[POV: Ezekiel]
Light didn't behave here.
That was the first thing he noticed.
There was still glow—dull, steady, stone-fed runes beneath the floor—but it didn't cast shadows.
Didn't touch the walls.
Didn't bounce off his skin.
It simply existed, like an old rule the room hadn't gotten around to unlearning yet.
---
The Threshold Vein was nothing like the Bone Stair.
That had felt alive—watching, waiting, measuring his steps.
This place didn't care if he walked or vanished.
It felt…
abandoned by time.
---
He moved slower now.
Not from fear.
From heaviness.
Each step pressed against memory—like the air here knew him, but not quite, and was deciding whether to remember.
---
He paused at a stone node embedded into the corridor—once a surveillance glyph, now burned out.
It was scarred, deeply—etched not by claws or swords, but by syntax.
Language had broken it.
Something had spoken too clearly here, long ago.
And reality hadn't healed.
---
He crouched.
Ran his fingers over the scars.
They vibrated faintly beneath his fingertips.
Not a warning.
A question.
> "Do you belong here?"
---
He stood.
And whispered.
> "I'm already inside."
The scar stopped humming.
---
He kept walking.
---
[POV: Black Inquiry Operative – Lower Intake Shaft]
The man's mouth was sewn shut.
Voluntarily.
His hands bore ink-bonded glyphs that let him speak without sound.
He walked through the dark with five others—operatives of the Black Inquiry, the Empress's quietest blade.
One of them stopped.
Tilted her head.
Her ink shimmered briefly as she caught the residual echo.
> "He's passed the Threshold Vein."
The first operative nodded.
The others began unbinding small shards from mirrored pouches.
They would have to erase the corridor behind him.
Not capture.
Not kill.
Seal.
This boy was a Vessel.
But worse—
he was in motion.
---
[POV: Ilhera – Shadowline Drift, half a corridor away]
The ground hissed beneath her boots—shale splitting under Concept weight.
She was moving too fast. The glyph-dust was reacting. Every ward she passed flinched.
> Doesn't matter.
She had to reach him before the palace responded fully.
The Bone Stair was already sealing behind her.
The glyphs were collapsing, collapsing—
> "Ezekiel…"
Then she saw it.
A flicker ahead.
A pale, pulseless silhouette.
Walking into a chamber where no light followed.
---
"Wait—!"
Her voice cracked through the corridor.
He turned, not startled.
Just still.
His eyes met hers through the dark.
They didn't reflect the light.
They drank it.
She slowed.
Held up her hand.
> "You passed the threshold."
He nodded.
> "You spoke?"
> "Yes."
> "It didn't take anything?"
He didn't answer.
Just blinked once.
She exhaled.
> "You have no idea what that means, do you?"
> "I'm starting to."
---
She walked up beside him.
Looked past the corridor into what lay beyond.
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
> "That's the Reflection Thread."
> "What is it?"
> "It's where language ends."
---
And ahead of them, the corridor twisted downward—into a vein made of half-light and broken grammar, where nothing remembered its shape for long.
The Black Inquiry was already on their trail.
And the palace was beginning to rewrite its lower maps to trap them.