I didn't move for a long moment.
Not because I couldn't—but because the air felt like a thin sheet of glass wrapped around my body,and any sudden motion might crack it.
Patch stayed beside me, tail low, ears sharp.Its presence steadied the static buzzing through my bones,but the tremor under the ground had already changed.
The seal wasn't just awake now.
It was aware.
I pushed myself up slowly, my legs trembling.
Patch meowed—a single, low tone,short but perfectly placed.
A warning to stay slow.Controlled.Measured.
I exhaled and looked toward the twin mounds.
The cross-shaped crack had shrunk back to a thin hairline scar in the air—barely visible,almost gone.
But the space around it wasn't normal.
The air carried faint distortions,like invisible fingerprints left on glass.
"…It remembers me."
I didn't know why the words slipped out.But Patch reacted to them—a tiny flick of its ear,acknowledgment without looking at me.
The ground hummed again.
Not loudly.But with purpose.
A pulse ran beneath the soil,traveling from the deeper layers of the moundsstraight toward the sculpture overhead.
The UFO-shaped structure answered.
A metallic groan.A vibration like a servo motor trying to correct an error.A sharp, brief flicker—space bending around its silhouette for one frame too long.
I felt the shift in my chest before my eyes caught it.
My source point throbbed—not with pain,but with resonance.
The seal was pinging me.Checking my presence.Verifying my signature.
A recognition handshake.
Patch walked forward, stopping between me and the crack.Its tail twitched once, pointed downward,as if drawing a precise marker in the dirt.
I whispered,"…It's really tracking me…"
Patch looked back at me.
Its eyes were calm.Too calm.
Like it already expected this outcome.
Another pulse rolled through the ground—this one stronger,like a heartbeat syncing with mine.
The symbol from before flashed briefly across my vision.White.Geometric.Alive.
I grabbed my chest instinctively.
A soft hum filled my ears,rising in pitch until it folded into silence.
Then—a whisper.
Not sound.Not words.
A message imprinted directly into my mind:
"Accepted."
My breath stopped.
Patch stepped closer and bumped its head against my knee—grounding me,reminding me to breathe.
I managed a shaky inhale.
"What does that mean…?Accepted for what?"
The wind didn't answer.
But the park did.
The trees around the mounds rustled,not from wind,but from a synchronized twitch—as if responding to the same unseen system call.
The crack pulsed once more.
A single, heavy beat.
Then everything went still.
Patch's fur settled.The distortions calmed.The seal retreated.
But it didn't undo anything.
It simply went quiet—the kind of quiet an animal makesright before it decides whether something is prey,threat,or…something else.
I swallowed hard.
I wasn't just a visitor anymore.
I had been logged.
Indexed.
Marked.
Patch meowed,the soft sound cutting through the tension like a signal:
"We need to go."
I didn't argue.
I followed.
But as we walked away from the mounds,I couldn't shake the feeling—
That something inside the sealhad opened its eyes for the first time in decades.
And the first thing it sawwas me.