The summons never stopped.
The moment Root walked out of Crown Chamber Delta, his system feed exploded.
[ Status: Marked – Unaligned Riftborn ]
[ Surveillance Active – Zone Clearance Restricted ]
[ Observation Rank: Sigma-Null ]
[ Tracking Initialized… ]
"Welcome to the blacklist," Veyr whispered. "Population: You."
Root barely reacted.
He didn't need to.
Because something had shifted in him—not physically, not magically, but in rhythm. The moment he said no, something deep in the Hollow thread that connected him to Veyr recalibrated.
He was no longer just avoiding deletion.
He was planning.
It started that night.
In the back alleys of the student ward, where Crownwatch eyes rarely bothered to look, Root waited beside a broken lift shaft with a hand-painted sigil etched into the metal.
He didn't know if the message would work.
He only knew one thing:
"If the system fears what it can't classify," he murmured, "then I need more unclassifiables."
Veyr hovered above his shoulder, arms folded, mask slightly tilted.
"So what's the plan, oh great nullborn overlord? Form a club of tragic rejects and run lunchtime revolution meetings?"
"Something like that."
"Does it have a name? We need a name. Something sexy and terrifying."
Root smiled for the first time in days.
"I was thinking… The Undone."
"Oooh," Veyr purred. "Now that's unsettling."
Footsteps echoed from the shaft.
Not loud.
But deliberate.
Root turned—and saw her.
Lyra.
Alive. Bandaged. One eye slightly glowing from a recent implant, but otherwise whole. And behind her—
Klem.
Bruised. Silent. Carrying a small satchel of cracked sigil stones like they were evidence.
"You called?" Lyra said, voice dry.
"I did."
"We brought snacks," Klem muttered.
Veyr clapped.
"This rebellion has potential."
They met in a collapsed storehouse beneath the east wing—somewhere old, unswept, and forgotten.
Perfect.
Klem was already reinforcing the door with frost-thread from his summon. Lyra paced in a loose circle, sharp eyes scanning the shadows, while Veyr floated upside-down above a rusted chandelier, muttering dramatic titles to himself.
"The Undone," Root repeated, low but certain. "Not a guild. Not a rebellion. A ripple."
Klem frowned.
"A ripple?"
Root nodded.
"Something that spreads. Quiet. Unseen. Not to destroy the system… but to unmake it from the seams."
"Like termites," Veyr said, flipping midair. "Sexy, righteous, reality-bending termites."
Lyra looked unconvinced.
"And how exactly do you plan to… unmake a system that's rewritten you half a dozen times and still can't classify your summon?"
Root held up his hand.
The sigil on his palm glowed—not bright, but stable.
"That's the point. It's already cracking. They don't know what I am anymore. So we use that."
"As bait?" Klem asked.
"As proof," Root replied. "That the Crown's narrative isn't absolute. That their records lie."
Lyra's expression darkened.
"You're not the first one to try that."
Root froze.
Even Veyr stilled.
"What?"
Lyra stepped closer, tone serious now.
"There's a name floating around the underground threads. Precursor error. Never confirmed. Deleted from every system archive but remembered by those who survived the purge."
"Name was: Alen Dravos."
Root felt something sharp twist behind his eyes.
A flicker.
A buried echo.
A memory that wasn't his… but felt like it wanted to be.
"That name means nothing to me," he said, voice too even.
"Doesn't have to," Lyra replied. "But the last Riftborn to say no to the system vanished a week later. Whole floor collapsed. And the summons tied to him? Every one of them reclassified as hostile anomalies."
Veyr's mask dimmed.
"No throne. No memory. Not even deletion. Just… rewritten."
"Exactly," Lyra said. "So if we do this—really do this—there's no going back."
Root clenched his fist.
The sigil pulsed once.
"Good," he said. "Then let's start walking forward."
The Archive Vault wasn't supposed to exist.
Even in the Academy's schematics, it was marked as a sealed maintenance shaft. But Root had seen it once—in a glitch. A flicker during system sync that revealed a vault of corrupted summon logs.
He hadn't known what it was then.
But now?
Now he was ready to steal what the system buried.
"This is it," Root said, crouched behind a rusted door at the bottom of Sublevel 13.
Klem looked unimpressed.
"Doesn't scream 'secrets of the crown' to me."
Lyra glanced around.
"No guards. No alarms. No trip-threads."
"Which means," Veyr said, floating smugly, "we're definitely walking into a trap."
Root ignored him.
He pressed his sigil to the metal. There was no click. No hum. Just a slow melting, like the structure was trying to remember how to open.
And then—
Light.
Not bright.
But wrong.
The kind of light that made you think you'd forgotten something important. That maybe you were the anomaly, not the vault.
Inside were dozens of shattered crystal tablets, each glowing faintly with fragmented summon logs. Most were too corrupted to read. But one—one pulsed in rhythm with Root's chest.
He reached out.
The moment he touched it, the room responded.
[ Accessing Forbidden Entry: Hollow Sync – Designation: V.1R ]
Date of Creation: Unknown
Creator: Redacted
Classification: NULL-SUMMON / FALLEN ECHO / THRONEBOUND
Notes: [ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.]
Root's hand trembled.
"That's you," he whispered.
Veyr hovered lower, silent.
The tablet flickered again—and began replaying an ancient trial.
A different user.
A broken simulation.
A summon… shaped like Veyr. But not like the one Root knew.
Colder. Crueler. Hungrier.
It devoured not enemies… but allies.
Root flinched.
"What is this?"
"That's not me," Veyr said, voice flat. "That's who I used to be. Before the system split me. Before you."
"You knew?"
"I suspected. But knowing and remembering are different things."
"So why didn't you tell me?"
Veyr looked straight into Root's eyes.
"Because I didn't want you to think I was still that thing."
Root said nothing.
Lyra watched in silence. Klem shifted uncomfortably.
The tablet sparked—then shattered.
[ Access Closed. Entry Marked. Surveillance Now Active. ]
"We have to go," Lyra hissed.
"Now."
As they ran, Root felt it:
Not fear.
Not betrayal.
But something new.
Uncertainty.
Because now he wasn't sure if he'd summoned Veyr…
Or if Veyr had summoned him.