The world sharpened into focus with a thin, metallic ring.
Not the world of Midnight Cradle—
not the cold hall, not the veiled figures, not the fractal pillar of darkness.
Just sound.
A single tone, clear and fragile, like a glass needle tapping the surface of silence.
Ping.
And suddenly Kael was falling upward.
Light and shadow twisted around him, not swirling but overlaying—
like pages from different stories being forced into the same spine.
A dozen worlds flickered beneath him:
a burning citadel, an endless desert of pale bones, a starless ocean swallowing a moon.
Yet all of them bent toward the same center: a throne made of broken mirrors.
Sitting upon it was the silhouette he had seen only at the edge of dreams—
a man with no face, only a crown of fractured halos.
And behind him…
A shadow.
Not cast by the throne, not by the figure.
A shadow with eyes.
Mine, Kael realized.
That is my shadow.
The next moment, the vision cracked—
shattering like frost under heat.
---
He woke to darkness.
Not the absolute void of the Interstice, nor the liquid night of the Abyss.
A softer darkness.
Warm.
Alive.
His pulse steadied as sensations returned: the coarse fabric beneath him, the faint hum of lanterns, the scent of damp wood and herbs.
He was lying on a cot inside a cramped room carved into stone.
A small window showed nothing but drifting fog.
Then—
"Ah. You're awake."
A voice stirred the shadows. A man stepped into the thin lantern-glow—
thin, sharp-eyed, wearing an apron stained with charcoal-black residue.
Kael recognized him immediately.
Sable. The Mirage-lens Artisan.
A man who dealt in illusions, memories, and truths disguised as lies.
Sable tilted his head, observing Kael like one might study a rare defect in glass.
"You were found outside the lower district," he said.
"Conscious enough to stay alive, but mentally… displaced."
He tapped his temple.
"Some kind of metaphysical turbulence, I assume?"
Kael sat up slowly.
His mind pulsed—
not with pain, but with something worse: remembered echoes.
The throne of mirrors.
The shadow with eyes.
The crown of broken halos.
And the Seventh Fragment's whisper, still lingering like a splinter behind his ribs.
Sable poured tea into a chipped cup.
"Drink. You look like someone who walked through a dying dream."
Kael ignored the cup.
"…How long was I unconscious?"
Sable shrugged. "Time is strange around you. Hours, perhaps. Days, possibly."
Before Kael could reply, Sable's expression sharpened.
"I assume you came here because of the fluctuations in the Outer Rings?"
"You've felt them too?" Kael asked.
Sable chuckled dryly.
"Every artisan worth their tools has. Something ancient is stirring—
and it is loud enough to wake the dead."
Kael's chest tightened.
He remembered the Seventh Fragment.
The Hypostases.
The decree:
If he does not reclaim himself, something else will take his place.
"Say, stranger," Sable continued, moving closer.
"When I looked into your eyes earlier, I saw layers.
Like overlapping reflections.
Like you are here… and elsewhere."
Kael stiffened.
Sable leaned forward, lowering his voice.
"Tell me—
when your shadow moves, does it always move with you?"
Kael's blood ran cold.
Because right then, against the lantern-light—
he saw it.
His shadow on the wall.
Delayed.
Half a second too slow.
A beat behind him.
As if remembering what it should have done.
As if learning.
Sable noticed the tremor in Kael's hand and exhaled.
"…I see."
A silence stretched between them.
Then the artisan whispered:
"Something is rewriting you."
The lantern flickered.
Kael swallowed hard. "And if it succeeds?"
Sable's lips curved into a thin, resigned smile.
"Then the Kael sitting in front of me will no longer be the Kael that rises tomorrow."
---
The sound returned.
Ping.
The glass-needle tone.
This time it came from deep within Kael's chest—
a resonance awakening, an echo of the throne of mirrors.
Sable's expression darkened.
"You carry a Note," he murmured.
"Not a spell. Not an artifact.
A metaphysical imprint—
one of the forbidden tones that shouldn't exist."
Kael felt his heartbeat synchronize with the ringing.
"What does it do?" he asked.
Sable hesitated.
That alone frightened Kael.
At last, the artisan spoke:
"It calls things that remember you."
Kael felt ice thread down his spine.
The lantern dimmed as the air thickened—
and his shadow on the wall blinked.
Not flickered.
Blinked.
Sable whispered:
"…It seems one has already arrived."
---
End of Chapter 10