They didn't speak for an hour.
Not even Kael.
Not after seeing that glyph — Cressa's glyph — burned into the margins of the First Scholar's Journal like a scar.
They camped on a cliff just above the sunken ruin, far enough that the divine interference didn't scramble glyph arrays, but close enough for the earth to still tremble beneath them. The moon overhead was bruised purple with arcane haze. The ruin had started leaking energy into the atmosphere.
Seren watched the horizon while Lia tended Kael's hand. His fingers were scorched where he'd grabbed the burning book.
"You shouldn't have touched it," Lia murmured, wrapping the cloth tighter. "Even if it's her glyph. Especially if it is."
"I didn't choose to," Kael said quietly. "It burned through my glove. Like it was looking for me."
Seren turned her head. "That glyph was not made to kill. That was a message."
"Worse," Kael muttered. "It was a promise."
---
An Ancient Map
Later that night, Kael sat alone by the fire, journal open in his lap. Lia had fallen asleep nearby, and Seren was on watch, her blade across her knees.
Kael turned the pages carefully, re-tracing the glyphic path left by the First Scholar. But the new symbol—Cressa's—kept humming. Not literally. It pulsed in his mind, an echo he couldn't shake.
He stared at it for a long time. The shape wasn't elegant. It was a contradiction—an intentional fracture in glyphic logic. But it fit. It curved toward a forbidden truth he had only begun to understand.
And then… a page turned itself.
A hidden fold beneath the glyph peeled away, revealing a map inked in invisible glyph-tone, visible only in the firelight. Kael's breath caught.
Not a place.
A pattern.
---
Glyph of Unmaking
It was a design.
Not of a weapon. Not of a structure.
Of a concept.
A glyphic lattice that traced the principles behind Talent-born power. Kael recognized the recursive loops — blessings encoded from divine anchors, looped through hereditary cores. It was the skeleton of the entire power system.
A blueprint… for undoing it.
"The Null Bind," Kael whispered.
Seren appeared behind him, silent as a ghost. "You found it."
He looked up. "It's incomplete."
"It always was."
Kael traced the lines again. Something was missing from the central convergence point. A glyph that the First Scholar never finished. Or refused to finish.
"Why?" he asked aloud.
Seren stared at the fire. "Because completing it would be a declaration of war against the gods themselves."
---
The Eye Opens
At that moment, Lia sat bolt upright.
Kael and Seren turned.
She wasn't moving. Not really. Her eyes were open—but glowing white.
"Lia?" Kael stood.
Then her mouth opened—and a voice came out that was not hers.
> "He dares to follow the path. He dares to finish the glyph."
Kael froze. It wasn't Cressa.
It wasn't even human.
> "You are not permitted to bind divinity. That path was sealed. That truth was buried."
Lia's body began to rise, slow and impossible.
> "And still you persist."
Seren drew her sword—but Kael stopped her.
Because Lia wasn't possessed.
She was being watched.
---
The Divine Surveillance
Kael narrowed his eyes. "Are you watching through her?"
No reply.
"Answer me," he demanded, stepping closer. "You think we're blind. But I see the patterns now. I understand your system. You're not infinite. You're structured. You're scared."
The fire flared around Lia's floating body.
> "You will not survive what comes next."
Then the light vanished.
Lia collapsed, unconscious.
Kael caught her, heart pounding.
Seren knelt, feeling Lia's pulse. "She's alive."
Kael stared into the night.
Whoever—or whatever—had spoken through her…
It wasn't finished.