They emerged from the underground chamber slowly, blinking as the dust of the past gave way to the stillness of the house above.
Noel shut the concealed door behind her and exhaled, her fingers still trembling faintly from the message Calder had left behind. His presence had been like smoke—faint, untouchable—but real. It lingered even now, wrapped around her thoughts like a whisper she couldn't shake.
The main floor of the Crestmont estate was quiet. Not empty, not abandoned—just waiting.
Jack's voice broke the silence in her mind. "This place… something about it feels wrong."
"Wrong how?"
"Not hostile. Just... suppressed. Like it's waiting."
"I'm still getting residual readings," she muttered, checking the resonance scanner. "Whatever's in this house, it's not done with us yet."
Jack was silent a beat longer than usual. "Something's up. That chamber was just one layer. I think the Crestmonts buried more than secrets."
...
She moved slowly, scanning with her resonance device—modified again after the second fragment. It blinked low-level pulses. Nothing major, just subtle traces. But they were here. Same energy signature as the prism shards.
"Jack, did the Crestmonts ever come up in your time?"
"A few times. Not directly involved with Spectra operations, but some of their heirlooms were flagged for potential resonance. One piece in particular..."
He trailed off.
"What piece?"
"I don't remember clearly. Just an image. A mirror—or maybe a frame. Gold, cracked at the edges. Something about it was unstable."
....
Noel pushed deeper into the house, toward the back wing. Her light scanned over old portraits, faded trophies, books lined spine-to-spine in languages she didn't recognize.
Then she saw it.
In a side hallway hung with dust and half-light: a mirror.
The scanner gave a faint, rhythmic ping.
"Jack?"
At the far end of the hallway stood a mirror. Tall, arched, its surface cracked like a spiderweb. The gilded frame shimmered faintly under the scanner's pulse.
Her chest tightened. "This it?"
Jack's voice dropped. "Yeah. That's the one I remembered. But it shouldn't still be active."
She approached carefully, senses high. No immediate vision. No jolt like with the shards, there was no surge of memory, no heat. Just tension—drawn like a bowstring in the air around her. But as she stepped in front of it—
The air behind her shifted.
The reflection didn't match her movement.
She froze.
Her reflection was… off. Delayed. Breathing wrong. As if the image in the mirror wasn't her, but something wearing her shape.
In the mirror, she stood still—but something behind her moved. A flicker. A blur. Not human.
Jack's voice sharpened. "Don't turn around."
"It's echoing a resonance. Someone linked this mirror to a memory field—maybe even a consciousness imprint. It's unstable."
The reflection flickered. Behind it, a figure emerged. Tall. Robed. Violet-eyed. His presence buzzed faintly in her skull—like a tuning fork struck too hard.
He raised his hand.
Noel's body screamed to run, but she couldn't.
"Step back," Jack said sharply. "Now."
She jerked away from the mirror, and in a blink, the image snapped back to normal. The hum faded. Her own reflection stared back—wide-eyed, shaken.
"That was a memory imprint?" she asked, her voice low.
"Partially. The mirror's acting like a lens. Or maybe a vault. Whoever that was—he left something of himself behind. And the Crestmonts kept it here."
Noel swallowed hard. "Why?"
"Inheritance. Some lines pass down wealth. Others... fragments of influence. Power."
As she turned away, something in the walls whispered faintly—an echo she wasn't sure she imagined.
> "Inheritance… must be claimed…"
She didn't answer it. Just kept walking.
There were still more rooms to search. More clues buried in silence. But one thing was clear.
The Crestmont name wasn't just history.
It was a thread. And someone had left it hanging—waiting to be pulled.
....
She moved carefully now. Every creak of the wooden floorboards felt like a warning. The mansion wasn't just old—it was reactive. Like it had been waiting for someone with the right resonance to stir it back to life.
Her scanner pinged again—sharper this time. A spike.
She turned sharply. A side room. The door was slightly ajar, light leaking from beneath even though the estate had no power. Noel pushed it open with the tip of her boot.
Inside was a small study. Bookshelves lined the walls, though many of the tomes were brittle and warped. At the center sat a desk with a sealed case, etched with the same crest from the chamber below.
Another ping.
The resonance wasn't coming from the desk, though. It was coming from behind it.
Noel rounded the desk and found a filing cabinet shoved against the wall. The scanner pulsed red now, high frequency. Whatever was behind there—it wasn't inert.
"Help me out here," she muttered.
"You're close," Jack replied. "Something's hidden behind that cabinet. It's giving off the same tone as the mirror—but more stable."
With effort, she dragged the heavy cabinet aside, scraping gouges into the floor. Behind it was a metal panel with no handle. Just a small indentation—circular.
Noel reached into her coat and pulled out the first shard, the violet one. Carefully, she touched it to the panel.
A hiss of steam, then a quiet click.
The panel opened like a vault door. Cold air rolled out.
Inside was a cylindrical container, locked in place with three pressure clamps. On its surface: a Crestmont seal and the Spectra insignia, side by side.
Noel's breath caught. "What is Spectra's symbol doing here?"
Jack went quiet.
"Jack."
"This… wasn't supposed to be here. This predates Spectra by decades."
"But it's their mark."
She reached in and freed the container. As she did, a flicker of blue light ran across the surface. The clamps released with a soft mechanical sigh.
Inside—resting in suspension—was a crystalline sliver. Smaller than the shards. But it radiated the same kind of pressure, tuned differently. This wasn't a fragment of raw memory.
It was a tether.
"A sync key?" she guessed aloud.
Jack's tone darkened. "Noel… this is tech they developed from the fragments. A prototype conduit. They were experimenting with legacy resonance. Trying to control awakeners by embedding artificial links."
Her mouth went dry. "They were implanting these into people?"
"Worse. Into bloodlines."
She stepped back. "Jack—was this done to me?"
A pause.
"I don't know. But if the Crestmonts had this—and they were working with Spectra—it's possible your connection to the shards wasn't entirely... coincidence."
Noel gripped the edge of the desk to steady herself.
Everything she'd felt—every vision, every flicker of power, every time the fragments had responded to her—it had felt real. Earned. Chosen.
But what if it was engineered?
"Why would they do this?"
"Control. Insurance. If someone went rogue—like Calder—they'd have a backdoor. A way to trace or suppress them."
....
Noel stared down at the conduit. It hummed softly, like a caged heartbeat.
She'd come here searching for truth, for safety, maybe even for justice.
But what she'd found was older. Colder. Calculated.
A legacy carved not from loyalty, but control.
She tucked the conduit into her satchel, voice low. "We need to leave. Now."
As they moved down the corridor, the mirror behind them cracked a little further.
Not broken.
Just watching.