It Starts Without Ceremony
The alert does not ring bells.
It does not summon instructors.
It does not wait for permission.
It arrives as a single, ugly sentence burned into the air above the central spire:
UNREGISTERED BREACH — INTERNAL ZONE
Ashthorne freezes.
Then moves.
Students are evacuated from three wings in under sixty seconds. Wards invert priority. Patrol constructs peel away from the perimeter and collapse inward like folding ribs.
Caelum feels it before the map updates.
Not danger.
Interruption.
Lira feels it a heartbeat later—pressure behind the sternum, the bond tightening like a hand bracing against impact.
They are in different buildings.
That alone is a problem.
Caelum — The Board Slips
Caelum turns as the floor sigils shift under his boots.
Anomaly origin: Archive Sublevel C.
That is not possible.
Those levels are sealed beneath triple-locked sigil arrays, reinforced after the Great Stitching audits. They house nothing active. Nothing moves there.
Which means—
Something has woken up where nothing should.
He does not wait for orders.
He folds distance.
Arrives at the stairwell as instructors flood the corridor.
Kael spots him instantly.
"Veylor—"
"I'm deploying," Caelum says.
Kael's jaw tightens.
"Not without—"
Caelum meets his eyes.
"Tell Voss I'm already inside."
Kael hesitates.
Then steps aside.
"Don't die," he mutters. "It's inconvenient."
Lira — The Choice Arrives First
Lira is halfway through Sigil Ethics when the classroom walls hum.
Not loudly.
Warning-low.
The professor falters mid-sentence.
Then the sigil windows darken.
Students gasp.
The exit seals.
The professor turns pale.
"That's not a drill," he whispers.
Lira's heart spikes.
Archive Sublevel C.
The knowledge slides into place without explanation.
The bond pulls.
Hard.
She stands.
"Stay seated!" the professor shouts.
She doesn't listen.
The doors resist her touch—
then unlock.
Not because she forces them.
Because something else stops opposing her.
Students stare as she walks out.
One whispers:
"She's going to him."
They are not wrong.
Descent
The Archive Sublevels do not look like part of Ashthorne.
The architecture shifts the deeper one goes—older stone, darker sigil-work, inscriptions written in a logic that predates the academy's founding.
The air smells of dust and old intent.
Caelum reaches Sublevel C first.
The corridor ahead is warped.
Not collapsed.
Bent.
Stone stretched thin like heated glass.
A low sound pulses from the far chamber.
Not a roar.
A breath.
He slows.
Threads extend.
The anomaly is not hostile.
Not yet.
It is… unfolding.
The Thing That Was Catalogued
The chamber beyond the corridor opens into a circular vault.
At its center floats a crystal lattice—fractured, half-dissolved, its internal sigils flickering erratically.
A Containment Record Core.
Those are not anomalies.
They are archives.
They store imprints of anomalies too dangerous to leave active—conceptual blueprints stripped of agency.
Someone—something—has reactivated it.
The lattice cracks.
Light spills.
And a presence pours out.
Not physical.
Not mental.
Procedural.
Caelum's Proto-Sigil recoils slightly.
Recognition.
"This is a function," he murmurs. "Not an entity."
The thing speaks without voice.
QUERY:
Why does the wound persist?
The walls shudder.
Reality bends.
The archive is asking why.
Lira Arrives
She reaches the chamber just as the second crack forms.
The pressure hits her like a wave.
Her knees buckle—
and the bond catches her.
She gasps, steadying.
Caelum turns sharply.
"You should not be here."
She meets his gaze, breath shaking.
"Neither should you."
The function pauses.
Attention pivots.
SECONDARY VARIABLE DETECTED.
ANCHOR STATE UNRECOGNIZED.
Lira feels it then.
The pull.
Not fear.
Invitation.
It is not trying to consume her.
It is trying to align.
Caelum steps between her and the lattice instinctively.
"No," he says.
The function recalculates.
OBJECTION REGISTERED.
INSUFFICIENT AUTHORITY.
The chamber warps again.
The floor fractures.
Time hiccups.
This thing isn't attacking.
It's running outdated instructions against a reality that no longer matches its parameters.
And it is failing dangerously.
When Orders Don't Apply
Dominion seals flare at the chamber entrance.
Voss appears, flanked by two containment specialists.
Her eyes lock on the lattice.
"…That record should never have been accessed," she breathes.
"Someone did," Caelum replies.
The lattice pulses violently.
NEW DATA ACQUIRED.
THREADBEARER PRESENT.
The pressure spikes.
Lira cries out as the bond surges, not painfully—but forcefully.
Her alignment with Caelum sharpens.
Too sharply.
"Caelum," she gasps. "It's trying to resolve us."
He understands instantly.
The function is attempting to reconcile conflicting anomalies by merging reference points.
If it succeeds—
They will not be two variables anymore.
They will become a single procedural anchor.
Permanent.
Unstable.
Weaponized.
Voss snaps orders.
"Sever the lattice!"
Containment sigils fire.
They fail.
The function adapts faster than expected.
Kael bursts into the chamber behind them.
"Options?" he shouts.
Caelum's mind races.
Destroying the lattice risks a conceptual backlash.
Sealing it risks reinforcing its directive.
Only one solution remains.
"Let it finish," Lira whispers.
Everyone turns.
Caelum stares at her.
"No."
"If it's resolving us anyway," she says, voice trembling but steady, "then let it resolve on our terms."
The bond hums.
Clear.
Focused.
She steps forward—just one pace.
Caelum grabs her wrist.
Their eyes lock.
"If we do this," he says quietly, "we cannot undo it."
She nods.
"I know."
The function pulses.
RESOLUTION WINDOW CLOSING.
Caelum releases her wrist.
Steps beside her.
Together.
Alignment Without Permission
They stand before the lattice.
Not touching.
Not merging.
Just… present.
Caelum opens his Proto-Sigil.
Lira opens her anchor state.
The threads do not tangle.
They parallel.
The function stutters.
ERROR:
MULTIPLE PRIME VARIABLES DETECTED.
Lira speaks.
"We're not a solution," she says. "We're a direction."
Caelum adds:
"And we are not finished."
The lattice shudders violently.
Light surges—
then collapses inward.
The function freezes.
Crystallizes.
Becomes inert.
The chamber goes silent.
The pressure vanishes.
The cracks seal.
The archive breathes again.
Normal.
Voss stares.
"…You just taught a pre-Stitching function to stop."
Caelum exhales slowly.
"It learned the wrong lesson," he says. "But it stopped."
Lira sways.
He catches her.
This time, no one objects.
Aftermath — The Cost Revealed
Med-units rush in.
Dominion officers whisper urgently.
Kael stares at the inert lattice like it personally offended him.
Voss approaches slowly.
"You resolved a live anomaly without containment," she says.
"Yes," Caelum replies.
"And without authorization."
"Yes."
"And without collapsing reality."
"Yes."
She closes her eyes briefly.
"…That cannot happen again."
Caelum meets her gaze.
"It will," he says calmly. "Because now the anomalies will start choosing us."
Lira leans into him, exhausted.
"And because," she adds softly, "they won't wait for permission."
Voss studies them both.
For the first time—
She looks unsure.
Below — The Entity Writes a New Rule
Deep beneath Ashthorne, the entity stirs sharply.
They corrected a function, it whispers.
Not by dominance.
By refusal.
Its interest sharpens.
The board just gained a new move.
And the players noticed.
What the Academy Learns
By nightfall, the truth spreads in fragments:
A sealed archive woke.
Two students stopped it.
No destruction.
No casualties.
And for the first time—
An anomaly ended because it was convinced to.
Ashthorne does not know what to call that.
But it knows one thing for certain:
From now on, whenever reality breaks—
It will look for both of them.