July 11, 447 A.R. – 9:12 A.M.Location: Cindralith – Eternal Order Surveillance Subdivision 4 (Vel Sector)
The room was small, windowless, and smelled faintly of metal and dust. Rows of ancient machinery hummed quietly, their flickering lights reflected in the glassy eyes of dozens of perched ravens — each one no ordinary bird, but a hybrid construct of flesh, feather, and embedded crystal.
They blinked in unison.Watching. Recording. Whispering data into the humming receivers that lined the walls.
Agent Castor Vey sat at the center console, pale gray eyes scanning a cluster of screens that streamed through the ravens' collective vision, a living network that saw through every street, rooftop, and shadow in Cindralith's capital.
For hours, he had watched nothing of interest.Petty thefts. Drunken fights. A stray explosion from a failed alchemy batch.
Then one feed flickered.
A raven stationed above the Duskholme district, residential block 47-B.A surge. Small. But measurable.
The crystalline sensors embedded in the bird's ribcage glowed faintly blue.Energy Spike Detected: 3:00 A.M. ± 5 minutes. Unregistered Awakening Signature.
Castor frowned. "Five minutes early?"
He leaned closer, tapping the console. The system expanded the data, displaying spectral readings and neural resonance graphs.
The readings were clear, Awakening confirmed. Female. Age range: 14–15. Power classification: still stabilizing.
He tagged the data and cross-referenced the district registry.
Match Found:Mira Ashborne, female, age 14, resident 47-B Duskholme. No prior anomalies. Family of four. Father: Elias Ashborne. Mother: Liora Ashborne. Brother: Rei Ashborne.
Castor's expression didn't change, but he drummed his fingers on the desk, a rare tell of thought.Rei Ashborne. The boy who'd been flagged three weeks ago for purchasing a crystalline power cell.
He pulled up the old file. The boy's face appeared on the monitor, dark hair, sharp eyes, neutral expression. Nothing outwardly remarkable.
"First the brother buys illegal tech," he murmured. "Now the sister awakens early."
His finger hovered over the escalation key, the button that would mark this family for active surveillance.
But then he hesitated.
Commander Thalia Ruen had given specific instructions.
"Monitor, don't interfere. Observe the boy, not the family."
Still… anomalies drew attention, whether sanctioned or not.
He switched the feed to live mode. The raven's eye refocused, zooming in through the cracked rooftop vent of the Ashborne residence.
Inside: a small kitchen.The mother - Liora - humming softly.The boy - Rei - laughing faintly.The sister - Mira - bright, alive, unaware that she was already catalogued in one of the Order's databases.
Castor's pale gray eyes lingered on Rei.
"Your timing's interesting, Ashborne," he muttered. "Too many coincidences in too short a span."
He typed a note in the record:
"SUBJECT: REI ASHBORNE.ASSOCIATED ENTITY: MIRA ASHBORNE – EARLY AWAKENING EVENT (Δ -5m).POSSIBLE TEMPORAL INTERFERENCE OR GENETIC CROSS-RESONANCE.STATUS: OBSERVATION CONTINUES. FLAG: LEVEL YELLOW (LOW PRIORITY ANOMALY)."
The system beeped in acknowledgment. The data was logged, encrypted, and sent to central archives, one more secret buried among millions.
Castor leaned back, stretching his fingers. "Five minutes. Barely worth attention. Still…"
He looked up at the ravens perched above him.Their mechanical talons clicked faintly, and one tilted its head toward the dark monitor.
"…sometimes the smallest timing errors cause the biggest collapses."
He smirked faintly, the kind of expression that never reached his eyes."Keep watching them," he said softly.
The raven cawed once, a sound halfway between organic cry and static feedback. Then it spread its metallic wings and flew toward the open vent, disappearing into the gray skies above Cindralith.
Castor turned his chair toward the dim corridor beyond the door.The day shift would arrive soon. He'd have to file a routine report, make small talk with analysts who didn't understand the art of patience.
But his mind lingered on that data string: Δ -5 minutes.
Something in his gut told him this wasn't just noise.This was a tremor, the kind that came before earthquakes.
He lit a cigarette, watching the smoke twist upward.
"Five minutes early," he murmured again, almost to himself. "Let's see what kind of butterfly you are, Ashborne."
Outside, hundreds of ravens took flight over the city, black wings slicing through the dawn.And somewhere beneath their gaze, Rei Ashborne looked out his window, completely unaware that from this moment on, the Eternal Order was watching.