Chapter Two: The Ones Who Watch the Silence
Part Two – The Mark Beneath the Map
Date: Maelis 25, Year 204 PCR
Location: Cradle of Aegir – Transit Hall / Veilscar Deployment Bridge
Time: Midday
The map refused to stay still.
Even as Kaelen pinned one side with his elbow and Yolti weighed the other with a plate of cooling ration bread, the pulselines on the parchment kept shifting—not by inches, but by fragments.
Each time Zephryn blinked, the resonance veins across the lower corner twitched.
"It's rewriting itself," Yolti whispered.
"Not itself," Selka corrected, narrowing her eyes. "Us."
Buta stood to the side of the war table, arms folded, smoking silently again. The glyph trails from the courier's scroll hadn't dimmed. If anything, they were brightening, reacting to the very air inside the stronghold.
"This route wasn't chosen for us," Selka said.
"It's following us."
Kaelen leaned closer to the flickering sigils.
"That's Veil-writing. Broken kind. Glyphs are twitching at the edges."
Zephryn stepped forward slowly. The closer he got, the more his Veilmark itched.
That itch wasn't pain.
It was recognition.
His glyph flared once—brief, soft. Enough to trigger a ripple in the map's lines.
The lines restructured, coiling into a spiral over the east cliff marker. Not a full spiral. A fragment.
A symbol began to form beneath the ink.
And when Zephryn touched it, the mark became clear:
∞
Not drawn. Not inked.
Etched into the paper. From underneath.
Selka reached across him, hand brushing the edge.
The glyph flared blue between them both, only for a second—then died.
"That wasn't a Veilmark," she said quietly.
Zephryn looked at her. "Then what was it?"
"It was a song."
Buta finally stepped forward.
"It's not a lie. This is a mission. But it's also a test.
Just not one from the Lyceum."
He tapped the mark with his knuckle. It didn't react to him.
"Someone—or something—embedded this call before the Doctrine dispatched it."
Kaelen growled. "So we're bait."
"You're Resonants," Buta said calmly.
"You were always going to be bait."
They suited up in silence.
Yolti laced her fingers with glyphthread and pulled resonance tape over her forearms. Kaelen wrapped his waist in pulse-lock binding and carried a short halberd—but it pulsed unevenly, his control still off.
Selka tied her hair back in two bands, both laced with woven glyphstone beads—tokens from her father's war gear.
Zephryn paused in the corridor, staring at the shard of paper he'd torn from the scroll—the one where the spiral had first flared.
He kept it folded, hidden in his sash.
His glyph hadn't spoken since.
But it was listening.
Outside, a new Crestborn sigil-carrier hovered near the edge of the stone deployment ring.
It wasn't shaped like the last one. This one was sharper, sleeker. It didn't carry weight.
It cut through the air like a blade.
Buta looked at it, then at the four of them.
"Scar zone's unstable. You'll deploy low."
"What does that mean?" Kaelen asked.
"No glyph parachutes. No glyph burns. No Crestborn extraction if the ground splits."
"…so it means 'good luck,'" Kaelen muttered.
As they boarded, Selka paused.
Zephryn noticed.
"What?"
She looked at the horizon.
"That mark on the scroll. I've seen it before."
"Where?"
"On my mother's desk.
Days before she vanished."
Zephryn didn't speak.
He felt the pulse in his forearm again.
Soft. Infinite.
And this time… it was echoing back.