Kael stared at the sigils drawn in his notebook until the ink blurred. He'd redrawn the same symbols a dozen times, comparing strokes, arcs, and patterns, looking for a thread—something intelligible.
He didn't know what drove him. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was fear.
Or maybe it was that vision still echoing in his mind: a city of light without a sky.
His sigil pulsed faintly in his chest.
Each beat felt like a word.
Each flare of warmth, a whisper.
He grabbed his pen again.
The "Descent" spiral? It wasn't just a symbol of force. He realized it responded to direction, pressure, angle of thought. When he visualized it twisting upward, it had tried to pull things skyward. Reverse the force.
Descent became Ascension.
It wasn't just magic—it was syntax.
Sigils were verbs. Adjectives. Commands.
But who had written the language?
He brought the notebook to Delra the next morning.
She took one look at it and muttered, "Of course you're a lunatic."
"That's not an objection."
"It's a reluctant compliment," she said, flipping pages. Her eyes narrowed as she studied his notes. "This—here. You reversed the Descent spiral?"
Kael nodded. "Not intentionally, the first time. But when I did it again… it pulled. I lifted a crate without touching it."
Delra's voice dropped. "That's not in the basic sigil forms."
"Exactly," Kael said. "We've been treating them like isolated tools. But they're expressions. If you shape the right phrase, the system responds."
Delra's fingers hovered over the symbol.
"…You realize this means the sigils are teachable. Like a language."
Kael grinned. "Or an operating system."
Delra blinked. "You're talking about programming reality."
He leaned forward. "And maybe whoever made the sigils didn't just want us to use them. They wanted someone to learn how they work."
Delra said nothing for a while.
Then: "You're going to get assassinated for this."
Their training shifted after that.
Sarn, the stoic drillmaster, started watching Kael differently. Less like a liability, more like a puzzle.
"Control is everything," he barked as Kael stood in the ring again, sweat dripping down his brow. "But understanding makes control easier. Show me 'Force Release' in reverse."
Kael nodded.
He visualized the sigil differently this time—not as an outward pulse, but a sphere collapsing inward.
It responded.
The air warped and sucked toward his center like an implosion—only faint, a baby version of something much worse.
Sarn held up a hand. "Stop."
Kael blinked. The energy flickered out.
"That," Sarn said slowly, "is how Flare users punch holes through walls. Or people."
"I barely felt anything," Kael muttered.
"Good," Sarn said. "That means you're containing it."
Delra nodded in the observation room. "Sigils aren't about brute force. They're interpretive. Like bending intent into form."
Kael wiped sweat from his brow. "So it's like painting. Except if you mess up, something explodes."
"Exactly," she said. "You're getting it."
That night, Kael returned to the dorm and found Ren waiting in the hallway, arms crossed.
"Oh boy," Kael said. "Did I miss something again?"
"You missed my brother's birthday," Ren said flatly.
Kael froze.
"…That was today?"
"You promised you'd come."
Kael swallowed. "Ren, I—"
"No," Ren said, stepping closer. "I get it. You've got this shiny new sigil, a mysterious ancient power, secret training programs. You're Important™ now. But we've been through years of garbage together, Kael. I was there when your mom died. I held you together when you couldn't breathe. And now?"
He jabbed a finger into Kael's chest.
"You ghost me for three days and show up looking like you fell into a sigil furnace."
Kael opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Then said, quietly, "I'm sorry."
Ren's expression shifted—anger still there, but flickering.
"…Why didn't you tell me?"
Kael sat down on the steps, suddenly feeling hollow.
"I didn't want to drag you into it."
Ren scoffed. "You think you're protecting me? I'm not a porcelain doll, Kael. I'm your friend. Stop cutting me out."
Kael looked up at him, eyes raw.
"I'm scared."
Ren blinked.
"I'm scared," Kael repeated. "Of what I'm becoming. Of what I saw. Of what this damn sigil is doing to me."
Silence.
Ren sat down beside him.
"…Then let's be scared together, idiot."
The next day, the city buzzed with panic.
An unregistered sigil user had triggered a flare in Sector Nine. Two buildings collapsed. Three confirmed dead.
Kael and Delra stood behind a yellow barrier as Sarn surveyed the damage.
"It's starting," he said grimly.
Kael glanced at him. "What is?"
Sarn didn't answer.
He just looked out over the crater, where the walls still glowed faintly with sigil burn. A symbol etched itself into the stone—one Kael didn't recognize.
But it looked old.
And familiar.
It pulsed once before vanishing.
Back at the facility, Kael flipped through his notebook. The symbol burned into the wall—it hadn't just been random.
He found a match. One he'd doodled after his second vision.
A triangle bisected by a curved line.
Labelled: Division.
Delra stood beside him, arms folded. "I've seen that one before."
"Where?"
She looked at him.
"In the archives. It's banned."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Because it's linked to the Origin tier. The last level. Nobody's ever reached it. And according to the old theories, whoever does… breaks the system."
Kael stared at the symbol again.
Breaks the system.
Suddenly, it all clicked into place.
The visions. The sigils-as-language. The memories hidden in the shards.
This wasn't a power source.
It was a test.
The sigils weren't tools. They were keys.
To something deeper.
And someone else out there was trying to open the same doors.
But without the caution Kael had.
Across the city, in a dim-lit chamber, the figure from before watched the news broadcast. His eyes narrowed as the triangle-and-curve symbol appeared on the screen for a half-second before vanishing.
"So it's begun," he whispered.
Another voice behind him—a woman, cold and sharp. "Should we intervene?"
He stood slowly, turning toward a massive wall covered in sigil diagrams and half-finished phrases.
"No. Let him walk the path. If he's truly his son… the system will respond."
He touched a sigil etched into the steel wall. It pulsed.
"He must suffer first. Like I did."