Morning did not announce itself.
It crept in, pale and uncertain, filtering through the gaps in the stone like a timid guest afraid of overstaying its welcome. The little flame Kael had made the night before had died into a circle of grey dust. Even its scent had faded.
But the marks I had seen…
I knelt just beyond the doorway, brushing my fingers lightly over the earth.
Nothing.
No glow. No symbols. Only cold, undisturbed soil.
And yet, I could still feel them.
A memory pressed into the ground like a scar that hadn't finished healing.
"what are you doing?"
Kael's voice came from behind me. He had already risen, his expression unreadable as he tugged on his worn gloves.
"I'm making sure it's still here," I said quietly.
He gave a dry huff. "The world?"
"The warning symbols."
His eyes flicked to the ground, then back to me. Something unreadable passed over his face.
"It won't show itself in the same place twice," he muttered. "Attention is dangerous. Patterns more so."
Xeno stepped outside moments later. The morning air wrapped around him, stirring his white hair. Even with the blindfold, he seemed to look directly where the symbols had been.
"You saw more than wind last night," he said.
"Yes."
"Did it speak?"
"No."
"Good," he replied. "Then it is still deciding."
I frowned. "Deciding what?"
"If you are worth opening to or ending."
A chill crawled down my spine, but I forced myself to hold my ground.
"And the symbols?" I asked. "What are they?"
Kael and Xeno exchanged a brief look.
Then Kael sighed.
"They are not markings," he said. "They are letters."
"From what language?"
"From the first one," he responded. "Before speech separated into lies and truths. Before writing was used to control instead of remember."
He knelt and began drawing on a flat stone with a small piece of charcoal. The shape that appeared was similar to the one that had been left in the dirt,but clearer now.
"Those who understood this language learned how to write the Books of Origin."
My breath caught. "The books the elder spoke of…"
"Not just books," he corrected. "Keys."
"Keys to what?"
"To knowing why the world broke… and how it might bleed again."
Silence folded over us.
"There were seven that mattered," Kael went on. "Some say thirteen. Others claim infinite. The truth is buried with their authors."
He drew more symbols beside the first.
"Each book is bound to a force. Not good. Not evil. Just… truth, stripped bare."
"Do they create Xenophores?" I asked.
He hesitated.
"No. That was humanity's gift to itself."
"Then what do the books do?"
"They explain them. They name them. They command them… or release them."
My pulse quickened. "And where are these books now?"
"Lost," Kael said bluntly. "Hidden. Destroyed. Guarded. Or waiting."
My eyes drifted to Xeno.
"But one," Kael added quietly, watching my face, "has started calling again."
The air changed at those words.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Because last night…" He tapped the area I had been watching. "It wrote back, didn't it?"
Later, we walked.
The land sloped upward into broken ridges of stone and brittle grass. As we moved, Kael pointed things out, changes in the wind's direction, marks in the earth that showed where Xenophores had passed but not crossed, places where the ground hummed faintly if you stood too long.
At first it meant nothing to me.
Then little things started to sharpen.
I noticed how the air shifted just before we reached a ruined area. How certain rocks held heat while others remained icy. How silence bent in different ways depending on what had touched the land.
"Don't just look," Xeno instructed quietly as we walked. "Listen with everything. Your skin. Your bones. Your breath."
"I don't know how to do that" I murmured.
"You are doing it already."
We stopped at a cracked stone arch resting against a hill.
"This place remembers words," Kael said. "Even when mouths have forgotten them."
Carved into the arch were thousands of symbols, faint, worn, but undeniably the same language as the marks and Kael's drawing.
My hand lifted without thinking.
The moment my fingers brushed the stone, the world shifted.
Not violently.
But clearly.
The symbols flared faintly beneath my touch, soft light, warm but not burning, running along the line where my skin met stone like ink coming back to life.
"Yona…" Kael breathed.
I pulled my hand back in shock.
The light faded at once.
But something remained inside my chest.
A feeling that I had been… answered.
"You didn't summon," Kael said slowly as he studied me now. "You were recognized."
I swallowed. "By what?"
"Not what," Xeno said quietly behind me.
"But who."
I turned to him.
"Books don't only respond to sinners," he continued. "Some respond to those who can carry their truth without breaking."
"And what makes you think I'm that?" My voice trembled slightly.
He stepped closer, just a little, the presence of him solid and unwavering.
"Who knows, maybe because you touched power,and didn't try to own it."
A strange heat flushed through me.
"And that," Kael muttered, "is where real strength begins."
Above us, the stone arch let out a faint sound,like a page being turned.
Somewhere deep beneath the earth, something had just awakened.
And it knew my name.
The air thickened.
It wasn't just cold,it was watchful now, pressing against my skin like invisible fingers. Kael tensed up. Xeno stilled completely, his head tilted as if listening to a sound too deep for human ears.
"Do you feel that?" I whispered.
"That's not a place remembering," Kael murmured. "That's a presence noticing."
The stone arch gave another soft groan. Tiny fragments of dust trembled loose from the cracks and floated, hanging in the air without falling.
Then the world… went quiet.
No breeze.
No insects.
No distant cries of birds.
Silence pressed in until it rang inside my ears.
A shadow slid across the ground,but when I looked up, there was nothing above us.
Slowly, the darkness gathered near the base of the arch, folding in on itself, thickening like ink dropped into water. It did not walk into existence.
It unfolded.
The Xenophore formed out of absence, a tall, distorted silhouette that refused to stay one shape for long. Edges blurred, stretched, reshaped. Where a face should have been, symbols shimmered faintly, twisting, rearranging, breaking, and reforming again.
My body locked in place, but my heart beat with strange calm.
"Don't run," Xeno said softly behind me. "It isn't hunting."
"Then what is it doing?" I asked.
"Answering."
The symbols carved into the arch began to glow again, brighter this time, and the light stretched from bone-white to deep crimson. The Xenophore lifted what might have been its head, and the symbols on its surface mirrored the ones in the stone.
A bridge.
A conversation.
The Xenophore shifted again, its form lowering slightly, no longer looming, but… regarding. Studying. Measuring.
Then it extended what resembled a hand, not to touch me, but to hover over the ground between us.
The earth responded.
A new symbol burned faintly into the soil. Not hot. Not painful. Just real.
Kael knelt beside it instantly. "This is different…" His voice held rare wonder.
"What does it say?" I asked.
His eyes lifted to me. "It isn't a warning."
"Then what is it?"
"A beginning."
The Xenophore began to dissolve, folding backward into shadow, but before it vanished completely, the symbols on its form flashed once more,bright enough that I had to close my eyes.
When the world returned to normal, the wind rushed back in. Birds cried out in sudden alarm. The dust dropped to the ground as if gravity had remembered its duty.
The Xenophore was gone.
Only the glowing symbol on the earth remained.