Chapter Four: Waterfall of the Unspoken
Part Five – The Scar That Still Sings
Location: Inner Vault Echofield – Beneath the Pulsefall Glade
It didn't move.
It pulsed.
The presence in the scar was not shaped like anything Doctrine would dare record—not a Riftborn, not a Pulsewraith, not even a Veilmark entity. It had no eyes, no skin, no face.
Just a feeling.
A pressure that came from before memory was assigned to matter.
Selka felt it first. Her ripple glyph curled away from her skin, reaching outward like a net catching vibrations the world didn't want sung.
Zephryn didn't flinch.
Because whatever was humming through the scar—knew him.
It didn't approach.
It waited.
—
"The scar was left open on purpose," Selka whispered.
Zephryn nodded. "Not to let something out."
"To let something wait."
She stepped toward the edge of the pulsefracture, the air growing thicker, not like heat but like breath—layers of breath, as if a thousand unsung echoes hovered between her and the thing that had never stopped humming.
Then—she heard it.
Not in words.
In repetitions.
Over and over again, almost like a code:
"Second Flame.
Second Flame.
Second Flame.
Second Flame…"
—
Zephryn's glyph pulsed.
And the chant stopped.
The silence that followed was worse.
Because silence meant recognition.
—
The walls shimmered around the Vault, pulseglass cracking slightly.
Selka backed up.
Zephryn did not.
The scar in the air opened.
Not violently.
Softly.
Like it had been waiting for him to remember.
And within the folds of that scar—
A shape.
Human-sized.
Not solid.
More like a man made of broken resonance.
Half-humming.
Half-formed.
His skin was mist. His face was shadow.
But the voice—
The voice was raw chord memory.
And it spoke:
"You are not Rael."
—
Zephryn didn't move.
He blinked once.
Then stepped forward.
"I know."
The figure tilted its head.
The shadow-form shifted slightly. Glyphs moved across its body—like a body made of someone else's Veilmark.
"But you carry what he left."
"I don't know what that means yet."
The mist-figure began to pulse faster.
"You will."
Selka stepped beside him.
"Who are you?"
The being flickered.
Then answered:
"I am what the Choir could not burn."
—
It raised a hand.
Not to threaten.
To offer.
In its palm—a fragment.
A cracked piece of Veilstone shaped like a mirror.
Inside it: a glimmer of Zephryn's face.
But different.
His eyes were white.
Not glowing.
Remembered.
Selka gasped.
Zephryn didn't reach for it.
He asked:
"What happens if I take it?"
The figure answered:
"Then the hum completes."
Zephryn nodded.
And extended his hand.
—
The moment his skin touched the shard—
The scar sang.
Not loudly.
Not musically.
But with one harmonic note so ancient that the Vault shook.
The glyphs above them stopped rotating.
Selka's ripple glyph locked into a slow orbit.
Bubbalor, far above in the glade, shrieked as his wings flared with crystal-hued energy.
And Zephryn—
Saw everything.
Not clearly.
Not fully.
But enough.
He saw a city not in this world.
He saw Rael casting a glyph that broke time.
He saw Solara splitting herself in two to stop a Choir wraith.
He saw the Elders covering their ears in a vaulted chamber, screaming as memory burned through their skin.
He saw the necklace Selka gave him—but worn by someone else.
He saw Skalara.
Before she fell silent.
And above all that—
He saw a word carved into Veil itself:
"Ruinborn."
But beneath it—another.
One he had not earned yet.
"Resonant."
—
The shard vanished.
So did the scar.
The Vault went dim.
Only the hum remained.
Selka placed a hand on his arm.
"You saw it."
He nodded.
"I think I saw what I'm supposed to become."
And then, for the first time in hours—
The Vault was still.
But the hum continued inside him.
Not singing.
Waiting.
Because next time?
He wouldn't just carry memory.
He would cast it.