The Crimson Scroll
Keiran left the Sanctum at dusk.
The city had shifted again.
Streets narrowed where they used to bend. Lanterns burned blue instead of gold. And the fog was thicker—not just clinging to the stone but listening.
He kept the obsidian sigil wrapped in cloth and close to his chest.
It pulsed faintly. Not with heat, not with light.
With awareness.
He didn't return home.
He couldn't.
He wasn't sure the house would still be there.
Instead, he followed instinct—the thread the mark had stitched into him, subtle but steady. It pulled him to the quiet district of Atrium's End, where even Watchmen didn't patrol after dark.
That's where they found him.
The Mediator.
Not loud. Not armed.
Just… present.
She stood beneath a withered lamp post, wearing the Concordium's crimson sash—not across the shoulder like a Sentinel or Pathfinder, but twisted around her wrist. Loose. Casual. Dangerous.
Her gaze swept him like a scale balancing weight.
"You're late," she said.
The same words the Warden had used.
Keiran stopped several paces away. "You're from the Concordium."
She tilted her head. "Technically. I don't take orders from the Council. I listen for… ripples."
He didn't answer.
She reached into her coat and drew out a scroll—sealed with dark wax, pressed with the Concordium crest: a compass rose split by a blade.
The seal was broken.
She held it out.
He didn't move.
"It's not a contract," she said. "It's an invitation."
Keiran stepped forward.
Took it.
Unrolled it.
The ink shimmered. Not black—red. Like dried blood in moonlight.
There was no name on it.
Just four words:
"We saw the tether."
And beneath it: a glyph he'd never seen before. Sharp angles. Spiraled ends. Movement trapped in stillness.
"What does it mean?" he asked.
She studied him.
"It means the Concordium no longer believes you're just a branded stray. It means someone in the High Archive thinks you're a risk worth understanding."
Keiran folded the scroll. "And if I don't want to be understood?"
Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Then you'll become something worse. A myth."
She turned away, then paused.
"You've touched something buried. Something even the Wardens feared. That means doors will open for you now."
She glanced back.
"But not all of them should."
Keiran's mark pulsed beneath his sleeve.
"What do you want from me?" he asked.
Her voice softened.
"Nothing yet. You're not ready."
Then, she tossed something over her shoulder.
He caught it.
A medallion—small, circular, threaded with crimson and cobalt enamel. It bore a glyph that wasn't Warden, or curse-forged.
Concordium.
Tierless. But marked for Observation.
"You wear that," she said, "and our doors stay open."
She vanished into fog before he could reply.
No sound. No weight. No goodbye.
Just the scroll.
And the choice.
He wandered until night fell fully.
Then—drawn by instinct, memory, or something deeper—he returned to the edge of the city.
To the place where the tower used to stand.
There was no stone. No ruin.
Just a stretch of dead grass, curled like parchment. And a ring of mushrooms growing in a perfect circle.
He stepped inside.
Nothing happened.
But the mark on his wrist flared.
And the sigil beneath his shirt began to glow.
Not with light.
With memory.
A flash:
A boy and a girl, back to back, facing something vast and winged.
A burning sky.
A scream not of pain—but betrayal.
And a single word etched in every corner of the dream:
"Keiran."
He opened his eyes.
The circle of mushrooms was gone.
But his footprints remained.
And now, another set beside them.
Smaller. Bare.
He knelt.
A single petal rested where the other steps ended.
White.
Faintly luminescent.
He picked it up.
It burned away in his fingers.
But not before he heard it—
A whisper, carried on the night wind.
Not in warning.
Not in invitation.
In remembrance.
"You are not the first."
"But you may be the last."