Chapter 10: "Thread Vault Access"

CONSEQUENCE: SYSTEM INTEREST FLAGGED

MONITORING ESCALATED: OBSERVER CLASS DELTA — DEPLOYED

Vael's heart raced.

The system wasn't just watching anymore.

Now it was tracking who he followed.

A sound echoed in the distance—something between a servo pulse and a breath. Slow. Measured. Approaching. It wasn't footsteps. It was heavier than sound—like something fundamental had shifted.

His HUD dimmed, suppressing its brightness. Not from damage—from instinct. Environmental telemetry dropped to minimal feed. Heat signatures, echo markers, air pressure—everything faded into silence.

He could feel a low hum in his chest—not from the Vault, but from his Anchor band itself. Like it was reacting before his thoughts could catch up. The band's core crystal, dormant since the Delta fight, now pulsed faintly with a shifting hue he hadn't seen before. Violet overlay threaded with red.

The walkway behind him began to disassemble, each segment of light vanishing silently as if unrendered. The system wasn't leaving him options.

He turned.

A figure stood at the far edge of the thread chamber—humanoid in shape, but clothed in mirrored code. Not armor. Not flesh. It reflected nothing, yet shimmered with the kind of stillness that didn't belong to living things. Like it had always been there, but reality hadn't known how to show it until now.

ENTITY: OBSERVER CLASS DELTA

AUTHORIZATION: THREAD CONSISTENCY ENFORCER

CURRENT OBJECTIVE: EVALUATE ANCHOR NODE DEVIATION

It began to move.

Each step didn't touch the ground—just hovered slightly above the platform surface, displacing pixels beneath its presence. Its face was a void—no eyes, no mask. Just a blank slate that glitched with raw telemetry.

The space around it bent—not through force, but data priority. Every recursive echo nearby froze mid-glitch. Paths that had been shifting stopped cold, locked into still frames like the system didn't want them to witness what came next.

Somewhere in the Vault above, a warning script blinked and failed to load. The system wasn't even logging this in the normal record space. Whatever was happening existed outside of routine protocol.

Vael backed away slowly, but the trait he'd just unlocked flared in his vision:

TRAIT ACTIVE — PHASE INTERLINK (RANK D): 7.2 SECONDS

EFFECT: Temporal shadow-step between aligned memory fragments

A ripple formed behind him—one of the flickering corridor images. A simulation snapshot where Lenya had been sprinting down a hall. Vael didn't think—he stepped into it.

The world twisted. Not in motion, but in understanding.

He emerged into a corridor—not physical, but not entirely illusion. A forked echo space. Thin, like memory scaffolding, supported only by unstable code. Static clung to his skin. His balance shifted—left foot dragging slightly, not because of terrain, but because this corridor had been remembered wrong.

He could still feel the Observer behind him. It didn't follow through the interlink.

But it watched.

He felt the sensation of being measured, like his entire Anchor signature was under analysis. Like the system wasn't trying to delete him—but categorize him. Not a threat. Not yet.

The echo corridor extended ahead, branching through mirrored versions of corridors Vael recognized. Each one reflected a moment from Lenya's past—classroom glitches, unstable pulse loops, quiet interactions she'd had with people Vael never knew. The corridor itself seemed to react to his gaze, flickering when he lingered on a memory too long.

One shard trembled violently. In it, Lenya stood before a terminal, typing rapidly. The screen beside her was blank, but her expression was focused—determined, even angry. Vael reached out, and his HUD pinged:

MEMORY ECHO INTERFERENCE DETECTED

PROXIMITY WARNING — THREAD CORRUPTION AT 42%

He stepped back quickly. His hand stung where it had nearly crossed the echo veil.

Further down, more memories. A moment where Lenya argued with Solas. Another of her walking alone, her band blinking red instead of silver.

OBSERVER DELTA RESPONSE: THREAD PROFILE UPDATED

NOTE: PATH DECISION — TRACE 3.1 CLASSIFIED PRIORITY

He ran for a moment—without reason. Just to test whether the space let him. The walls bled light when he passed too close. A low chime played every time he blinked.

Another echo shimmered beside him—an older version of himself, from the very first day at the Academy, pausing in a loop of hesitation. A glitch that had long since been forgotten.

He tried not to look too hard. Even fragments could destabilize here.

Then—everything changed.

The Observer's presence surged behind the echo veil. It hadn't followed, but its outline shimmered beyond the corridor walls like an eye pressed to glass. The environment shook, not violently, but rhythmically—like the system was forcing a sync.

A new presence joined it.

Something Vael hadn't seen before—a ripple, like a second Observer. Smaller, not fully rendered. Its body shifted with static pulses, glitching in and out of view. Where Delta moved with intention, this second figure seemed unformed, as if still being constructed.

UNCLASSIFIED ENTITY DETECTED

THREAD PROBE - LEVEL: ANCHOR COMPATIBLE

STATUS: DEVELOPMENTAL / OBSERVER-LINKED

The Vault began to react. More corridors peeled away from the central node. Vael's Anchor band buzzed with new telemetry. His HUD shifted:

PASSIVE SYNC CALIBRATING…

THREAD FUSION DETECTED — ERROR 87

He wasn't meant to see this. None of it.

ANCHOR NODE 0 HAS BEEN FLAGGED FOR VARIANT SUPERVISION

RETURN TO SURFACE — TEMPORARY CLEARANCE GRANTED

The echo tunnel collapsed behind him. No warning. No countdown. One moment it existed, the next it retracted like a filament being reeled back into a spool.

Vael stood again on the central platform of the Vault. The echo bridges were gone. The air was denser now—charged with something chemical, like the trace of old coolant or recycled heat. Only the path to the exit remained.

He exhaled, muscles trembling.

The Observer hadn't attacked.

But it had seen everything.

And the next time, it might not just watch.

He looked at the last message hovering in his HUD.

RETURNING TO SYSTEM SURFACE…

THREADMARK: ENFORCEMENT PROTOCOL WATCHLIST — ACTIVE

PRIORITY TAG: ANCHOR DEVIATION LEVEL 1

Even after the lights faded and the Vault sealed behind him, Vael could still feel the Observer's gaze.

Not on his back.

Inside his code.