The station was old tech.
Thick glass, half-shattered. Metal consoles fused with overgrowth. Antennae curled like bones above it, still humming faintly with dead signals.
Lira pried open a panel and nodded Cael inside. The place smelled like dust and ozone, but it was dry. More than you could ask for this deep into distortion territory.
They didn't speak for a while.
Not until the door was barricaded. Not until the silence settled like ash.
Then Cael said:
"You knew the word."
Lira didn't look up.
"Lots of people know old words."
"Monoliths don't speak."
"They did today."
"So what does it mean?"
She sighed and sat down on the twisted frame of a broadcast chair.
"Keyborn," she said, slowly, like tasting it hurt her teeth. "It's not just a title."
"It's a classification."
"From before the collapse. From before even the Locks fractured."
Cael sat.
"How would you know that?"
She didn't answer directly.
"There were people once — not soldiers, not engineers. Call them anchors. They weren't meant to open Locks. They were meant to contain them."
"The theory was: if reality is breaking apart, bind it to people who can carry contradiction."
She looked at him.
"They tried to design paradoxes into living forms."
He stared.
"That doesn't make sense."
"Neither does the world. But you've seen what happens when the Locks act on their own."
"You survived one. That's not chance."
He felt the mark under his sleeve — warm now, like it had heard all of this before.
"So what does it want?"
"I don't know."
"Yes you do."
Lira's jaw tightened. Her hand drifted to her side pouch — not to draw a weapon, but to touch something inside.
Then she said:
"There's a name for what you might be. For what the Monolith remembered."
She said the word so softly, he barely heard it:
"Thirian."
The room went darker.
As if the light had flinched.
"That word's been wiped from most systems," she said. "Auto-redacted. You say it too close to a living net-hub, it burns the record."
"No one's supposed to remember the Thirian experiments."
Cael swallowed.
"Why?"
She looked at him for a long time.
"Because they worked."
They sat in silence.
And then the station lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Dead.
Lira stood instantly, crossbow up. Cael backed against the wall.
Outside, movement.
But not footsteps.
Scrapes.
Sliding.
"That's not a scav patrol," Lira whispered. "They're coming too slow."
"How would they even know we're here?"
She looked at him. For once, no quip. No mask.
"They're not tracking us," she said.
"They're tracking you."
The door creaked once.
Cael braced himself.
The mark began to throb.
And outside the glass, something whispered:
"Thirian…"
End of Chapter 5: Names That Shouldn't Exist