Chapter 26: Glyphstorm at Hollow Spine

Chapter 26: Glyphstorm at Hollow Spine

It began with no roar.

No warning.

Just a fracture in the Codex pulse.

Deep in the Verdant Vault beneath Bastion, the glyph-vines shuddered. Memory-stones cracked. Codex echoes twitched like startled nerves. The Verdict Circle—freshly formed and still pulsing from the unity flame—trembled at its edge.

Talym was the first to move. His Codex halo flickered out of sync. The glyphs spinning above his wrist flashed red, then inverted, forming symbols not written since the Codex Wars.

"It's here," he whispered. "It's real."

In the chamber's center, the Codex core flared like a sun behind mist. A projection surged upward—raw data, unfinished glyph strings, warping spatially as it fought to stabilize.

"Malixen has breached Hollow Spine."

A silence followed that wasn't silence—it was containment. Everyone inhaled at once, then stopped. Like the Codex had stolen breath.

Kael stepped forward. The image swirled—a broken map, symbols bleeding from its edges, terrain warping where logic collapsed.

"Stormfront," Talym confirmed. "Full glyphstorm anomaly. Echo-signatures from before the First Verdict. This is not just a Codex breach… it's a resonance rupture."

"He woke the bones," Maelith said grimly. "He's calling to what the Wardens buried."

"Then we answer," Kael said.

And the Circle moved.

Three teams. Thirteen oaths.

Serrin, Whisper-Vow, and two Veiled: shadowstrike infiltration of the perimeter cliffs. Map the terrain. Find Malixen's forward position.

Raazhk and his Brinevein scouts: monitor subterranean Codex-rivers and pulse echoes. If the storm hits the coastline, it spreads.

Maelith, Zhaer, Ironwrought, and Morrowseed banner: front-line engagement. Stop Ashvault from reaching the inner breach.

Kael and VyrmClaw would stay… at first.

The Rootbearer must hold Bastion's pulse steady.

But the storm would call.

Hollow Spine was not named by humans.

It was named by the Codex.

A trench-veined, vertically collapsed mountain range that once held pre-Verdict Codex archives—sealed, because what was inside refused to be remembered.

And now, it screamed.

The glyphstorm appeared before the scouts could descend.

Not wind. Not cloud. Symbols, hundreds, thousands, spinning and overlapping—white-hot trails of pulsing script that rewrote the air.

One glyph tore through a tree. It didn't slice it—it reverted it.

Backwards.

The bark crawled inward, rings spiraling the wrong direction. Then it collapsed into dust.

A Brinevein scout screamed as a glyph surged through his arm. The skin turned transparent. Then the bone remembered a different shape.

Raazhk severed the limb instantly.

"Do not let it touch your memory."

On the cliffs, Serrin and Whisper-Vow watched as Malixen's Nullborn elite moved through the storm as if it was guiding them.

Whisper-Vow adjusted her Codex lens.

"They've got tether-glyph anchors. It's feeding the storm, not fighting it."

"It's not a breach," Serrin murmured. "It's a summoning."

They moved.

On the front, Maelith led the charge.

Ironwrought plowed through Codex-corrupted terrain like a living avalanche. Zhaer's squad used mirrored shields—reflective glyphsteel—to scatter reality-twisting symbols. Morrowseed hybrids lit their claws with counter-runes, burning sigils into the ground to stabilize the air.

But it wasn't enough.

The glyphstorm surged.

A vortex opened above them, glyphs spinning into a spiral. Then something stepped out.

It was not human. Not hybrid.

It was pre-memory.

A creature composed of echoes—Codex strings forming its limbs, glyphs pulsing across its body like living tattoos. It didn't speak.

It sang.

Serrin heard it from the cliffs and collapsed to one knee.

"It's rewriting us," she gasped. "It's erasing the present—forcing the Codex to remember what never should've been."

Kael felt it.

He stood in the root chamber as Bastion's Codex bloomed red.

VyrmClaw growled beside him.

"You must go."

Kael nodded.

He placed both hands on the Codex core.

"Feed me their fire."

The vines pulsed. Codex veins snapped into new pathways. Flame channeled through him—not as a weapon, but as an anchor.

"I am not a strike," he whispered. "I am what stands after."

And he vanished in flame.

Kael arrived mid-sky, directly above Hollow Spine.

He saw the creature.

He saw his kin faltering.

He saw Malixen's shadow receding beyond the breach.

And Kael spoke.

"You were buried for a reason."

The Codex flared from his back—glyphroots spreading across the storm like a net.

He raised his arm.

The flame didn't burn. It remembered.

Reality surged. The glyphstorm slowed—not stopped, but anchored. Kael planted a seed of memory into the breach. A tether.

VyrmClaw landed beside him.

"You always have to be dramatic."

Kael smiled, barely.

"You love it."

When it cleared, Hollow Spine still shook.

The creature retreated, not defeated—but curious.

A Codex shard remained, half-buried in broken stone. On its surface, written in inverted flame:

"The Ashvault remembers deeper than you dream."

Kael turned.

The Rootbearer did not speak.

He simply lifted the shard.

And Bastion's next war began.

Next: Chapter 27 – Ash Crowned in Dust