Chapter 18 – Splinter Pulse
The ash winds had quieted.
Kovarra's Teeth stood against the dying light like a fractured crown, jagged and shadowed. Within the cliffs, the warband moved with the precision of a unit that had bled together—but the silence between them pulsed with unspoken weight.
Kael stood alone at the Codex well.
Teyra lay motionless at his feet, her breath shallow. One of the new rescues from the Mawtrain. Barely sixteen. She had taken a glancing shard to the lung during the retreat. Luma had stabilized her. Barely. Now, Kael stood over her, hand raised, Sovereign Glyph glowing.
"Pulse: Engage," he whispered.
The Codex flared.
Then glitched.
The glyph on his palm sparked, lashing backward like a struck nerve. Kael staggered.
[Codex Error: Sovereign Pulse Rejected]
[Pulse Already Claimed]
He froze.
Teyra's eyes shot open.
Glyphs not of Kael's line—foreign, rootlike, alien—blossomed across her neck and wrists. Her body arched. She screamed, not in pain, but release.
And then she stood.
Unaided.
Awake.
Whisper-Vow appeared instantly beside Kael, blades half-drawn, but paused. Teyra looked at her hands, blinking like a dreamer waking in a stranger's body.
Crate arrived last, panting. He had followed the surge from the relay lines.
"Kael..." he said, voice dry. "That sync? That wasn't yours."
Kael didn't speak.
He couldn't.
The camp that night was quiet, not from fear, but tension. Dreadmaw paced like a caged beast. Ironmark sat sharpening his reinforced spade in rhythmic strikes. Kestri remained perched on the canyon edge, unmoving. Luma read vitals from a cracked slate, his hands never still.
Kael entered the fire ring. His steps were heavy. The warband turned.
"You all saw what happened," he said. No illusions. No posturing.
Serrin rose, eyes unreadable. "She woke without you."
"The Codex chose without me," Kael corrected.
Dreadmaw snarled. "Then maybe it doesn't need you."
Ironmark spoke slower, colder. "Or maybe it's choosing others now. Spreading the weight."
"The weight still falls on me," Kael said quietly. "Until it kills me or crowns me."
No one laughed.
VyrmClaw, silent until now, grunted. "If the Codex is growing... are we still its soldiers? Or just soil for its roots?"
Kael looked down at his hand. The glyphs flickered, like a candle struggling in the wind.
[Sovereign Pulse Count: 78]
[New Glyph Thread: Detected (Unbound)]
He clenched his fist. "We hold the Teeth. We prepare for reprisal. That's all that changes."
The glyphs flared suddenly—without command. His voice faltered. A pulse rippled from his chest, knocking dust loose from the cave ceiling.
Kael's eyes went black with Codex bleed.
"They think I'm fading," he hissed. "They think the Codex is slipping from my hands."
He raised his arms. Glyphs spiraled out across his skin like burning roots.
"Then let them see what slipping looks like."
The fire pit exploded upward in a column of blue flame.
Hybrids fell back, weapons half-drawn. Even Dreadmaw hesitated.
Kael's breath was ragged. Glyphs twitched uncontrollably. The Codex was speaking through him now—too many threads. Too much power. No filter.
Serrin stepped forward. "Kael, stop. You're bleeding control."
"I am not losing control," he growled. "I am control."
And just as suddenly, it ended.
He dropped to one knee. The glyphs dimmed. His breath returned.
No one moved.
But from that moment on, none of them looked at him the same.
Whisper-Vow turned to Luma quietly.
"He didn't burn the Codex," she whispered.
"No," Luma replied. "He let it burn him."
Later, in the relay den, Crate worked alone. Sweat beaded down his temple as he tapped into the Codex spine net—a thrum of data, half-organic, half-digital, always humming just beneath the world. A flicker caught his attention. A whisper slithered through the static.
Not a voice.
A presence.
[Override Signal Detected]
[Designation: NULL-CROWN CLASS]
[Subject: MALIXEN KHAELIS]
[Status: Revoked Sovereign — Signal Intent: Observation]
The glyph patterns were sharp, ancient, more like scars than code. Crate backed away from the console like it had become a live predator. He whispered to himself: "Kael... someone's inside. Watching."
Far beneath Ashvault, the coral chambers hummed.
Malixen Khaelis stood before a vat of incomplete flesh. Hybrid. Ancient tech fused with fossil bone. His glaive leaned beside him, carved from the same Codex coral that once rejected him.
He watched Kael through the Codex glass—a projection born of pulse-threads and memory bleed. Static bloomed across the image like frost.
"Still you struggle to lead," he murmured. "Still you bleed in front of them."
He ran his hand along the obsidian half-mask fused to his jaw. Once, it had been a restraint. Now, it was part of him.
"I remember when it rejected me. When I screamed and it screamed back. I didn't break. I listened."
He turned toward his lieutenant—a malformed hybrid still twitching in its growth sack. He placed a hand on the vat.
"Kael thinks he was chosen. But the Codex never chooses. It tests."
He stepped forward. The ground responded, pulsing once beneath his bare feet.
"Begin the march," Malixen said.
"Let the Sovereign feel what it means to be... alone."
Back in Kovarra, Kael awoke with a start.
The glyphs on his arm were burning again.
But this time?
He hadn't summoned them.
They were answering something else.
Outside, Teyra sat near the fire, whispering to herself in a voice that wasn't hers.
Above, Kestri turned her gaze to the western horizon.
The clouds there weren't clouds.
They were moving.