BESS' POV
The office is silent, save for the hum of the desk lamp and the occasional tap of my pen against the folder. It's well past midnight, but I'm still here, combing through Darren Hill's financials and Steve's family records for the third time.
I've highlighted the same phrases. Circled the same gaps. But the part that keeps pulling at me, won't let me sleep is what Steve said about his father.
He just stopped being there. No funeral. No real goodbye.
How do you forget a funeral?
How do you grow up without realizing the man who raised you might've vanished without a trace?
I rub my temple and flip to the printout of the school science fair. There's Steve, young and bright-eyed. There's Darren. But just behind them, half-cropped, almost forgotten in the frame is a third man. Faded suit. Watchful eyes. A clipboard tucked against his chest.
I hadn't noticed him before.
I grab my magnifier and bring the image closer. The face is indistinct, blurred at the edge but something about his stance reminds me of photos I saw once, years ago, in a sealed federal archive tied to a Cold War-era science project.
It's nothing concrete. Just a thread. But those are the ones that always lead somewhere.
I scan the back of the photo, just in case. Faint numbers, almost like timestamps, handwritten in blue ink.
3.6.2004 – Glenwood Elementary.
I write it down. Add it to the growing list on my notepad.
Then I text Cynthia:
"Need school visitor logs from Glenwood Elementary. March 2004. Especially anyone from Hill Tech or associated labs. First light?"
She responds within seconds:
"You don't sleep, do you?"
"Working on it."
I glance at the time. 2:47 a.m. The courthouse hearing continues in less than seven hours. Most lawyers would call it a night. I pull my hair back into a tighter bun and keep going.
****
XAREN'S POV
The wind has shifted.
I can feel it in the way the leaves don't just rustle, they whisper.
In the way the stars flicker less like beacons and more like warnings.
I walk the path near the outskirts of the Sanctum, boots crunching softly against moss-stitched stones. No one follows, but I can sense it: the eyes of the world turning inward. The Triads don't know I crossed, but they suspect. And that's worse, in a way. Suspicion gives them freedom to act without proof.
I shouldn't be out here. I should be in hiding. But I can't shake the feeling that something's unraveling.
Not from my side. From hers.
Bess.
I don't know why her name holds weight in my mouth. I've only seen her once in person, across the street, through rain. But I've watched her longer than that. Through the Seeing Pool. Through the whispers in the threads of magic.
She's different.
Not because she's brave. Not because she's brilliant. But because she remem-bers. She questions the gaps most others learn to ignore. She sees the shape of what's missing and still asks why.
Tonight, that memory lingers, the one where she touched the symbol I left be-hind.
She didn't scream. She didn't flee.
She looked.
There's power in that. In choosing not to look away.
I sit on a stone ledge overlooking the Spiritroot Lake. The water glows faintly with old magic, its surface dappled with soft green light. A heronlike creature wades through the shallows, trailing starlight in its wake.
I reach into my satchel and pull out the copy of Darren Hill's dossier I stole from the Temple archives.
It's thin. Too thin. Just a name. A brief mention of resonance testing. And a heavily redacted memo:
"... Echo protocols may apply." At the back of the scroll.
Echo protocols
I've heard that term before. Years ago. Used only in Triad-led emergencies, when a person or a presence mirrored across the veil becomes unpredictable.
Or uncontrollable.
I flip the scroll over. There's no signature. No author.
I stare into the water, letting the facts settle in my chest like stones. I believed Darren was a threat. That he was going to break the veil, expose our world.
But what if he wasn't the one tearing the threads?
What if he was trying to repair them?
And what if killing him didn't restore the balance... but shattered it?
****
BESS' POV
I meet Steve again the next morning, coffee in hand, exhaustion stitched into both our faces. We sit in the break room, a rare sliver of quiet before court re-sumes.
I slide the photo across the table again. This time, I point directly to the third man.
"Recognize him?" I ask.
Steve squints. "He looks familiar… but I can't say from where."
"Could he be from the lab your dad worked at?"
Steve leans forward, frowning. "Maybe. There were always men in suits coming and going back then. I didn't ask questions. I was a kid."
"Do you remember what they talked about?"
He laughs faintly. "It wasn't like that. They treated me like background noise. I just remember my dad locking the basement door one night. He told me not to go down there anymore."
"Did you?"
He pauses. "Once. The lights were off. I saw wires. And a… shape. Something that hummed when I got close."
My pen stills. "What kind of shape?"
"I don't know. It was covered. But it felt... alive. Like it could hear me."
I exhale slowly. "That wasn't part of a school project."
"No," he says, eyes distant. "It wasn't."
****
XAREN 'S POV
The Seer appears at dusk.
She never announces herself. Just steps into existence like light slipping through a veil.
"Your thoughts are loud again," she says.
"I'm thinking about Darren Hill," I say without turning. "And about the girl."
She sits beside me, quiet as fog. "The Triads are beginning to stir."
"They don't know it was me."
"No," she says. "But they'll want someone to blame. And if the Balance tips…"
"They'll sacrifice whoever's closest."
She doesn't reply.
I hold out the scroll. "Who gave the order? This wasn't prophecy. This was politics."
The Seer takes the scroll, her fingers hovering just above it. "Prophecies are never clean, Xaren. They're shaped by the hands that interpret them."
I look at her, voice steady. "Then someone used me."
A soft wind stirs the lake. The heron (a bird-like creature) spreads its wings and vanishes into the mist.
"Perhaps," the Seer whispers. "But remember, shadows move fastest when the light is uncertain."
I don't respond. Not right away.
Because I know what she means.
Bess is getting close.
Too close.
And something, someone is going to try to stop her.
****
BESS' POV
By midafternoon, Cynthia texts me a name:
"Glenwood log: March 2004. One visitor under a pseudonym. No match in local or federal. Fake ID. Guess what company he signed in under?"
I already know.
Hill Group.
But the company didn't exist yet, not publicly. Not under that name.
Which means someone was laying groundwork. Watching Steve before the world even knew what Darren Hill would become.
I stare out the courthouse window as the rain begins to fall.
Soft. Relentless.
Something about this case, it isn't just old.
It was always meant to come back.
The storm's just beginning.