The dorm lights dimmed in layers.
First the main hall glyphs—
Then the soft underfloor resonance—
Then, finally, the memory seals in each room began their low-cycle hum.
Zephryn sat at the edge of his bed again, hands resting on the folded scarf in his lap. The sparring match was hours behind him. The confrontation, the hum, Nima's voice… all of it pressed against his chest like weight tied to silence.
He could still hear her note.
Not as a sound.
As a memory.
Like a hum that hadn't stopped since the void… just shifted pitch.
Selka's footsteps passed the hallway once.
Stopped.
Didn't enter.
He heard her pause.
Then continue walking.
She didn't knock.
But he felt her presence like wind against glass.
Zephryn's hand moved across the scarf.
Not to hold it.
Not to wear it.
But because something in the weave itched.
A thread was loose.
Just one.
Woven too tightly, but out of sync with the others.
Tugged slightly by motion.
Almost invisible.
He pulled it.
And the scarf shimmered.
Not fabric. Not thread.
It pulsed once—like a glyph remembering where it came from.
A symbol flickered in the thread's light:
A spiral.
Cracked.
Incomplete.
He stared.
Didn't move.
Because he'd seen that shape before.
Not in the archives.
Not in the scan room.
But in the void.
It was the first mark the glyph showed him… before it burned itself into flame.
The thread unraveled completely now.
And at the end of it—tucked into the seam like a forgotten note—
was a pulse-sealed shard.
A sliver of crystal.
Inscribed on the inside:
"If you find this, then you're not broken.
You're just remembering in the wrong direction."
—Solara
Zephryn didn't breathe for a full ten seconds.
Then—
"I never forgot."
He closed his fist around the shard.
And the glyph inside his pulse began to stir again.