Lilith didn't appear in full then. She didn't need to. Her presence was a weight, velvet-sweet and dangerous; it tugged the back of Siheon's mind like a scent he almost recognized.
He slept badly that night in a cell the Bureau offered—safety, they called it; isolation, he thought. Seraphina stayed near, an energy-stern guardian angel at the edge of sleep.
In dreams, the past kept arriving in pieces. He saw a white-winged figure laughing with a darker one; he saw hands shaping clay, a child cradled in both light and shadow. He woke with the systems shouting.
〈CELESTIAL SYSTEM: Limit dream exposure. Memory sanitation recommended.〉
〈ABYSSAL SYSTEM: Dreams are deliciously useful. Let them chew.〉
By dawn, he knew something else: he could call forth a small shard of the Duality Surge without collapsing his insides. The shard was a fingertip of both lights—gold and bruise-dark—hovering above his palm like a living ember. It flared when he concentrated and subsided when he let go.
He practiced in secret.
No one need know the exact color a soul-made ember cast.
When Ulfric returned the next morning, he didn't smile. He brought no pity. Instead he nodded once to Siheon.
"You found an edge," Ulfric said. "Good. Now temper that edge."
Ulfric dragged him into a narrow corridor lined with training runes. "Rounds. Non-stop. Exhaustion is a kind of memory. It teaches the body to rely on instincts instead of thought."
Siheon obeyed. He moved. He burned. He felt himself splintering and aligning simultaneously. Each exhaustion round brought a memory-spark: a lullaby in a language he almost understood, a hand pressing a cold coin into his tiny palm—Baek Hyunjin's face, a flash of sorrow, a command to survive.
〈ABYSSAL SYSTEM: He remembers his name. Hyunjin. Accepting lineage.〉
〈CELESTIAL SYSTEM: Prevent cascade. Monitor—overrides engaged.〉
Seraphina arrived twice during the day—water, food, a shoulder. Her look said what she would not say aloud: you are more than prophecy. To everyone else, he was the ominous child of myth. To her, he was the person who sneezed at bad coffee and cursed in English idioms.
At dusk, Ulfric halted their drills.
"You survived," he said simply. "Tomorrow: a demonstration."
Siheon's stomach knotted. "A demonstration of what?"
Ulfric's grin was a grim thing. "Of whether the world should fear or follow you."
That night, while Siheon tried to sleep, a distant tone rang—an alarm not in the Bureau but in the sky. Somewhere, a bell tied to cosmic law had been rung. And Lilith, listening from wherever she had retreated, whispered: "Soon."