Thalen locked himself in the Strategy Court that night. The Rift model: cracks from one to two. Nobody knew when he’d started carving blue lines into the underside of the stone table. With his finger. He’d seen Seraphis do it — press the cognitive barrier and leave a mark only certain people could feel. The line beneath his desk pulsed faintly.
Solvaris had given him a number that afternoon. Time until full Seal failure. Not years. Months. Everything accelerating.
He opened the envelope delivered through Fundoris after the session. No signature. Not paper — a thin material, surface smooth as water. One line: “The Seal wasn’t opened by you. You forgot it was always there.” Thalen locked it in a drawer. The handwriting’s frequency matched Kaelen’s cracks in the barrier exactly. Itheron wasn’t a mastermind from fifty years later. He’d been standing on the other side the moment he stood before V fifty years ago. Waiting behind a door for half a century. Waiting to be seen. Waiting for an answer.
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