veilwind.
"I'm breaking the lie."
The agents moved to stop her.
She didn't cast.
She cut.
One glyph.
Midair.
It shattered all sound for six seconds.
And when it ended—
Only one being remained standing.
Bubbalor.
His scales cracked with stress.
His pulse unstable.
But alive.
And her only witness.
—
She laid the child into the beast's arms.
"Protect him."
Bubbalor didn't roar.
He bowed.
Solera stepped back.
One more time.
One breath.
One song.
She drew the glyph.
A perfect ∞.
And opened a Veilhole.
Smaller than a rift.
Sharper than any gate.
And she sent her son through it.
—
The child didn't cry.
The glyph on his chest burned blue.
Then white.
Then off.
And he was gone.
—
Solera turned.
Choir blood on her arms.
Eyes blazing.
And faced the spiral sky.
Where Caelus' voice still echoed.
—
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"I couldn't let him become you."
And she vanished in light.
—
Memory collapsed.
Bubbalor woke.
Present time.
Still wrapped around Zephryn.
The boy was unconscious now.
Burned.
Fractured.
But alive.
And glowing again.
—
The ∞ glyph had changed.
Not broken.
Not whole.
Just different.
A crack down the center.
A fracture remembering where it came from.