The room was cold.
Not because of temperature—
but because of time.
Lior stood before the vault.
The walls glowed faintly now. The seal was pulsing like a heartbeat from stone.
He hadn't seen it react in years.
Not since the last time someone had crossed the timeline uninvited.
And yet... this time felt different.
More specific.
Personal.
Across the room, Professor Elenya Vael finished adjusting the relay crystal. Its light snapped into focus.
Three red points hovered in midair.
"They're not drifting anymore," she said.
"They've stabilized?"
Elenya frowned. "No. They've anchored. Something's pulling them into place."
Lior didn't speak.
He already knew what it was.
His hand hovered over the glyph.
It didn't reject him.
It didn't burn.
Instead, it opened.
The vault cracked with a hiss.
Inside—dust.
And a single object.
A clock.
Shaped like a bell.
With no hands.
Far beneath them, in the sealed Subarchive, two more glyphs activated.
These weren't warm or welcoming.
They were sharp.
Old.
Awake.
A third chamber blinked.
No lights.
Just movement.
Whispers.
"The one without time has moved again."
Back in the vault, Lior lifted the clock with both hands.
It was warm.
Not hot.
Not dangerous.
Just ready.
"It still ticks," he said.
Elenya moved closer, eyes wide.
"That's impossible."
"I know."
"But that would mean—"
He nodded before she could finish.
"It recognized him."
The vault pulsed again.
This time, the glyphs didn't show coordinates.
They showed a symbol.
Simple.
Clean.
The rune for: Return.
Elenya's boots echoed as she paced the stone floor.
"I don't understand why we're not doing more."
Lior didn't look up from the glyph network. "We're doing exactly enough."
"Enough for what? For him to disappear completely?"
He sighed.
"Elenya. You've seen the readings. The resonance is synchronizing with something we haven't even documented."
"That's exactly why we should act faster!"
She stopped, turned, arms crossed.
"I want a retrieval squad—one that knows how to operate outside stabilized time."
Lior looked up slowly.
"You're talking about recallers."
"Yes."
He shook his head.
"Noé hasn't triggered a hostile anomaly."
"Yet."
"That's not how the Bell works. It doesn't respond to threats."
She narrowed her eyes. "Then what does it respond to?"
His voice lowered.
"To choice."
Silence stretched between them.
The glyphs flickered again. The clock in the vault pulsed faintly.
Elenya's voice was quieter this time.
"You think this is part of the design."
Lior nodded.
"Not our design."
"Then whose?"
He didn't answer.
Instead, his eyes shifted to the vault door behind them.
A second glyph was activating.
Smaller.
But faster.
Elenya turned.
"What's that?"
Lior stepped forward slowly.
"That's not a signal. That's... a containment release."
The air shivered.
And the seal cracked.
From the dark chamber behind the glyph, something stepped out.
It was tall.
Draped in cloth, face hidden beneath a smooth silver mask—blank except for the glyph of Memory carved into the forehead.
It moved without sound.
Not walking.
Just arriving.
Elenya took a step back.
"What in the—"
Lior didn't move.
He bowed his head slightly.
"It remembers the Old Names," he said.
The being turned toward him.
Its voice wasn't a sound.
It was a chord.
"You unsealed me, Curator."
"I didn't," Lior said.
"You aligned the resonance. That was enough."
It turned.
"Where is the bearer?"
Elenya found her voice again.
"Bearer?"
"The one with the Echo-Signature. The Broken Thread."
Lior looked at it carefully.
"You mean Noé."
The being tilted its head.
Then:
"He is moving toward the Gate."
"That cannot be allowed—until his choice is made."
Elenya stepped forward. "You intend to stop him?"
"No."
The voice deepened. Cold. Final.
"I intend to retrieve him."
The thing in the mask did not run.
It did not glide.
It did not break sound or space.
It simply moved—
And space moved with it.
One moment it was beneath the academy.
The next—
It stood in the treeline outside the forgotten valley.
The bell-shaped mask turned slowly, as if searching not with eyes, but memory.
"His thread passes here."
Its hand raised.
A ripple pulsed through the grass—
And the world answered.
Noé blinked.
He was still near the glowing gate.
Mira and Lysira were walking slightly ahead, talking quietly.
Then—
His vision twisted.
Only for a breath.
The grass turned to marble.
The sky to glass.
A city surrounded him.
Familiar.
Wrong.
"Arkana...?" he whispered.
But it wasn't Arkana.
Not the version he remembered.
There were no students. No voices. No lights.
Only dust.
And—
Footsteps.
Behind him.
He turned slowly.
And saw—himself.
Not older.
Not distorted.
Just... emptier.
In the real world, Mira turned.
"Noé?"
He didn't respond.
He was standing still, eyes wide.
Lysira narrowed her gaze. "Something's happening again."
She moved toward him.
And walked through a shadow that hadn't been there a moment ago.
Suddenly she was standing in a hall.
Bookshelves.
Floating candles.
She spun around.
"This isn't the path.
This is..."
She paused.
"My first spell chamber."
She hadn't seen it in years.
How was she here?
And why—
Why was the air breathing?
Above it all, the masked being stood quietly.
It did not pursue.
It unfolded.
Its cloak stretched wider than physics allowed, casting shadows in directions that had no meaning.
And with each pulse—
A memory returned to someone.
Not the full one.
Just the feeling of it.
And the test began.
The shelves hadn't aged.
That was Lysira's first thought.
Everything looked exactly as it had the last day she stood here, three years ago.
Same candlelight.
Same smell of old parchment and mana dust.
But something was wrong.
The shadows were breathing.
She stepped deeper into the room.
The doors were gone.
She didn't panic.
Lysira didn't panic.
But her hand hovered near her side, where a casting glyph had once been engraved into her bracelet.
Now it was gone.
She turned to the central table.
There—
a book.
Thick. Black-bound.
And titled:
"Caelira."
Her breath hitched.
She stepped closer.
The air trembled.
She touched the cover.
The leather was warm.
It whispered—not words—but recognition.
And then, the pages turned on their own.
To a single line.
"You remembered me too late."
She stepped back. "What... is this?"
The book didn't answer.
But the room did.
A sound—soft and steady—like a ticking bell with no source.
And then:
A voice. Behind her.
Not spoken.
Felt.
"You wrote it before you were her."
She turned—
And saw herself.
Not younger.
Not older.
But unwritten.
No symbols on her arms. No uniform. No name.
Just a girl who looked exactly like her—
But hadn't chosen anything yet.
Lysira froze.
The echo spoke again.
"This is the part they erased.
The version of you that never learned the laws.
The version that dreamed instead."
Lysira whispered: "Why show me this?"
The echo smiled—soft, sad.
"Because the Archive doesn't want you to forget again."
Mira's memory came softly.
She didn't even notice the shift.
One moment she was near the gate.
The next—she was running.
Barefoot.
In a red dress.
Through grass she didn't remember, toward a house that didn't exist anymore.
She knew this place.
But not from now.
She reached the door and opened it.
A woman stood inside.
Smiling.
"You're home late, Elvarein."
Mira froze.
No one had called her that since—
Since the dream.
"I'm not her," she said.
But her voice cracked.
The woman's eyes softened.
"You will be again. If you let yourself remember."
Noé's memory hit harder.
It began with glass.
A hallway of mirrors—endless.
Each reflection a different version of him.
One was bloodied.
One was laughing.
One... was gone.
He moved slowly.
The mirrors pulsed.
He stopped in front of one where he stood alone, older—worn.
The reflection looked at him.
"You haven't chosen yet."
Noé clenched his fists.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to choose."
"You're not supposed to."
The reflection stepped forward.
"You're allowed to."
Back in the spell chamber, Lysira was still facing her echo.
"I need to leave," she said.
The other her tilted her head.
"Why? To run from this again?"
Lysira narrowed her eyes. "No. To stop it from taking Mira. And Noé."
"You think they need you?" the echo whispered. "They already saw what you are."
"No," Lysira said. "They saw who I am."
Her runes sparked—gold this time.
The chamber began to shake.
She turned back to the book.
Its final page glowed.
"To leave, speak the name you chose."
Lysira stepped forward.
Took a breath.
And said:
"Lysira."
The chamber dissolved.
The book crumbled.
And she was falling—
Back into the forest.
Back into real time.