Chapter Five: Sharp Shadows, Quiet Steps
Part One – Before the Cast Even Hums
Date: Maelis 31, Year 204 PCR
Location: South Veilline Barrens – Recon Training Ridge
Mino hadn't spoken in almost two hours.
Not to her squad.
Not to the wind.
Not even to the glyphboard pulsing quietly at her side.
She just watched.
Kellian was balancing on a shattered pulse pillar twenty meters out, eyes blindfolded, arms spread wide, Veilmark tether humming a little too loudly for a recon drill.
Rhea crouched low on the grass, fingers grazing the dirt like it had something to say. Her eyes didn't move, but her left boot was twitching—a habit she never shook when her pulse picked up.
Torr was upside down in a tree.
Not hiding.
Waiting.
He dropped the second he saw Kellian lose balance, caught him in midair with a cast-laced blinkstep, and grinned like he'd planned it all along.
"Still too loud," Mino said flatly.
Torr landed beside Kellian, brushing moss off his shoulder.
"Didn't even cast," he said. "That was pure instinct."
"Then your instinct hums like a dying drum," Mino muttered.
She turned back toward her notes.
Except…
She hadn't taken any yet.
Because her eyes had been fixed for the last twelve minutes on something her squad hadn't noticed.
A glyph.
Small. Faint. Carved not into stone, but into the air—like a burn scar suspended mid-breath.
It hovered three feet off the ground between two ridge pillars.
It didn't flicker.
It didn't glow.
It just persisted.
—
Mino approached it after the others returned to their drills.
Slowly. Quietly. Without hum.
When she reached it, she held her hand just close enough to feel the static pull.
And then…
it pulsed.
Not out.
In.
Like it was drawing her in—measuring her. Waiting.
She didn't cast.
Didn't hum.
But her Veilmark flared just enough to whisper.
The glyph reacted.
Three pulses.
One reversed.
And then it vanished.
Not burned out.
Not erased.
Just… folded back into the air like it had never wanted to be seen.
—
Mino stood still for a long time.
When she walked back to the others, she said nothing.
Not yet.
But that night, she drew it from memory—etched it into a personal glyph-scroll and filed it in her private Veilmark archive.
She didn't tag it.
She didn't name it.
She just wrote one word beneath it:
Vael.
And when she sealed the scroll, her fingers shook for the first time in a year.