Frostveil was less a city and more a myth of stone and silence. It emerged from the frozen horizon like a buried cathedral, its towers carved directly from glacier walls, each one etched with archaic glyphs that shimmered faintly beneath layers of ice.
Echo-Ward and Harrowforge stood at the edge of the Frostveil Enclave, their cores humming quietly in the cold. The gates ahead were wide open, but unmanned. Silent. As though the city had been waiting.
Kian stepped down the ramp into snow that didn't melt under his boots. It whispered as it shifted—almost like memory trying to speak.
Behind him, the others followed in silence. Kess walked close, hood drawn low, her system still adjusting after the encounter with Ashar Vale. Veyna's flame flickered dimly, cold-resistant and strangely subdued.
[Codex Notification]
────────────────
Region Discovered: Frostveil Enclave
Status: Technically active
Memory Layer: Instable (3%)
▸ System Note: Codex integration limited. Manual interface required.
▸ New Entry Unlocked: Dream-Sliver Echoes
────────────────
They passed beneath a massive arch of rune-etched ice. Frost-covered constructs lined the walls—humanoid, but clearly abandoned. Some still twitched gently in their sockets, locked in frozen glitches.
Kian ran his fingers across a column of symbols. It was Codex script, but broken. Repeating loops. The same command, again and again.
"These systems… they're dreaming," Kess whispered. "They've been asleep so long, their routines started mutating."
"Dreaming systems," Gellon muttered. "Great. What's next? Sleepwalking weapons?"
Veyna stopped near a long stairwell. "This place is too quiet," she said, flame lifting. "Too intact. Cities don't survive like this."
Kian agreed. And deep down, so did both his systems.
[Predation Warning]
▸ Local signal conflict detected
▸ System consciousness anomaly within 300m
[Codex Alert]
▸ You are being observed.
▸ Anchor thread: pulsing.
In the center of Frostveil stood the Dreamhall, a dome of translucent crystal surrounded by hovering slivers of metal. Each shard rotated slowly, like planets orbiting a thought.
Inside, at the base of a shallow pool, lay a suspended mass of light—a crystalline Codex shard, still active. But… wrong.
Its glyphs pulsed out of sync. Its color bled between silver and red. Something in it was awake.
"This is where it lives," Kess said. "The dreaming Codex. A system fragment that never shut off."
"And it's watching us," Kian replied quietly.
As Kian approached, the world trembled—not outside, but inside his mind.
His Codex interface blinked erratically. Text flickered. The system began to speak, but not in its usual clinical tone.
[System Event – Internal Echo Instability]
You shouldn't be here.
You are too many things at once.
You are not only Kian.
You are the one who sees.
You are the one who builds.
You are the one who feeds.
Kian stumbled backward. A wave of nausea hit him. The others shouted his name, but their voices were distant—like echoes underwater.
[Predation Conflict Triggered]
Hybrid System Clash – Internal Faultline Unstable
Codex attempts to map what cannot be mapped.
Predator attempts to consume what is dreaming.
Resolving… Resolving…
Hybrid Error.
A face appeared in his mind—his own—but aged, burned, hollow-eyed. The voice that spoke was not his, but it knew him.
"You are not awake yet," it whispered. "But you will be. And when you are… we will dream the same city."
Kian gasped. The shard pulsed. A blast of psychic force knocked the others back. Ice cracked across the Dreamhall floor.
Kess caught him as he collapsed, eyes wide.
"Kian!"
"I'm here," he croaked. "It just… it spoke to me. It knows me. It knows… all of us."
He pushed himself up slowly.
[Codex Synchronization Repaired]
▸ Fragment Accepted: Dreamshard Incomplete
[New Hybrid Ability Gained: Dream Anchor]
▸ Temporarily stabilize system clash during active battle
▸ Increases resistance to mind-altering effects
[EP Gained: +40]
[System Fragment Stored for Study]
That night, Kian couldn't sleep. Not just from what he saw—but from what he felt. He wasn't alone in his mind anymore.
The shard had touched both systems—Codex and Predation—and left something behind.
He stepped out into the frozen courtyard of Frostveil and looked up.
There, barely visible, was a thin wisp of energy in the sky. A tether. Not to a star. But to something higher.
Kess joined him. "You still feel it, don't you?" she asked.
He nodded. "Something's watching."
She touched his arm. "It's not a god. It's not a monster. It's a system… with too much time to dream."
Kian's Current Level: 11
Codex Tree Unlocked: 3rd Tier Node – Dream Anchor
Predation Status: Unstable but evolving
Kess's Class: Thoughtweaver
Veyna's Rank: Flameborn Initiate
Next Destination: The Icewound Trench – a ruined city swallowed by frost and time
Estimated Threat: Active System Ghosts
Codex Addendum:
"Systems do not sleep. But sometimes… they dream. And in dreaming, they remember us."
End Of Chapter 23