Volume V – The First Bloom

Chapter Two: The Ones Who Watch the Silence

Part One – Resonant Mail

Date: Maelis 25, Year 204 PCR

Location: Cradle of Aegir – Stronghold Gate Hall

Time: Morning

The door knocked without sound.

Not once. Not twice.

Three slow taps against the outer veilstone gate—sharp, precise, and cold.

Kaelen flinched mid-stretch. Yolti sat up from her meditative coil. Selka was already at the corridor, hand brushing the edge of her glyph blade out of habit. Zephryn didn't move.

He was staring at the glyph above the doorframe—

one that hadn't glowed since they arrived.

Today, it pulsed. Once. Then dimmed.

Buta opened the door himself.

Standing on the other side was a Crestborn courier—head wrapped in pulsewoven linen, face obscured beneath a spiraled black visor etched with shifting runes.

He said nothing.

Only extended a sealed scroll bearing the emblem of the Doctrine's Outer Dispatch: a broken tower coiled in glyph script.

"For Legato Unit," the courier said.

"First mission. Category: Ember Veil."

"Time allotment: Twelve hours."

Buta took the scroll. "Any return glyphs active?"

"None. Scar zone unstable.

Crestborne will not travel beyond that point."

"Expected casualties?"

The courier paused.

"…Unclear."

Then turned, vanished into mist.

Inside the stronghold, the silence cracked.

Kaelen muttered, "That wasn't unsettling at all."

Selka reached for the scroll, but Buta waved her off.

He walked to the stone table in the war alcove and unrolled it himself.

Inside:

One pulse-encoded map A list of resonant anomalies The words:

"Veil disruption centered near the eastern cliff of Leth Hollow.

Local resonance breaking into pulse-stutter.

Riftborn confirmed."

Buta didn't flinch.

"You're being sent into a memory field."

Zephryn blinked. "A what?"

Buta looked at him long.

"When the Veil ruptures too deep, it doesn't just bleed Riftborn.

It starts leaking the past.

That's where you're going."

Yolti touched the edge of the map, careful not to let her glyph burn through it.

"This pulseline…" she whispered.

"It's not natural. It's singing backward."

Selka leaned closer. "There's something carved near the corner."

Kaelen squinted. "That's not a location."

Zephryn stepped forward.

He knew that mark.

Not from this scroll. Not from the Doctrine.

It was burned into his glyph.

A small symbol.

Not full. Just a sliver.

But unmistakable:

∞

…in reverse.

Buta spoke.

"You'll deploy in one hour.

No formation drills. No squad tests."

He looked at Zephryn and Selka both.

"This isn't training. This is your first step outside the Lyceum's reach.

And if that mark is showing up already…"

"Something in the Veil remembers you."

Zephryn looked down at his arm.

The glyph was dim.

Still.

But his chest pulsed.

And somewhere behind the scroll ink and seal wax, he could already hear it:

A hum. Quiet. Reciting a name he hadn't earned yet.