Chapter Two: The Loop That Broke the World (Part Three)
"Threadglass holding. Begin full descent."
They took him to the roof of the Harmonic Lyceum.
Not the dorms.
Not the halls.
But the roof—
the highest spire of a place that sang before it spoke,
that once taught resonance through silence long before glyphs were drawn in stone.
Here, the wind hums.
Not wildly. Not loud.
But deep. Tonal.
A note that doesn't want to be heard, only respected.
It hums against the skin like old memory.
And it presses against Zephryn's chest like it remembers him before he was ever found.
He floats above the tower's center.
Threadglass winds from the points of five obsidian anchors—
each tethered to a Choir glyph-handler positioned equidistant from the others.
Their robes barely move.
Their masks shimmer faint under moonlight that doesn't belong to any moon in this world.
The ritual has begun.
Above them, faint words pulse through the containment veil.
"Threadglass holding. Begin full descent."
The Veilmark stabilizer flickers once—
the sigil for Mirrorlock Pulseframe rotating behind Zephryn's head like a memory wheel refusing to stop spinning.
One agent inhales.
"Initiating sequence crawl.
Layer by layer."
Glyphs begin rotating across the chamber's outer ring.
One by one, Zephryn's memories begin to breathe open.
But not all at once.
They don't appear like scenes.
They ripple—
like echoes thrown into still water.
Images, moments, fragments.
None complete.
A hand reaching.
Ash falling over ruins.
A voice—Solara's voice—without words.
Bubbalor, half-formed in a reflection Zephryn never saw himself.
The Choir agent narrows their gaze.
"Begin structuring sequence tags."
Another nods.
Their hand lifts—index and middle finger extended.
They carve a shape midair.
A Veilmark for memory designation:
Phase One: Echo-Root
The light around Zephryn bends.
This isn't animation.
It's reconstruction.
The Threadglass pierces not through flesh, but through mnemonic marrow.
It does not record.
It asks.
What do you remember, child?
What are you hiding from the light?
A pulse surges.
Slight.
Resisted.
Not rejection.
Not pain.
Just… tightness.
A hesitation born of someone who never agreed to be known.
"Subject's base layer is sealed," one agent confirms.
"Not surprising," another says.
"The one who raised him used anchor glyphwork.
Scribed old-style. Pre-Choir."
They pause.
"She wasn't just hiding him.
She was protecting something."
The Smiling Cantor steps forward from behind the ring of stabilizers.
Her voice cuts quiet.
"Let him keep what he thinks he owns.
We're not here to take it.
Just to see where it leads."
Her smile never moves.
But then—
the glyph above Zephryn's heart begins to flicker.
A thread—not of Choir origin—glows just beneath the skin.
It pulses once.
Twice.
And then folds away—like it never wanted to be found.
One agent lowers their hand.
"Layer one offers no full access."
Another tilts their head.
"Then we go further."
The glyphs realign.
Threadglass deepens.
They dive.
And Zephryn drifts further inward—
toward the place where his name was first buried under silence.