Wednesday, October 22, 2025 3:17 AM
Lia hadn't slept.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the words from her notebook: They know you're listening too. Every shadow in her dorm room seemed deeper than it should be. The darkness beneath her desk. The space behind her closet door. The corner where the ceiling met the walls.
Her laptop sat closed on her desk. She was afraid to open it, afraid of what might appear on the screen.
The photos from Kharafa's manuscript glowed on her phone—the only light she trusted. She'd read them over and over, memorizing the weaknesses. Iron. Certain invocations. Faith itself as a weapon.
At 3:18 AM, her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
She almost didn't answer. Then she recognized the area code—it was local to the university. Her thumb hovered over the green button.
"Hello?"
Heavy breathing. Then, barely audible: "Lia?"
"Marcus?" She sat up, heart racing. "Where have you been? Your phone—"
"Don't come to campus." His voice was wrong. Strained. Like he was speaking through water. "They're... something happened. After Monday's lecture. The forum kids. The ones who were posting about the patterns."
"What happened to them?"
"Gone. All of them. Twelve students. The university is saying they withdrew. Mental health leave. But Lia..." His voice cracked. "I saw one of them. Sarah Chen. You know her? Philosophy major. She was in the library yesterday."
Lia remembered Sarah—she'd been one of the most active forum posters. "So? She's okay?"
"She didn't recognize me. She looked right through me. And her eyes..." A long pause. "They weren't the same color anymore. They were blue. Deep blue. Like those things Professor Finch described. The Examiners."
Lia's blood went cold. "Marcus, where are you calling from?"
"Pay phone. Near the old chemistry building. I had to destroy my phone. They were using it. Tracking me. Maybe... maybe talking through it."
"Who's 'they'?"
"I don't know. The suits. The administration. The things we can't see. Maybe all of them. Lia, I found something. In my research. The math I was doing."
She grabbed a pen. "Tell me."
"The electromagnetic spectrum explanation Finch gave us—it's incomplete. There are frequencies we haven't discovered yet. Frequencies that exist in the spaces between the ones we know. Like... like musical notes between the notes. And if the codex is transmitting on those frequencies..."
"It's not just a beacon," Lia finished. "It's a doorway."
"A bridge. Between their spectrum and ours. And every time someone studies it deeply enough, understands it enough... the bridge gets stronger."
There was a sound in the background—footsteps on gravel.
"Someone's coming," Marcus whispered. "Lia, whatever you do, don't—"
The line went dead.
Lia stared at her phone. The call log showed no record of the conversation.
7:43 AM
She needed help. Finch was unreachable. Marcus was compromised or hiding. The administration was involved. That left one person.
Dr. Aris Thorne's office was in the old Humanities building, third floor, corner room. Lia had looked it up after the lectures. She climbed the stairs slowly, listening for footsteps behind her.
The hallway was empty. Too empty. Where were the other professors? The graduate students who usually haunted these offices?
She knocked on Dr. Thorne's door.
"Come in."
The office was exactly what she'd expected—books floor to ceiling, artifacts in glass cases, papers everywhere. Dr. Thorne sat behind an oak desk, but something was wrong. She was too still. Too composed.
"Ms. Vance," she said without looking up. "I wondered when you'd come."
"You know what's happening?"
Now Thorne looked up, and her eyes were tired. Ancient-tired, like she'd seen too much. "I know you went to the archives yesterday. I know you found Kharafa. I know you can't reach Professor Finch."
"How—"
"Because this has happened before." Thorne stood, walked to her window. "Not here. Not with this codex. But with other objects. Other beacons. In 1978, a team in Romania found inscribed tablets that described the same seven heavens. Within a month, half the team was catatonic. The others simply vanished."
"The Oslo team. Singapore."
"And Cairo, 1962. Prague, 1989. Mumbai, 2003." Thorne turned. "Every time we get close to understanding, they push back. And now..." She gestured vaguely. "Now we've gone too far. The codex isn't just being studied. It's being activated."
"How do you know about all these incidents?" Lia asked. "These aren't public records. Some of them aren't even documented."
Thorne was silent for a moment, then pulled a small leather wallet from her desk drawer. Inside was an ID card with her photo and a symbol Lia didn't recognize—a stylized eye surrounded by geometric patterns. "I'm not just a guest lecturer, Ms. Vance. I'm part of a network that's been monitoring these phenomena for decades. We have members in universities, research institutions, intelligence agencies around the world. Our job is to contain breaches before they become public knowledge."
"What kind of network?"
"One that understands that some truths are too dangerous for general consumption. One that's been preparing for exactly this moment for longer than you've been alive."
"By who?"
"By whom," Thorne corrected automatically. "And the answer is: by all of you. Every student who attended those lectures. Every person who truly understood what Finch was teaching. You're all nodes now. Points of connection between their reality and ours."
Lia felt sick. "The missing students. Sarah Chen."
"The ones who understood too much, too quickly. The bridge opened wider for them. Wide enough for something to cross over." Thorne pulled a leather journal from her shelf. "This was written by a colleague in Prague. His last entry before he disappeared."
Lia read the cramped handwriting:
They don't possess us in the way we imagine. They don't climb inside our bodies like putting on clothes. They overlay themselves onto our consciousness. Like double exposure in photography. Two images becoming one. The original person is still there, but... diluted. Mixed with something else.
"That's what happened to Sarah?"
"We call it cognitive overlay. Her mind is still there, but it's been... supplemented. Enhanced. Or corrupted, depending on your perspective." Thorne closed the journal. "The blue eyes are the tell. When you see blue eyes on someone who didn't have them before, you run."
"What about Professor Finch?"
Thorne's expression darkened. "Alistair went looking for answers. Real answers. Not in books or manuscripts, but in direct contact."
"He tried to summon them?"
"Not summon. Communicate. He believed that if we could establish proper dialogue, we could understand the rules. Set boundaries. Make treaties, even." She laughed bitterly. "Brilliant man. Terrible judgment."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know. His apartment is empty. His car is in the parking lot. His phone goes straight to voicemail. But..." Thorne paused, looking troubled. "Before he left, he said something strange. He said he might need to become something else to understand what we're dealing with. That sometimes you have to step across the threshold to see what's on the other side."
"What did he mean?"
"I think he meant he was going to try to bridge the gap between our reality and theirs. Not just observe from a distance, but actually experience what it's like to exist in both dimensions simultaneously. It's... it's not something you come back from unchanged."
Lia stood. "We have to do something."
"Do we?" Thorne tilted her head. "Ms. Vance, have you considered that perhaps the wisest course is to forget? To walk away? To pretend you never heard of the Mariner's Codex?"
"You know that's not possible. They already know my name. My Doppelganger has already made contact."
Thorne studied her for a long moment. "Show me."
Lia pulled out her phone, showed her the photo that had appeared by itself. The message on her laptop. The notebook writing she didn't remember doing.
Thorne examined each piece of evidence carefully. "You're further along than I thought. The Doppelganger isn't just observing anymore. It's interacting."
"How do I stop it?"
"You don't stop it. You can resist it, contain it, maybe even negotiate with it. But stop it? No. It's been with you since birth. It'll be with you until death." She moved to another bookshelf, pulled out a thin volume. "This might help. Protective practices from various traditions. Not the watered-down versions you find online. The real ones."
The book was handwritten in multiple languages. Lia recognized Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and others she couldn't identify.
"The iron method works," Thorne continued, "but only for physical manifestations. For the mental intrusions, you need something stronger." She opened to a marked page. "This invocation has been used for centuries. It won't stop your Doppelganger, but it will create... boundaries."
Before Lia could respond, the lights flickered.
Not just flickered. They pulsed. Three times. Like a heartbeat.
"They're here," Thorne whispered.
The temperature dropped. Lia's breath came out in visible puffs. The shadows in the corners of the room began to move—not expanding or contracting, but shifting. Like something was moving inside them.
"Don't look directly at them," Thorne commanded, grabbing Lia's arm. "Peripheral vision only. Direct observation gives them power."
But it was too late. Lia had already seen it.
In the corner, where the bookshelf met the wall, something was taking shape. Not solid, not gas, but something in between. Like heat shimmer, but dark. It had a vaguely humanoid outline, but wrong. Too tall. Too angular. And where its face should have been, there was only a smooth surface that somehow still gave the impression of watching.
"That's not my Doppelganger," Lia breathed.
"No," Thorne agreed grimly. "That's something else. Something that shouldn't be able to manifest this clearly. Not yet."
The shape moved forward. Not walking—it didn't have legs in any conventional sense—but gliding. Flowing. Like oil sliding across glass.
Thorne began speaking in a language Lia didn't recognize. The words seemed to have physical weight, pressing against the air. The shape paused, rippled, but didn't retreat.
Then it spoke.
Not with a voice. The words appeared directly in Lia's mind, bypassing her ears entirely:
The threshold is opening. The bridge strengthens. Your kind has invited us, and we accept.
"By whose authority?" Thorne demanded.
By the authority of the covenant. The one who seeks knowledge of the hidden must accept the consequences of being known.
"The covenant can be refused."
Not after the third acknowledgment. The girl has acknowledged us thrice. In dream. In writing. In seeking.
Lia's heart sank. The dreams. The notebook. Going to the archives.
Three acknowledgments.
The shape turned its attention to her. She felt its focus like cold fingers pressing against her skull.
You sought the story of Kharafa. You wished to know how he lived among us. Would you like the same honor?
"No," Lia said firmly.
Then cease your seeking. Destroy your knowledge. Forget what you have learned.
"I can't do that either."
Then you have chosen the third path. The path of resistance. It is the hardest path. Few survive it unchanged.
The lights pulsed again—three times—and the shape began to dissolve. But as it faded, it left something behind. Words, burned into the wall in a script that hurt to look at:
"The Night of Reckoning approaches. Choose your allies carefully."
Then it was gone. The temperature returned to normal. The lights steadied.
Thorne sank into her chair, exhausted. "That was a Herald. A messenger. They don't usually manifest that clearly unless..."
"Unless what?"
"Unless something big is coming. Something that requires announcement." She looked at the burned words on her wall. "The Night of Reckoning. I've seen that phrase before. In the Prague journal. In the Oslo team's final transmission."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know. But every time it's been mentioned, people disappear." She stood shakily. "We need to find Finch. And we need to warn the others."
"What others?"
"The other students from the lectures. The ones who are still themselves." Thorne grabbed her coat. "How many do you think understood? Really understood?"
Lia thought back. "Maybe fifteen? Twenty?"
"Then we have fifteen to twenty potential victims. Or allies, if we can reach them first." She handed Lia a list—the class enrollment. "Start calling. Tell them to meet us. Somewhere public. Somewhere with iron fixtures and running water."
"Why running water?"
"Old superstition. They can't cross running water easily. Might be folklore, might be fact. But right now, we need every advantage we can get."
As they left the office, Lia glanced back at the burned words on the wall. They were already fading, like they'd never been there at all.
But she would remember them.
The Night of Reckoning approaches.
Choose your allies carefully.
That evening, they gathered in the old campus chapel—one of the few buildings with iron gates, running water from an old fountain, and enough religious symbolism to maybe, possibly, offer some protection.
Seven students showed up.
Out of twenty-three Lia had called, four didn't answer. Six said they'd transferred schools—suddenly, without explanation. Three hung up when she mentioned Professor Finch. And three more...
Three more had answered with the same words: "We're already here."
When she'd asked where "here" was, they'd laughed. All three. The exact same laugh.
Now the seven survivors sat in a circle, sharing what they knew. There was Marcus (who'd somehow made it despite his paranoia), two physics majors Lia barely knew, a philosophy student named David, and two others from the back rows she'd never talked to.
"The forum's gone," Marcus reported. "Not just quiet. Gone. Like it never existed."
"My roommate doesn't remember the lectures," David added. "She says there was never a Professor Finch in the Religious Studies department."
"The university website has been scrubbed," one of the physics majors—Chen—said. "No record of the course. No record of Finch. Even the room we met in is listed as 'under renovation' for the whole semester."
They were being erased.
Dr. Thorne stood at the altar, the protective invocations book open before her. "What you're experiencing is systematic reality revision. They're not just removing evidence. They're trying to alter the timeline itself."
"That's impossible," Chen protested.
"A week ago, you would have said non-Euclidean chambers were impossible," Thorne countered. "We're past the boundaries of the possible now."
"So what do we do?" Lia asked.
"We preserve the truth. We document everything. And we prepare."
"For what?"
Thorne looked at each of them. "For the Night of Reckoning. Whatever that is, it's coming. And we're the only ones who remember enough to potentially stop it."
"Or survive it," Marcus added grimly.
Thorne reached into her bag and pulled out seven small objects wrapped in cloth. "But first, you need protection. The frequencies you've been exposed to are intensifying. Without proper shielding, you'll end up like the Original Twelve—overwhelmed and overlaid."
She unwrapped the objects, revealing seven simple metal pendants on leather cords. Each one looked like a small tuning fork, but more intricate, with symbols etched into the metal that seemed to shift when you looked at them directly.
"Consciousness dampeners," Thorne explained. "Calibrated to your individual resonance frequencies. They'll help stabilize your awareness, prevent the codex from overwhelming your cognitive defenses."
She handed one to each of them. Lia's pendant was warm to the touch, vibrating slightly against her palm. The metal felt like nothing she'd ever encountered—not quite solid, not quite liquid, but something in between.
"Put them on," Thorne instructed. "And don't take them off. Not until this is over. They're your only protection against what's coming."
The seven students fastened the necklaces around their necks. Immediately, Lia felt different—more grounded, more centered, as if her consciousness had been anchored to something stable in a sea of chaos.
"Better?" Thorne asked.
"Much," Marcus said, touching his pendant. "It's like... like I can think clearly again."
"Good. The dampeners will help you maintain your individual identity even as the frequencies intensify. But they're not perfect. You'll still experience the effects of the codex—just in a more controlled way."
"Controlled how?" David asked.
"Instead of being overwhelmed by the broadcast, you'll be able to process it consciously. Instead of losing yourself in the frequencies, you'll be able to use them. Think of it as... learning to surf instead of being swept away by the wave."
Outside, the campus bells chimed midnight. But they rang thirteen times instead of twelve.
And in the distance, something that sounded like thunder rumbled through a clear night sky.