Kael didn't sleep that night.
Not because he couldn't—but because he was afraid of what he might see if he did.
He sat cross-legged on the floor of his room, the disc resting on his palm. It pulsed faintly with a soft warmth, like a living thing. No symbols had appeared again, no voice whispered in his mind. But its silence was not emptiness. It was waiting.
For what, he wasn't sure.
A knock broke the silence.
He jumped, stuffed the disc under his mattress, and stood.
Another knock—this one softer.
Kael cracked the door.
Zaira stood outside.
The genius of the fourth quadrant. A telepath and cultivator of memory essence, ranked second in the entire Earth Federation youth division. She wasn't just smart—she was terrifying. And she never knocked.
"Can I come in?"
Kael blinked. "Uh… yeah. Sure."
She stepped in and closed the door behind her. Her presence filled the room like a shadow that didn't belong to her body.
"Something's off about you," she said, scanning him with unreadable violet eyes. "The monolith responded. Not how it should've, but it did."
Kael stayed silent.
"I've been trained to pick up mental fractures," she continued. "Inconsistencies in memory threads. You—you've got layers. Hidden ones. Like someone rewrote your timeline and didn't clean up after themselves."
Kael swallowed. "That's… poetic."
"It's illegal," she said flatly. "And extremely rare."
He shifted, trying to steady his breathing. "Why are you here, Zaira?"
She hesitated for the first time.
"Because I saw you before you touched the monolith."
Kael blinked. "Okay?"
She sat on his desk chair, folding her arms.
"No, I saw you. The same way you probably saw something inside that chamber. I remember a different version of the world—where the Overseers came years later. Where I never joined the Academy. Where you didn't exist."
A long pause stretched between them.
"You're from a fractured timeline too," Kael said.
She nodded slowly.
Kael felt the bottom drop out from beneath him. All this time, he'd thought he was alone—that the disc had chosen him by mistake or fate. But now, Zaira, of all people, stood here speaking of fractures as if they were real.
As if they were shared.
"How many of us are there?" he asked.
"I don't know. Maybe only us. Maybe more. But I think the Overseers are searching for people like you. Like us."
Kael pulled the blinds closed, double-checked his door lock, then retrieved the disc.
Zaira's eyes widened. "What the hell is that?"
"It came from the pod," Kael said. "It speaks sometimes. It showed me... memories. Stars dying. Seeds drifting through space. A girl named Elyria."
Zaira sat frozen, her mind moving faster than her mouth.
"I've heard that name," she whispered. "Not in this life—but in the other one. Before things rewrote."
Kael placed the disc between them on the floor.
"Then maybe we're not just anomalies," he said. "Maybe we're keys."
Zaira looked at him, and for the first time, she wasn't the detached genius with perfect control.
She looked afraid.
"This isn't just about cultivation anymore," she said.
Kael nodded. "It never was."
They sat in silence, the disc pulsing faintly between them like a heart neither of them owned.
And outside, far beyond the campus and the domed skies of the Federation capital, a second pod drifted through the dark—its course set, its cargo intact.
Inside it, Elyria stirred.