The morning hums.It's the first thing Riku hears — that low, steady vibration running through the walls like the Bastion itself is alive and dreaming. His Chains pulse with it, faint threads of light tightening and loosening around his wrists. Every movement feels observed. Every breath measured.
The air tastes faintly metallic. He can't tell if it's from the wards or from the blood he bit through last night.
When the door opens, he doesn't turn.Kael's boots hit the stone in short, precise bursts, the rhythm of someone restraining anger through discipline. Two Enforcers follow — helmets on, weapons locked to their spines.
"On your feet," Kael says.
His voice isn't loud. It doesn't need to be. The weight behind it makes Riku's pulse slow to match its tempo.
The Chains react before he does — uncoiling slightly, then drawing taut, as if they sense the command embedded in Kael's tone.
Riku stands.The floor glows beneath him, the runic circle responding to his movement.
"Where are we going?" he asks quietly.
Kael's jaw tightens. "The Arbiter wants words."
No explanation. No warmth. Just duty sharpened into something personal.
They walk the corridor — long and narrow, carved from white crystal that refracts their silhouettes into a dozen warped versions. In the reflections, Kael looks taller, broader. Riku looks hollow, his eyes dimmed out entirely.
The Bastion hums louder the deeper they go.
When they reach the Chamber, the Enforcers halt. Kael presses a palm to the sigil etched in the door. It opens without sound, splitting the crystal into curved halves.
Inside is silence. Not emptiness — silence that feels engineered.
The Chamber is a circle of white stone veined with faint light. The walls shimmer like trapped glass. In the center, a single chair of pale metal waits under a suspended ring of sigils. The air hums faintly — not sound, but pressure.
Riku steps inside. The Chains drag faintly against the floor, leaving trails of light like molten lines.
The Arbiter stands across from him — tall, robed in grey, face indistinct. The kind of face you remember only as calm.
"Sit," the Arbiter says. The voice isn't sharp. It resonates — each word carried by two echoes, one human, one something else.
Riku sits.
Kael remains by the door, arms crossed. He's supposed to be silent. He won't be.
The Arbiter lifts a hand over a glass tablet. Lines of light flow up the arm like veins filled with data.
"When did the distortion begin?"
Riku blinks. "The distortion—?"
"The anomaly in your Ance," the Arbiter clarifies. "The event that ruptured your containment field."
He tries to remember. The memory bleeds through the cracks — the village, the flare, the world bending in reverse. "It started… when I tried to stop it."
"Stop what?"
"The screaming."
Kael shifts. His voice cuts in, low and hard. "He's evading. You could have leveled the entire outpost—"
The Arbiter turns a single glance toward him. Kael stops mid-sentence, throat tightening as if an invisible hand pressed against it.
The silence that follows is colder than rebuke.
The Arbiter returns to Riku. "What color was your Ance when it fractured?"
"Color?" Riku exhales a thin laugh. "There wasn't one color. It was—"He stops.His eyes flick to the ceiling ring. The runes above are flickering faintly, pulsing with each word he speaks.
"It was every color," he says finally. "And none. It bent around itself."
The runes brighten. The hum deepens, almost pleased.
Kael takes a step forward. "You expect us to believe—"
"Silence," the Arbiter says.
This time the word hits like a strike. Kael's expression hardens, rage flashing behind his eyes — the kind of anger born not from hatred, but from fear he doesn't understand.
The Arbiter continues, undisturbed."When you released the blast, did you hear multiple voices?"
Riku's breath catches. His body stills. The memory slides open like a wound — light folding, sound distorting into chorus. His own voice splintering into thousands, each calling a different name.
"I heard… myself," he says. "Too many times."
The Chamber hums louder.
Kael's restraint snaps. "Enough riddles—" He grabs Riku by the collar. The Chains react instantly, flashing with raw light. The air burns.
The Arbiter doesn't move. "Release him."
Kael's hand trembles — not by choice. The command runs through him like static, forcing his grip to unclench.
He steps back, breathing hard, face shadowed with fury and something dangerously close to regret.
Riku lowers his gaze. "Why am I here?"
The Arbiter studies him. "Because the Council must understand what you are."
He wants to laugh, but it comes out hollow. "You already decided, didn't you?"
The Arbiter tilts their head slightly, as if listening to something distant. "Riku… Solveil."
The sound of it cuts through him.
He doesn't remember saying that name to anyone. Not since the orphanage. Not since before everything burned.
"How do you—"
Kael's eyes flick toward him, surprise flickering beneath the anger. Even he didn't know.
Riku's throat tightens. "That name was buried."
The Arbiter's gaze doesn't waver. "Nothing stays buried in Aldoré."
The Chamber's light dims suddenly — a single pulse, like the space exhaling.
And for a heartbeat, Riku feels the city itself remembering him.
"You may return" The Arbiter says calmly.
The return walk feels longer.
The Bastion's corridors hum with the same rhythmic pulse as before, but now each vibration carries his name inside it.
Riku Solveil.
It repeats under his skin like an echo that refuses to fade.
Kael doesn't speak. His jaw is locked, his shoulders squared too tight — a man trying to convince himself of his own control. The Enforcers peel away at each turn until it's just the two of them, moving through corridors of glass-veined stone that refract the torchlight into shifting spectrums.
When they reach the containment wing, Kael halts at the threshold. He doesn't look at Riku. "You'll be called again when they decide you're useful."
Riku lifts his gaze. "And if they decide I'm not?"
Kael's expression doesn't change. "Then they'll make sure you never distort again."
The door seals behind him with a low hiss — a sound too soft to match the threat behind it.
The cell waits, white and quiet.But it isn't empty.
Someone sits near the corner — young, maybe early twenties. Not armored. Wearing a simple Bastion tunic with the faint insignia of the lower garrison stitched near the collar. His posture is too careful, his presence out of place.
When Riku enters, the stranger stands quickly. "You're back. Good."He lifts a tray of food — steam rising from a bowl of broth, two pieces of dense bread, and something that might be tea. "They said you hadn't eaten."
Riku stops short of the table. The Chains hum faintly, their light crawling across his skin. "Who are you?"
The young man hesitates — then forces a small, polite smile. "Eiden. Eiden Varas. I handle logistics and, sometimes, low-risk observation."
"Observation." Riku's voice flattens. "So you're a watcher."
Eiden chuckles nervously. "I prefer the word liaison."
Riku doesn't sit. "Liaisons don't bring food to prisoners."
Eiden's hand tightens on the tray. He sets it down carefully, eyes flicking toward the Chains. "You're not a prisoner. You're a containment risk. There's a difference."
"That supposed to make me feel better?"
Eiden shrugs — a gesture that seems both honest and tired. "It's supposed to make you understand."
The silence that follows hums like static.
Riku finally moves, lowering himself to the edge of the cot. The broth smells faintly of herbs, but there's something metallic beneath it. He doesn't touch it.
"You were in the lower villages," Eiden says quietly. "When it happened."
Riku looks up, eyes narrow. "You read the report?"
Eiden shakes his head. "Heard it. The Enforcers talk when they think the corridors don't listen."
Riku studies him — the steady hands, the nervous posture, the eyes that don't seem trained to look away from pain. "Why are you really here?"
Eiden hesitates, then exhales. "Because no one else volunteered."
A dry laugh almost escapes Riku's throat. "Smart people."
"Maybe," Eiden says softly. "But I've seen what happens when they isolate people too long. The Bastion's walls can make anyone fracture."
Riku tilts his head. "You sound like you've seen it firsthand."
"I have."
The quiet that follows isn't empty. It's waiting.
Eiden glances toward the floor, his tone dropping. "My sister manifested when she was sixteen. They said she was a Mirror Soul. For a while, she could project her reflections — talk to them like they were pieces of her. The Council called it dangerous."
Riku doesn't move. The name Mirror Soul sits heavy in the air, familiar in concept but alien in practice — a cousin to his own cursed type.
"What happened to her?"
Eiden swallows. "They took her for 'study.' I haven't seen her since."
His fingers trace the edge of the table — a small motion, grounding himself.
Riku feels something shift inside, an echo of what might have once been empathy, dulled by exhaustion. "You still work for them."
"I do," Eiden says simply. "Because if I don't, I'll never find out where she went."
The honesty in it cuts through the air like a blade.
For the first time since the village burned, Riku doesn't know what to say.
He reaches for the cup of tea — hesitates — then sets it back down. The surface ripples faintly, though the air is still.
Eiden's eyes flick to the movement. "The Chains reacting?"
Riku shakes his head slowly. "No. That wasn't me."
Then he sees it — the flicker.
It starts subtle: the light bends wrong across Eiden's shoulder, a shimmer like heat distortion. For an instant, there are two of him — overlapping perfectly, yet slightly out of phase. One smiling nervously. One staring straight at Riku, mouth open, whispering words that don't reach sound.
The room shifts. The hum deepens. The air hiccups.
Riku's breath catches; the Chains flare to life, tightening until he feels his pulse in every link. The world around him seems to stutter — one frame too many.
Eiden blinks. "Riku—?"
The tray rattles.
He looks down just as it falls — the bowl, the cup, the bread — but instead of shattering, everything splits midair, fracturing into mirrored halves that drift apart like shards of reflected glass.
Light scatters across the cell in ribbons. The hum turns sharp, almost a scream.
Riku clutches his chest. His vision fractures.
And for an impossible second — he swears he sees two Bastions.Both breathing. Both humming. Both wrong.
The floor ripples under his boots like stretched glass. The walls pulse — white, then colorless, then a color that refuses to name itself.
The air fractures with a sound too thin to be heard.
Eiden shouts something, but his voice splits — two syllables layered out of sync. One version echoes ahead of itself. The other lags behind.
The tray hits the floor. Or maybe it doesn't. Each mirrored half keeps falling forever, sliding through each other like ripples meeting.
Riku stumbles back against the cot. The Chains blaze, heat searing through the metal as they pull taut — anchoring him in place.
"Don't—" he gasps. But to who? To the world? To himself?
Eiden grabs his arm — or one of him does. The other flickers out of phase, caught between moments.
A roar shakes the corridor outside. Then another, like the Bastion's bones grinding against themselves.
The hum swells into a shriek. The light above the door fractures into prisms that spin, faster and faster, until the whole cell becomes a whirl of refracted light.
Then it stops.
Everything snaps back.
Riku collapses to his knees, breath ragged. The tray lies untouched on the floor — whole, as if nothing happened. Eiden's hand is still outstretched, trembling.
"What was that?" he whispers.
Riku opens his mouth, but the Bastion answers first.
A deep vibration rolls through the stone — not an earthquake, not a ward failure — something older, resonant. The walls themselves hum with recognition.
Alarms follow. Low, guttural tones that shake dust from the ceiling. The runes along the corridor flare bright white.
Eiden curses under his breath. "Citadel resonance."
Riku forces himself up, bracing on the wall. "Resonance with what?"
"The Core," Eiden says. "The Council's heart. Nothing should—"
He doesn't finish.
Through the barred slit near the ceiling, light floods in — not sunlight, not moonlight. Something purer, alien. It bends through the cracks like liquid glass, filling the cell with the same impossible hue Riku saw in his dreams.
His Chains scream. Metal to metal, link to link.
Riku can feel it pulling — not outward, but inward — as though the Citadel itself were drawing breath and he was caught inside its lungs.
Guards rush past outside. Orders shouted, boots hammering.
Eiden bolts for the door panel. "Stay here!"
But Riku can't move even if he wants to. His body anchors to the floor, the Chains biting deep, dragging him toward the center of the cell as the resonance builds.
The walls flicker again — but this time it's not illusion. Through one wall he sees a corridor with different banners, older armor, another Bastion in another time. Through another, a reflection of the same cell — empty, no Chains, just himself standing still, eyes glowing with that same impossible light.
He tries to look away. The world won't let him.
The Citadel flares again — so bright it washes color out of the world.
Eiden shields his eyes, shouting, "Riku, what's happening?!"
"I—" His voice breaks. "It's calling me."
The light condenses into a line, a perfect fracture cutting through the ceiling — and in it, for a heartbeat, he sees a city of glass towers suspended in the void, mirrored infinitely, each version trembling in unison.
Then it collapses.
The Bastion's resonance dies, leaving only silence and the distant echo of running boots.
Smoke curls from the runes in the walls. The air smells of ozone and burnt metal.
Riku kneels in the center of the wrecked cell, chest heaving. The Chains are dim again — no glow, no hum — only a faint pulse where they touch his skin.
The door bursts open. Kael storms in, face pale with fury. "What did you do?"
Riku looks up at him. His voice is hoarse. "Nothing. It called to me."
Kael stops mid-step. The rage in his eyes falters — replaced by something colder.
"Then it knows you're here," he says quietly.
He doesn't blink. Doesn't move.
"And that means the Council will act soon."