The second the door creaked again, Lira moved.
Fast.
No sound, no hesitation — just motion. She grabbed Cael's collar and yanked him down a maintenance chute in the floor, sealing it behind them with a slide-weld.
The tunnel below was tight. Cold. Lit by the faint green glow of her wristlamp.
Above them: slow movement. Inhuman. Deliberate.
Not footsteps. Not claws.
Something dragging something else.
"They shouldn't have found us," she whispered as they crawled. "Not this fast. Not in this zone."
"So what are they?"
"The Ones Who Remember."
"What?"
She glanced back.
"That's what people call them. They show up after Monoliths activate. No one knows how they move or why they follow resonance. But when they do... things get rewritten."
They crawled in silence until the tunnel opened into a cracked subterranean rail line. Exposed pipes arched over the track. Shimmering residue hovered in the air like heat haze — a leftover distortion effect.
"We're cutting through a burst path," Lira said.
"A what?"
"Where reality flared and burned out. Time and space don't run clean here. You'll feel it in your bones before your eyes."
Cael's skin prickled.
"Why is it safe?"
"It's not."
They sprinted.
The station behind them hissed — not from heat, but memory.
Cael looked back once.
And saw a silhouette at the far end of the tunnel.
Too tall.
Arms too long.
Face blurred, like someone had forgotten to finish drawing it.
He looked forward again.
The image stuck to the back of his eyes.
The Keymark pulsed.
Not in panic — in anticipation.
Like it wanted him to do something.
He looked at his hand.
How did it work last time?
What triggered it?
Lira stumbled — a pipe burst near her, spraying steam. She fell hard, knee skidding open.
The silhouette moved faster.
Cael didn't think.
He reached inward — not to his thoughts, but to the pressure where the mark lived.
And he called.
The air rippled.
A pulse of silence erupted around them.
And the tunnel began to speak.
Not in words.
In echoes.
Voices from years ago. From minutes ahead. Memories that weren't Cael's flickered like projections — scenes of others fleeing this very path, of soldiers lost, of engineers begging unknown systems to hold.
The creature chasing them staggered.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
It started weeping.
Cael blinked.
It wasn't just weeping.
It was remembering.
Lira pulled herself up, staring.
"You used it," she said.
He didn't answer.
He felt wrong.
Something was bleeding inside him — not physically, but in identity.
Like a seam had split.
Then the tunnel lights stuttered.
Not from energy loss.
But from attention.
Something was now watching him through the mark.
Not the Lock.
Not the Monolith.
Something older.
Miles away, Solin stood beneath a collapsed overpass, running fingers over the ground.
"He activated a weave-path," he said to no one.
"He's learning to call it now."
He smiled.
Just slightly.
"Good."
End of Chapter 6: The Ones Who Remember