Location: East Circuit Plaza, Maatari
Time: 03:40 PM
Khazim's boots tapped against the layered pavement of East Circuit Plaza — quieter here, but no less alive. Sunset spilled across the storefronts like honey over rust. Synthetic ivy crawled up ceramic towers, and magnetic delivery drones hummed above glass awnings.
He stopped at a corner vendor half-buried beneath hanging baskets of dry-rooted herbs and coded produce.
The old man behind the counter squinted, then raised a palm. "Ah. Didn't hear your feet this time. Boy, anyone ever tell you you've got 'murder feet'? You move like an assassin."
Khazim said nothing. Just pointed to a sealed satchel of crimson grain and two jars of marinated pulsefruit — the kind his mother always soaked in salt before stewing them in broth.
"Family night?" the vendor asked, bagging the items into a lightweave tote.
Khazim handed him a fresh Musa note. "No change needed."
The man chuckled. "Tell your mother the spices were on me."
"I didn't say who they were for."
"Didn't have to."
Khazim left without another word.
By the time he reached the outer loops of Maatari, the skyline had dipped beneath the burnline — that last strip of day where shadow climbed fast. His transit pass clicked against the reader of a magnetrail terminal, and the platform doors hissed open.
He rode in silence, watching the city mutate through the window.
High-rises gave way to housing towers. Towers gave way to low-built structures and winding roads lined with light-trees and passive defense nodes. This was the outer ring — the slow belly of Maatari. Clean. Faintly lit. Reconstructed after the last quake. It was where the forgotten went to try again.
Where his family stayed.
He stepped off the platform as the train whispered away, the air thicker here with the smell of treated wood and static-churned soil.
And despite the years of absence, his legs knew the way.
One curve. Two lefts. A garden wall with chipped paint. A familiar door.
He paused. Let the stillness sink in.
Then knocked once and stepped inside.
The scent hit first — spice charred over woodsmoke, grilled cevi-root patties crisped on a synth-skillet, and something sweet laced with citrus and maza peel simmering near the back of the kitchen. Home — if such a word still applied.
His mother's voice followed from around the corner.
"Didn't even knock twice. I knew it was you."
Khazim set the groceries on the entry table. "I don't double knock."
She appeared a moment later — copper-toned skin glowing warm against the kitchen light, eyes sharp and soft all at once. Her curls were pulled into a thick knot streaked with silver. The faint hum of her Se'lo threadwork glimmered just beneath the skin of her wrists — domestic use, no combat purpose.
"You never change your tone either," she said, stepping in to hug him. Not long, but firm. "You look leaner."
"I'm not."
"Not arguing. Just observing."
She sorted the bags while talking. "Everyone's already here. Drelan's been bragging about some internship. Marek's trying to play peacemaker like always. And Harok… well. You'll see."
Khazim exhaled. "Should I leave?"
"You made it this far. Might as well eat."
The dining table sat beneath a dome of aged skyglass, letting in dull twilight filtered through the city's rising haze. Plates steamed across hand-etched glass: fried maza sticks, sweet-oil cassava wedges, spice-rubbed grillfish, honey-braised lom root, and sour rice studded with shrimp flakes. An open bottle of Tundari bitter sat beside a pitcher of melonwater, condensation running like veins.
Drelan was mid-story — smooth-skinned, honey-brown, with his mother's eyes but his father's confidence.
"So, they said my project cycle was clean enough to ship. Fully vault-worthy. I mean, sure, it was just internship routing, but the system flagged it as tier-two viable. Supervisor said I might get a temp badge before end of cycle."
He noticed Khazim enter and smirked. "Wow. You came. Mom must've guilt-hacked you."
Khazim pulled out a chair and sat. "You still talk like that?"
"I speak future," Drelan grinned. "You grumble in static."
Harok, eldest, sipped from a dark ceramic cup. His skin was darker, near obsidian, uniform collar still on from enforcement shift. His Se'lo threads were faint blue, pulsing at the neck — the mark of an Ether-aligned officer.
"He shows up once every few moons and still smells like alley concrete," Harok muttered.
Khazim didn't look at him. "Better than smelling like false security."
Marek, broad-shouldered and amber-skinned, chuckled. "Let's keep the spice on the table, yeah?"
Their mother entered with a tray. "Enough. Eat first. Jab after."
The meal moved in stages. Harok droned about enforcement restructuring — how even "middle districts need heavier codescans these days." Drelan offered more internship talk, now about clearance keys and "desk nodes optimized for pulse-redirect environments."
Khazim ate in silence. The rhythm of their voices blended with the soft hum of domestic Se'lo lines running through the house — energy threads pulsing faintly along the walls, keeping heat steady and lights breathing.
"You still punching things for coin?" Harok finally asked, not looking up.
"Sometimes for cause."
"Still think cause pays your rent?"
"Sometimes it pays better."
"You ever think about joining real enforcement? I could put in a word."
"I'd rather bleed honest."
"Cute," Harok said, "until you're bleeding for nothing."
Marek raised his glass. "At least you're winning, yeah? Saw a flyer last week — your bracket posted five knockouts in two nights. That's something."
Khazim gave a barely-there nod.
"You always were fast," Marek added. "Freakishly so. Like you bend seconds."
"I count them," Khazim replied.
The table fell quiet.
After dessert — a half-melted cube of vanilla zap-ice and baked maize crumble — Harok and Drelan excused themselves. Drelan gave Khazim a look caught between envy and defense. Harok didn't look back.
When the door clicked shut, his mother handed Khazim a small, sealed wrap.
"Found this while clearing your father's things. He passed it to me when you left. Said it came from his father. I didn't give it to you then… because I wasn't sure you'd come back."
Khazim unwrapped it slowly.
Inside lay a folded eye-shaped pendant, carved from weathered Ghostglint — symmetrical, edges smoothed by time. The iris was hand-etched, not machine-made. A seam clicked open at the back, revealing a thin hook lock — a perfect fit for his chain.
He clipped it into the last open link of his herringbone. It didn't glow or hum. Just rested there, silent and old.
"I thought he gave both pieces to Drelan," Khazim said quietly.
"He did." A pause. "He didn't argue when I said you should have this one."
Khazim looked up. "Thanks."
She placed a hand over his. "Don't make this your last time."
He stepped to the door, paused, and said — soft, but clear:
"You're the only reason I come."
Then he vanished into the dark again, the faint hum of home fading behind him like an old song learning to end.
The Next Morning…
Location: The Gullies, Maatari
Time: 07:35 AM
The sun had barely begun to crack the sky when Khazim climbed the ladder to the roof of his building. The metal creaked like old bones, each rung coated in dew and city dust.
At the top, the skyline of Maatari stretched wide — neon scars splitting the haze, rail lines humming far off in arterial rhythm. The Gullies rolled below him in waves of broken rooftops and half-lit corridors, a place both forgotten and alive in its own jagged tempo.
He stepped to his usual spot — an exposed slab near the corner edge — and sat cross-legged. No mat. No cushion. Just cold stone.
The Ghostglint Chain rested against his collarbone, warm from body heat. The newly added folded-eye pendant nestled against it like it had always belonged.
Khazim closed his eyes.
He drew in breath — slow and shallow. The kind that traveled through ribs, not lungs. The kind that silenced sound, even the noise inside.
His pulse slowed.
His mind didn't.
Not completely. Something buzzed beneath stillness — a friction just behind his thoughts. Not chaotic, but insistent. A spark scratching at the edge of awareness.
Then it happened.
A low harmonic thrum passed through the pendant. Not loud. Not forceful. But ancient. Elemental. Like memory, not noise.
His Ghostglint Chain vibrated once, faintly — then flared.
Light spilled through the links like ink set ablaze. A thin violet-blue thread passed from the pendant into his chest, then up along the side of his face… until his dead eye lit with spectral resonance — not seeing but feeling.
Khazim didn't move.
He didn't panic.
He simply observed — like always.
The glyphs weren't visible. Not yet. But he could sense their shape. Their tension. Something within him had synced — not to the pendant, not to the chain, but to the buried signal they'd both carried all along.
His Se'lo stirred.
He placed two fingers to his temple — out of reflex more than purpose — and felt the scar pulse once, then fade.
A beat of silence.
Then a soft growl behind him.
Tre'co stood in the rooftop shadow — smoke-bodied, luminous-eyed, silent until that sound.
Khazim glanced back over his shoulder.
"No idea what that was," he muttered.
"Don't care right now either."
He stood. Cracked his neck.
His Se'lo settled back into stillness.
"But I know one thing."
Tre'co's head lifted slightly, waiting.
Khazim rolled his shoulder once, expression unreadable.
"…It's time to eat."