When Ash returned to the orphanage, things were not the same.
The walls hadn't changed. The dorms still smelled of synthetic linen and old dust. The hall lights still flickered between blue and amber during shift changes.
But the silence was different now.
Before, it had been neutral. Natural.
Now it was watchful.
Like the walls were breathing with him. Like the lights dimmed not because of timing, but because of observation.
Ash didn't mind. He was used to being watched.
What disturbed him was how others had changed.
---
"Hey, that's the kid from the bridge."
"Didn't he kill it with one look?"
"I heard he didn't even scream."
"No blood. Just poof — gone."
"I heard he's not even real."
The whispers trailed behind him in the cafeteria, in the hallway, even in the study chamber.
He ignored them.
Not out of pride. But because they didn't matter.
Truth was not loud.
And lies didn't bite unless you listened.
Still… something in their words bothered him.
Not the stories.
But the way they spoke.
Fear.
They feared him.
And fear led to eyes.
Eyes drew attention.
And attention… led to discovery.
He needed to be careful.
---
In the highest levels of the city — far above the orphanage domes — a figure stood before a series of floating glass panels in a room of living crystal.
Each panel showed a different sector of Elyssia, its systems flickering in code, colors, and calculated balance.
Only one screen was dark.
Sector 12.
The site of the soulbeast incident.
"Rewind three hours," the figure said softly.
A shimmer ran across the black screen, and then a grainy image appeared — the bridge, cracked and broken, and a lone child standing on it.
Ash.
The figure narrowed her eyes.
She was tall, robed in gray with silver-white braids coiled atop her head like a crown of threads. Her name was Sevina Vel — and she was a Watcher of the Final Path, one of the thirteen hidden Inquisitors of the Order.
Her voice was calm.
Her thoughts were not.
> "No signature. No trail. No memory log.
Not a child.
Not a system artifact.
Something else."
She turned toward the shadows behind her.
"Send a Seeker," she said. "Let it watch quietly. If it approaches the truth, report to me directly. No alerts. No flags."
The shadows whispered back, "As the Order wills."
And the room dimmed.
---
Back in the orphanage, Ash sat in class.
The topic today was World Law Theory.
Instructor Halren — the older, soft-voiced teacher from earlier — was tracing energy patterns through the air using light glyphs. He spoke slowly, each word like a leaf falling into a stream.
"In the time before the Order," he said, "the world was wild. Lawless. Souls rose and fell as the universe willed. Then came the Seal of Eternity."
He tapped a rune.
An image of thirteen rings appeared, spinning in sync.
"The Seal locked the life cycle in place. Cultivation became infinite. Death… was removed."
Ash blinked once.
> Removed?
As if death were a program, a glitch to be patched out.
He raised a hand.
Halren paused. "Yes, Ash?"
"What was removed?" he asked softly.
Halren smiled, but there was tension behind it.
"Death. An outdated function of entropy. Once life became self-sustaining and cyclical through advanced cultivation and technological convergence, death lost purpose."
Ash tilted his head.
"And where did it go?"
Halren blinked.
The class fell quiet.
Tarek turned in his seat, frowning. A few others shifted awkwardly.
Halren cleared his throat. "Nowhere. It faded. Death was a natural product of limitations. Once we surpassed those limits, it became… unnecessary."
Ash nodded slowly.
But said nothing.
Because he felt it.
Beneath the words, beneath the light glyphs and spinning seals…
A pressure.
Like something buried.
Still breathing.
---
Later, after classes ended, Ash wandered the upper library level — an older wing filled with real books, not holograms.
No one else came here. The kids preferred digital lessons. Physical texts were slow, outdated, inefficient.
But Ash liked the weight of things.
Things that took space.
Things that aged.
He walked the rows quietly, trailing his hand across spines and faded bindings.
Then something tugged at him.
Not physically.
Energetically.
His steps slowed.
And he stopped before a shelf half-covered in dust.
There was no label.
No catalog tag.
Just a small, flat book wrapped in gray linen.
He reached for it.
When his fingers touched the fabric, the world fell silent again.
Not like before.
This was absolute silence.
No breathing.
No air.
No heartbeat.
He opened the cloth.
Inside was a book made of black paper.
Its cover bore only one symbol:
A circle.
Broken at the bottom.
Split by a single, vertical line.
Ash blinked.
He had seen it before.
The mark that had appeared in the air when he faced the beast.
He opened the first page.
There were no words.
Just a pattern — a spiral made of tiny dots, converging inward.
He stared at it.
And something inside him shifted.
A memory?
No.
A familiarity.
> "You were mine, once," a voice said from nowhere.
Ash turned.
No one.
> "You are still mine," it whispered.
Then the page turned on its own.
---
Later that night, Ash sat in his room.
He had hidden the book beneath his mattress.
He didn't understand it yet.
Didn't even know if it was real.
But he knew it had found him.
And the more he saw the world…
The more he realized the world was built on forgetting.
And he?
He was built on remembering.
---
Elsewhere, the Seeker watched.
Not from the shadows.
Not from a rooftop.
But from above, through layers of light invisible to mortals.
It had no name, no body — only eyes.
Its only command was to watch the boy.
But even it… trembled when Ash opened the black book.
For a moment, the Seeker could not see him.
Not because Ash had hidden.
But because something else had stepped between them.
And whispered:
> "Not yet."