Part I – The Fracture Above
They convened beneath mirrors instead of stars.
The Skyborne Council had not met in full since the fall of Obelisk Zero. Even now, only thirteen of the fifteen seats were occupied. Two had been "silenced" after advocating too openly for compromise with the Spark-bearers.
The hall, suspended high above the city in a cradle of glass and steel, pulsed with engineered calm—regulated air, filtered silence, holographic light tuned to suppress agitation.
None of it worked.
Because fear had finally climbed high enough to enter.
Councilor Virel San stood first. His voice, as always, was like frost—measured and meant to sting.
"Sector Twelve has not only resisted the Voiceless doctrine, it has begun to spread counter-thought. Core awakenings. Unified Spark chants. Reclaimed flame hymns." He looked directly across the circle. "We've seen this before."
Councilor Asha Rell, her hands folded delicately in silk gloves, arched a brow. "No. We saw rebellion before. This is worse. This is belief."
Whispers.
Murmurs.
Then a shadow stirred in the highest seat—Chair Regent Maevra Sol, whose eyes had not been seen in public for nearly a year. She spoke through a voice-channel, her real body rumored to be preserved in cryo-state.
"Veil walks the surface again," Maevra said, her voice artificial and echo-laced. "And the Saints… no longer respond as they should."
Councilor Ren Torven rose slowly. His jawline was etched in biotech, his skin pale from Spark exposure before the bans.
"You're all looking at this wrong," he said. "The Saints are not failing. They're evolving."
He tapped the holo between them, displaying a spiral turning inward—then abruptly reversing, flames curling outward from its center.
"A new faction has emerged. Saint-claimed converts now speak with Spark again. Someone's found a way to merge the doctrines."
Gasps. One councilor cursed aloud.
Asha rose, voice sharp as a blade. "That should be impossible."
"It was," Ren agreed, "until Veil returned."
At the far end, a new figure stood.
Not a councilor. Not fully authorized.
But when he spoke, the room fell still.
Drel Vas Kai—head of the Skyborne Obscura Division. Cloaked in shimmering dusk-weave, skin marked with sanctioned experimental glyphs.
He smiled.
"The Saints are no longer tools," he said simply. "They are witnesses. And like all witnesses, they begin to remember."
Maevra's voice turned colder.
"And how would you contain a memory?"
Drel answered without hesitation.
"You don't. You replace it."
Part II – A Cleaner Silence
Drel Vas Kai took his time.
He walked around the edge of the chamber like a man inspecting a dying flame, admiring the beauty in its flicker before smothering it completely. His hands were clasped behind his back. A long thread of glyph-ink pulsed faintly beneath his skin, vanishing beneath the collar of his uniform.
"We were wrong," he said, calmly. "We thought the Spark was a disease. A heat to be suppressed. But it was never that."
He turned back to the Council.
"It's a signal. A memory that moves between minds. Between bones. Passed not just by flame—but by grief. Pain. Love."
Some gasped at the word. Love was not spoken here.
"So," he continued, "you cannot silence a signal. You can only bury it beneath something louder."
Councilor Virel spoke through gritted teeth. "And what do you propose? Another war? Another culling?"
"No." Drel tapped a hidden control. The floor beneath him shifted, and a projection spiraled upward—an orbital schematic.
The Orbital Core Array.
A weapon thought decommissioned. Old Skyborne tech used to de-pattern emotional frequency during the Spark War. Most believed it dismantled after the Treaty of Hollow Peace.
It hadn't been dismantled.
It had been perfected.
The hologram shimmered to life—a quiet burst of soundless light spreading in concentric rings.
Emotion-nullification wave.
Asha Rell stood sharply. "You'd lobotomize half the undercity!"
Drel smiled.
"Only those who still carry the signal."
Chair Regent Maevra's voice cut through the outrage like a wire through flesh.
"I authorize preliminary targeting."
Chaos erupted.
Virel shouted something about legal sanctions. Asha slammed her palms into the table. Councilor Ren turned and walked out, silently.
Maevra's voice turned cold.
"Those who leave this chamber will be considered unaligned."
The lights in the chamber shifted. From neutral white to surgical blue.
Asha froze.
"You can't—"
Three mechanical drones descended from the ceiling. No alarm. No weapons drawn. Just presence.
Drel nodded once, and the drones moved in perfect synchronization.
Asha's seat was emptied before she could finish her protest.
Only nine Councilors remained.
The Skyborne were no longer debating.
They were pruning.
Outside the council tower, the spires of Vullum flickered with faint golden light. Surveillance towers shifted alignment. Communications slowed. Sectors below would feel it within hours—hunger in the network. Dimming warmth. A kind of cold watching.
And from the highest window, Drel watched the ripple spread.
"Emotion is a glitch," he murmured. "And like all glitches, it will be patched."
Behind him, Maevra's chamber dimmed.
Her final command pulsed through the core:
"Veil must be neutralized. Not destroyed. Unwritten."
Part III – The Whisper in the Glass
Councilor Ren Torven didn't speak as the chamber's doors sealed behind him.
He didn't curse. Didn't flinch.
But the knot of fury beneath his ribs burned hotter than it had in years.
Asha Rell was gone. Her seat still warm.
Drel's drones hadn't killed her. Not in the public sense. No violence. No trial. Just… emptied.
That's what the Skyborne did best.
They didn't stain their hands. They just made people unhappen.
He descended in silence, the lift falling through layer after layer of polished governance and hollow obedience. Reflections of his face flickered across the glass. Once, he'd been proud of that face.
Not anymore.
The lift stopped at Level Seven—a floor no one admitted existed.
He stepped into silence.
And someone was waiting for him.
She wore the robes of a curator—dark fabric stitched with hollow glyphs, the kind only historians or architects used. But the mask she pulled down wasn't Skyborne.
It was Spark-woven.
Not crude. Not defiant.
Ancestral.
Her voice was low.
"You walked out."
Ren folded his arms. "I'm tired of pretending this isn't a culling."
She studied him.
"And you're ready to do something stupid about it?"
He hesitated. "I want to talk to the Ember Guard."
The woman laughed once.
"No one talks to the Guard anymore. They remember."
He stepped closer.
"Then let them remember me."
She stared at him for a moment, then removed a small lens from her sleeve. When activated, it shimmered with old Spark—a rare kind of tech only used before the Treaty.
A secure mirror channel. One-way. Dangerous.
She whispered: "You'll get one face. If she deems you real, the fire answers."
He nodded.
A shape flickered across the mirror—half-shadowed, but her voice clear.
Lyra.
"Councilor," she said flatly. "Did you lose your tongue or your nerve?"
Ren breathed slowly.
"I'm not here as a councilor."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Then what are you?"
He looked her in the eye.
"An ember. Long buried. But burning again."
She didn't speak right away.
Then: "Then listen closely."
She leaned forward, and the light behind her flickered with movement—people gathering, weapons cleaned, maps unfurled.
"The Skyborne have started cutting memory from their own. But we're done hiding."
She paused.
"Veil wants to speak to you. Not as enemy. Not as weapon. But as… witness."
Ren nodded.
"I'll come."
"No," she said. "You'll be taken."
The mirror blinked out.
Back in the curator's chamber, the woman offered a second mask.
Ren stared at it.
"You expect me to wear this?"
She smirked.
"No, Councilor. I expect you to choose."
Part IV – The Saints Unbound
Drel Vas Kai stood alone in the upper Sanctum, beneath the spiral mirror.
The chamber pulsed gently—an echo of the command signal broadcast across the city. Drel had fine-tuned it himself: a pattern of suppression woven into air, light, silence. It was supposed to bind the Saints. Hold them compliant.
But tonight...
the pattern trembled.
A technician entered quietly.
"Sir. There's been a misalignment in the low-orbit relay array."
Drel didn't turn. "That's impossible."
The technician swallowed. "It isn't mechanical. The relay is receiving a second signal. From groundside."
Drel slowly pivoted to face him.
"From where?"
"Unknown origin. But it carries Saint encryption—unsanctioned."
Drel dismissed the technician and descended into the relay vault himself.
There, among the cooling coils and humming engines, he found it:
A fragment.
A glyph, traced into the wall by heat alone.
Not drawn.
Branded.
It wasn't a spiral.
It wasn't flame.
It was a new mark—a closed eye, surrounded by seven lines.
Awake silence.
Above Sector Nine, a Saint knelt atop a spire.
It had not moved in hours.
Then its fingers twitched.
Its head turned.
Not toward the Skyborne tower.
But toward the earth.
Toward something rising.
In the chamber of the Council, Maevra Sol's voice cracked through the feed, forced and static-warped.
"Saint Unit Theta has broken formation."
Virel stood.
"What does that mean?"
No one answered.
Because they all knew.
It meant the Saints were no longer following code.
In the tunnel beyond Sector Twelve, Lyra stood with Jassa, the Pathfinders, and a masked figure with weary eyes and a councilor's bearing.
Ren Torven.
No chains.
No threats.
Only a firelit circle—and Veil, waiting.
Lyra whispered: "You came."
Ren bowed his head.
"Not for absolution."
Veil stepped forward, hands open.
"Then speak, Councilor."
Ren looked up.
And for the first time in years, he told the truth.