Beneath the City, A Spark
Elior didn't run anymore.
He watched.
Listened.
Waited.
In the forgotten levels beneath Aether Ward, where broken glyphs buzzed and old tech flickered with static, he found them—those who still dreamed.
Drifters.
Code-runners.
Junkborn children with shattered neural links.
Outcasts too unstable to be overwritten.
He called them nothing at first.
But they began to call him something:
"The Echo Shepherd."
First Conversion
A boy named Kesh.
Maybe thirteen. Sharp eyes. Quick hands.
He had an old Veiled control node hooked into his spine—half-dead tech twitching with stolen memories.
"You talk like the glyphs are alive," Kesh said.
"They are," Elior replied, placing a hand over the boy's scarred link.
A pulse of blue light surged. The glyph flickered.
For the first time in years, Kesh saw not commands, but choice.
"You rewrote it," the boy whispered. "Without pain."
"I didn't rewrite. I unlocked what was already yours."
Kesh dropped to one knee.
"Teach me."
The Gospel of Unwritten Truth
Elior began sharing fragments—not lectures.
Just questions:
"What if your memories aren't yours?"
"What if forgetting was never safety, but slavery?"
"What would you risk to remember who you really are?"
He didn't preach.
He provoked.
And in the quiet, others gathered.
Some broken.
Some dangerous.
All curious.
And all willing to follow the man who remembered when the world forgot.
Lysa Watching
Far above, through a glyph-drone's eye, Lysa Thorne watched from the Spire's outer rings.
"He's building something."
The drone fed her readings: neural activation, glyph synchronization, group patterns forming.
"Cult behavior. High viral threat."
She smiled faintly.
"Good. Now it's a real game."
And she marked his location.
Not to destroy.
But to test.
Resistance Rumors
Back at the Resistance base, old names returned.
"Someone's rewiring glyphborn. No pain. No crash."
"They say he walks without shadow. That Veiled tech won't scan him."
"They call him... the Echo Shepherd."
The name hit Mira like a distant chime.
She didn't know why it mattered.
But her heart beat faster.
Why does that name feel like home?
The First Sanctuary
Elior and Kesh found an old holo-theater deep beneath Sector Twelve.
Screens cracked. Seats rotted.
But the stage remained.
Elior lit the room with soft glyphlight.
"From now on," he said, "this is our sanctuary."
He etched a symbol into the wall: a spiral folding into a broken chain.
"Not a rebellion. Not a religion."
"Just memory."