The scrap of cloth sat between them like a question.
Folded, smudged, and inked in symbols Kael didn't recognize. Not fully.
Mira had returned breathless, her steps frantic. She'd found the message tucked into a cracked wall near the abandoned shaft entrance, just beside where the tunnel curved back toward the main food storage trench—hidden in plain sight.
"You are not alone."
Beneath the words, a symbol shimmered—drawn in some metallic ink that still glimmered faintly under the flickering lantern light.
✠⟞⧬☍
Kael ran his finger across the cloth. The ink didn't smudge. That alone told him whoever wrote it knew glyphwork. It wasn't scribbled. It was sealed.
Renn crouched low beside him. "Could be a trap."
"Or a test," Mira added.
Brenn remained quiet. He stood near the cave mouth, arms crossed, staring out into the dark.
Kael didn't speak for a while.
Then: "We're not the only ones using glyphs."
The next morning brought ash-colored skies and a strange hush across the camp.
Rumors clung to the air like coal dust. The guards were tense. Eyes darted. Orders barked a little sharper. Everyone had heard by now.
The boy was saved.The glyph-wielders are real.One of them sings. One of them breaks a stone. One sees the truth.
Some whispered that the old ways were waking. Others thought the Mindflensers had returned. A few just muttered prayers and hoped not to be noticed.
Kael kept his head down during labor, watching everything. Every glance. Every twitch.
That's when he saw her.
Near the slag line, where slaves pushed broken carts of scrap ore, a girl no older than sixteen moved with careful intention. Her steps faltered near each support beam—but her hand brushed the base of every post.
Every time, just for a second.
And every time, her fingers left behind something tiny—barely visible.
A mark.
A glyph.
Kael narrowed his eyes.
That night, after the food was dumped and the yard cleared, Kael slipped out under cover of darkness. Mira followed, then Renn. Then Brenn.
They didn't speak.
They didn't need to.
They found the girl by the rusted water wheel, kneeling beside a dying fire.
She didn't flinch when they approached.
She just looked up and said, "Took you long enough."
Her name was Ashra.
A former miner from the glass tunnels far to the west. Captured. Branded. Forgotten.
But not broken.
"You've been drawing," Kael said. "Leaving glyphs on the supports."
"Only the old ones," she replied. "The ones that hum when the stone listens."
Kael's heart skipped. "How long?"
Ashra met his eyes. "Since before you arrived. But not openly. Not until you cracked the post with that hammer-armed brute."
She nodded toward Brenn, who raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms tighter.
"You sent the message," Mira said.
Ashra smiled. "Not just me. There are others. Deeper. Scattered across levels. We don't call ourselves anything—but we listen. And when you saved that boy…" She exhaled. "Everything changed."
They spoke for hours beneath the abandoned wheelhouse.
Ashra told them of a half-burned scroll passed between slaves. Of an elder who once sang glyphs into carved stone. Of a group that had tried to rise ten years ago and was buried alive in the sand shaft.
"Glyphs aren't spells," she said, voice hushed. "They're intent. Memory shaped into meaning. Language the world still understands, even if we've forgotten how to speak it."
Kael nodded slowly. "We're learning."
Ashra looked at him carefully. "You're doing more than that. You're teaching without meaning to. That's dangerous."
"I know," he replied.
"But you won't stop."
"No."
She smiled faintly. "Good."
Before she left, Ashra handed Kael a smooth stone. On its surface: a spiraling glyph like an open eye.
"This isn't one you use," she said. "It's one you carry. It listens. Records. Think of it as a memory lens. When the time comes, it'll show you something you've forgotten."
"From my past?"
Ashra shook her head.
"From your future."
Then she vanished into the tunnels.
They returned to the sanctum that night and laid the stone on the scroll.
Nothing happened at first.
Then a faint line of text appeared at the scroll's edge:
"Memory is not a line. It's a circle.Those who bear the Eye will walk the loop."
Kael whispered, "What does that mean?"
No one answered.
But in the pit of his gut, he already feared the truth:
They hadn't just woken old power.They were trapped in something older.
The next few days passed in uneasy silence.
No attacks. No warnings. No new orders from Grath.
Just quiet.
Too quiet.
Mira sharpened her hook. Renn trained his trap glyphs. Brenn patrolled their sector without speaking. Kael wrote glyphs into every surface he could find—stone, bone, leather, even his skin.
And still, the glyph on the memory stone pulsed. Slowly. Like a second heartbeat.
Until the seventh day.
A bell rang.
A scream followed.
Then, the sound of something in the air. Not wind.
Wings.
Heavy. Thick. Beating like a drum.
Kael ran to the pen wall and climbed the side to look over the camp's outer fence.
And there—descending from the skies—he saw it.
A black air-sled drawn by winged serpents, its frame marked in silver flame.
And below it—
Figures in robes of shadow and bone-white masks.
Mindflensers.
Kael dropped down, heart hammering.
"They're here," he said.
"Who?" Brenn asked.
Kael looked at each of them, then back toward the wall.
"The ones who know the glyphs. Who don't learn them."
Renn's face paled. "What do they want?"
Mira already knew.
"Us."