Chapter Five: Sharp Shadows, Quiet Steps
Part Five – The One Watching the Drift
Date: Apris 1, Year 204 PCR – Sundown
Location: Veil Perimeter Ridge – 3km Outside Staccato Stronghold
The glyph shimmered once and died.
Not from casting pressure.
Not from disruption.
From being seen.
And on the far side of the ridge—past the Doctrine sensor towers, beyond the perimeter veilfield—
Someone watched it collapse.
Not with tech.
Not with hum-sight.
Just with eyes that remembered what the world tried to forget.
Shaenor Drenn sat atop the rusted frame of an old Veil outpost beacon, legs swinging lazily over the edge like a child daring gravity to test him.
His mace, Forgeface, lay across his lap—veiled in an old cloak so worn, it looked like drift canvas.
His armor wasn't polished.
His hair wasn't tied.
But his eyes—his eyes were awake in a way they hadn't been in months.
Beside him, a pulsecraft flickered under a tarp—black, silver trim, and hum-stitched tires still warm.
Echolash.
Illegally tuned.
Drift locked.
And banned in every Doctrine-run sector for "resonance warping beyond approved threshold."
It hummed without moving.
Shaenor reached down and patted the side like it was a sleeping dog.
"He's alive," he murmured.
No reply came.
But then—
a voice from below, quiet and sharp, drifted up through the wind.
"So you felt it too?"
Shaenor didn't turn.
He didn't have to.
Halric 'C-Drift' Veer stood at the base of the tower, twin daggers sheathed in a criss-cross on his back, white cloak dragging mud like he didn't care if the ground remembered him.
His eyes were colder. Sharper.
But beneath the silence was something almost relieved.
Shaenor nodded once.
"Ruinborn cast a drift glyph. Not fully—but enough to ping my echo line."
Halric frowned.
"That mark hasn't flared in a decade."
Shaenor smiled. Toothy. Wild.
"And yet it hummed like it never left."
They sat in silence for a while—one above, one below.
The wind passed between them, but never through them.
Halric finally said:
"You think Doctrine'll trace it?"
Shaenor chuckled.
"They already are."
He leaned back, folding his arms behind his head.
"But that's not why I'm smiling."
Halric tilted his head.
"Then why?"
Shaenor looked up at the darkening sky.
Let the first stars flicker into view.
"Because it means the kid's not just remembering."
"He's reaching."
"And when a memory reaches long enough…"
He grinned wider.
"It starts pulling things back with it."