The glyph in Elian's palm still pulsed.
Faint.
Controlled.
Patient.
Like a loaded question waiting for the perfect moment to be asked.
He didn't rush.
Power meant nothing if it wasn't used with precision.
The Vault collapsed behind him — not physically, but ontologically.
It could no longer contain itself after offering what it was never meant to share.
And Elian?
He emerged back into the ruined corridors of the Threadgrave, changed.
Not visibly.
But the world reacted to him now.
Threadlines recoiled.
Memory warped.
Rot slithered out of his path, whispering prayers to a god that wasn't listening.
He found the girl and the rotborne woman waiting at the edge of the Crypt's entrance.
Both stared at him like they'd seen a ghost wear a crown.
"What did you find?" the girl asked.
Elian didn't answer immediately.
He lifted his palm.
The glyph shimmered once — just once.
And the ground beneath her cracked.
No force. No command. Just presence.
Her legs buckled. She caught herself with a gasp.
"You broke something."
Elian looked toward the sky — a sky that now bent unnaturally at the corners.
"Not yet," he murmured. "But I'm getting close."
[Threadmaker Status: Unstable Anomaly]
[Warning: System Core has registered echo from Prime Inversion Sigil]
[Response Level: DELAYED]
[Tracking Entity Deployed – Unknown Class]
Far above the Threadgrave… something woke.
It didn't exist on maps.
It wasn't listed in system directives.
It had no name.
Only a purpose:
Find the anomaly.
And correct it.
By any means necessary.
Elian's Threadsense screamed.
Not in warning.
In recognition.
He turned sharply toward the east.
"Something's watching," he said.
The rotborne woman's eyes narrowed. "System?"
He shook his head.
"Worse."
"Something that knows how to watch without being seen."
The girl whispered, "What do we do?"
Elian smiled faintly.
"We misbehave."
That night, they camped beneath a ruined glyph-spire, its inscriptions long since burned away.
Elian didn't sleep.
He traced the glyph in his palm slowly, over and over again, feeling the logic around him ripple.
He could see it now — thin cracks spreading through reality.
Places where rules stuttered.
Zones where authority hesitated.
He wasn't just breaking the system.
He was teaching it to doubt itself.
At the edge of the dreamspace, something flickered.
Not a vision.
A message.
Scrawled into the veil by a hand that didn't belong to time:
You are not the first.
But you might be the last.
Elian stared at the message for a long time.
Then he whispered into the void:
"Then let them remember the last as the one who stopped asking."
"And started taking."
The message did not respond.
But the veil rippled.
Not in defiance.
In respect.
[Echo Signature Embedded]
[Your presence now echoes across unindexed zones]
[Hostile Observer Class Entity en route]
[Name: UNKNOWN]
[Rank: UNKNOWN]
[Status: Watching]
Elian lay back, staring at the sky.
Not to rest.
But to invite.
"Come, then," he murmured to the stars.
"Let your gods descend. Let your watchers breathe."
"I'm ready to teach them how devils are made."