The next morning came fast.
Too fast.
Yuren hadn't slept.
Neither had Reika. She sat beside the fire with her knees drawn up, fingers tracing silent shapes in the dirt. Her blades were half-formed, not sharp, not loose—listening.
Mason had retreated to his scanner rig, running diagnostics on atmospheric pressure and stress tremors in the stone near camp.
What he'd found?
He hadn't said.
Chloe gathered the camp.
No speeches.
Just a statement.
"Kaela gave us a deadline."
Murmurs spread like fire.
"She says Lyra is the final key. That she intends to take her."
Someone in the back—new, still limping from the Fall—asked, "And if we say no?"
Chloe looked at them.
"Then she'll kill us all."
Denzel, of course, had already chosen his side.
He stood with arms crossed, flanked by three B-ranks from the second wave—people who had no loyalty to anyone yet.
"She's not bluffing," he said.
"Then we fight," said someone else.
"She's an A-rank," Reika replied coldly. "And we don't know what her discs do at full tilt. If she's holding back, we're dead."
"We can't just hand the girl over," Chloe said.
"Then we move," Denzel offered. "Split the camp. Let the ones who don't want to die hand her off."
Yuren spoke for the first time.
"No one's splitting anything."
Denzel narrowed his eyes. "You don't give orders."
"I'm not giving one," Yuren said. "I'm making a promise. If anyone turns Lyra over, I'll bury you myself."
The fire popped.
Nobody laughed.
Not even Denzel.
Lyra didn't eat that day.
She didn't speak.
She sat on a broken crate with her knees pulled to her chest, glyph tucked between her palms.
When Yuren approached, she didn't look up.
"I don't want to be the reason people die," she whispered.
"You're not."
"Kaela thinks I am."
"She's wrong."
"Then why is everyone so scared?"
Yuren crouched beside her.
And for the first time, he told the full truth.
"There are three glyphs. Mine. Hers. Yours. When all three are active, the Door opens. We don't know what's behind it, or what it wants. But the glyphs say something."
Lyra glanced at him. "What?"
"Only one survives."
The silence after was different.
Heavier.
But not hopeless.
Just… real.
Lyra didn't cry. Didn't panic.
She asked only one question.
"If I run… would that protect anyone?"
"No," Yuren said.
"Then what happens if I stay?"
"You decide what opens. And who follows."
Night fell.
Fast.
Campfires were low. No one laughed. No one trained.
Then Kaela returned.
No storm. No entrance.
She walked through the north path like she already knew how this would end.
Chloe stood to block her.
So did Reika.
So did Mason.
So did Yuren.
And Lyra—silent—stepped out from behind them.
"I'll go with her," she said.
Yuren's heart stopped.
Reika said, "No."
But Lyra shook her head. "I want to see what she's planning."
Kaela raised an eyebrow. "Suddenly brave?"
Lyra held up her glyph.
It was fully cracked now—but stable. Glowing.
And at the base was a new symbol.
A triangle.
With a line through the top.
Kaela's expression finally changed.
Not anger.
Not surprise.
But… recognition.
And something like fear.
"You weren't supposed to awaken yet."
Lyra stepped forward. Quiet. Calm.
"I know."
Day 32 — Evening
The descent was longer than expected.
Not steep—precise. The stairwell curved gradually, stone blocks fitting so tight he couldn't slide a finger between the seams.
This wasn't made by survivors.
This was engineered.
At the bottom: a chamber.
Cold. Vast. Circular.
The ceiling was domed and reflective. Pillars lined the walls—twelve in total, etched with the same three-dot language as the glyphs. But no light source. No torches. Just the faint bioluminescence from lichen across the floor, outlining…
A platform.
Stone. Octagonal. Two feet high.
Something waited on it.
A ring—large, metallic, forged from a black alloy that pulsed gently with a heartbeat rhythm.
Not dead.
Dormant.
The glyph in Yuren's hand began to thrum again.
He stepped closer.
FOURTH FOUND.
NOT A KEY. A ROOT.
THE DOOR WAITS FOR POWER.
He crouched beside the platform, ran his fingers over the ring.
No reaction.
Then he focused. Pushed Trace Sense into it, looking for pathways, breaks, anything living.
And it hit him like a shock.
There was circuitry.
Not wires. Not modern tech. But a flow—something like psionic current. It wasn't reacting to thought.
It was measuring intent.
He stepped back.
Not out of fear—out of recognition.
This was a power conductor. Not a weapon.
Not a vault.
A receiver.
It wasn't made for one person.
It was made for three.
Back at camp, Kaela had returned without Lyra.
Alone.
She told Chloe nothing.
Reika hadn't returned yet either.
That raised alarms.
And Denzel?
He was watching Yuren now like a problem he hadn't solved yet.
But Yuren didn't care.
Because now he knew.
Kaela's discs weren't her gift.
They were tools.
Remotes. Controlled through mental force.
He'd seen the subtle hand gestures. The stillness when she launched them. The lack of recoil.
He knew telekinesis when he saw it.
That night, Yuren set his plan in motion.
He helped patch the perimeter.
He shared rations.
He sat by Kaela's fire.
Watched her eat.
Listened to her movements.
Timed how her blades hovered when she wasn't speaking.
4 hours of close proximity.
2 of active tracking.
Subtle mimicry of disc-control using small rocks when she wasn't looking.
His mind worked slower than hers, maybe. But not dumber.
He just played patient.
And then—
At midnight—
The glyph vibrated.
Not a glow.
Not a pulse.
But the kind of internal click that meant one thing:
Replication window open.
Yuren waited until she slept.
Then sat quietly in the jungle perimeter, holding the slab to his chest.
And whispered:
"I'll take it."
The glyph absorbed the pattern.
A cold rush flooded his chest.
The mental architecture formed, neuron by neuron.
And suddenly—
He felt the weight of matter like threads in his hands.
He picked up a pebble without touching it.
It hovered.
Spun.
Split into dust.
Then collapsed like nothing happened.
He smiled.
Telekinesis acquired.
A-Rank. Versatile. Invisible.
Now it's mine.
Day 33
Yuren didn't touch anything for the first three hours.
Not with his hands.
He trained with pebbles.
Leaves.
Twigs the size of fingers.
Out in the woods before sunrise, masked by birdsong and shadows.
He learned that pushing was easier than pulling.
That spinning an object took focus, but stopping it took instinct.
He could lift two things at once if they were symmetrical.
He could crush a beetle from ten feet without leaving a mark.
But finesse was hard.
He nearly knocked out a tree branch trying to rotate a flat stone.
Lost control.
Had to catch it with his palm like nothing had happened.
Back at camp, Kaela was off.
She paced more.
Spoke less.
Stared longer.
Her discs didn't hum the same way they used to—one hovered slightly off-axis.
And she looked at Yuren once.
Just once.
Like she felt something.
He kept his breathing slow.
His posture loose.
He even mimicked a slight shoulder stiffness to hide how his arms moved when he used the field.
You don't just hide a stolen ability.
You become the kind of person who never had it.
Then, late morning—
Reika came back.
Alone.
Her shirt was torn at the shoulder.
Blood—not hers—streaked across one arm.
She went straight to Chloe, ignored Denzel, and pulled Yuren aside without a word.
They stood behind the comms tarp, the sound of rain on the plastic barely covering her voice.
"I followed them," she said.
Yuren tensed. "Where's Lyra?"
"She's alive. Kaela took her to a ridge—an old one, hollowed near the base. Some kind of site. There were symbols. A basin. Blood in it."
Yuren's voice dropped. "Blood?"
"Animals. Small ones. Maybe. I couldn't tell. But Lyra stood inside it."
Yuren felt it like a stone sinking in his stomach. "What did she do?"
"She didn't flinch. Didn't move. Just stared into the glyph like it was talking back."
Reika looked at him then—hard.
"She's not normal."
"I know."
"No. I mean she's not even pretending to be."
That evening, Kaela vanished.
Just like that.
No one saw her leave.
Her discs were gone.
Her bedroll still folded.
The soil beneath her tent hadn't even shifted.
Like she'd melted out of the camp.
That night, Yuren tested the reach of his power.
He stepped twenty feet from the camp's outer edge, lifted a fist-sized rock, and held it in the air for thirty seconds.
It floated smooth.
Silent.
Perfect.
Then, with a flick of thought—he sent it flying into the jungle canopy and split a branch without a sound.
If Kaela wanted a war… he was almost ready for it.
Then something even stranger happened.
He checked his glyph before sleeping.
Expecting silence.
But found new writing:
THREE HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.
BUT THE TRIANGLE WILL NOT HOLD.
THE FOURTH HAS BEEN MARKED.
And under it, something that hadn't appeared before:
A sigil.
Not a dot.
Not a line.
A curve, like a sideways "C" shaped from fire.
It glowed for a moment.
Then faded.