It was supposed to be a simple spar.
No Blood Moon, no ambush drills, no crater patrol alerts—just morning mist, two combatants, and a circle of dry ash cleared by footwork. Kael's new glaive model—curved spine, double-weighted shaft—had been tested on training dummies, beasts, and alloyed shellbacks. But never in hand-to-hand with a skilled opponent.
Until today.
The opponent was Dravin, a former tunnel-breacher turned close-quarter master, now tasked with elite drills beneath the southern tunnel tiers. He moved like cracked flame—unpredictable, short-tempered, fast.
Kael grinned as the fourth clash rang out, steel on alloy.
"Still slow," Dravin barked, jabbing low.
"You've got moss in your reflexes," Kael shot back, stepping just out of reach.
The glaive moved like memory—perfect weight, tighter balance than his last design. A spark of pride ran through him. Months of adjustment, sketching, refining. This one was his, top to tip.
Then it happened.
As Dravin lunged again, Kael twisted his grip—classic hook-parry. But when the strike landed, the air between them shimmered, briefly.
Not with heat. Not with sound.
But with pressure.
Kael staggered a step, blinking. The glaive in his hands felt suddenly… lighter. No—there were two.
One still in his grip.
The other lying in the dirt.
They froze.
"What the—" Dravin's words cut short as Kael bent to retrieve it. The second glaive was identical in shape. Weight. Even the notched groove on the rear spike.
Except… it wasn't.
The handle's inlay was faded. The metal had weathered hues—dust-worn, almost antique. And the centerline of the blade held an inscription. Not engraved like his, but sunk, as if carved over time by something older than tools.
He couldn't read it.
Kael turned the weapon over again, feeling its balance, his fingers tightening unconsciously. It felt like his work… but somehow preceding it.
A memory, cast forward.
Neither man spoke as Kael slid the new glaive into a lockwrap and secured it beneath his traveling cloak. His mind had already leapt ahead—to Riku.
Two hours later, the glaive sat in the central vault beneath Blackridge's obsidian node. The walls here sweated only under direct flame. The temperature, even by Hollow standards, was freezing to touch.
Riku stood over the table, both glaives unwrapped. The one Kael had forged. And the one that now existed, impossibly, alongside it.
"You didn't trigger it?" Riku asked quietly.
"No. No battle, no enemy slain. Just sparring. Routine."
"Any shift in pressure?"
"Felt like a pulse in the soil," Kael said. "But I was moving. Could've been balance."
Riku didn't speak for several seconds. Then, slowly, he traced the etched inscription on the duplicate's blade with a gloved thumb.
The characters were looping. Not from any Hollow kin. Not Draganoid. Not even Sovereign-script, which some traders claimed traced back to the First Cycle.
They were elegant, but melted. Lines that didn't want to be read yet.
Riku gave a short breath. Not quite a sigh.
Sira stepped in from the side arch. "I heard."
Kael glanced at her. "It wasn't—"
She brushed past him and laid two fingers on the aged glaive's shaft.
The moment her skin met the grip, her pupils narrowed sharply. She didn't withdraw. Didn't speak.
Instead, after several seconds, she whispered:
"This hasn't happened yet."
Riku stiffened. "You saw something?"
Sira's lips parted slightly. Her voice was distant now. "No. Not a vision. Just… wrong time. Like it's late. Or early. Like it doesn't belong in either."
Kael folded his arms. "It's a future echo?"
"No," Sira murmured. "It's more like the weapon looped… not forward. Not back. Sideways."
Riku leaned against the stone table.
The vault was quiet.
None of them had spoken the word. They didn't need to.
It wasn't a fold in the usual sense. Not quantity. Not quality. It was a… reflection. A shadow cast by motion that hadn't occurred yet.
Riku's mind ticked quietly. This changed things.
He hadn't seen this behavior in the Fold before. It responded to repetition, inheritance, loss. But never spontaneous mimicry… with divergence.
"If it came from parallel motion," he said slowly, "then we're not just triggering echoes of what we did—but what we could have done."
Kael looked up. "A potential outcome?"
"Or a failed one," Sira added.
They let that hang in the air.
Outside the vault, Blackridge burned steady and silent. Steam from heat-wells curled skyward. Forge-glow pulsed rhythmically like a heart.
Inside, Riku took the second glaive and locked it in the obsidian chamber. Alone. Isolated.
He didn't want it near the others.
Not yet.
"You tell no one," he said, glancing back at Kael. "This stays between us. Logged as scrap if anyone asks."
"And if it happens again?"
"Then it's not coincidence."
Sira lingered by the vault wall, still watching the closed case.
"If it does happen again," she said softly, "we need to ask a harder question."
Riku tilted his head.
She turned to face him.
"What happens if something comes… not from the fold, but through it?"