They held the unveiling in the Celestium Hall.
Not the academy.
The palace.
A tier above even the Seven Houses.
Curtains of gold.
Statues of the First Archive Keepers.
A mirror-floor where every reflection looked higher than it stood.
The place where truth was sculpted—and recited.
The audience was carefully chosen.
High seats.
State scribes.
Echo custodians.
And precisely twelve Threadless representatives known for their cautious loyalty.
Virel was not invited.
But she didn't need to be.
Because the Threadline lit up the moment he stepped into the light.
Lys Vael.
Draped in silver-trimmed gray.
A spiral-thorn on his chest—too precise to be born, too elegant to be fake.
He looked young.
Too young to have known Elandra.
Too perfect to have fought for anything.
But when he spoke—
He spoke in Threadcode.
Fluently.
With emotion.
"The Pattern was never about rebellion."
"It was about preservation."
"Elandra believed in memory that served the future—not threatened it."
"I am here to serve."
His face never wavered.
Not smiling.
Not defiant.
Just… calm.
Like a reflection that had learned not to ripple.
Then he unrolled a scroll.
Recited something Virel recognized.
"We rise without asking."
The words she'd spoken the night she first accepted the spiral.
The hall applauded.
Some stood.
Some whispered.
And one old noble murmured, just loud enough for a recorder to catch:
"Finally… a Patternkeeper we can trust."
That night, three Threadless students deactivated their spirals.
One of them carved into a garden wall:
"The Pattern was never meant to burn."
Virel didn't answer.
Not yet.
She simply lit her own spiral-stone.
And whispered:
"Let me see him closer."
They called them Clarified Memories.
Released daily.
Projected in controlled chambers.
Echo-approved.
Thread-sealed.
Court-sanctioned.
Each one bore the imperial watermark—verified, unedited, untouchable.
The first showed Elandra sitting in her study, speaking softly to a shadowed figure.
The image sharpened.
It was Lys.
She handed him a book.
Whispered something.
Touched his forehead with two fingers in a gesture once used to signify binding memory.
"What you carry, you carry clean."
Then the memory faded.
Virel's name was never mentioned.
The second showed a garden—moonlit, windswept.
Lys knelt before a threadstone.
Elandra's voice said:
"They cannot protect the Pattern by force."
"Only through discipline."
"Only through obedience."
The camera panned upward—too perfect to be real.
But real enough to believe.
Within three days, her own echoes began to falter.
Threadline response dipped.
Crowds at open-echo sites shrank.
One echo-stone in the northwest ring began displaying both names when prompted for "Patternkeeper."
The divide was not just narrative.
It was becoming infrastructure.
Selvine watched one of the reversals replay on a hallway stone and muttered:
"They're not proving he's real."
"They're proving she could've chosen better."
Jessa punched through one of the playback runes.
But it reformed.
Like a smile that refused to crack.
And Virel?
She stood in the atrium at dusk.
Watching both spirals shimmer.
Hers, dimmed.
His, polished.
Then said:
"Let them compare."
"Because mirrors don't echo. They only reflect what they're shown."
Selvine had been watching Lys.
Not publicly.
Not politically.
Personally.
He studied his gestures.
His pauses.
The way he scanned a room before speaking—as if seeking permission not just from others, but from something inside himself.
"Too fluid," he muttered one evening.
Jessa raised an eyebrow. "You mean trained."
"No," he said, staring at a scribed projection of Lys's last speech.
"Too fluid to be scripted."
The imperial echo-projectors were perfect.
But Selvine found three inconsistencies in Lys's delivery.
One gesture Elandra never used.
One turn of phrase found only in Threadless graffiti.
One moment—barely a breath—where Lys's expression broke.
Not from fear.
Not from deceit.
From recognition.
Selvine traced it to a forgotten threadcore in the west archives.
One of the original Patternkeeper test stones.
Unactivated for years.
Yet when Lys passed it that morning, it lit.
Not because it was commanded.
Because it knew him.
Jessa didn't like it.
"You're telling me he's remembering?"
Selvine looked at Virel.
"I'm telling you... he might not be just made."
Virel didn't blink.
"What if he's believing?"
That night, she stood in the hall where Elandra once walked.
Laid her hand against the oldest echo-wall.
And whispered:
"If he remembers something real…"
"Then I need to remember what they tried to steal."
She didn't summon him.
She threaded the invitation into a wall he'd have to pass—an echo shimmer, faint and personal.
Not a trap.
A thread-pull.
An echo only someone truly Pattern-tied would feel.
And he came.
They met in the hollow between archives, where Elandra once held secret lessons.
No lights.
No blades.
No audience.
Just two spirals, barely lit.
Lys arrived without guards.
Without fanfare.
Without fear.
He looked at Virel.
Not hostile.
Not apologetic.
Just still.
And said:
"You summoned me?"
"No," she said.
"You followed."
They stood facing each other.
Equal in silence.
Unmatched in origin.
"I know your echoes are clean," Virel said.
"I know they've been prepared."
Lys nodded.
"All truth is prepared. Even yours."
She stepped closer.
Enough to see the subtle flicker in his threadmark.
"But there's something you didn't rehearse."
"Something that reacts when you're alone."
Lys's jaw tensed.
Just for a moment.
Then softened.
"I don't hate you, Virel."
"That's not comfort," she said.
He paused.
Then said, almost gently:
"We are what remains when truth is too heavy."
Virel didn't speak for a long time.
Then:
"Do you remember her?"
Lys blinked.
Slowly.
"I remember what I was given."
"And sometimes I wake from dreams where I see her—laughing."
"That memory isn't in the archives."
She didn't smile.
Didn't challenge.
Only whispered:
"Then maybe you weren't made."
"You were broken."
"And filled with something that still wants to be real."
Lys turned.
Did not flee.
Did not fight.
He only said:
"Be careful, Virel."
"Mirrors can break both ways."
And then he was gone.
It began as a quiet test.
Two spiral-bearers met at a fountain echo-stone.
One asked to project a truth.
The other offered a correction.
Simple.
Polite.
But when the memory clashed—
The Threadline fractured.
Elandra's voice—fragmented.
Two versions overlapping.
One said: "The Pattern chooses its bearer."
The other: "The Pattern must be chosen."
The echo glitched.
And then—it screamed.
The stone pulsed erratically.
Nearby echoes burst into conflicting loops.
Observers gathered—then argued.
One girl called Virel's truth "an infection."
Another punched her in the jaw.
A noble boy shattered a Threadline terminal with his cane.
By nightfall, five more stones were damaged.
Threadcasters drew boundary wards—not to stop the fighting, but to contain it.
The atrium was sealed.
The south wing—evacuated.
And for the first time in academy history, the Council declared Echo Emergency Protocol.
They sent stewards to confiscate unauthorized threadmark cloth.
Two professors resigned.
A threadweaver was arrested for "intentional memory conflation."
Neutrality died that day.
Not with a speech.
But with silence—from those who no longer knew what memory was safe to say aloud.
Virel stood before the broken stone in the center of the dueling ring.
Its spiral burned half-gold, half-gray.
Fractured.
Beautiful.
Selvine appeared behind her.
"They've made your movement into a riot."
"And his into a religion."
Virel touched the stone.
It sparked faintly.
And she said:
"Then let's ask a better question."
No podium.
No banners.
No spiral raised.
Just a stone.
Cracked.
Half-lit.
Still listening.
And a group of people—some loyal, some broken, some simply there.
Virel stepped onto the shattered ring without robe or title.
No mask.
No script.
Only thread coiled in one hand.
And she said:
"I've stopped asking you to follow me."
"Because if your truth can't walk without mine—then it was never yours."
She looked around. Met every pair of eyes.
Then asked:
"What did you remember that no one told you to?"
Silence.
Then—slowly—
A voice from the back.
A Threadless boy.
"I remember the first time I wrote my name in spiral instead of crest."
A servant whispered:
"I remember Elandra laughing in the kitchen, barefoot, with no crown."
A dueling instructor stepped forward.
"I remember when I was told to erase a memory—and couldn't."
More voices joined.
Not loud.
Not rehearsed.
But true.
The Threadline pulsed.
Faint.
Unstable.
But alive.
And for the first time in weeks, a new spiral etched itself into the floor.
Not Virel's.
Not Lys's.
A stranger's.
Crude.
Uneven.
Honest.
Across the city, echo-stones began responding to unsanctioned threadmarks again.
One by one.
The Empire tried to block the surge.
But it was already too late.
They had fought Virel's truth.
But now they faced something worse.
Everyone else's.