Kaley didn't talk much that day.
She didn't need to.
The hum was back—not loud, not painful. Just present. Like a heartbeat under her skin. Like a song with no words, looping quietly in the background.
Her mother noticed.
"Another glyph?" she asked, carefully placing the breakfast plate on the table.
Kaley shook her head.
"No new ones. Just... the old ones feel awake."
Her mom paused for a beat, then nodded like that made perfect sense. "Stay grounded," she said softly.
"I am."
She wasn't. Not completely.
Part of her—just a sliver—was still hovering, like her soul was leaning out a window no one else could see. The glyphs she carried weren't content to sleep anymore. They stirred beneath her skin, whispering meanings she didn't have words for.
She could feel Himiko now. Not just in dreams. In the quiet between moments. In the way the wind moved wrong, or how her shadow twitched a second late. Her presence wasn't loud or sharp—it was sticky, like honey on fingers, clinging.
The glyphs in her notebook had started changing. Not in shape—but in texture. Lines that used to stay flat were deepening, layering, like they wanted to peel off the paper and become something else. They itched at the edge of reality.
When she touched one—a simple mark for Echo—it pulsed.
And outside, across town, Himiko jerked awake from a nap beneath a dumpster. Her eyes snapped open, pupils wide and golden. She sat up fast, heart hammering with electric joy.
She grinned.
"She's learning."
That afternoon, Kaley went on a walk with her mom.
Normal route. Normal shoes. Normal weather.
But everything felt... brighter. Sharper. Like the world had been bumped into focus.
Birdsong sounded slower. Trees leaned in closer. The clouds overhead looked like they were watching.
They passed a man on a bench with a crumpled paper bag. Kaley paused.
There, just above his shoulder, floated a flicker of glyph—so faint she thought it was a trick of the light.
Watch.
She blinked.
The glyph vanished.
Her mom tugged her sleeve.
"Come on."
Kaley nodded, but her eyes lingered. That glyph hadn't come from her.
It came from them.
Someone was watching. Marking.
She didn't like the taste it left in her mouth.
She looked up at her mom. "He was tagged," Kaley whispered.
Her mom didn't stop walking. Her pace didn't change. But her fingers closed just a little tighter around Kaley's hand.
"I know," she said. "Eyes up, always."
Kaley didn't need to ask who they were.
That night, dinner was quiet. Her mom hummed under her breath as she washed dishes. Kaley sat at the table, fingers tracing old glyphs onto a napkin.
She stopped halfway through Thread.
Something pulled.
A tiny yank. Not physical. Emotional. Like a whisper tugging her heart sideways.
She stood.
"Outside," she said softly.
Her mother turned, soap still on her hands. "Stay in the yard."
Kaley nodded, slipping through the back door and padding barefoot into the grass.
It was colder than she expected. The wind didn't bite—but it nudged.
She walked to the tree at the back of the yard. Not the big one with the swing—the other one. Smaller. Crooked. The one that never lost its leaves, even in winter.
She placed her hand against the bark. It thrummed under her fingers.
A glyph pulsed at her touch. She hadn't drawn it. It grew there.
Echo.
She whispered back, "I'm here."
A gust of wind swirled around her ankles. A flicker of shadow across the fence line.
No threat.
Just presence.
She smiled.
Across town, Himiko crouched in a storm drain, journal open in her lap.
She traced Kaley's name again and again. Not with ink—never with ink. Ink faded.
Blood stayed.
Each letter hummed. Each line twitched. Glyphs bloomed between them.
They weren't all hers.
Some came from Kaley.
Some came from something else.
"Soon," she whispered. "We'll speak in light. In thread. In teeth."
She closed the journal and hugged it to her chest.
Above her, the stars blinked slower.
Later, alone in her room, Kaley opened her sketchbook. The pages flipped themselves like eager hands. Glyphs trembled like spider legs stretching from sleep. Her fingers hovered over the ink and the paper shivered.
She closed her eyes.
"Echo," she whispered.
And something answered.
A glyph lit up by itself.
Listen.
Then another:
Reach.
Then a final one, drawn by no hand Kaley recognized, etched faintly in the margin like it had always been there:
Bloom.
She touched it. The tip of her finger sparked, but it didn't burn.
Instead, the room tilted. Just slightly. Like gravity had sighed in a different direction.
Kaley opened her eyes.
The air in the room felt heavier. Dense with quiet.
The sketchbook snapped closed on its own.
Outside, the night had deepened. The stars blinked slower. And in the darkness beyond the backyard, unseen by her or her mother, golden eyes gleamed with unblinking joy.
Himiko whispered to herself, voice light as breath:
"She's calling now. She's really calling."
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a tiny, folded paper square. A glyph sketched on it in her own blood.
Thread.
She pressed it to her chest.
"She remembers me."
A hundred miles away, buried in steel and hum, a screen lit up.
Kaley's file blinked. Glyph anomalies. Signature mutations. Void-resonant activity.
The agent watching squinted.
"Again?"
The technician beside her shrugged. "She's accelerating."
The screen flickered.
Covenant sequence detected.
"Log it," the agent muttered.
But deep down, she knew.
This wasn't just a file anymore.
It was a signal.
And someone—something—was listening.