Chapter Five: Sharp Shadows, Quiet Steps
Part Two – Three Who Don't Sleep Right
Date: Maelis 31, Year 204 PCR – Nightfall
Location: Staccato Unit Stronghold – Outer Ridge Barracks
Rhea didn't sleep much that night.
Not because of nightmares.
Because of the hum.
It wasn't loud.
It wasn't hers.
It was… familiar.
She tried tracing it during evening silence drills, dragging a pulse-chalk thread across the inner edge of her bunk glyph, waiting for the echo to catch.
But every time it flickered—
It skipped.
Like a song that had once played right, but someone had torn out the refrain and sewn it back in the wrong order.
She finally sat up. Looked over at Torr, who was sitting upside-down again on the ceiling beam like gravity had lost interest in arguing with him.
"You hear that?" she asked.
Torr cracked one eye open.
"I hear a lot of things you don't," he muttered. "Be specific."
Rhea's voice dropped.
"Under the barracks hum. There's a second tone. Repeating. Not ours."
Torr closed both eyes.
Paused.
Then said it—
"Three-step cast. One inversion."
Rhea blinked.
"You heard it too?"
He dropped to the floor without a sound.
"I felt it," he said. "Like someone tapped a cast into my spine."
Kellian was already outside when they reached the rear ridge.
Barefoot. Shirtless. His Veilmark was glowing faintly—not by will, but from agitation.
"I'm gonna ask a dumb question," he said as they stepped into view. "What's the glyph that looks like a sideways flame folded through a circle?"
Rhea froze.
Torr didn't speak.
Because both of them had seen it in drills.
Both of them had forgotten.
But hearing it now—described like that—it came back.
The glyph from the fracture site.
The one the Doctrine scanner refused to log.
The one that pulled Zephryn's hum out of him like a name that was never meant to be said twice.
Kellian looked at both of them.
"No one taught us that mark," he said quietly.
Rhea stepped closer.
"No. But we've all seen it."
Torr ran a hand through his hair, muttering.
"This isn't some Veil rebound. That's a signature cast."
"But no one cast it," Rhea said.
"No one living," Kellian corrected.
They stood in silence.
Then Rhea, softly:
"Why do I feel like we've seen it before… but not here?"
Torr looked up at the sky.
It didn't answer.
But the wind shifted—just slightly.
Like someone had whispered too close to the ridge.
And the glyph that wasn't there anymore?
It pulsed again.
Once.
No cast. No flare.
Just… recognition.
And none of them slept the rest of the night.