The punishment came quietly.
No trial.
No formal censure.
Just absence.
Lyle wasn't called to drills.
His Codex interface froze at Level Access 3.
And when he passed through the Hall of Ascendants, every instructor suddenly found something else to look at.
> Exile without chains, he thought.
They want me to flinch. To beg.
He didn't.
But something else did.
---
Juno visited his dorm late—after curfew, after lights out. She didn't knock.
He opened the door before she touched it.
"Anything?" she asked.
"Not a word."
They sat on the floor.
Not because there were no chairs—but because the floor felt real. Grounded. Cold like the truth.
"You think they'll separate us?" she asked.
Lyle didn't answer right away.
"I think they already tried."
"And failed."
"They won't next time."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then leaned in, just barely, and whispered:
"Then let's be ready before they try again."
---
At midnight, the Codex pulsed.
Not in light.
In sound.
A soft knocking inside his skull.
Then a message appeared—not in system script, but in handwriting. Familiar. Too familiar.
> You're using it wrong.
Lyle froze.
The Codex flickered.
Then surged.
And a new page opened.
Blank.
Except for one name.
> Xethan Mourne
> Known Title: The Veiled Architect
Status: Erased
Last trace: Seventy-two years before the Fall
Affiliation: Exiled Division – Codex Origin Team
Another pulse.
Then an address.
Coordinates.
Nowhere near the Academy.
Nowhere on any map he'd ever seen.
Beneath the message, a sigil burned into existence—
A spiral of ink and blood.
Identical to the mark on the first page of the book he'd cried on.
The one that started everything.
---
The message ended with one sentence.
Burned into the Codex interface, not over it.
> "If you want the truth, bring her. Only her. Come alone, or don't come at all."
---
Lyle stood at the window for a long time.
The moon above looked cracked tonight.
Like it, too, was hiding a secret.
Juno stirred behind him.
She hadn't asked what the message was.
Not yet.
Because she trusted him.
But trust only worked until you reached a cliff.
And they were standing on one now.
---
He turned to her.
And finally said it.
"There's someone I need to find."
Juno sat up slowly. "Who?"
"A ghost."
"From your past?"
"No. From the Codex's."
She studied his face.
Didn't blink.
Then nodded.
"I'll pack."
He blinked. "You don't even know where we're going."
"I don't care. If you're going… I'm not staying behind."
---
As they slipped out through the eastern supply hall—dodging warden glyphs and cutting low through the blind zones—Lyle couldn't help but feel it again:
Not fear.
Not hope.
But inevitability.
As if someone had been waiting for this exact choice.
For him.
For them.
And now… the hunt had truly begun.