The vault had gone quiet.
But it was not peace.
It was the kind of silence that hangs before a faultline breaks.
Kael sat at the heart of the chamber, the fading glow of recursion glyphs dancing over his skin like starlight from a dying galaxy.
Ava stood near the archway, arms crossed, eyes locked on him like she was waiting for someone she no longer fully recognized.
Letha hadn't spoken in minutes.
She just watched. One hand near her blade, the other gripping her arm like she was holding herself together.
---
"You're different," Ava finally said.
Kael didn't respond immediately. He was reading something only he could see—something layered over the world, flickering through the edge of his vision.
"It's not me that changed," he said. "It's the system that stopped pretending I didn't exist."
---
He rose slowly. Not with strain—but with purpose.
There was no more weight in his movements.
Only direction.
---
