Chapter Seven – The One Who Was Stolen From
Part Four – The Rift That Remembers His Name
There are places where even the Doctrine does not cast.
Where resonance bends sideways.
Where the Veil does not guard.
Where the world hums not with history…
But with reminders.
Zephryn found one by following absence.
It had no form at first. No light. Just silence that grew too still.
Then came the pull—like a thread catching on the soul.
And he stepped into it.
Not through a gate. Not through a glyph. But through a fracture in the soil. A hollow in the stone. A space that shouldn't echo—but did.
The air was colder. Thinner. Not dead. Just old.
The trees were taller here, though broken near the roots. Their bark shimmered with faint glyph scars—markings too ancient to be Doctrine-born. Threads of forgotten hum bled from their trunks in pulses too slow for time.
And at the center of it all stood the Riftborn.
But they did not attack.
Four of them—silent, unmoving. Their limbs twitched, but not in rage. In restraint.
Zephryn stepped forward.
His glyph didn't light. It simply woke.
A faint spiral glowed along the inside of his wrist. He didn't cast. He didn't speak.
But the Riftborn nearest to him—thin, spined, eye-less—turned its head.
And then it did the unthinkable.
It knelt.
Zephryn's breath caught.
The others followed.
One by one, the Riftborn—those who had torn villages in half, consumed Veilmarks whole, and danced through Doctrine fire like ash—bowed.
He took one step back.
And then the kneeling one spoke.
Not aloud. Not in sound.
In resonance.
A deep pulse. Ancient. Not cast. Echoed.
"Rael…"
Zephryn's knees nearly gave. His eyes widened.
It said it again.
"Rael… flame-bearer… Riftwalker… not-forgotten…"
His mark surged. A line of light ran up his forearm.
His body convulsed.
"You were sung before the Choir. Before Doctrine.
Before the Lyceum wrote names in silence."
He fell to one knee.
Not from pain. From the sheer pressure of the memory forming behind his eyes.
The Riftborn raised one clawed limb, slow, reverent.
And with it, it traced something into the dirt before him.
A glyph. Circular. Broken in half. But within it—
An infinity curve.
Twisted. Ancient. Familiar.
The same mark that once flared beneath Solara's final scream.
"Rael…" the Riftborn echoed.
"The Veil remembers you."
And then the Rift closed.
Not violently. Not with thunder.
But with a hum—
soft, sacred,
and old enough to be called a beginning.
Zephryn collapsed into the dirt, hand still clutched around his wrist.
The glyph was still glowing.
But this time—it was humming back.