The crystals shimmered faintly beneath the calibrated light, their glow threading across the table like veins of muted starlight. Minjae adjusted the etched slab with slow, careful movements—muscle memory now, each shift precise, every nuance intentional. No flux this time. No unexpected stall. The array's response was immediate: a low, almost polite thrum resonated through the rune lines.
Aethra held steady.
Surnglyph stabilized the perimeter.
The ambient pulse reached the threshold of measurable consistency—brief, fragile, but undeniably there. Progress. Quiet, incremental, but real. Three positive sequences in one week. A pattern.
He watched the cycle run twice more. Any longer and the stability would degrade—like stretching a thin thread until it snapped. The runes weren't volatile; they were sensitive. They required listening, not force.
He powered down the system with no thrill, no outward reaction. Just a breath, controlled and satisfied.
Paper still helped him think, so he wrote the numbers by hand. Observations. Questions. Theories he'd loop back to later. He set his pen down and reached for his personal interface—just to skim the company threads, a small habit to close out the night.
But something new sat at the top of the feed.
Trending.
A public board post.
His brow lowered. He clicked it open.
A high-angle photo—taken from the break room weeks ago. His posture in the picture was familiar: arms crossed, gaze lifted toward the horizon beyond the window. He looked detached, quiet, almost contemplative.
He hadn't noticed anyone else there at the time.
The caption read:
*"When the quiet guy who never talks turns out to be a secret conglomerate heir hiding his empire behind quarterly reports."*
The tags were worse.
#IntrovertPrince
#LowProfileLegend
#MysteriousHeir
#BetHeOwnsUs
A hundred likes. More comments. All amused.
Minjae blinked once.
Not offense. Not discomfort.
Calculation.
He reopened the image. Studied it. The lighting sharpened the angles of his face, made him look more severe than he felt. A version of him that didn't exist, yet felt close enough to be a warning.
No one had ever approached him about his background. No one had ever guessed anything real. This wasn't a theory—it was a joke, born from office boredom and exaggeration.
But jokes had an unsettling way of circling truth.
He closed the tab, though the image stayed with him like a faint echo. His own face—framed in a way that made him look like something he wasn't trying to be.
---
Across the city, Renner exhaled through his nose, half amused, half startled. He'd seen the meme while scrolling through the open thread on an account he'd made weeks ago—quietly observing the chatter around Seojin Capital Solutions.
The photo was undeniably Minjae.
Renner leaned forward, elbows on his desk. He remembered the phrase he had once muttered in a late-night haze of frustration, sifting through old case files and dead-end leads.
"Not from above… but below."
Not a corporate implant. Not a foreign operative. No external puppet strings. Someone who rose on their own. Someone invisible until they weren't.
He had abandoned that theory months ago. Far too speculative. Too narrative-driven.
Yet now…
He chuckled, shaking his head. "The internet always finds a way."
Still, the weight of old suspicion flickered in his chest—not stronger, but awake again. Not evidence. Not even a hint. Just… a nudge. Enough to make him re-examine what he'd dismissed.
He closed the window and leaned back in his chair as the room settled into silence again.
---
At the company, Yura intercepted Minjae in the hallway with a grin she tried—and failed—to tone down.
"You've seen it, haven't you?"
He didn't ask what. He didn't need to.
He just gave a slight nod.
"You look good in that kind of lighting," she said, tapping her phone. "But it's the caption that did it. People are actually calling you the Introvert Prince."
He arched a brow faintly. "Is that supposed to be a title?"
"More like a vibe," she replied, amused.
They turned a corner and nearly bumped into Yuri, who carried two coffees—one for herself and one, presumably, for someone who was now about to receive a lukewarm drink.
"So," she said, eyes alight with mischief, "when's the royal decree coming?"
"I wasn't aware there was a court," Minjae answered, continuing forward without slowing.
Yuri laughed behind him. Yura bit her lip to hide her grin.
He didn't mind. Their reactions were harmless. Human. A small disturbance in his otherwise quiet existence—but no threat.
Still, the photo remained in the back of his mind.
Not because of the caption.
But because he looked almost like a stranger to himself.
---
That night, he returned to the hidden lab—his sanctuary beneath the noise of the city. The runes still held the remnants of the previous activation, a faint hum of Vitalia Surge lingering inside the sealed core.
He placed the third slate beside Aethra and Surnglyph. The new design—a multi-spoked array with curved branching lines—was still nameless. New things didn't get named until they proved themselves.
This one was promising.
Not powerful. Not reactive.
Responsive.
There was a difference. And he knew it.
Minjae sat before the slates, letting his gaze follow the arcs and intersections. Everything about the pattern felt familiar in a way that scraped gently at memory—like a word he used to know but couldn't fully recall.
The energy wasn't force. It wasn't command.
It reminded him of something older.
Remembrance.
Vitalia wasn't simply a flow. It was continuity—a thread between states of being. Between past and present. Between selves.
Between Minjae and the shadow of someone who once soared.
He lowered his hand to the nameless rune.
As his fingers brushed the surface, a soft blue shimmer traced along the inner curve. Not heat, not a reaction to contact. Something subtler. Something that felt almost—
Acknowledgment.
Like the array recognized him.
Not as an analyst.
Not as a researcher.
But as someone who had touched its source long before this human lifetime.
The glimmer faded.
But the quiet stayed.
And Minjae, for the first time in weeks, exhaled with something close to certainty:
This wasn't the beginning of understanding.
It was the beginning of remembering.