The sanctuary groaned.
Not from wind or time—but something deeper, something beneath the stone and steam and breathing roots. It was a sound that didn't echo but folded in on itself. The kind of sound you felt in the marrow, like a warning whispered through bone.
Elias looked up sharply from the circle. His hands were still trembling from the resonance test, his breath shallow but steady. The moment of stillness that followed his awakening hadn't lasted long.
Mira was already on her feet, blade drawn—not steel, but woven light, humming low.
Even Kirin paused, teacup suspended midair.
"That," she said quietly, "should not be possible."
Jamie looked from one face to the other. "What shouldn't?"
Kirin turned her head. The mist in the room thickened for a breath, then parted, revealing a distant echo—a pulse, far beyond the wall.
It came again.
A knock.
Not a physical one—but a pressure in the world, a question made of force.
Kirin stood slowly, voice low. "The sanctuary is not known. It was unmarked, unspoken. For someone—or something—to find it means one of two things."
She looked to Mira.
"Either the Veil is shifting its protections—"
"Or someone marked us," Mira finished grimly.
Kirin nodded once. "I'll hold the outer fold. You two stay in the inner chamber."
But before she could leave, Jamie stumbled.
He dropped his sketchbook.
"Jamie?" Elias asked, moving to steady him.
But Jamie didn't hear him.
His eyes were wide—unseeing. His hands trembled at his sides. His lips moved, soundless. Then he gasped and fell to his knees, palms pressed to the floor like he was bracing against a wave.
The sigils in the chamber pulsed.
So did the stone in Elias's pocket.
Kirin turned, eyes sharp. "What did you do?"
"Nothing!" Elias said. "I didn't touch him!"
"No," Kirin muttered. "He touched it."
The Veil.
It roared through Jamie like wind through a hollow place. But instead of breaking, Jamie bent—flexed—tuned. He let it pass through him, and something else took root in return.
The spirals around the chamber—normally faint, etched into the walls—blazed bright.
And all at once, Jamie opened his eyes.
They were flooded with gold.
Not power. Not qi.
Something else.
Memory.
He spoke, but the voice wasn't his.
> "The garden is open. The map returns. The echo walks."
Then he collapsed.
Mira caught him.
Kirin's face had gone pale. "He's not a cultivator."
"No," Mira whispered. "He's something worse."
---
Far above, in a place that was neither sky nor thought, the Council stirred.
Vaelen turned toward the sealed window of the chamber. "The second thread has awakened. The boy sees."
Ashari flickered. "That one was never meant to climb."
Sael's blade rang once across her palm.
> "Then perhaps we've underestimated how the Veil chooses its dreamers."
Nara did not speak.
But his eyes, hidden behind grey cloth, narrowed.
---
Back in the sanctuary, Jamie slept.
Kirin had placed him on a woven mat surrounded by burning herbs that didn't smell like anything Elias could name.
Elias paced.
"What happened to him?"
"Something ancient," Kirin replied.
Elias ran a hand through his hair. "That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have. He didn't awaken the way you did. He didn't resonate. He aligned. Like something had been waiting for him."
Mira was silent.
Elias turned. "You've seen this before?"
"Once," she said. "In a boy who drew spirals into the stone walls of a forgotten monastery. He didn't speak for a week. When he finally opened his mouth, he sang in a language no one had spoken in three hundred years."
"What happened to him?"
Mira looked away.
"He burned out."
---
A rumble shook the walls.
Not just vibration—shift.
Kirin stood again.
"Whoever's outside has found the first fold."
Elias instinctively stepped forward. "Then let me help."
"You're not ready," she said.
"I don't care."
Kirin looked at him. Then tilted her head slightly, as if listening to something only she could hear.
The roots of the sanctuary responded to Elias's heartbeat.
They shaped themselves around him—curling inward, softening the ground beneath his feet, humming at a frequency Mira had never seen.
Kirin's eyes darkened. "You… You don't move like the others."
Mira watched carefully.
"What do you mean?" Elias asked.
"I mean the Veil isn't treating you like a visitor."
Her voice dropped.
"It's treating you like something it remembers."
---
Outside, the pressure mounted.
A wind with no source battered the walls. Shapes moved in the mist—blurred, humanoid, but wrong. Mira saw them first and stepped forward, blade ready.
"Entities," she said.
Kirin's voice went flat. "Projections?"
"No," Mira said. "Actuals."
"Then we're out of time."
---
The chamber dimmed.
Elias stood over Jamie, shielding him without thinking. The roots beneath his feet brightened.
A final knock echoed through the walls.
This time, it was not a question.
It was an invitation.
> Open.
And deep within Elias's chest, something old answered.
A rhythm that wasn't his.
A memory not made of thought—but pattern.
His eyes flared—not gold like Jamie's, but silver-veined black, like ink dropped into water.
Mira stepped toward him slowly.
"You're not just marked," she said.
Elias didn't respond. The sound in his head was rising.
Not music.
Machinery.