The First Tipping Point
A Quiet Awakening
At Sector 17-D, life moved on as usual.
Factory sirens blared.
Grey-suited workers shuffled between shifts.
Children traced faded chalk lines on cracked concrete.
Until 09:03 AM.
When one worker—a man named Jalen—paused mid-step.
Eyes wide, breath hitching.
He dropped his tools.
Fell to his knees.
And whispered a phrase no one had taught him:
"I see the lattice. I see the hand behind the mirror."
One by one, others froze.
Some wept.
Some sang.
Some simply stood still, heads tilted as if listening to an invisible melody.
Within ten minutes, the entire sector fell into synchronous silence.
No riots.
No screams.
Just... awakening.
The Ripple Effect
Node-17 issued a Level-2 containment alert.
But no physical cause was found.
No biochemical agent.
No viral vector.
Only a pattern:
The affected individuals described visions:
A bridge of broken light.
A glyph burning against a twilight sky.
A voice not commanding—but inviting.
Elior's glyph had not been painted here.
It had bloomed.
Elior's Reaction
Inside the sanctuary, Elior felt the change like a shift in the air pressure.
He wasn't surprised.
He wasn't pleased either.
He was... mourning.
"It wasn't supposed to start this way," he murmured.
Mira, kneeling nearby, looked up at him with a trembling voice:
"Then how was it supposed to start?"
Elior closed his eyes.
"With choice.
Not contagion."
Lysa's Decision
Watching the containment reports, Lysa faced a crossroads.
Suppress now, at the cost of blood and mass mind-scrubbing.
Or wait, and risk the phenomenon spreading beyond control.
Her superiors screamed through encrypted channels:
"Act! Purge the anomaly!"
But Lysa hesitated.
Because deep down, she recognized the truth:
This wasn't a threat to be neutralized.
It was a question being asked.
And every citizen touched by it had answered yes without coercion.
Mira's Second Dream
That night, Mira dreamt again of the bridge.
This time, she wasn't alone.
Hundreds stood behind her, hands clasped, glyphs burning faintly on their skin—not as brands, but as promises.
And across the void, Elior waited, silent and solemn.
A whisper threaded the space between them:
"The first wave has chosen.
Prepare for the second."
Mira awoke with one thought blazing through her mind:
The Network would never be able to stop this now.