Morning came too quickly.
Lior woke with the uneasy feeling that something had shifted while he slept. Not a sound, not a dream—just a pressure behind his eyes, like the world had leaned a little closer to him overnight.
He lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling as sunlight crept through the curtains. The city outside moved as it always did—cars, footsteps, distant voices—but to him, it felt different. Sharper. Closer.
The last quiet one.
The thought surfaced unbidden, and he frowned. He didn't remember thinking it before, yet it carried weight, as if it had been planted there deliberately.
He sat up slowly.
That was when it happened.
The room… peeled.
Not physically. Nothing cracked or shattered. Instead, the air itself seemed to thin, like a veil pulled half aside. Colors deepened. Shadows stretched in unnatural ways. For a brief, terrifying second, Lior could see layers—overlapping impressions of the same space, slightly out of sync.
He gasped and grabbed the edge of the bed.
The sensation vanished.
Silence returned. His room looked normal again.
His heart hammered.
"That wasn't a dream," he whispered.
As he stood, his gaze drifted to the desk.
The cube sat exactly where he had left it.
Except now, it wasn't dormant.
Faint lines of light traced across its surface, not glowing, but present—as if they had always been there and he was only now able to notice them. When he stepped closer, a strange clarity washed over him.
Awareness.
Not answers. Never answers.
Just… perception.
He turned toward the door, toward the hallway beyond his room. For the briefest moment, he knew—without knowing how—that someone in the building carried something more than ordinary potential. Not stronger. Not dangerous.
Just awakened.
Stage One, a quiet voice in his mind supplied.
Lior froze.
"How do I know that?" he muttered.
There was no response. No explanation. Only the lingering sense that this knowledge hadn't appeared overnight—it had been unlocked.
The Veil had opened.
Not fully. Not enough to expose the truth of the world. Only enough to let him glimpse the first rung of a ladder he hadn't known existed.
He looked back at the cube.
For the first time, it felt less like an object and more like a key.
And somewhere beyond his awareness—beyond the reach of the Veil—others had noticed the shift.
The quiet was over.