The subway tunnel beneath Old District 7 stank of rust and echoing memories. It had been abandoned for decades, long since deemed too unstable to support. But today, Kade, Caela, Aurelle, and Lira descended its broken steps.
Not because they wanted to.
Because the Vergepiercer pointed here.
It throbbed in Kade's hand like a tuning fork struck by fate.
Caela consulted her scanner. "Residual Echo-signatures. Time fractures. This place's been touched."
Aurelle knelt by a wall smeared with graffiti. Her eyes widened. "These aren't tags. They're glyphs. Ancient. Written in Verge Script."
Lira cocked her head. "Verge Script?"
Aurelle traced a spiraling symbol. "Language of forgotten timelines. You only see it when something erased from history tries to claw its way back."
The Vergepiercer suddenly pulsed.
Kade flinched.
In the next instant, she appeared.
A little girl, no older than ten, standing in the middle of the tunnel. Her dress was white but stained with black ink at the seams. Her eyes glowed gold. Not with innocence—but with eternity.
Lira raised her pistols instantly. "Who the hell—"
"Wait," Kade whispered. He stepped forward. "I know her…"
But he didn't. He shouldn't.
And yet her presence struck something buried deep in his mind—like an echo of a life he'd lived and lost.
The girl tilted her head. "You kept the blade."
Kade's breath caught. "Who are you?"
"You called me Ryn," she said. "Back when you were still whole."
Aurelle murmured, "That name's not on any records. Not in his past. Not in any thread we've scanned."
Caela's face paled. "She's an Anachron."
Ryn smiled sadly. "I was meant to be erased. But he held onto a piece of me. That was enough."
Lira narrowed her eyes. "So what are you? Ghost? Illusion?"
"No," Ryn whispered, turning to Kade. "I'm the price."
The air trembled.
The glyphs along the wall glowed, spinning into fractal spirals. From them emerged silhouettes—fragments. People without features. Shadows of those who had existed once but were scrubbed from reality.
They screamed without mouths. Their bodies twitched, malformed and shifting. Reaching.
Caela snapped up a barrier as one lunged. "They're Memories Unglued! If they touch you—"
"They rewrite your body," Aurelle finished, already casting a purging ward.
Kade stepped forward, the Vergepiercer burning blue now. The shadows recoiled.
"They fear it," he muttered. "They fear me."
Ryn nodded. "You're the tether. The blade remembers everything you've forgotten."
"But why now?" he asked. "Why show me this?"
Ryn's glow dimmed. "Because you're approaching the Vergegate. Once you pass through, there's no returning to the boy you were."
"Then who do I become?" Kade demanded.
She looked at him. Not with fear, but with sorrow.
"The breaker. The binder. The one who tears the Citadel from its pedestal."
Aurelle flinched. "You're saying… he becomes the Veilborn?"
"Not becomes," Ryn whispered. "Already is."
A roar tore through the tunnel. One of the shadow creatures had fused with multiple echoes, forming a hulking abomination with fractured arms and weeping holes where its chest used to be.
Caela cursed. "That one remembers war."
"Then I'll remind it who I am," Kade growled.
He surged forward. The Vergepiercer extended, glowing with layers of code, light, and ancient sorrow. With one clean motion, he cleaved the monster in half.
But it didn't die.
Instead, it split—like memory fragmenting under trauma. Two, then four, then eight smaller beasts lunged forward.
Ryn stepped between them.
"No more," she said.
She pressed her palm to the glyph-covered wall.
A pulse.
The tunnel flipped inside out, revealing a hidden chamber bathed in violet starlight.
"Come," she said. "Before they remember too much."
They entered.
Kade turned once, locking eyes with one last shadow. It didn't attack. It simply watched.
And smiled.
---
Meanwhile, in the Citadel
Arch-Deacon Volen knelt before the Grand Assembly of Tethers. Twelve masked figures sat in thrones of time-locked crystal, watching him through golden veils.
"The Vergepiercer has passed the threshold," Volen reported.
A masked voice spoke. "And the boy?"
"Fragmenting. But not yet unstable."
Another figure leaned forward. "Then it is time. Begin Operation Threadburn."
Volen raised an eyebrow. "That protocol hasn't been used since—"
"Since the Veilborn's last emergence," the voice interrupted. "Do it."
Volen nodded once, then rose.
"And if he resists?"
The chamber echoed with silence.
Then one masked voice whispered:
"Then bury him beneath a century of pain. Again."
---
End of Chapter 30