Kael hadn't told Ren about the note. He'd barely told himself.
The morning was grey, the kind of grey that looked like a bored god had forgotten to paint the sky. Rain hung in the air like an unmade decision.
"Did you not sleep again?" Ren asked, chewing dry toast.
Kael shrugged. "Slept just fine. Woke up a little haunted, but that's normal, right?"
Ren rolled his eyes. "You're not as funny as you think you are."
"Sure I am. I just save my best material for emotionally tense breakfasts."
They caught the tram to school, packed between half-asleep students and overcaffeinated teachers. Kael stared out the window, trying not to notice how many people were touching their phones or bags in perfect synchrony.
Tap. Pause. Tap. Pause.
He shifted uncomfortably. Was it always like that? Or had he just never noticed?
In class, things got worse.
Math was usually tolerable because numbers were at least honest liars. But today, Ms. Delra was drawing waveforms on the board and Kael couldn't stop seeing sigils in the curves. They weren't real, he told himself. Just familiar shapes his brain was trying to impose.
But then he blinked, and one of the symbols pulsed.
Pulsed.
Like it was alive.
He dropped his pencil.
Delra stopped mid-sentence. "Kael?"
He looked up. "Yes, wise sage of algebra?"
"Would you stay after class?"
"Already regretting my quest for enlightenment?"
She gave him a flat look.
After the final bell, Kael hung back. Students poured out around him like escaping prisoners. Delra shut the door quietly and sat on the edge of her desk.
Kael fidgeted. "If this is about the pencil thing, I promise I was only semi-possessed."
She opened a drawer. Pulled something out.
Kael's stomach dropped.
It was a shard of obsidian.
Identical to his.
His mouth opened but no words came out.
Delra stood and held it out—not toward him, but in open palm, as if she were offering it to the air.
Nothing happened.
Kael's hands started to shake.
"I've been waiting," she said softly. "For someone else to feel it. To hear it."
"Hear what?"
She looked at him, really looked at him. "The old song. The hum behind the world."
Kael tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry.
"I touched mine fifteen years ago," she continued. "It took weeks before the first signs. Patterns in static. Dreams that weren't mine. Then... the first Bond."
Kael's thoughts raced. "So you—are you one of them? A Bonded?"
"I was," she said. "I Sparked. I even reached Burn. But I stopped there. Too dangerous to go further without knowing what I was doing."
"What is it? What are these things?"
She tilted her head. "They're not magic, if that's what you're asking. They're... instructions. Compressed layers of meaning. The sigils teach you how to change the world, one rule at a time."
"Why me?" Kael asked. "Why my attic? Why now?"
"That," she said, "is a very good question. And one I think your father would've answered."
Kael froze.
"You knew him?"
She paused too long. "I didn't. Not directly. But he left signs. Clues. People like us—Bonded—we find each other, eventually. But your father? He disappeared before anyone could understand what he found."
Kael sat heavily. "This is insane."
"Is it?" she asked. "You already know the patterns. You already feel them. The bond is real, Kael. Whether you like it or not."
"I'm just some sarcastic seventeen-year-old with trust issues and one pair of shoes."
"You're more than that," she said. "You're resonating. And others will feel it. Soon."
That night, Kael lay awake in his room, replaying her words.
Instructions. Layers of meaning. Old songs.
He didn't remember falling asleep.
But the dream came anyway.
Not a vision. Not a nightmare.
A call.
In the dark place behind his eyes, something opened.
He stood in a city that bled into the sky, built of stone and glass and impossible angles. Symbols floated in the air, stitched into space like constellations trapped in amber.
A voice spoke in a language he couldn't understand but somehow recognized.
Then the city burned.
He woke gasping, heart pounding.
Ren stirred but didn't wake.
Kael looked at his desk.
The box was open.
He hadn't opened it.
But the shard was glowing.