Chapter 22 : Silence
The research wing of Centralis was always colder at night.
The lamps above buzzed softly with their weak green glow, casting mossy light across the wooden table. The warmth of the day had long fled, and even Kael's Crownlight seemed to dim in the deep silence of the stacks.
Across from him, Iris leaned over a weathered text titled Inherited Sigils and Cognitive Residue. Her finger tapped the same line twice before she glanced up, eyes shadowed with thought.
"You've read that paragraph four times," Kael said without looking up from his own book.
"I know," she murmured. "It just feels… off. Like whoever wrote it was scared to explain too much."
"Because they probably were," he said, flipping a page. "Anything involving Crown-affecting or mind-based sigils always ends in a redaction. An interesting topic, that one."
They sat in silence again; they hadn't quite had a friendship or formality. Just a mutual breath before the plunge.
The Deathzone Trial was tomorrow.
Kael eventually looked up. Iris had her hood off for once, revealing the mint streaks in her dark hair. The flickering light caught the ink of the vine-shaped sigil curling faintly over her collarbone — not the aggressive mark of a combat crown, but something subtler. He couldn't place it. Didn't ask.
"Do you always come here this late?" he asked, breaking the hush.
"Not always," she said, eyes still on the page. "But books don't interrogate you the way people do."
He nodded. That much, at least, he understood. Some truths didn't survive conversation.
His gaze drifted down to his own book — a collection of fragmented witness accounts titled Veilstalker Phenomena. No diagrams. Just ragged writing, inconsistent details, and more names blacked out than left intact.
"Could they be in the territory we're going to?" He muttered. "Veilstalkers".
Iris glanced up slowly. Her lips pressed together. She didn't answer.
Kael's jaw tightened. He wasn't sure if the silence was confirmation or fear.
Before he could push further, a loud clang echoed from deeper within the wing — metal on metal, jarring and sharp. It sounded nothing like the smooth hum of the automaton caretakers. It was... deliberate.
Kael stood.
"That wasn't part of the rotation cycle," he said carefully.
Iris didn't move, just lowered her eyes back to her book. "They won't bother us here."
Her calmness unsettled him more than the noise.
Elsewhere in the Archives — Moments Earlier
His name wasn't important. Most didn't know it. Some thought he'd graduated. Others thought he was dead.
But that was his gift.
Cayder could vanish. Not by will, not with stealth. Just... naturally. Forgotten even while present. Faded from memory like fog curling away from light.
Even his Crownlight flickered faintly, like smoke trapped in glass — barely perceptible. It passed him through every test. Just enough to avoid suspicion. Just enough to be left alone.
He shelved sealed documents in the restricted wing as Professor Emm had instructed. Quiet, methodical, one gloved hand at a time. He was more a fixture here than the light fixtures themselves.
And yet — tonight, something was off.
He had paused by one of the adjacent archive rooms when the voices started.
"I'm telling you, it wasn't an anomaly," said one. "That spike wasn't natural. We need to warn the students. This trial isn't safe."
Another voice, deep and measured, replied, "The Veilstalker hasn't breached in years. We don't even know if the Crownlight burst was from it."
"No Trynarch will convince me that silence means safety," snapped the first. "They're here for their own reasons. They wouldn't warn us if the world was burning."
Papers shuffled. A third voice — low and weary — spoke next. "Even if you're right, we can't cancel now. Not with the elite clans arriving. This Deathzone trial was too expensive to build, and pulling it now would cost us everything."
The silence after was heavy.
Cayder didn't move. Didn't breathe.
One of them noticed something. A pause. A step toward the door.
Cayder simply stepped backward, eyes half-lidded. He faded between the shelves, each motion slow, practised, as though he belonged to the air between pages. The lamps above him dimmed, as if even they forgot he was there.
He didn't run. He didn't need to.
Moments later, he had successfully slipped into the main hall of the Archives. No one noticed. Not the instructors. Not the librarian bots. Not even the other assistants.
He was meant to report findings like this. He was a minor assistant of the instructors under the chain of Lysian — commander of the Thousand-Edged Sovereigns — a man who prided himself on intel, domination, and precision.
But when Cayder looked out the high-arched windows into the courtyard below, he saw Lysian's squad clustered together, laughing. Boasting. Preparing.
They'd never believe him. And if they did, they'd use him as bait. Or worse — forget him mid-command and leave him behind to die.
He slipped his hand into his coat, fingers brushing against the old parchment he'd stolen months ago — rough notes, ill-kept sketches, the only pieces left of Veilstalker studies before they were erased.
He should have left Centralis months ago. He should have gone back to the shadows beneath the border cities, where silence wasn't betrayal — it was survival.
But something kept him here. It wasn't loyalty; he knew that, but he could never leave the halls of Centralis. Maybe it was fear or maybe curiosity.
Because if the whispers were right... if something was feeding from inside the zone…
Then tomorrow would be a massacre.