The communicator's screen was a thin slab of cold glass, a single pulse of light in the dim cave. Vorren thumbed the call once, twice, watching the ring count down through the blue halo. Every small sound — the trickle of the cave stream, Aethros's soft exhalation — was suddenly sharp. He felt the capsule of silence around himself like an old cloak, familiar and necessary.
The call connected.
A face filled the screen: tired, tight, eyes rimmed with the pale ghosts of too many sleepless drills. Callan looked exactly as Vorren remembered and not at all like the boy from their childhood games. He was older; the academy had tightened him into someone efficient and wary. He frowned at the unknown caller ID — Vorren? The name would mean nothing to most. To Callan, it should mean nothing at all.
Vorren kept his face still behind the mask. The voice he used was even and neutral, a courier's voice meant to allay suspicion.
"Callan Dray," he said in common speech, casual. "You post things. Thought I'd invite you. Vorren—new voice in the simulator. You game?"
Callan blinked. He studied the masked stranger, mapping shapes, guessing age. "Vorren? You messaged my feed. 'Solo drills get stale.' You want a match in Palimpsest?"
Vorren allowed a small, practiced chuckle. "Exactly that. Sync reflexes. A private room. No spectators."
Callan's hand hovered near the corner of his own comm. He hesitated. "I don't— I don't usually play with strangers."
"You're not strangers online," Vorren said lightly. "You're soldiers with a nervous streak. My message was bait."
The camera caught a small twitch: Callan's jaw. He laughed, brittle. "Fair enough. Send the invite."
Vorren tapped the screen. A faint icon blinked — Palimpsest Enclave — Private. The invite sent, the handshake established. Callan accepted.
For a fraction of a heartbeat, neither spoke. They exchanged the etiquette of strangers about to become partners: time, basic credentials, ping strength. Then — quietly, in the cadence only two people could share — Vorren slid their childhood key into the conversation.
"Alen dor'kai, fra shen."
The phrase landed like a stone in still water.
Callan's expression broke like winter thawing. The laugh shut off mid-breath. He sucked air. The color drained from his face; his fingers tightened on the console until knuckles shone white.
He heard it not as common language but as memory — the broken syllables they'd stitched as boys under rooftop nights, hidden words to trade secrets and dares. No one else could have used it.
Callan flinched. His voice came out small and hushed, even as he tried to keep the room neutral. "Vorren?" he said, risking the name as if testing a stone for hollowness.
Vorren let the mask wear the lie. "Yes. Vorren." He pushed one more token of recognition, a childish wink that only Callan would understand — the blink they'd used to mean 'keep quiet, follow me.' It registered on Callan's face like a bell.
Callan's mouth opened — closed. He swallowed. "I thought— they said… you were gone." The words were a blade pulled free. He didn't speak in Cenari yet; shock made his common voice tinny and thin. "All those reports. The vault, the blast—"
Vorren's shoulders moved the smallest amount. The cave hummed around him, Aethros a dark silhouette behind. He answered with the line that would make the story fit, soft and rehearsed. "I'm a freelance. Vicissitudes happen. I saw your public post — harsh training near the quarantine. I thought you might enjoy company."
Callan's eyes searched the screen. He watched the masked outline as if it might peel away, reveal the face it disguised. Finally he could not contain himself. He used their code, clipped and careful, syllables turning like the lock on an old chest.
"Teran mor, shen vel."(Translation in their secret grammar: If it is really you, say the second line.)
Vorren matched him, voice a near-whisper though the comm line did not carry whisper. "Shi laen kor."(I am alive, but different.)
The world tilted for Callan. He stared as if Vorren had stepped through a pane of glass and walked into the room. The academy's lights blurred behind him; his thumb hovered over a panic disconnect. His throat, for once, refused the practiced armor of a soldier.
"Why?" Callan said finally — the word small, twelve years of loss in it. He spoke in Cenari now without thinking, because words in that language would still be private, should anyone be listening in. "Why did you leave us dead?"
Vorren's hand rose to the mask, an old habit that would have been meaningless if anyone else watched. He did not remove it. He did not lighten his tone. He answered in Cenari, surgical.
"For safety, for them."("I carried the lie so they could live.")
Callan's eyes glittered. He wanted to shout — to call down every guardian in the city to come and tear the cave apart — but he didn't. He hid everything behind steel training. The Cenari syllables dug into him like a knife and a salve both.
"You can't—" Callan started, then stopped. He inhaled. He kept his voice steady in common only long enough to buy cover, then dropped back into the old language. "Tell me plainly. Are you— alive? Or an echo?"
Vorren let out a breath that might have been humor. He widened the conversation just enough to slide in a plan, practical and dangerous.
"Listen," he said in common to maintain deniability. "I told you to play. I need you to trust me once more. If you're still willing—"
The message was already flowing between them, a weave of veiled meaning. Finally, Callan answered in their secret syllables.
"I will trust you. Say what you need."
Vorren exhaled. The cave's light painted his mask in emerald. He leaned forward, eyes alight behind glass.
"I faked it. I could not survive otherwise. The Ligari were looking for me. For all of us. If I remained known, they would tear apart everything and everyone I love. So I learned to vanish."
Callan's hands went to his mouth. He tasted the old fear again, the sharp metallic tang that stayed in a throat that had grieved. His voice shook as he asked the next question, clinging to the only truth he had left.
"Did Sensei—?" His breath caught on the name.
Vorren's reply was a flint-strike: "No. I hid. He may be dead or he may be gone. I could not find him when the Vault burned."
Silence pooled like a shadow. Callan let it sit, measured, then the boy in him — the child who had once been brave enough to jump off roofs into nets — surged forward.
"If you're alive," he said in Cenari, "why now? Why call me?"
Vorren's eyes did not leave the camera. The voice he used was low, intimate.
"Because I found a loop — a flaw in their tempering method. A way they stop. They are not weak; they are stopped. I can make it better. I can teach it to someone I trust. For that, I need you not to break through."
Callan's breath snagged. "Not to— break through? You mean— you want me to hold off my breakthrough?"
"Yes." Vorren pushed the truth like a burning coal across both languages. "Two days. Two days I need to format and send a secure file. Not a file anyone can trace. Not an archive, not a cloud — ephemeral. A Palimpsest enclave. I will invite you inside. You will have one read. Then it will vanish. Memorize it. Destroy every medium. Do not let anyone see."
Callan's mind ran scenarios: traps, Ligari listening servers, forged voiceprints. He felt the pricks on his neck that always came with dangerous choices. "Two days," he repeated, as if making it real. "Why two?"
Vorren let the simplest, honest answer out of the mask. "Because I need to consolidate the second reforging into words. It's not a formula for brute force. It's a procedure — step-by-step. I need to translate sensation into instruction, and to do that I need notes, recordings, and the quiet to shape them. Two days to compose, then the Palimpsest room will be open for twenty minutes and closed forever."
The image of that last word — forever — hammered into Callan's skin. He nodded, though Vorren could not see it.
"Okay," Callan said slowly. "Two days. But if I'm to believe this— if you really are you— you must prove it. How will I know the file is yours and not a trap?"
Vorren smiled just enough that Callan could sense it through a screen. "We have a birthmark code," he said in Cenari, softer than a prayer. "Vel caren. You remember the place I drew the scar? You remember the ladder at the mill?"
Callan did. The memory came back with the heat of their teenage summers — the joke about bravery, the ritual of scars, the ladder that creaked under winter wind. He let himself laugh, wet and broken, then spoke in the old syllables.
"Alen. I remember."(I know. I remember.)
"Good." Vorren's voice dropped into common again, leveling. "The invite will come as a gaming link. Palimpsest is a known training sim, but I have a private enclave — one that runs on local peer-to-peer and a quantum handshake that self-erases. When you open it, your interface will lock to the enclave. You will have one playback that decodes the steps through sensory synopses, not raw code. It will be targeted to your neural signature. Only your eyes, your ears. It won't be extractable."
Callan's fingers trembled on the edge of the console. He asked the question that sat like a stone in his throat: "If I read it… will I change? Will I be able to do what you did?"
Vorren's answer was honest and careful. "It will give you a better path. It will not force a breakthrough. You must still temper. But you will not be stopped by the same blind spot humanity has been falling into for generations. Think of it as a map… and the courage to follow it."
Something in Callan loosened. The dream of a better map had always been his — that tiny, stubborn spark that had kept him training through cold clinics and bruised ribs.
"Two days," Callan said again. "I won't break through. I'll wait."
"Not a command," Vorren said quietly, "a brother's request."
Callan swallowed. He let the old language take a final bite at the confession.
"Welcome back, my brother," he said in Cenari, voice barely more than a breath.
Vorren felt something uncoil in his chest, old and warm. He answered the code as they always had when something felt right between them.
"Not yet."
Callan's laugh was a bark of disbelief and relief. "Not yet, eh? Don't be a coward."
"Maybe," Vorren said. "Maybe not. Be ready. When the invite comes, do not tell anyone. Print nothing. Record nothing."
Callan's fingers tightened on the console. He imagined the academy's eyes and the Ligari harvesters like ghosts in the wind. "I'll bury it or burn it. I'll memorize it."
Vorren inclined his head as if that small, private vow reached him. "I'll be careful. And Callan— if anything leaks, act. Move, disappear. Promise me."
Callan was soldier and brother; the answer was automatic. "I promise."
For a suspended second they both let the old shorthand of their childhood drip through the silence: images of rooftop tucks, of dives in rain gutters, of oaths beneath constellations. The line hummed with all the years between.
Vorren lingered, then reached for a final practical detail. "After two days, the enclave closes. If you do not get the invite, do not ask about me. Act like I am dead. No searching. No broadcasts."
Callan nodded, though Vorren could not see it. "Understood." Then, because the boy in him would not be denied, he spoke the one thing he wasn't allowed to feel aloud.
"Bring me proof someday. Show your face."
Vorren's hand brushed the mask as though it were possible, and he nearly allowed the hint of a smile to show. "Someday."
Callan's throat tightened. He collected himself, a soldier again. "I should—" He swallowed. "Vorren… be careful. If you get this right… if you actually do this—"
"I know," Vorren said softly. "We will need to be careful. That's why I came to you. I would trust no one else."
The comm line hummed like a held breath. Callan's eyes searched Vorren's mask one last time as if trying to see age or scar or the ghost of laughter behind glass. He said in Cenari, quick and raw:
"If you go, go with me in mind."
Vorren flinched as if struck. He bowed his head. "Always."
Callan exhaled. He clicked the end call, then stayed seated, staring at the blank glass until the afterimage of the mask faded. In his chest something that had been wounded a long time ago began to stitch.
Vorren watched the screen dim. For a moment he simply sat in the cave while Aethros shifted his weight and settled closer, the beast's breath a steady metronome. The telemetric glow of his own Force still pulsed beneath the mask like a heartbeat. Impurities from the baptism had been washed far away; they had been replaced by a cold, crystalline steadiness that tasted like old iron and new snow.
He rose, and for the first time in months, he let himself imagine a return — not a parade, not an unveiling, but a slow, careful emergence: lessons sown and burned, friends reunited in secret, a new method planted like seed.
"Two days," he said aloud to the cave and the creature and the darkness. Aethros answered with a low rumble that might have been assent, might have been a gruff promise.
Vorren set the communicator into a small leather pouch, the edges of it damp from the cave's air. He turned the mask slightly toward the opening and, for a moment, let the pretense drop in the privacy of the dim mosslight. He was still a ghost to a world that mourned him. That ghost would remain careful.
Outside, in the distant glass of Naraïs City, a faint ripple folded across the ocean. The dome's lights flicked, then steadied. Men and women in distant watch rooms did not notice. The world did not yet shift.
Vorren breathed. The deep taught patience. He had a map to make, a file to fashion into temptation and truth. Two days to make it perfect and ephemeral. Two days to build a room of memory that could not be owned.
He wrapped the leather pouch back into his pack, squared his shoulders, and moved deeper into the cave where plans could be made in silence. Aethros rose and followed, the huge beast a shadow that never stopped speaking.
The ringlight on the communicator sat dark and satisfied, a single signature inked in the cave's modest glow — a promise committed across a web of lies, an oath echoing between brothers.