Azel kept the chain fragment hidden beneath his mattress.
He didn't sleep after that. Not really. He lay still, listening to the mechanical hum of the hallway lights and the low, almost inaudible frequency of the surveillance drones cycling above the ward.
Most people couldn't hear them. But he wasn't most people.
At sunrise, the ward sirens pulsed faintly. The students rose like they were responding to a conductor's silent baton. Stiff backs, silent mouths, eyes that opened on cue. Azel got up too—but not before touching the chain fragment one last time.
It was cold.
But it pulsed, like it remembered something.
In Recital, something strange happened.
When the students repeated the pledge—
"Unity is clarity. Clarity is peace. Peace is freedom."
—Azel caught Kain pausing. Not a full stop, but enough. Like the words had turned into sawdust in his mouth.
Their eyes met.
But this time, Azel wasn't the one who smirked.
Later, in Observation Studies, Instructor Velos activated the neural vision screen — a massive display that pulsed with citizen activity across the district. Blue pulses moved like soft waves across the city map.
"Each dot," Velos said, "is a citizen in harmony."
He pressed another button. Red sparks flashed in the lower tiers.
"Disruption events. False memories. Residual instincts. These are classified as Ash Points. All cases under review."
Ash. The word struck Azel like a slap.
The same word from his dream.
As if summoned by thought, the screen glitched for half a second—just long enough for Azel to see something.
A sigil. A spiral within a spiral.
Faint. Burned into the map for only a breath.
Then gone.
No one else reacted. Not even Kain.
After lessons, Azel returned to the Reflection Courtyard, where his notebook waited under the stone. But this time, it wasn't alone.
Kain was already there.
He held something in his hand.
"What is it?" Azel asked.
Kain opened his fingers. It was a scrap of cloth, thin as breath, with strange letters burned into it.
"It was inside my bed frame," he said. "Stuffed into the corner like someone hid it there long ago."
Azel leaned in. The letters weren't from any alphabet he recognized.
Then he realized—they weren't letters.
They were marks. The same symbols from his dreams.
"Do you remember them?" Azel asked.
Kain hesitated.
"I think… I've always known them."
They stared at each other.
For the first time, Azel didn't feel alone.
That night, Azel did something reckless.
He crept out of his bunk long after lights-out, timing his steps between the surveillance drone's cycles. He bypassed the cafeteria corridor and snuck into the abandoned north wing — a section that had been "under maintenance" since before he could remember.
The doors weren't locked. That was strange.
Inside, dust coated the air like breath held too long. Desks overturned, shelves empty, wires coiled like dried veins along the walls. He lit a dim flame from his stolen heat-chip and scanned the room.
Then he saw it.
A mural. Faded and cracked, but not gone.
It depicted people without Rings. People of every color, standing in a circle, hands joined, heads raised to a sun that bled fire.
In the center was the symbol again.
The spiral. Burned into the wall. Almost glowing.
Beneath it, scratched in old script:
"Before the Ring, we were wild.
Before the silence, we sang."
Azel reached for the wall, breath catching.
Behind the mural, the concrete felt loose. He pried at it, fingers scraping dust and metal.
A small box fell into his hand.
Inside:
A worn page made of treated cloth. A single word burned into the center: "REMEMBER", and beneath it… a symbol etched in faint red.
The same sigil. But this time, carved into a coin.
The whispers returned, louder now.
"You are not the only one."
"Others are waiting."
"The chain is not unbroken."
Azel pressed the coin to his palm.
The spiral glowed.
The walls of the abandoned wing suddenly creaked. Lights flickered. And down the hall, the shadows moved.
Not like a person.
Like a memory trying to take shape.
He fled, the coin clenched in his hand, the whispers swirling around him like smoke.
But something had changed.
This time, when he stepped into the courtyard, Kain was already waiting.
So was someone else.
A girl, her face half-covered in soot, her eyes watching the sky.
No Ring.
No uniform.
And on her wrist—a tattoo of the spiral.