Trail of Threads
They followed the echo where the map ended.
It wasn't a trail in the usual sense. No footprints. No broken branches. No burnmarks. Just resonance.
Glyph pulses that flickered in the corners of the eye. Brief shifts in weight or temperature. Small anomalies only the trained could detect.
Kael led the way, his blade sheathed but fingers twitching near the hilt.
Tiv's scanner blinked rhythmically. "Same pattern every two hundred meters. Someone's walking beneath us, leaving intention."
Jace adjusted his sensor relay. "You're saying he's broadcasting glyph traces subconsciously?"
"I'm saying," Tiv replied, "he's not trying to be found. But part of him wants us to follow."
Claire scanned the nearby ridge. The earth there curved strangely, as if warped inward. "How deep?"
"Too deep," Lira muttered. "If he's still alive… he's not entirely human anymore."
No one argued.
They reached the ridge just as the light changed.
It wasn't the sky. Still cloudy, still dim. It was the air.
A rush of pressure slammed outward from the ground in a silent quake. Kaelen stumbled. Tiv's scanner screamed once and went dead.
Glyphlight burst along the ridge's base in mirrored spirals. Then receded just as quickly. Leaving glass-like veins etched into the rock.
Claire's breath caught. "That was him."
Kael crouched, pressing a palm to the stone. The surface vibrated. Slow and alive.
"No Spiral corruption in the shockwave," he murmured.
Tiv stared. "Then what was that?"
Kael rose slowly. "Memory."
Beneath – Echoed Fire
The chamber stank of ozone and old roots.
Raka's chest still glowed faintly. But the Seed had settled. It's rhythm now matched to the pulse of the chamber. Not Spiral. Not Ki. A third beat.
He stood amid shattered threads and scattered glyphlight. The dagger still warm in his grip.
Behind him, the collapsed lattice crackled with dying sparks. In front of him, the wall fell away completely.
And the Spiral poured in.
Seven figures. Humanoid, but flickering like exposed film. Faces empty, movements jagged. Mirror-glyphs shimmered across their skin. Not red, but iridescent. Like oil on water.
They stopped when they saw him. Not attack. Just… pause.
Raka lifted the dagger.
"Back," he said. His voice was quiet, but the glyphs echoed it.
The Spiral figures shifted, then one stepped forward. Its arm unraveled into thread light. Not a weapon. A question.
Raka frowned. "You're not here to fight."
The figure tilted its head. And for the first time, Raka heard it speak. Not aloud. But through the glyphs burning in his chest.
"You were one of us. Before forgetting."
Surface – The Faultline Tension
The valley ridge buzzed with residual glyphlight. It pulsed beneath the skin of the stone. Faint, rhythmic, like an echo of a buried heartbeat.
Kael stood at the crest, watching where the earth had split. The spiral patterns had stopped flickering, but their presence lingered.
Tiv's hand hovered near his broken scanner. "There's a tunnel beneath us. Narrow at first. Then wide. Stable enough, probably. We could drop and follow."
Claire frowned. "Into Spiral territory? Blind?"
"We've done worse," Lira said, brushing ash from her glove.
"But not with a war front behind us," Kael replied.
A silence fell.
Then Kaelen spoke, his voice low, steady. "Don't chase it."
They turned.
Kaelen didn't meet their eyes. He was watching the spirals.
"This isn't a trail," he said. "It's a lure. I've seen how the Spiral feints. It adapts to memory. If it knows Raka's alive, it'll build around that thread to pull us in deeper. Make us choose him over the mission."
Claire narrowed her eyes. "And if he's in danger?"
"He is," Kaelen said bluntly. "But so is everything else if we don't stop the spread here."
Kaelen didn't mean to remember it, but the image came anyway.
Another time. Another place.
He was younger. Less scarred. Spiral-threaded.
He'd led them. Five Vel'Tharan hunters. Through a valley very much like this one. Not with words. With glyphlight. Nanipulated just enough to resemble a lost comrade's resonance signature. Faint, just enough to trigger protocol.
One of the hunters even said, "That's her." The same way Claire just had.
They followed the echo into a chamber shaped like a tongue.
None of them came back.
Kaelen had stood at the mouth of that ruin, watching it collapse behind him, his orders fulfilled. A few days later, he forgot the names of the ones he'd lured.
He shook himself out of the memory.
Now he looked at Kael. "You asked for my judgment. That's it."
Kael studied him for a breath longer, then gave a slow nod.
"Agreed."
Jace exhaled. "Then we hold here?"
Kael turned. "No. We move east to intercept the Riftline. Spiral roots are spreading through the hollow ridges. Lira, scout ahead. Claire, you and Kaelen reinforce perimeter anchors. Minimal resonance exposure."
He looked at Tiv. "You go back."
"What?" Tiv blinked.
"You're faster than Jace in reporting, and he's better at relay tuning. We need base to recalibrate suppressors and re-map glyph distortions."
Tiv hesitated. "We're this close to something ancient. Don't you want eyes on it?"
"I want Vel'Thara intact," Kael replied. "And we don't win by being curious."
Tiv nodded reluctantly. "Understood."
Kael added, quieter, "Tell Coren to pin the last trail echo. And don't let them write Raka off. Not yet."
Beneath – Spiral Chorus
Far below, Raka stood before the seven Spiral echoes.
Not attacking. Not retreating.
They shimmered like firelight trapped in glass. Flickering with wrongness. Seven silhouettes. All humanoid. Too tall, too thin. Their joints bent just slightly off-human. Their heads tilted in unison.
Each bore a distinct mark on the chest. Incomplete glyphs rotating slowly around a central void. None of them glowed red.
They hummed with energy that didn't crackle. It vibrated like the strings of a long-buried instrument tuning itself to him.
"You were one of us," the first figure said. Its voice not spoken but formed in runes that shimmered across the ground. "You helped build the first gate."
Raka took a slow step forward. "I don't remember."
"You forgot because she made you forget," said another. "She feared what you might become."
The dagger in Raka's hand warmed. The glyph on its surface shifted, faint tendrils of white crawling toward the hilt like roots.
"Sereth," he murmured.
The figures pulsed. Not with recognition, but acknowledgment.
Images hit him in flashes. A sea of mirrors. A burning sky. Sereth kneeling before a door of gold. Bleeding memory into the stone.
"She gave me the dagger," Raka said, his voice flat. "And the Seed."
"You carry both the lock and the echo," a third figure whispered, stepping forward. "You are the tether that loops the gate."
Then the seventh figure moved. Slower than the rest. Not threatening. Not welcoming.
It extended a hand. Within its palm, a glyph ignited in mirrored flame. A third shape now joined the serpent and the moon.
A broken crown.