Chapter 107: Beneath Quiet Stone
—They Whisper, Still—
The chamber wasn't a prison.
It was worse.
Spacious. Clean. Silent.
Its air had no scent. Its walls pulsed gently like something half-asleep.
Karen Lockwood sat with her knees drawn to her chest, scythe across her lap like a sleeping serpent.
The Proto Domain that had once bloomed like a flower now hovered dormant—compressed, sheathed in her soul.
Across from her, Cassandra Ikemba sat upright on a slab of blackstone—arms crossed, face unreadable.
The Null Field no longer flared, but its residue clung to her like cold static.
They had spoken very little.
But silence could only stretch so far.
"We're not leaving the way we came," Karen murmured.
Cassandra's brow lifted slightly.
"You just figuring that out?"
"No. Just saying it out loud."
Cassandra shifted.
"He's watching us. Not with eyes."
Karen didn't ask how she knew.
She just nodded.
---
Elsewhere, in the deeper folds of shadow, Mirex watched. Not through screens. Not through spells.
Through intention.
He didn't see their bodies.
He saw their weight.
Karen's conflict.
Cassandra's density.
"Fascinating," he muttered.
Nyel appeared beside him like a shadow's echo.
"They're resisting."
"Yes."
"T`halem hasn't broken them yet."
Mirex smiled faintly.
"T`halem doesn't break things. He waits for them to lean."
He turned his head, whispering like smoke.
"But maybe I don't have to wait."
---
That night, Karen's dreams didn't come from her.
She stood in a familiar hallway.
Soul Academy. Empty. Cold.
But wrong.
The shadows were thicker.
And Cassandra was there—but not as she was.
She was older.
She stood in black robes, hair longer, eyes faintly glowing. Her Null Field spiraled behind her like a wound that consumed time.
"We never left," Cassandra whispered.
"We just became what they always feared we would."
Karen stepped back.
But the dream pulsed.
Cassandra's voice came again—but this time, it wasn't hers.
"She will fall first. The one you trust. Because she knows what it means to be unchosen."
Karen screamed into the void—
and woke up sweating in the cold chamber.
Cassandra sat up across the room, startled.
Karen stared.
"Did you just…?"
"Yeah," Cassandra said slowly, eyes wide. "I think he's in our heads now."
---
Far across Soul Island,
under a moon half-veiled by stormlight,
Muna Ikemba moved.
No task force.
No escort.
Just her coat.
Her rage.
And her tracking mark, carved quietly into Cassandra's wrist years ago.
It wasn't designed to trace across planes.
But she wasn't relying on tech.
She used memory.
Flesh memory.
Bloodline memory.
And now—she felt it.
A faint pulse.
Flickering.
Still alive.
"Hold on, baby," she whispered. "Just hold on."
---
Back inside the Veil's sanctum,
T`halem returned.
He entered the room where Karen and Cassandra sat like two stormfronts waiting for lightning.
He didn't bring chains.
He didn't bring threats.
He brought a chair.
And sat between them.
"You've been dreaming," he said. Calmly.
Neither girl answered.
"He's impatient," T`halem continued, as if speaking to the walls. "Wants to unravel you. Twist you into statements. I don't care for statements."
He turned to Cassandra.
"Your Domain... swallows expectation. But I wonder, do you understand what it denies?"
Cassandra narrowed her gaze.
"No."
"Good."
Then to Karen.
"And you. Ra`gnisis(Rose) taught you to wield the Abyss like armor. But she didn't tell you where she learned that."
Karen clenched her fists.
"I don't care."
"You will. Eventually."
He stood again.
"He will come again. The whisper. You should listen next time. Not everything from the Abyss is meant to harm you."
He left.
The door closed.
Karen and Cassandra looked at each other.
Karen exhaled.
"That man is…"
"Older than the nightmares they trained us to kill," Cassandra finished.
---
In the surveillance chamber, Mirex stared at the soul-silhouette T`halem left behind.
He didn't speak.
But something inside him burned.
"She was mine to shape."
---