"Some things burn only once. Others keep smoldering, even after the fire is long gone."— Fragment from a censored Edras glyph manuscript, seized by the Tribunalist Archive
Location:Vandral, South District – 7 years before Chapter 1
Age: Sarai Verrin, 13 Codename: None yet. Just a sister. Just a promise.
The air tasted like rust and boiling oil.
Vandral never truly slept, but sometimes it pretended. The smog was thinner at night, revealing the city's darkness— broken towers held together by steel rope and desperation. In the distance, the Tribunalist citadel glowed like the light was trying to pierce the sky itself.
Inside a collapsed housing block, Sarai crouched in the corner of a small room, clutching a rusted blade still wet with her own blood.
"It didn't work," she whispered.
"Try again," said her brother.
Tiron Verrin. Two years older. Smarter. Louder. Warmer.
And in the end—more human than she ever stayed.
The Failed Binding
They had stolen the ritual. A torn page from an Imperial archive. Supposedly an early Edras contract. A way to bind two Aiths through shared memory — by giving something up.
"You give something, I give something. What's left is ours."
That's what Tiron said before they sliced their forearms, linked fingers, and let the warmth of Aith spark between them.
Sarai gave her laughter.Tiron gave his fear.
But something went wrong.
The glyph burned across their skin asymmetrically — cracking down the middle like a lie torn in two.
And Sarai? She let go of everything.
By morning, her brother no longer knew her name.
Then he forgot her face. Then how to walk. Then how to breathe.
He became one of them — one of the "Folded Souls" the rebels whispered about. Failed bindings. Living fractures. People whose Aith had collapsed in on itself.
The Extraction
The Imperial Aith Research Unit 17 arrived that night.
They catalogued Tiron, labeled him "unstable but extractable."
They sedated Sarai. Ran tests. Her Aith readings breached Primordia proximity thresholds.
"High resonance. Emotional catalyst trauma confirmed. Candidate potential: viable."
But before she was taken away for conversion, someone intervened.
A shadow from below.
Codename:Irest. Master of the Veyla Path.
Specialist in Memory Severance and Perception Splicing.
He didn't rescue her. He made her invisible.
"You're no longer a person," he said. "You're a ghost. Survive long enough, and maybe you'll understand what that means."
And then—
"Your brother is gone. But his death can still serve a purpose."
"If you want to burn something… burn the Empire."
Aftermath
The Sarai who fled Vandral wasn't a girl.
She was ash in the shape of someone who still remembered how to walk.
She never tried to bind again. Not without knowing exactly what she'd lose.
[Present Fragment – Veil Layer 3, Moments After Chapter 5]
Kael lay half-conscious, blood drying across his face. Sarai sat beside him, brushing glass dust from her hair. His hand twitched toward her. Not with purpose. Just instinct.
And for a moment—
—she saw Tiron.
Not the broken shell. Not the silent thing strapped to the table. Just… her brother.
Then it faded.
And Sarai whispered into the dark:
"I should've burned with you."