She arrived at dawn.
Not with ceremony.
Not with guards or fanfare.
Just quiet steps on stone, boots caked with ash, and eyes that held too much history for someone who couldn't be older than twenty.
She didn't knock.
She walked in.
Kael turned as the chamber door opened.
She paused when she saw him.
Then said simply, "I followed your fire."
---
Her name was Rei.
Just Rei.
No house. No bloodline. No sigil. No divine mark.
Yet the Weave shivered around her like a violin string pulled too tight.
Kael watched her walk past the other Spark initiates. They whispered behind her.
> "Did you see her eyes?"
> "She's Talent-born. Has to be."
> "But she doesn't wear a core…"
She ignored them all.
Only Kael held her attention.
"Teach me," she said.
Kael studied her. Her movements were efficient. Her mind radiated pressure, like a barely-caged tempest.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Revenge."
Kael frowned. "We're not building a weapon."
"You already did," she said. "You just don't see it yet."
---
Later, Kael sat with Lyssa as the storm rolled across the sky above Weavemind.
"She's different," Lyssa said. "Not like the others. Her Weave signature… it's inverted."
"Inverted?"
"She's tearing it and reshaping it from the inside. Like she's trying to escape something embedded in her soul."
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"That's not learned. That's… implanted."
Lyssa's voice dropped. "She's a buried Myth."
Kael stood abruptly.
> A Myth-tier Talent, undocumented, unregistered, uncontrolled—
—and she had walked into his Beacon like it was nothing.
---
Rei sat alone in the Observation Vault, studying the original Spark Model.
She didn't understand the math.
Didn't follow all the logic.
But something in it spoke to her.
Or rather…
Screamed.
It cracked open the part of her she had tried to lock away.
The memory.
Of the Talented Sanctum.
Of cages.
Of experiments.
Of fire that wouldn't stop.
Rei had once been told by a High Priest that her birth was a mistake. That the gods had given her too much—and so they would take it back.
They had failed.
But not before burning the part of her that trusted.
Now, this model—this idea—was giving her a choice.
And she wanted it.
No matter the cost.
---
That night, Kael found her outside the sanctuary, staring up at the stars.
"You're angry," he said.
Rei didn't turn. "No. I'm focused."
"You think the Spark Model will help you destroy them."
"I think it will help me become."
He sat beside her.
"I won't turn it into a weapon," he said softly. "But I won't stop you from using it to survive."
She finally looked at him.
Eyes glowing faintly red-gold, like embers under skin.
"You talk like a god."
Kael's smile was thin.
"No. I talk like a man who watched gods fail their own creations."
She hesitated.
Then nodded once.
"Then I'll stay."
---
But far away, the Manifold watched a burning thread across the night sky.
He touched the mark engraved into his chest—shaped like a closed eye.
It pulsed.
He whispered to the wind:
> "Kael has begun forging monsters."
> "So I will remind the world what happens to unworthy minds."
And the air behind him peeled open like torn silk.
He stepped into the breach.
And began to erase.