Volume V – The First Bloom

Chapter One: The Petalwind Ceremony

Part Six

Date: Maelis 23, Year 204 PCR

Location: Petalwind Courtyard → Veil-Scar Expanse, Cradle of Aegir (Legato Stronghold)

Time: Afternoon, just after assignment

The wind did not cheer when they were chosen.

It whispered.

The kind of whisper that hangs behind a funeral veil—soft, bitter, ancient. As if the land itself had already seen the end of what was beginning now.

Buta stood at the head of the path, cloak resting like a shadow over rusted armor, smoke curling around his breath as if even fire dared not touch his voice. He didn't look back as they followed.

"Legato Unit… with me."

Four steps fell into rhythm behind him—silent, hesitant, then slowly syncing to his stride.

Zephryn walked first, still tasting the pulse of the orb on his fingertips. His Veilmark hadn't just flickered—it had cracked the glass. Everyone had seen it. And yet no one had said a word.

Not even Selka, who trailed behind him now, hands still wrapped in white bandage-thread, glyph ink bleeding faintly beneath her skin.

Kaelen muttered, eyes on the sky. "Wind's wrong."

Yolti hummed something broken and slow—not a song, not a spell. Just memory.

They crossed the final edge of the Heartbloom Courtyard, where the last petals still fell like fractured snow, and behind them the Pulse Eye sealed itself shut.

And the world forgot their names.

Three transport glyphs lit along the lower stone steps—Crestborn vessels of living crystal and floating spine-runes, humming with slow arcane breath. A mail-runner tossed Buta a sealed scroll.

"First wave of mission routes," the Crestborn said. "Low rank. Recon-heavy. Pulseborn activity."

Buta didn't open it. He tucked it beneath his belt and stepped into the glyph-lit vessel. The others followed.

No goodbyes. No crowds.

Only the quiet hiss of separation as the glyphs flared and launched skyward.

The wind howled.

Through the glass curve of the transport shell, the world below fractured—forest veins, old rivers dried into song-lines, rusted ruin beneath white mist. Nothing clean. Nothing untouched.

Zephryn stared, breathing in silence.

"Why didn't Lumyra get called?" he asked quietly.

No one answered.

Yolti tilted her head. "Maybe she wasn't meant for any of us."

Selka, cold, replied: "Or maybe they already wrote her ending."

Kaelen frowned, but said nothing.

They arrived just before dusk.

The stronghold of Legato Unit did not wait like a home.

It stood like a wound.

Cradle of Aegir—a broken fortress folded into the edge of the Veil-Scar Expanse, where winds screamed down jagged stone cliffs and glyphs whispered through shattered archways. The outer walls bore cracks too deep to be natural. And the main hall?

Hollow. Dark. Waiting.

As they stepped off the glyph platform, the air tightened.

Zephryn felt his mark shimmer—faint, unspoken. Kaelen walked slow now, slower than before. Yolti's hum quieted.

Selka looked back once. "This place knows ghosts."

Buta pushed the great doors open with a single hand. They groaned like they hadn't been touched in months.

Inside—dim light from half-burned glyph torches. A long corridor carved from blackstone. Dust suspended midair like breath caught in the throat.

But someone had swept the floor.

Someone had touched this place.

And then—

They saw her.

Lumyra.

Standing in the far corner with a worn cloth in hand, her white hair tied back, sleeves rolled. Not speaking. Not startled.

Just… cleaning.

She didn't look up when they entered.

Didn't greet them. Didn't explain.

Just kept wiping dust from the edge of a shattered rune altar, her movements precise—like someone preserving memory, not stone.

Zephryn stopped first. "Lumyra?"

She paused.

"I thought you weren't—"

She turned. Slowly.

"Didn't need to be called," she said. "Already knew where I belonged."

Her voice didn't tremble. Her eyes didn't search.

And when Buta said nothing, no one dared question it.

They settled in silence that night.

No beds—just empty quarters carved into the stone, lined with old glyphs long since burned out. Kaelen lay against a wall, one arm behind his head, watching cracks in the ceiling like they might whisper back. Yolti braided thin threads of wind into shapes she didn't name. Selka sat cross-legged, unmoving.

Zephryn stared at his hands.

His mark hadn't stopped pulsing since the orb.

He could still feel it—the spiral, the way it didn't just react, it remembered. Like it knew something about him that he didn't.

Like it was waiting.

Buta stood alone in the upper hall, cigar half-burned, smoke drifting through the broken skylight above. The wind shrieked over the cliffs outside.

He didn't move.

He didn't speak.

He just stared at the Crestborn scroll.

Unopened.

His voice, quiet, rasped like memory.

"They're not ready.

But the glyphs already chose."

He looked toward the chamber where Zephryn slept.

"And if the Choir saw what I just saw…

Then we're already late."