Kaelen woke up from his sleep three times in the morning—not from nightmares, but from silence.
Each time his eyes snapped open, his heart raced. His senses reached outward on instinct—and each time, they met resistance. Not a wall. Not pain.
A delay.
Like his thoughts had to push through water before touching the world.
By the fourth time, he stayed awake.
He sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor while the city outside began to stir. Distant engines hummed. Pipes groaned. Somewhere far below, metal scraped against metal.
Normal sounds.
Too normal.
The city's noise was always unnatural, layered and restless. Today, it was calm—and that was alarming.
Kaelen focused inward carefully, peeling back his awareness the way Selene had taught him—layer by layer, never rushing.
The Threads appeared.
Fewer than before.
Where there had once been dense lattices of faint light woven through walls and floors, there were now gaps. Not emptiness—absence. Places where his perception slid off, refusing to settle.
Kael frowned, his eyebrows knitting together.
"That wasn't there," he whispered.
He tested another angle.
The desk across the room responded faintly, its connections visible but thinner, less cooperative. He nudged them gently.
Nothing happened.
He increased his intent by a fraction.
The desk trembled, then stopped abruptly, as if something had cut the response halfway through.
Kael recoiled, a sharp ache flashing behind his eyes.
He sucked in a breath and steadied himself.
This wasn't exhaustion.
It was interference.
Someone had touched him.
Not physically.
Not mentally.
On a conceptual level.
The pendant rested against his chest, cool and inert. He lifted it slowly, half-expecting resistance.
Nothing.
No warning.
No reassurance.
No whispering. No voices.
For the first time since he'd found it, the artifact felt… distant.
Kael let it fall back beneath his shirt.
"Fine," he muttered. "I'll manage."
He didn't believe it.
By midday, Argentinis was alive.
Crowds flowed through the streets like blood through veins, unaware of the invisible currents beneath their feet. Kael moved with them, keeping his head down, shoulders relaxed, breath controlled.
He didn't reach outward.
Not once.
Even so, he felt it.
Eyes that weren't eyes.
Attention without direction.
Whenever he lingered too long, the pressure returned—not heavy, not painful, just present.
A reminder.
You are seen… but you are not meant to be.
At a food stall near the transit junction, Kael ordered something warm—anything to ground himself. The vendor, a middle-aged man with oil-stained gloves, took one look at him and hesitated.
"…Sorry," the man said after an awkward pause. "We're closing."
Kael glanced at the grill. It was still running.
"You're not," Kael said carefully.
The man frowned, confused by his own words. "I—yeah. I guess not." He shook his head, uneasy. "Just… come back later."
Kael stepped away without arguing.
Two streets later, a woman bumped into him, muttered an apology, and walked on—only to stop, turn around, and stare directly at him with a blank expression.
For three seconds.
Then she blinked and kept walking.
Kael's pulse spiked.
This wasn't pursuit.
This was containment.
They weren't hunting him down anymore.
They were shaping the environment around him.
He ducked into a public archive building and sat near the back, surrounded by noise, paper, and human presence. The pressure eased slightly, like fingers loosening their grip.
Kael exhaled.
So this is how they do it.
No violence.
No confrontation.
Just narrowing the world until there was nowhere left to stand.
A folded slip of paper rested on the table in front of him.
Kael froze.
He hadn't seen anyone approach.
Slowly, he unfolded it.
"Control is not silence.
It is knowing when to be loud."
No signature.
No mark.
But Kael recognized the cadence.
Selene.
His jaw tightened.
So she knows.
He crushed the paper in his fist and stood, leaving the archive without looking back.
That night, Kael stood on his apartment rooftop, rain misting the air, city lights stretching endlessly below.
He focused inward again.
The gaps were still there.
But now he understood them.
They weren't damage.
They were locks.
Limits imposed not on his power—but on his recklessness, his curiosity.
Kael clenched his fists.
"Then I'll learn the keys," to open the locks and i will be the key he said quietly.
The pendant pulsed once.
Not in warning.
In acknowledgment.
Somewhere far away, a man closed a file.
"Phase one complete," he said calmly. "Subject adapting."
He paused.
"Proceed to secondary variables."
Back on the rooftop, Kael stared into the city.
The hunt hadn't ended.
It had evolved.
And this time—
He would too.