CHAPTER FIVE: THE GLYPH BENEATH THE GATE (Part five)
Liraen moved through the lesson like the glyphs weren't still humming in their bones.
She didn't mention Zephryn.
Didn't pause when the light beneath his feet had glowed.
Didn't even glance toward the part of the floor that had remembered him.
Instead, she asked them to define themselves.
"What defines your glyph path?" she said calmly, pacing the ring. "Your parent's affinity? Your emotional signature? Your survival?"
Silence.
Then Yolti raised her hand. "What if you don't know what your path is?"
Liraen stopped. Not facing her. Just listening.
"You begin where you were last broken," she said.
"Because that's where your glyph first tried to speak."
The room breathed shallow.
Kaelen's eyes flicked to the wall near the resonance chart—where he used to stand, the day after Solara's death, and punch the stone until his knuckles bled.
Selka didn't move.
But her hand rested gently against the inside of her sleeve.
Yolti looked down. A small shimmer of light danced along her fingers before vanishing.
Zephryn sat still.
Not out of obedience.
Out of fear that if he moved,
the glyph would react again.
And he wasn't sure what it would remember next.
Liraen stopped before him.
She said nothing.
Her eyes studied his pulse mark—veiled beneath his sleeve.
Then his pendant.
Then his still hands.
Her white eye didn't blink.
"I expect you to submit a resonance log by next week," she said aloud, for all to hear.
But the way she said it—
Like it wasn't homework.
Like it was a warning.
Zephryn nodded once.
But inside, something was trembling.
And it wasn't fear.
It was a name.
A sound.
A note buried beneath everything he thought he forgot.