Inquisitor Brael did not sleep.
Sleep was for the weak. The uncertain. Those who had the luxury of unawareness. Brael had not known such comfort since before the Divide. Long before the light fractured and the monsters learned how to wear human faces.
He did not dream. He watched.
And tonight, the Watch screamed.
He stood in the Sub-Crypt Level of the Oversight Tower—twelve floors beneath the surface, deeper than any training chamber, research lab, or containment cell. The walls were alive with old circuitry, half of it magical, half of it lost to time. Sigils writhed in the stone, drawn in blood and code, flickering like candle flames in a hurricane.
In the center of the room floated a single red lens. Sentinel Node #001.
It had gone dark for seven minutes.
Seven minutes without telemetry. Seven minutes without pulse detection. Seven minutes of static in a system that never failed.
Brael played the loop again. And again.
The hallway feed blinked out. The transformation vaults were untouched. But something had tripped an ancient alert tied to the deepest layer of Nova Veil's foundation.
"Echo Gate," he whispered.
Brael moved through the upper levels like a shadow in robes.
He left no trace, no sound.
Only the faint scent of ozone.
The Observation Wing sat in its usual silence, the juvenile barracks untouched by the tremors below. On his pass, he paused outside a particular door. Riley Cross.
Her heartbeat was uneven.
Awake.
The Soul Linked were easy to find once you knew what to listen for. Especially those who had forged their bond in silence.
He placed a hand against the cold metal.
The door did not open. It did not need to.
He could feel her through it.
Not just heat or breath. Not even fear.
Fire.
The old kind.
Kaelira's kind.
He moved on.
At the Vault Registry, Brael activated a master override. Not a digital command—those could be traced. He used a relic key: a black shard of obsidian the length of his thumb, slotted into a mechanical lock older than the war itself.
The registry stuttered to life.
Not the active logs. The sealed ones. Hidden under twelve layers of encryption, forgotten by everyone but those who had built the Vault from ruins.
There, the system confessed.
ACCESS: PROHIBITED ECHO GATE: DORMANT BIOMETRIC INDEX: UNLISTED
He found the imprint.
Two pulses.
One: Juvenile. Unregistered.
The other:
NAME: DR. EVAN THORNE (REDIRECTED —> D. THORNE) STATUS: RETIRED. DECEASED (FILE ERROR) FORMER CLEARANCE: R&D ALPHA-TIER
"Well," Brael said softly. "That explains that."
He studied the waveform signature.
It had changed.
Merged.
Linked.
Not just a Soul Bond.
Something older.
He whispered into the dark, "Kaeliraeth."
The walls answered with a flicker of ancient fire.
Brael did not call for backup.
He did not tell the Command Oversight Board.
He left a single glyph on the tower's north wall: a loop of red and violet with a single spike through its core. It was not a warning.
It was a lock.
And a promise.
That evening, Riley trained alone in the auxiliary yard. The glow of dusk painted the sky in bruised gold. She moved like someone trying to outrun their own heartbeat. The drone targets flared and vanished beneath her fists. Her control had sharpened. Her body had adapted.
But more than that, she was remembering something she had never experienced.
Each motion was not just learned—it was recalled.
Inherited.
The fire that moved through her was not borrowed. It was an awakening.
Until the targets shut down.
Someone had cut the feed.
Riley spun, ready to ignite—
Brael stood at the edge of the yard, hands behind his back.
He looked like a statue. Not old. Not young. Just timeless. Like something carved from truth and shadow.
"You fight like someone who was never taught," he said. "But knows anyway."
Riley stayed quiet. Her pulse was thunder in her ears.
He stepped forward, boots silent.
"Tell me, Riley Cross... who named you?"
The words struck deeper than they should have.
She opened her mouth.
Lied. "My mother."
Brael tilted his head.
"A lovely story," he said. "You should keep telling it."
And then, with the faintest smile, he turned and left.
But as he did, Riley felt the Link pulse sharply.
Daphne's voice in her head, fierce and immediate: "He knows".
Riley swallowed. "Then it begins".