The morning sky was clear. Too clear.
Not a wisp of cloud, not a shift in wind. It was as if the world itself had stopped breathing.
Frank noticed it first. Standing atop the citadel's eastern watchtower, he gazed out across the horizon. The air shimmered faintly—like heat waves, but there was no warmth. Just a trembling stillness that pressed against his skin like a silent scream.
Behind him, Susan climbed the final step. "You feel it too?"
Frank nodded, not taking his eyes off the haze. "It started an hour ago. Nothing moves out there. No wind. No birds. Just stillness."
Susan activated her lens. Glyph readings buzzed across its surface, but most were empty—blank results, missing values. "It's like the glyphs don't recognize the world anymore."
Then came the sound.
A soft crack. Not thunder. Not explosion.
Glass. Breaking. From beneath the soil.
Frank leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "There."
At the far edge of the eastern plains, the ground split open. Not violently—but precisely. A circular ripple spread outward like a reverse shockwave. Grass turned white. Stones cracked. The light itself bent.
And then, rising from the center, came a storm.
But not of clouds. Not of water.
A glyph storm.
Hundreds of swirling symbols—some ancient, some malformed—rose into the air like torn pages caught in a wind that no one could feel. They spun in slow, deliberate circles, forming an enormous ring above the cracked earth.
Susan stepped back. "That's not natural."
"No," Frank said. "It's intentional."
He turned and shouted down the tower. "Sound the alarm!"
---
By the time the Seven gathered in the Hall of Flame, the sky had darkened. Not with rain—but with glyph shadow.
Fragments of corrupted glyphs had begun to fall like snow across the eastern walls, disintegrating on contact and leaving behind trails of blackened light. No known glyph system could explain it. Not even Neolin's deepest scrolls.
"This isn't a malfunction," Susan reported. "This is a message."
Tom stood near the map table. "Or a threat."
Jack flipped one of the falling glyph fragments in his palm. It vibrated faintly. "It's humming. Like a heartbeat."
Kitty walked in, clutching a scroll case. "We found this near the perimeter. It was embedded in the stone. Still warm."
Neolin opened it carefully. His face changed the moment he saw the inscription. His breath caught.
Lucy stepped forward. "What is it?"
Neolin slowly set the scroll down. "This glyph doesn't belong to any recorded system. It's inverted… recursive. Written from the outside in."
"What does it say?" Frank asked.
Neolin closed his eyes.
"One has stirred.
One remains buried.
One is listening.
The first crack has been made.
Dissonance has entered the song."
A cold silence filled the room.
"Dissonance?" Peter echoed.
Neolin opened his eyes. "That was the name of the first one."
Tom looked up. "The first… of the Trio?"
Neolin nodded grimly. "The Wielder of Dissonance. The one who corrupted harmony. A glyphsmith so powerful they could unravel meaning from memory."
Frank exhaled. "So they're not coming."
"They're already here."
---
The Seven rode out that afternoon, accompanied by a team of elite scouts and glyph readers. The corrupted glyph storm had grown in size, now hovering like a slow vortex above the cracked vault site. The closer they got, the more reality seemed to flicker.
Jack blinked between trees. "This place... it shifts. I step forward, but I don't end up ahead."
Kitty flared her wings to stabilize the group. "Wind's resisting movement."
Tom held his blade low, flames coiled at his fingertips. "Stay sharp. This isn't just distortion. It's redirection."
As they reached the center, they saw the vault.
Or rather… what was left of it.
Once sealed with layers of glyph rings, the underground chamber had burst open like a blooming flower of stone. Spiral fractures radiated outward. Floating above the central breach was a shape—just barely visible. A figure wrapped in threads of glyphs, like a puppet held by forgotten strings.
It didn't speak. It pulsed.
Susan activated her lens. "It's not alive. But it's not inert either."
Then a voice echoed—not in the air, but inside their minds.
"Meaning is the first lie."
Frank staggered, clutching his head. The voice was smooth, genderless, quiet—but it scraped across his thoughts like a dull blade.
"Words are cages. Symbols are echoes. You built your world on illusion."
Lucy dropped to one knee, her eyes glowing faintly. "It's a projection. Not of voice. Of intention. It's forcing thoughts into shape."
The shape above the vault pulsed again. One by one, the glyphs around it collapsed into silence.
"You shattered Kazakare.
And now you've drawn the attention of what waits beneath remembrance.
You've awakened me."
Susan fired a glyph beam at the figure.
It vanished instantly. The storm above slowed… but didn't stop.
Instead, one final glyph fragment floated down and landed in Frank's palm.
It was blank—until he blinked.
And then one word burned into its surface.
"Velmorith."
Jack whispered, "That's the name of the first."
Neolin confirmed it without looking up. "The Wielder of Dissonance. The Composer of Silent Thought."
Tom stepped forward. "Then what was that thing we just saw?"
Neolin spoke gravely. "That… was only his breath."
---
Back in Odessyus that night, the glyph readers struggled to stabilize the surrounding field. Strange pulses continued to ripple across the eastern reaches. Time moved oddly. Reflections in glass didn't match reality. Children spoke words they'd never learned.
And across the walls, a new pattern had begun to spread.
Three interlocked marks—half claw, half glyph, half shadow.
The sign of the Trio.
The first had moved.
And the world… had just begun to fracture.