Chapter Five: Sharp Shadows, Quiet Steps
Part Eight – The Outcasts Cross the Perimeter
Date: Apris 2, Year 204 PCR – Sundown Approaching
Location: 1.6km South of Doctrine Veilwatch Post Theta
Halric didn't speak when the barrier shimmered.
He just kept walking.
The Veilwatch perimeter flared against his cloak, shivered once along his spine, and then folded aside—like it didn't want to touch him longer than it had to.
Echolash purred quietly nearby, pulse-thrusters at half-sleep.
Shaenor stood leaning against it, arms crossed, helm off.
He raised an eyebrow.
"You're sure this isn't a mistake?"
Halric's voice was quiet.
"When glyphs hum without casters, we follow."
Shaenor snorted.
"Right. Not suspicious at all."
Halric turned slightly.
"It wasn't a cast. It was a reach."
"From someone like us."
That made Shaenor straighten.
Just slightly.
The two of them moved through the shadow-line, trees parting around them like memory kept them hidden.
Shaenor glanced at the ridge.
"Doctrine won't like this."
Halric replied without turning:
"They never did."
As they moved, Halric's glyph pulsed.
Not brightly.
Not dangerously.
But in sync with a tone he hadn't heard in twelve years.
A memory hum, layered with a familiar break between beats—like a name once sung wrong, now trying to remember its true voice.
"He's not just remembering," Halric muttered.
"He's harmonizing."
Shaenor didn't smile this time.
He pulled Forgeface from his back and rested it over his shoulder.
"Then we better find him before Doctrine hears the final verse."
They stopped at the last Veilgate path before open terrain.
A rusted Doctrine patrol marker hung from a broken glyphpost.
Halric stepped over it.
The moment his boot hit the old stone, Echolash pulsed once behind them—
A memory flare.
Shaenor turned.
Saw it.
"That was a trace. Glyph bounce."
Halric looked forward.
"It wasn't from us."
—
Somewhere beyond the trees,
past the Doctrine scanner range,
beneath the soil where a broken glyph refused to die…
Rael's hum had reached them.
And the Outcasts were moving now.
Not in warning.
Not in fear.
In recognition.