The stairwell echoed with each step as Xander climbed out of the Rust Crypt, gripping the dented pipe like it was the only thing tethering him to reality. The damp air had changed. Sharper. Thinner. Every corner, every pipe overhead now hummed like it carried a secret. Or maybe a warning.
He emerged into the upper maintenance tunnel and pulled the hatch shut behind him. The glow from the console had faded entirely. No traces of the attack. No signs of the scout. Just the silence of a system that had gone back to sleep—or was waiting.
Xander's mind raced.
A glyph had come from his hands. A spell he hadn't studied. It had carved into the air like muscle memory, even though he'd never cast before. Not once. And he remembered the sensation, burned into his bones—like the spell hadn't been learned so much as… unlocked.
They'll come for you.
He quickened his pace, ducking through service corridors, emerging into the fringes of the market levels. Sector D13 buzzed louder now. Holo-panels sputtered to life. People resumed their routines. As if that ancient whisper underground had never stirred.
But something followed him. Not visibly. A weight. A residue. Like the spell energy hadn't left him. Like it had stained his blood.
He needed answers.
His feet moved before his thoughts did, carrying him toward the upper tiers of D13. Toward someone he didn't like—but who knew more about black-coded spell architecture than anyone else in the underground.
James Nuel.
The old best friend.
The betrayal still sat sour in Xander's gut, even months after it happened. A girl. Some credits. A lie about loyalty. James had sold him out during a botched scav run—left Xander to take the fall when Corp patrols closed in.
But right now, he didn't care. James dealt in rare spelltech and codeweaving. If anyone could explain the glyph he'd just fired out of thin air, it was him.
Xander found James two levels up, tucked behind a semi-legal mod shop that passed for a gambling den. The corridor stank of burnt synth-oil and soldering smoke. Old signage blinked weakly above the door: "Nuel & Fix: Custom Rigs – No Questions."
Typical.
Inside, James leaned against a cluttered desk, goggles resting on his forehead. He was repairing a cracked spelldisc, fingers twitching with practiced movements, wires wrapped around one wrist like bramble.
He looked up. Didn't smile.
"Well, well. Ghost-boy returns."
"Shut it," Xander muttered. "I need a read."
James raised a brow. "You walk in here after vanishing half a year, with that tone? Where's the gratitude?"
"You sold me out to a Corp Enforcer."
"Details," James said, waving a hand. "You're alive. That's gotta count for something."
Xander stepped forward and raised his hand. A faint trace of violet still shimmered across his knuckles. "I cast something. No interface. No prep. I watched it once and then… I did it."
That got James' attention.
He set the spelldisc aside, leaned forward, and scanned Xander's hand with a wand-like device. The tip pulsed faintly blue as it passed through the shimmer.
"Residual imprint," he said slowly. "But not standard. This looks… native. You generated the glyph from zero?"
"I saw someone cast it," Xander replied. "Then I copied it. It worked."
James looked at him for a long second. Then, seriously: "No tech involved?"
"Nothing."
James leaned back and let out a low whistle. "You're tapped into something deep, X. That's old-world mimicry magic. From back when spell structures were bio-reactive. Only a handful of people ever pulled that off. And it's not supposed to be permanent."
Xander clenched his jaw. "I remember it perfectly. The pattern. The flow. Even now."
James's expression darkened. "Then it's not mimicry. It's retention."
He pulled a cracked data-tablet from beneath the desk, tapped a few keys, and pulled up a flickering diagram—one that showed a figure surrounded by rotating spell-glyphs. "This is a legend. Prototype spellcasting from the Veiled War era. Said some bloodlines could observe and absorb techniques without learning in the traditional sense. They called it imprint weaving."
Xander narrowed his eyes. "Sounds like a fairy tale."
"Maybe. But so's half the tech under the city. If that glyph stuck in your blood… you might be Echo-marked."
He almost laughed. "Echo what?"
James stood and lowered his voice. "Echoes of forbidden memory. The kind Corps used to wipe. If you're triggering ancestral spellcode by accident, you've got more than spelltech. You've got a loaded past."
Xander's stomach twisted.
James stepped closer. "Whatever you touched down there, it cracked your firewall. I'd keep your head down, if I were you. Old ghosts don't stay buried when you wake 'em up."
Xander turned to go, but paused at the door. "If you hear anything—about people tracking Echo-bloods, or what that tech was—let me know."
James gave a small nod. "Sure. Just remember: information's currency now, Croft. And not everyone sells cheap."
Xander left without another word.
As he emerged into the city's dim main corridor again, the humming in his blood hadn't faded. If anything, it had deepened—like something ancient was stirring beneath his skin.
And far beneath the levels, in a chamber lit by cold surgical lamps, another figure watched.
Ralph Thorne stood before a series of hovering glyph screens, watching the same pulse pattern that had first awakened the console in the Rust Crypt. His long coat drifted around him like a shadow stitched from void.
"He accessed it," whispered a voice behind him.
Thorne nodded slowly. "The blood took. The resonance is clear."
The assistant trembled. "He's still unaware."
"For now." Thorne's voice was calm, almost reverent. "But the circuits remember. And the Vessel always returns to its origin."
He turned toward the vault, where a heart-shaped engine pulsed with unnatural code.
"And this time," he whispered, "we'll finish what the last one couldn't."