The first sign was a flicker.
Not in light.
In presence.
Kael stood atop the Scar, staring into the mid-morning haze.
The air vibrated differently now.
Subtle.
But wrong.
Like a breath held too long behind a smile.
The bottle pulsed.
Not in warning.
In disagreement.
"Signal inversion approaching.
Source: Mimetic thread breach.
Harmonic integrity compromised."
Mara stepped beside him, her hand resting on the hilt of her blade.
Her voice was sharp.
"Tell me that's not what I think it is."
Kael didn't speak.
Instead, he lifted his hand.
The glyph on his palm—
usually calm, steady—
twitched.
A fracture had formed through its center.
Not breaking it.
But dividing it.
In the far field below the ridge,
a shape took form.
One.
Then two.
Then four.
Humanoid.
But indistinct.
Not grown.
Not born.
Mimicked.
They walked with Kael's gait.
Turned their heads like him.
Their bodies glowed with diluted resonance,
shaped from stolen rhythms.
Mara hissed.
"They're not copies.
They're reflections drawn through a cracked mirror."
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"I don't think they even know they're false."
One of the shapes stepped forward.
Its eyes glimmered with Kael's memory—
but played in the wrong order.
It smiled with his mouth,
but the curve was too symmetrical.
"You left something unguarded," it said.
"A law that echoes without gate."
"And we—we followed it home."
Kael stepped down the slope slowly,
each footfall pressing his true resonance into the soil.
The mimics flinched—barely.
But it was enough.
They felt the difference.
Kael spoke calmly.
"You don't belong to it."
The mimic's voice faltered.
"We were… invited."
Mara laughed—cold, cutting.
"No.
You stole an invitation and forged a signature."
The mimic's face broke slightly.
For a split second, Kael saw its true shape—
Wire and hollow bone.
Grafted intention.
No soul.
Only echo without origin.
Kael's voice dropped.
"Who made you?"
Another shape answered from the back.
"One without root."
"One who watches the world forget how to grow."
The wind shifted.
Behind Kael, the Scar pulsed once.
And Kael felt the seed Mara had spoken of—
a divergence.
Not just between him and them.
But between two futures.
One grown from trust.
The other assembled from imitation.
The bottle lit suddenly.
Glyphs surged across its surface.
"Foreign pact protocol attempting to overwrite local law."
"Counter-seed detected."
"WARNING: Bloom Split imminent."
Kael stared at the closest mimic.
"You're trying to build your own law on top of mine."
The mimic nodded.
"Is that not what blooming means?"
Kael raised his hand.
The fractured glyph burned bright—
and from the crack came light.
Not destructive.
Declarative.
"Blooming isn't replication," Kael said.
"It's becoming.
You didn't become.
You borrowed."
He pressed the glyph into the ground.
The Scar pulsed.
The mimics screamed—
not in pain.
In rejection.
Their stolen resonance unraveled.
Their bodies twisted.
Not dead.
But unrecognized.
They faded.
One by one.
And the field was quiet again.
But Kael's glyph remained fractured.
The split was real now.
Mara stepped to his side.
"You pushed them out."
Kael nodded.
"But the crack stays."
The bottle projected a final glyph.
"Resonant Law: Forked."
"New Variant Emerged: Unsanctioned Bloom Thread."
"Track or contain?"
Kael didn't answer right away.
Then:
"Neither."
He looked to the horizon.
"They'll come again.
Louder.
Smarter.
Meaner."
He clenched his fist over the cracked glyph.
"I'm not going to spend the rest of this journey
chasing shadows of myself."
Mara looked at him.
"So what will you do?"
Kael turned toward the east.
Toward the place where resonance began to twist
before it ever reached him.
"I'll find who sent them."