The Fractured Mind
The sky above Odessyus had turned pale. Not gray, not cloudy—just... pale. Like someone had drained its color and left behind a dull sheet of light. Time still moved, but everything felt slightly off. The wind came from the wrong direction. Bells rang a second too late. Glyph lights flickered without reason, and even the fire in the hearths burned a little too blue.
Susan was the first to notice the cracks. Not in stone—but in memory.
She had been reviewing glyph charts with the archive mages when she stopped mid-sentence and blinked.
"Where's the scroll on pulse harmonics?" she asked.
One of the mages pointed to a sealed tube beside her.
Susan frowned. "No, not that one. The red one. I wrote it three days ago. I remember the ink still being wet."
The mage hesitated. "You didn't write a red one."
"I did."
But when she opened her logbook, the page where the red scroll should've been mentioned was gone. No ink. No mark. Just a blank space between two entries. She ran her fingers across the paper—it hadn't been erased. It had never been written.
Or rather... it had been forgotten.
---
Frank stood on the training field, facing Tom. Their blades crossed again and again in steady rhythm—until Tom suddenly stopped and stared at Frank like he'd never seen him before.
"Where did you learn that stance?"
Frank blinked. "What?"
"That step. The arc slice. You never used it before."
Frank lowered his blade. "Yes, I did. Two weeks ago. You even told me I was finally learning to control weight."
Tom shook his head slowly. "I've never seen that before."
Frank opened his mouth to argue—but then stopped. His memory was sharp. His movements were consistent. And yet… he suddenly felt unsure. The stance felt familiar, but he couldn't picture the moment he first learned it. Or practiced it. Or showed it.
He took a step back. "Maybe I'm... mixing things up."
Tom didn't reply. His eyes narrowed just slightly—like he wasn't convinced.
Neither of them spoke after that.
---
In the infirmary wing, Kitty visited a soldier who had been injured during the glyph storm near the vault. He sat upright, his bandaged arms trembling.
"They're singing," he whispered.
Kitty leaned closer. "Who?"
"The shadows. The ones beneath. They hum when I close my eyes."
Kitty tried to calm him. "It's just the echo of the storm. It'll pass."
"No," he whispered. "I heard my mother's voice. She's been dead for ten years. And she asked me if I remembered my name. I told her yes. She laughed."
Kitty stiffened.
He grabbed her wrist, trembling. "Do you remember your name?"
She pulled away gently and left the room without speaking. As she walked down the corridor, she murmured her own name under her breath three times.
Just to be sure.
---
Peter wandered through the glyph garden late at night. The floating stones usually aligned in perfect orbit, glowing faintly with glyph trails of elemental harmony. Tonight, one of them was pulsing erratically. Each pulse pushed the stone an inch away from the others.
It was a small shift. A nearly invisible drift. But Peter knew enough about glyph balance to understand what it meant.
One force had disconnected. Or worse... had begun orbiting something else.
He touched the stone.
His vision stuttered. Just for a second.
He saw himself — not here, but somewhere darker. His clothes were burned. His left eye was missing. He was laughing — no, screaming — at something that wasn't there.
Then the vision vanished.
Peter pulled his hand away, breath shallow.
This wasn't just glyph instability.
This was psychological dissonance.
And someone was behind it.
---
Neolin summoned all seven to the high chamber the next morning. He looked worn—his beard slightly untrimmed, his eyes hollow.
"I've been reviewing glyph frequencies over the last five days," he began. "Something is wrong with time."
They exchanged glances.
Neolin laid out scrolls across the table. "Each glyph emits a signature frequency—like a clock. A tick. But some have started... ticking backward."
Lucy leaned forward. "Backwards?"
"Not physically. Not visibly. But when I match the readings against harmonics, the echo pattern loops in reverse."
Frank crossed his arms. "What does that mean?"
Neolin met his eyes. "It means that some parts of our world are beginning to think they happened before they existed. And that only happens when reality starts to—"
"Fracture," Susan finished.
Neolin nodded. "Velmorith's influence is spreading. Not by presence… but by memory corruption."
Kitty hesitated. "Can we stop it?"
Neolin didn't answer.
Instead, he opened a small black box and pulled out a shard of obsidian marked with three silver dots.
"We recovered this from the remains of the broken vault. It's not a glyph. It's not stone. It's… thought. Encoded."
Lucy touched it gently and gasped. Her voice changed—hollow and distant.
"He who sings without sound
walks within your memories.
And when you forget your own footsteps,
he will wear your name."
Everyone froze.
Frank grabbed Lucy's shoulders. "Lucy—"
She blinked and pulled back like she'd just woken from a trance. "What... did I say?"
Tom stepped away from the table. "He's not just watching. He's walking among us. Already."
Susan turned. "Then we need a barrier. Something to hold our minds together."
Neolin looked grim. "There may not be one. Velmorith's power doesn't break walls—it breaks logic. The moment you think you're safe, you forget the door was ever open."
Jack spoke last, quiet but clear. "Then we need to remember each other."
They all turned to him.
"Write it down. Say it aloud. Etch it into stone. Who we are. What we've done. Who we've lost. If we can't trust our minds, we trust our voices. Our proof. Each other."
For the first time that day, silence didn't feel like fear.
It felt like choice.
---
That night, Frank stood alone in his quarters, staring at his sword. The glyphs along its hilt flickered faintly.
He closed his eyes.
Then opened them again.
Something was wrong.
The sword was still in his hand—
But his reflection in the mirror behind him… wasn't holding it.
And the reflection was smiling.