Director Orin Hale had seen anomalies. He had walked through rooms where reflections screamed in silence. He had watched cities forget their own shadows. He had stood inside the first breach and come out breathing — though no one ever figured out what came out with him.
But nothing unsettled him like the boy.
Kayden Hart.
A Conduit who survived resonance exposure without cognitive collapse. A boy whose static pulse had torn open memories Hale had buried a lifetime ago.
He remembers the breach. Kayden's distorted voice still echoed through the chamber walls.
Not possible.Not tolerated. Not survivable.
Hale stood alone in his office, hands clasped behind his back. The room was dim except for a single monitor showing Kayden's vitals — pulsing, shifting, forming impossible shapes that resembled fractal signatures.
The same signatures Hale had once seen inside the veil.
He closed his eyes.
He remembered—
Not the version he told the Eye. Not the sanitized report. Not the fragment they allowed the world to know.
He remembered the truth.
Ten years earlier.
He had been the first agent to step into an unsealed breach — a mirror shattered in thirteen places, an apartment soaked in static frost, neighbors found humming a single note until their minds unraveled.
The breach had pulled him in like water swallowing a stone.
Inside, he didn't see chaos. He saw order. A world of perfect recursive reflections, each layer awake, each one watching the one above it.
And one reflection — just one — stepped out of sync.
It looked at him. Spoke a word he never told anyone.
"Remember."
When he came back, his eyes glowed silver for three days. He forgot his own name. And every reflective surface in the room showed a different version of him smiling.
He never stopped hearing the static after that.
And now, Kayden Hart — a nobody, a boy with no training, no conditioning — had replicated the same signature that scarred Hale's soul.
Worse.
He'd stabilized it.
That terrified Hale more than anything.
A soft voice broke his thoughts.
"Director?"
Seren stood at the door, arms crossed, posture tense.
"You called for me."
Hale didn't turn around. "Agent Vale. How is the boy?"
"Confused. Shaken. Not fully aware of what he did, but…" She hesitated. "He's not broken. You said resonance would shatter him, but he walked out of that chamber."
"I know."
"And you don't look happy about that."
"Because I understand what it means," Hale said softly.
Seren stepped closer. "Explain."
Hale finally faced her. His eyes — normally calm — carried the weight of someone who had stared too long at the wrong part of the universe.
"Kayden didn't just connect to the veil," he said. "He triggered a memory loop."
Seren frowned. "Memory loop?"
"An echo repeating across layers of reality," Hale said. "And it only happens when the veil recognizes one of its own."
Seren stared. "…You're saying he's like you."
Hale shook his head.
"No, Agent Vale. I'm saying he's worse."
For the first time since joining the Veiled Eye, Seren Vale felt a chill beneath her skin.
Hale's voice dropped to barely a whisper.
"The veil called him."
Kayden wasn't chosen. He was reclaimed.
---
Kayden sat alone in the medical bay, staring at his hands.
They were normal. Perfectly normal. No glow. No static. No trembling.
But he could feel something humming beneath his skin — not electricity, not magic, not anything he had a name for.
He looked at the cracked mirror placed earlier on his bedside table, the one that had appeared after his dream.
The crack had grown.
And the reflection?
It wasn't delayed anymore.
It was ahead of him.
When Kayden blinked, his reflection blinked first. When he inhaled, the reflection exhaled.
He lifted a hand.
The reflection didn't follow — it reached toward him.
The edges of the mirror rippled.
Kayden stumbled back, knocking over the chair.
"Stop… stop…" he whispered, breath trembling.
The hum grew louder, pressing against his skull, threading itself through his thoughts like something trying to find space inside him.
Then—
Someone grabbed his shoulder.
Kayden jerked and spun to see Seren.
"Easy," she said. "You're okay."
"No, I'm not," Kayden snapped, pointing at the mirror. "Did you see—"
But the mirror was normal again. Silent. Still. Just a cracked reflection.
Seren studied him carefully. "Tell me what you saw."
Kayden hesitated.
If he told her the truth, she might lock him in a containment cell. If he lied… he'd be alone with whatever was happening inside his head.
He chose the lesser evil.
"It moved without me," he whispered. "It wasn't copying me. It was… watching."
Seren didn't react outwardly, but her pulse quickened — he could hear it, faint, like a soft drum behind a wall.
"You're not unstable," she said quietly. "This is the veil's influence… but stronger than expected."
Kayden frowned. "Meaning?"
"Meaning we need answers," Seren said. "Real answers. Not from Hale. Not from the Eye."
She leaned in.
"But from someone who survived the veil longer than anyone."
Kayden raised an eyebrow. "Who?"
Seren looked toward the far door — the one the agents avoided.
"The Static Collector," she said. "Elias Rune."
Kayden went cold.
He didn't know that name.
But something inside him reacted to it — a ripple in his mind, a memory that wasn't his.
Static buzzed in the cracked mirror.
And far below the city, Elias Rune smiled without knowing why.