Morning came slowly over the snow-choked ruins of Caldris. The sky was pale and quiet, with only a thin red haze remaining from the Blood Moon's fading echo. But even as the sun tried to rise, warmth refused to follow. The city remained cold. Still. Scarred.
Frank stood at the edge of the cliff where Lucy had disappeared the night before. His arms were crossed, his shoulders stiff. He had barely slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that mark in the sky again. That black sigil. The shape that didn't belong to any known glyph. It didn't flicker. It simply burned itself into memory — like it had always been there.
"She didn't go far," Kitty said softly behind him. She was kneeling beside a patch of frozen earth, brushing her fingers over the faint indentations of Lucy's footsteps. "But she didn't want to be followed."
"She doesn't know who she is right now," Frank said, not turning around. "That's the worst part. She's afraid… and she might be right to be."
Tom stepped up beside them, rubbing his sore shoulder. "That voice she heard, the visions Kitty saw — they weren't random. We all know something's wrong. But blaming Lucy for it without answers would be a bigger mistake than anything else."
Jack crouched nearby, drawing patterns in the snow with the tip of his dagger. "You think she's Alexa?"
"No," Kitty said quickly. "I don't."
Tom didn't speak. He stared out toward the cracked mountains in the distance. "I think… she might be. Or at least part of her might be. But I also think that isn't all she is. We've known her for too long. We've fought beside her, laughed with her. She's not just some enemy hiding behind a face."
Peter scoffed quietly, pacing. "But what if that was the plan the entire time? Hide in plain sight. Earn our trust. Wait until we're at our weakest… then strike?"
Susan sat beside one of the broken glyph stones. She looked tired. Her normally smooth crystalline armor was scratched and faded from the battle. "Even if that's true," she said calmly, "what good will it do to doubt her now? If she's Alexa, then pushing her away will just give her more reason to leave. If she's not… we'll lose her for no reason."
Frank finally turned back to face them. "Then what do we do?"
Jack looked up. "We wait."
"For what?"
"For Neolin," Jack replied. "He called us back for a reason. And I think it's more than just an update."
They returned to Odessyus that same evening, escorted through the glyph gates with caution. There were more guards now — more whispering behind armored masks. News of the Caldris crack had spread fast, and fear was growing. People were starting to sense something deeper than war. Something older. Something unnamed.
Neolin met them in the lower tower. His cloak was ragged, and there were lines under his eyes that hadn't been there before. He didn't greet them. He simply turned and led them down into the archive levels beneath the palace — deeper than they'd ever been allowed before.
The hallway narrowed the farther they walked, and the air grew colder, denser, heavy with old power. Glyphs along the walls shimmered, half-active, half-dead. The light flickered strangely — like it didn't want to touch the stone here.
They stopped before a door. A simple door made of black stone, carved with a single mark — the same black sigil that had appeared above Caldris.
"This door hasn't opened in six hundred years," Neolin said quietly. "It leads to the Forgotten Chamber. The first generation of glyph scholars sealed it after the Glyph War… and the last person who walked out of it was never seen again."
"Why open it now?" Frank asked.
Neolin placed a hand on the mark. "Because someone opened it before us."
The door groaned open. The room inside was circular, filled with dust and cracked stone shelves. Broken scrolls littered the floor. In the center stood a statue, like the one Neolin had seen in the ruins. A woman. Wings folded. Face hidden. Eyes scratched.
"What is this place?" Kitty asked.
"The first vault," Neolin answered. "Where the glyphs were born."
The air inside the chamber was too still. Like something was holding its breath.
Neolin stepped to the statue and slowly reached behind it. He pulled out a scroll — old, brittle, covered in faded ink that seemed to pulse faintly.
"This is the original glyph script," he said. "Written before Triggsen, before Palecto. It was the foundation of everything we know now… and everything we chose to forget."
Susan leaned closer. "What do you mean 'chose' to forget?"
"There was a fourth force," Neolin said. "A forgotten power that wasn't bound to light or fire or shadow. It was absence. The glyph of silence. The glyph of erasure."
Tom narrowed his eyes. "Alexa."
Neolin nodded once. "That name wasn't always a name. It was a term. A warning. 'The one who walks through memory.' But something — or someone — turned it into a being. A person. A will."
Jack crossed his arms. "So you're saying Alexa isn't just a person… she's a force?"
Neolin turned, eyes serious. "I'm saying she might be both. And she might not be alone."
Silence gripped the room.
Frank broke it. "What does that mean for Lucy?"
"I don't know," Neolin admitted. "But the glyphs around her are changing. When I looked through the time mirror… I saw two reflections. One of Lucy. One of… something else."
Peter stepped forward. "Then we need to confront her. Talk to her before whatever's inside takes over."
"She might already be past that," Neolin said quietly. "The longer we wait… the stronger the echo becomes."
Kitty raised her head. "Then we don't wait. We find her."
Tom looked at Neolin. "Do you know where she went?"
"No," Neolin said. "But I know where she might go."
He unrolled the scroll fully, revealing a map so ancient it barely held together. At its center was a mark — a spiral within a spiral — drawn over the edge of the continent, near a place none of them had ever heard before.
"The Edge of Origin," Neolin said. "The place where the first glyphs were carved into the world. It was sealed after the first fall of the old gods."
Susan raised an eyebrow. "That sounds exactly like the place someone like Alexa would go to remember who she really is."
Frank stepped forward. "Then that's where we go."
Jack unsheathed his dagger. "We're not letting her face this alone."
"No," Kitty added. "And we're not letting her become someone she's not."
Tom looked down at his hands — the same hands that once burned a village and now held the weight of a world. "Then we find her. And we bring her back. Or we fall trying."
Neolin watched them carefully, eyes lingering longest on Frank… then on Kitty… and finally on the empty space where Lucy should have been.
"If you go," he said slowly, "you must be ready. Because the place she's heading… it's not just dangerous. It's not just cursed."
"It's where the world began to end."