Chapter 2: The Veil Stirs
---
The silence that followed was absolute.
Not the ordinary kind the awkward quiet between friends or the hush before a storm but something deeper. The kind of silence that rang in the bones and settled in the lungs. It held weight. Meaning. Kellan felt it like pressure against his ribcage, a presence still lurking just beyond the veil of visibility.
Dex was the first to move. He stepped back, tripped over a cracked panel, and caught himself on a rusted support beam, his eyes wide and darting towards the space where the apparition had vanished.
"Tell me that was some kind of… advanced hologram," he muttered, his voice shaky, still glancing nervously at Kellan's hand where the pendant rested.
Kellan didn't answer immediately. He crouched, fingers brushing the cold floor where the being had hovered, his own gaze drawn back to the smooth, dark stone of the pendant. No scorch marks. No tech residue. Not even a thermal trace. But something had changed the air felt thinner, charged. Like a storm waiting to break.
"I don't think that was tech," he said at last, voice hoarse, his fingers instinctively tightening around the pendant. "Whatever that was… it felt ancient. Older than anything in this city."
Dex was already pulling up his recorder, his hand trembling slightly as he replayed the footage on a loop. But the shape was gone. Just static. The moment it looked into the camera, the data corrupted not glitched wiped.
"It knew it was being recorded," Dex muttered, his eyes wide with a dawning unease. "Like it… edited itself out."
"Then we're not dealing with just code anymore," Kellan said, his gaze still fixed on the pendant, a strange sense of recognition stirring within him. "This is something else."
Dex looked up, his usual bravado completely gone. "You really think it was magic?"
Kellan's lips pressed into a line. He'd spent his life dismissing the idea magic was myth, whispered by Archive dissenters and old-world romantics. But tonight shattered that certainty like glass. His fingers traced the silver lines on the pendant, a sudden, inexplicable connection forming.
"I think we've crossed into something real. And dangerous."
---
Meanwhile, deep beneath Technopolis, Aria Forest stood at the edge of a pool of light in the Archive Vault's inner sanctum. Aurelia's presence had faded, but the energy she left behind still lingered like embers after a lightning strike.
Aria's hands trembled slightly as she sealed the last awakened scroll into a rune-bound satchel, a fine sheen of perspiration on her brow. She moved with urgency now. Kellan's vision had confirmed it: the Veil was weakening faster than expected. That meant the Enclave would start hunting.
She moved through the narrow corridors beneath the Scholar's Circle, past walls lined with forgotten texts and preserved memories. The city above may have rewritten history with tech, but here, the truth still breathed barely.
A familiar figure waited at the exit: lean, sharp-eyed, cloaked in shadow.
"Lira," Aria greeted, her voice carrying a hint of fatigue.
"You were seen," Lira said, her gaze intense. "Your aura left traces. Even the lowborn tech-rats could feel it. The Enclave is already scanning for fluctuations."
"I didn't have a choice. He saw it." Aria rubbed a hand across her temples, a gesture of exhaustion.
Lira's eyes narrowed. "You think he's ready?"
Aria brushed hair from her face, the weariness evident in the slump of her shoulders. "No. But the Veil doesn't care about readiness. It only cares about resonance. And he's resonating. Strongly."
Lira hesitated, then stepped aside, her expression grave. "Then may the old forces guide us all."
---
Morning broke as it always did in Technopolis with artificial sunrises and synchronized newsfeeds. Holograms blinked on, displaying curated headlines, and citizens resumed their mechanical march beneath glass towers and digital skies.
But something had shifted.
Kellan couldn't focus. He sat in his apartment, the pendant laid before him on the desk beside the old pages. He'd scanned the runes overnight. No matches. Not in any database. Not even the dark net. Whatever language it was, it predated the city's systems. Maybe everything.
He turned to the drawing of the forest. That forest. The one from Dex's vision. The one etched in his memory like it had always been there, waiting. A shiver traced his spine.
Then three sharp knocks.
Kellan frowned, his hand instinctively moving towards the concealed disruptor beneath his jacket. No one knocked in Technopolis. Most people sent pings or appeared as holos.
He opened the door cautiously, the chain still latched.
A woman stood there, hooded, cloaked, her striking green eyes flickering gold in the morning light an unsettling echo of the pendant's glimmer.
"Hello, Kellan," she said softly, her voice carrying an unusual warmth that felt out of place in the sterile environment of Technopolis.
He froze, his mind racing. "Do I… know you?"
"No," she said, a faint smile playing on her lips. "But I know you."
Before he could react, she subtly shifted her stance, and he felt a faint pressure against the door, as if she possessed a strength that belied her slender frame. He instinctively unlatched the chain and stepped back, allowing her entry but remaining wary.
Her gaze went straight to the pendant on his desk.
"You found it."
Kellan shut the door slowly, his eyes fixed on her. "Okay. This is… strange. Who are you? How do you know my name? And what is that thing ?" He gestured towards the pendant.
"My name is Aria," she said, her gaze softening slightly. "Aria Forest."
His breath caught. The name from the old pages. The impossible reality crashing down around him.
"You're real," he whispered, a mix of disbelief and a dawning sense of wonder in his voice.
"I am real," she said. "And I'm from the part of the city that's been forgotten." Her eyes flickered around his small apartment, taking in the tech-cluttered space with a hint of sadness.
He moved between her and the pendant, his posture still defensive. "Why are you here? How do you know about this… this thing?"
"Because the Veil is thinning, Kellan," she said, her voice gaining a note of urgency. "Because you're not just seeing things, Kellan. You're being called. And that," she nodded towards the pendant, "is a key. A focus."
Kellan narrowed his eyes, his skepticism warring with the undeniable presence of this woman and the impossible connections. "Called by what? What is the Veil? And what do you mean, forgotten part of the city?"
Aria met his gaze, her green eyes holding an ancient wisdom.
"By the Arcane, The Arcane doesn't choose lightly. But when it does it doesn't let go."
" she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper. "And I can explain everything. But we don't have much time. If I stay any longer they will come after you"
"Who are the...?" But before he could finish asking she was gone. It as if she was never there.
---
Dex nearly dropped his mug when Kellan called.
"You what? She was in your apartment?"
"She walked right in," Kellan said, pacing. "Talked like she's known me for years. Talked about arcane and some kind of vail. She knew about the pendant, Dex. Knew what I saw."
Dex swore under his breath. "That's it. We're dead. We messed with something big. Bigger than Enclave protocol. You need to get out of there."
Kellan paused. "What if she's right?"
"What?"
"What if this is a call? What if I'm meant to do something with this?"
"Kellan, listen to yourself. You sound like the monks on the edge of the Fringe. This is exactly how people vanish. They get drawn in by the whispers and the visions and the crazy women with glowing eyes.You need to cut contact. Now. Please stop"
But Kellan didn't answer. He turned toward the pendant, the way it pulsed faintly now as if responding.
Something inside him shifted. A memory that didn't feel like his own flashes of trees, a woman's voice, ancient fire spiraling in air.
He remembered something Aria said before she left:
"The Arcane doesn't choose lightly. But when it does it doesn't let go."
Dex knew that no matter what he said nothing could change his friends mind. He couldn't change his mind but he would try his best to protect him "whatever you do please tell me I'll help out how ever I can."
---
At the heart of Technopolis, far from slums and secrets, the heads of the Enclave divisions met in silence.
The room was pure obsidian no light, no noise save the hum of arcane-forged tech fused into the walls.
A gaunt figure at the head of the table, his expression a mask of absolute calm, presided over the assembly. A dozen other figures stood around him, hooded, cloaked in shadow, their features obscured.
" Aria Forest has made contact," a voice said from the side, belonging to a taller figure whose cloak seemed to absorb all light.
"Confirmed?" the gaunt figure asked, his voice low and measured.
"A pulse was detected on the Aether Grid. Tier-Five fluctuation."
The gaunt figure exhaled slowly. "And the boy?"
"Kallan Stone. Confirmed visual sync. No known Arcane lineage, but he bears the Pendant," reported a slighter figure whose voice held a hint of metallic resonance.
Murmurs flickered through the silent assembly.
"Then we begin Observation Protocol," the gaunt figure declared.
"What if he awakens?" asked another figure, his voice a rasping whisper that seemed to slither through the air.
" That will only be possible if he reaches the old world. We'll just have prevent him from going."
" How? We have not been able to locate it since the Vail was placed "
The gaunt figure's unseen eyes flicked toward the speaker.
"If he does awaken he'll either join us or be removed."
Silence. Then a single word etched in iron, spoken by a figure whose hands, barely visible beneath their sleeves, appeared unnaturally long and slender.
"So it begins."