Chapter Two: The Loop That Broke the World (Part Two)
"Keep the subject sealed."
The memory collapses like glass under breath—
not shattered… just no longer whole.
Light folds inward, threads scatter, and for a moment, the chamber hums with nothing at all.
Then—
A pulse.
Faint.
Mechanical.
Cold.
Zephryn hangs in mid-air.
Limbs adrift, head slack, mouth slightly open like something almost escaped.
The threads suspending him aren't chains.
They're silk-thin, colorless, intentional.
A lattice of memory strands wound through his veins, knotted across his mind like a spiderweb that doesn't want to kill—only catalog.
And catalog they do.
A wall of glyph-light ripples in the darkness.
On it, an echo replays: Kaelen lifting his halberd.
Then Torr.
Then the line:
"Then I'll burn trying."
And again—
"Then I'll burn trying."
No impact. No ending.
Just the line. Repeated.
A closed loop.
"Sequence confirmed incomplete," one of the Choir agents says from behind the light.
Their voice holds no emotion. Only record.
Another taps a glyph-pillar on the left edge of the chamber.
The lines across it adjust like threads pulling taut.
"This is the third collapse.
No deviation. No break-in.
Subject repeats memory without directional shift."
A longer silence than the room should allow.
"That means he's clean."
"No," a different voice cuts in.
Sharper.
Refined.
Deliberate.
The figure that enters the chamber does not walk with weight—she walks with rhythm.
As if the sound of her steps was chosen before she moved.
She wears the Hollow Choir's white-lacquered mask, but hers curves into a crescent grin.
Not painted.
Carved.
The Smiling Cantor.
She doesn't speak right away.
Only stares at Zephryn—hanging, humming faintly from his chest without sound.
"Take him from the dorm," she says finally.
"Keep the subject sealed. His resonance doesn't need to be awake to move."
An agent hesitates.
"He's not showing any threat-level glyph reaction.
There's nothing inside him that—"
"I said seal him."
The room listens.
The glyphs shift.
No one questions the order again.
Zephryn twitches once.
Not violently.
Just enough for the Threadglass to tighten.
The lattice flickers.
One pulse buckles.
The agent monitoring the structure leans forward.
"We're losing edge symmetry."
"Stabilize it," the Cantor replies.
"Threadglass is locked in. Veilmark is resisting."
"Then use another."
The second Choir agent steps forward.
No words.
They raise their hand and carve a mark through the air with two fingers—
A sweeping arc, then a sharp hook.
The glyph flares silver-black—
Veilmark Art: Mirrorlock Pulseframe.
A rare stabilizer. Banned.
Too precise.
Too violent on memory that tries to breathe.
But it holds.
The lattice tightens.
Zephryn's twitch slows.
His body settles again.
"I want his trajectory monitored," the Cantor says.
Soft. Almost gentle.
But the hum beneath her voice carries command.
"He doesn't know what he carries.
But if he ever learns—
I want to be standing where he falls."
The other agents nod.
None meet her eyes.
Even through a mask… they don't want to see what she's smiling at.
The probe holds.
The loop resets.
And Zephryn drifts—
unaware of the voices
moving behind his memory.