The canals ran quiet that day. Barges drifted lazily, children shouted from rooftops, and life crept back into the cracks. But wherever he walked, the water followed him with its eyes — reflections rippling, small waves tugging toward his steps.
By noon he'd reached the far pier, a forgotten place where the city's pulse dimmed. He dropped to his knees, cupped the murky water, and watched it spill through his fingers.
It should have felt cold.
It didn't.
A faint warmth pulsed behind his left eye. For a heartbeat the world tilted — colors deepened, sounds stretched thin, and he could feel the flow beneath the surface: currents coiling, threads weaving through the silt.
He blinked, and it was gone. No witnesses. No Codex voice. Just him and the river's slow breathing.
He spent the next hours testing that feeling. First by accident — tossing pebbles, tracing ripples, watching them stop when he willed them to. Then by intent — spreading his palm over the canal, exhaling until the surface stilled.
At first nothing happened. The water mocked him, flat and silent. Then, a tremor.
A single drop lifted from the surface, hovering in the air like a tear refusing to fall. Jayden stared until it burst, splashing his cheek. He laughed once, short and startled. Again.
He steadied his breath, lowered his heartbeat, and reached for the pulse beneath his skin — the same pulse he'd felt in the Realm, when he battled the skeletal eel. Something ancient answered, faint but real.
The canal shivered. Dozens of droplets rose, orbiting his hand like a ring of translucent moons. They spun faster, merging into a thin ribbon that cut the light into shards. He moved his wrist; the ribbon obeyed.
He smiled. "It's listening."
The smile faded. Power thrummed through his veins, too wild, too eager. He lost focus; the ribbon collapsed with a splash that drenched his knees.
Panting, he dropped to the dock. "Too much," he whispered. "Too fast." No one answered. Only the canal, settling back into stillness.
As dusk bled into the sky, he sat cross-legged, watching reflections glide over the water's skin. Each ripple caught a fragment of the setting sun, scattering gold like coins he'd never own.
He thought of Daren's calloused hands, Mira's tired smile, Askeladd's reckless grin. Of the lightning that had taken one, spared another, and remade him into something he couldn't name.
The ache in his chest twisted, hot and sharp. For an instant his vision blurred — and the mark in his eye flickered alive.
Blue runes bloomed within his iris, rippling outward like expanding rings. The canal answered. A column of water surged upward, towering above the pier, glimmering with moonlight though no moon had risen. Jayden gasped, forcing his mind to steady.
"Down," he commanded through gritted teeth.
The column trembled... and obeyed. It collapsed back into the canal with a sound like a sigh. He fell to one knee, trembling, soaked but grinning. Control. Real control.
Night deepened. The city lights of upper Keystone blinked to life, reflected in the canals like constellations drowning upside-down.
Jayden sat there until the stars took their places. His hands were raw, his body spent, but something within him had settled — a new rhythm, calm yet unyielding.
He looked into the water. His reflection stared back, no longer the ragged boy hauling buckets through mud. The same face, but different eyes — eyes that carried the quiet of the depths.
"I'll master this," he murmured. "All of it."
The canal rippled once, as if the world had heard but refused to care. That was fine. He didn't need its blessing.
He gathered his blades, slung them across his back, and turned toward the sleeping city. Behind him, the water stilled completely, clear enough to mirror the stars — and for a heartbeat, the faint outline of an enormous eye shimmered beneath the surface, watching him go.
Then the warmth behind his left eye flared again — and the world shifted.
The night did not brighten; it unfolded.
Colors deepened beyond color, shapes softened into lines of essence. The wooden planks beneath him unraveled into threads of energy — not seen, but felt. The world was no longer matter, but meaning.
His gaze drifted to a fallen leaf resting on the water. For a moment, he knew it — its age, the softness of its veins, the faint ache of its fading life. He saw how the moisture clung to it, how the threads of its spirit still whispered to the tree that had birthed it.
Everywhere he looked, the Eye unveiled truth:
The flow of the canal was not water but memory, moving in endless rhythm. The wind carried echoes of breath. Even the stones beneath his feet sang in stillness — each holding a fragment of creation's first vibration.
Jayden's breath hitched. The world was too vast, too alive. His heart struggled to match its pulse.
And then—
Images flickered at the edge of his vision: his hand raised, droplets spinning, the column rising — not as memory, but as recording, etched in light behind his gaze.
He staggered back, clutching his head. The Eye dimmed slowly, its runes fading to silence.
Only the canal remained, still and indifferent, as if none of it had happened.
Jayden stared into the rippling water, chest heaving. He didn't understand what he'd seen, only that he had peered too deep — and something had peered back.
He exhaled shakily. "Not a word of this," he muttered, half to himself. "Not even to Askeladd."
The canal shimmered once — faint, approving, or warning — and went still.
Jayden turned toward the city lights, his reflection fracturing in the dark. Somewhere beneath, unseen, the Eye of Creation opened once more...
and began to remember.