---
— MILO Location: St. Aurelia Shelter — Isolation Room 3C Time: 3:17 PM
The sun had shifted angles, but Milo hadn't moved. He sat where Elias left him, cross-legged on the scorched floor. Around him, ash circles began to reshape. The old lines he'd drawn were no longer stable. They moved now, rearranging themselves without his hands.
Whispers came from beneath the floor.
> "Judgment was not made for you." "You are an accident. A vessel without the chain."
Milo tilted his head. He recognized the voice. Not Elias. Not the Mandate.
His own.
But older. Sharper. And it laughed.
---
— KELLS Location: Subsurface Annex, Wrought Chapel — Ritual Observation Chamber
Adrian Kells watched three monitors flicker. Each one showed Milo from a different angle, though none of them were connected to any known camera grid.
The echo conduit ritual had worked. The boy was tethered to the glyph network Kells had revived.
One screen crackled.
Milo looked directly into it.
> "You're the liar in the basement."
Kells froze.
> "He sees me," he muttered. "That should be impossible."
His assistant entered, holding a thin dossier. "The preacher failed. Shelter personnel are requesting federal withdrawal. The Judge hasn't retaliated. Yet."
Kells grinned. "Then Elias still thinks he has a choice."
---
— ELIAS Location: Rooftop above Shelter | Time: 4:02 PM
Elias stood beneath a sky warped by heat and something more invisible. It was like the heavens were trying to blink but couldn't.
The Mandate inside him was quiet. Not calm. Withholding.
He tried to summon the Judgment Blade. Nothing came.
> "You hesitate." "You allowed corruption." "You are no longer absolute."
He sank to his knees.
For the first time since he accepted the mantle, Elias felt something terrifying:
Abandonment.
He heard footsteps behind him.
Not Milo. Not Kells.
Someone heavier. Older. Tired.
Salene.
She sat beside him without speaking.
---
— SALENE & ELIAS
"He's not yours anymore," she said.
Elias didn't answer.
"You marked him. Burned something into him that didn't come from law. It came from fear."
He looked up. "Then help me fix it."
She shook her head. "You can't fix echo. You can only decide which way it spills."
A silence passed. Salene closed her eyes.
"You know what he is now, don't you?"
Elias nodded.
"A second gate."
"And gates open both ways," she added. "That means if you don't seal him, something else comes through."
"I won't chain him."
Salene turned her head slowly, face unreadable.
"Then you better teach him how to choose. Because someone down there wants to pry him open."
---
— MILO (AGAIN) Time: 4:45 PM
He stood now. The ash circles were gone. Replaced with a mirror plane under his feet.
He walked forward. With every step, visions snapped into place.
Elias, screaming in an ocean of gold light
Kells, eaten alive by a hundred hands
Salene, kneeling at a grave that bore no name
He blinked.
All of it vanished.
He turned to the door.
It unlocked itself.
He walked into the hallway. Silent. Staff dropped to their knees without knowing why.
The preacher, outside in the courtyard, felt it before he saw it.
His soul lit up like a flare.
> "Judgmentless," Milo whispered.
And the man caught fire.
Behind him, burned into the concrete wall, a new sigil began to form—a vertical spiral split by twelve diagonal lines.
Salene saw it from the rooftop and muttered only one thing:
> "The second gate has opened."
---